I have multiple ideas for different novels. Should I go with the most ambitious or start with something simpler?

[RandomSimpEvent]

It's exactly as the title says. I have several different ideas for novels, but I'm not sure which one I should go with for my first novel. My favorite of the bunch is also the most ambitious, with multiple character arcs, vast worldbuilding, and intersecting plots, but I'm worried that I don't have the skill and experience to pull it off successfully. I have ideas for other stories, that while still intriguing, are simpler and smaller in scope. So I just wanted to see what people had to say. Should I go with the one I'm most passionate about, or leave it to the side for now and build up my writing skills with 'easier' stories?

 

[msstice]

If it were me, I'd tackle the one I'm most excited about. I learn by doing, so it wouldn't matter to me if it was the most complex. I'd learn, write, learn and rewrite.

 

[worldofmutes]

I have good ideas myself that I don’t really have the capacity to write. Probably the one I need to write is my own username, World of Mutes.

But like, the ones I wish I could write but can’t- if you think you can do it, give it a try and just see if it works out.
No harm in trying I guess.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I see you have put the word easier in quotes, and that is appropriate, because shorter doesn't necessarily mean easier. It just means shorter. Nor does one get better by avoiding what is challenging and sticking with what is simpler.

It takes on the average between half a million and a million words written for a new writer to develop the necessary skills. And it doesn't matter whether you reach that point writing x number of shorter works, or writing and rewriting something considerably longer—you have to put in the same amount of effort before everything clicks and falls into place and you finally really know what you are doing.

So the question is, will you be most likely to stick with it for as long as it takes if you turn out a lot of shorter works that disappoint you and weren't what you most wanted to write about anyway, but at least you will have some finished stories, or if you spend the same amount of time and effort slowly bringing something you really care about closer and closer to what you want it to be. Only you can answer that question, and maybe even you can't answer it yet until you've been working at it for a while.

So why not start with the project you feel passionate about? If you find that it defeats you (which is to say, if you don't feel that you are learning and progressing in spite of the number of mistakes you make and the number of rewrites you undertake), you can always put it aside for a time and try out one of your other ideas. But it's a long road ahead, whichever way you choose, so you might as well get as much pleasure and satisfaction as you can out of the journey. In the end, it may be the thing that sustains you when you might otherwise grow discouraged and give up.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Go with what you're passionate about. If you get bored, your reader will notice.

 

[Toby Frost]

I would wait a while. I sometimes get hit by what seems like an amazing idea for a story, but two weeks later the idea will have faded away. Ideas that fade often get discarded entirely or worked into another story as minor subplots. Other ideas just kick around in the back of my head for ages until I eventually figure out how to approach them: after years, I'm finally trying to write "the Georgian fantasy novel".

But I agree that ultimately you should go for the project that you're most into, provided that you can maintain that interest to the end.

 

[The Judge]

Just to act as devil's advocate for a moment, there is one possible drawback to writing the story which you're most enthused about when you've not yet acquired the skills to do it justice, and whether it is relevant largely depends on your character.

Some writers -- such as msstice, perhaps, and Teresa -- are able to finish something, realise it's not right, and then rip it up and start again. And they can do that over and over until it's right. Personally, I can't do that. I can edit down (I write long, so have to prune heavily), and I can fiddle with specific scenes and chapters, but I simply can't bring myself to tear a novel all to pieces and re-write it. That means that my first SFs which I greatly love but are simply not good enough because I wasn't experienced enough to write them, remain fixed in aspic and will never improve.

We all learn on the job when it comes to writing, so whichever story you go for, the end result of your first attempt will not be quite what it could be -- even if in the first flush of success you're happy with it, by the time you've had someone knowledgeable look it over, you'll realise that. If you're the kind who can overcome that disappointment, knuckle down and revamp it in total as it needs, then that's fine. If though you're like me and you'd then have to move to another project rather than try and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, starting with the story which you love best might be a mistake.

Whichever you decide to start with, good luck with it! You've come to the right place to get help and advice as you progress!

