Writing a book without any ideas....

[Mjollnir13]

Has anybody attempted to write a story without having any idea where it would lead to? Just starting writing about people and having events play out as you write them?

[Stew21]

I had a couple of novel ideas roaming around in my head and had attempted to excavate them a couple of times but hated the results, let them simmer for a bit on a back burner.
then one night of insomnia I decided to write, no idea what, saw I had a message on my answering machine. the light was blinking. That's where the story started. I didn't have a character's name. I didn't know what it was going to become, until I saw "that simmering story" start to break to the surface.
So I guess technically it didn't come out of no where it was an idea I already had. I just didn't understand how to write it until I dove in with absolutely no idea of where I was starting and where I was going and it sort of showed me which idea it was. It still surprises me, not the concept I started with so long ago.
but yes, I've just started writing and seen a story come forth.
The ideas I have, how to execute them, well that's a different story all together.

[NeuroFizz]

If you don't have any deadline pressures, just write and enjoy it. You may end up scrapping a significant portion of what you write as the story firms up, but as long as your time constraints are minimal, just do it. Just write.

[BlueTexas]

I often start that way, but it ends up being a bad thing if I don't have some bits of it worked out by the first 2000 words or so.

[The Grift]

Has anybody attempted to write a story without having any idea where it would lead to?

There's an entire genre for this. It's called literary fiction.:tongue

In all seriousness, this is the only way Tom Robbins writes (as I understand it) and he's done okay for himself.

[NeuroFizz]

I know you were kidding, Grift, but this bears saying--literary fiction should NOT be a catch-all genre for misfit and directionless stories. They should be carefully thought out like stories in any other genre. I'd say this is as competitive a genre as any out there, and it is one that probably garners the most academic scrutiny (I may be wrong about that last part, so straighten me out if I'm wrong, please).

That said, some literary fiction I've read has been consdered misfit or directionless by some readers.

[Stew21]

There's an entire genre for this. It's called literary fiction.:tongue

In all seriousness, this is the only way Tom Robbins writes (as I understand it) and he's done okay for himself.

Robbins doesn't even know what the next sentence is going to be until the one he just wrote is perfect. He's weird. but you're right, he's done ok for himself.

[rugcat]

That's basically how I write. But by the time I'm halfway through the novel I usually have a pretty good idea of where it's going, although I do sometimes get well and truly stuck.

I write that way because it's the only thing that seems to work for me. I wouldn't recommend it though, if you have a choice. It's like walking a tightrope, esp if you have a deadline.

[MidnightMuse]

Starting out with no direction has never worked for me - but I have often found the WIP taking a completely different direction than the one I'd started out with, as it progresses.

[Saanen]

I'm about to start revising a novel I wrote without any idea where it was going--I just had a good main character, an interesting setting, and a kickass premise (or at least, I like to think so). The problem is, although I cobbled together a plot as I went along, the whole thing came in at just barely 50k words and is full of plot holes and inconsistencies. The revision is going to be more of a rewriting, which is why I've put it off for so long. I'm currently hammering out the plot. If I'd done my work right in the first place, I'd be shopping this thing now instead of rewriting--the draft was written two years ago.

[Jamesaritchie]

Has anybody attempted to write a story without having any idea where it would lead to? Just starting writing about people and having events play out as you write them?


It's the only way I will write, and it's the way a great many very successful writers go about it.

[JamieFord]

The practical problem with this is, what happens when your editor wants an outline for your second book? (The one you haven't written yet).

[stormie]

I start out with either just an opening sentence or one idea. The characters, the scenes, the plots and sub-plots then come from that. I can't outline. I might do a draft of a synopsis. But that's usually as the story progresses. And I make notes as I go along.

[stormie]

The practical problem with this is, what happens when your editor wants an outline for your second book? (The one you haven't written yet).
Then you have to do it. But the editor knows that this outline isn't a hard and fast rule to follow. During the process of writing it, he/she and you might have different ideas of where the story should go or how a character should act.

ETA: I have trouble with outlines so I send in a synopsis to my agent.