 

[BAYLOR]

If I may offer a suggestion, Do a vague background sketch of this big world you want to create and. In other world do a dry run short story first I the setting you envision . Test it to see if it's something you want to do.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I recommend starting with the story that inspires you most to write. Writing should be enjoyable, so do not deprive yourself by writing something that isn't the most intriguing for you. The most important goals are, first to start, and second to complete a story. Especially when writing a novel length tale, there will be periods where it is a slog and you feel everything you have written is junk (it is never as bad as you imagine it to be). If there is a more interesting story in the back of your mind, it is far too easy to quit on the first tale and jump to a new one without finishing the first.

One thing I found extremely helpful was to get my first thousand words written and submit it to the Critiques forum. There are a lot of extremely helpful people on this site who are willing to look at your work and give advice. Polish the opening a little, then push through to finish. There is nothing so rewarding as typing 'The End' when you have completed your tale. Knowing that you can complete a novel provides confidence that 'Yes, I can do this.' That will enable you to take on the next idea that sparks your desire, and, if you are really cut out to be a writer, there will be another fascinating idea to write about.

Don't overthink the issue, go ahead and get started. Pick something that you really want to write about and charge forward. Good luck and remember to have fun.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I agree with the others. Choose the one you find the most fun and exciting because that will be your motivation to complete the novel.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm going against the grain here: when starting to write, choose to start with the simpler story. There's a reason why many successful authors started out writing short stories and other short fiction. Simply put, it allows you to learn to better craft your work. Big sprawling projects don't allow for that development and experience, because they always take so much more time to do.

The best compromise IMO is to write some form of prelude - perhaps a short novel based on a single character who will appear in the big work.

 

[WSDuffy]

Take this with a grain of salt, as I've only written short fiction, but I have written long from academic writing, so I'm going from my PhD writing experience. What I'd do is to take the thing that really excites me, but find the part of it that excited you most. One of your big intersecting plots, for example. It will either lead you naturally into your larger work or become its own cohesive project while laying the groundwork to expand into the bigger space when it's ready. ALternatively, you can write 5-10 pages of two or three of them and see which one demands you keep going forward.

 

[Toby Frost]

Ok, slightly longer post.

I was talking to a writing friend and we concluded that we both wrote in a two-stage "process": (1) finding a bunch of things that it would be cool to write about and (2) fitting them together into some sort of coherent story. What that means is that you've got to not only find the starting ideas fun but be able to keep up enthusiasm until you get to the end.

My way of doing this is to look for "plot islands", points during the story that aren't conclusions but are important scenes for the story (the chestburster in Alien, say). To maintain enthusiasm, I try to aim for the next plot island and not the end of the story. So, the entertaining elements need to come together to produce a good ending and several interesting points along the way.

I think that's why I suggest waiting a little while. If it's just the setup that seems good, it may not be possible to keep it going to the end. But if it is good, ways of developing the original idea should come up while you're thinking about it.

 

[The Big Peat]

I am currently working on three different novels (and strongly resisting the urge to write more). One of them is a very complicated project that I'm hugely passionate about, that I nibble on slowly as I build the skills, knowledge of the world, and knowledge of what I'm doing.

The other two are indeed less complicated - and yes, I am less passionate about* - and I switch working between them in chunks to try and keep my mind and enthusiasm fresh.

In other words, I have my cake and eat it.

And yes, not everyone can work like this. But not everyone has the patience to build their skills doing things they love less than other things, and not everyone has the patience to fix the thing they love most if they botch it. There is no universal right answer, just a right answer for who you are right now.

The only answer I have is to pick whatever seems right to you and hurl yourself at it.



*My passion levels might be because I never loved them as much, or it might be I did love them as much but a far greater focus on them has doused that passion, like a sword used more often will blunt quicker.

Which is in itself something you'll have to learn about yourself. Can you complete your drafts in one big rush like some here and never really reach that stage? Are you slow and steady but capable of working through the tedium**? Are you neither and perhaps better suited to approaching your stories in nibbles and chunks? Don't worry about finding out answers to this now, but be alert to the answers when they arrive.


**Stephen's point about "if you're bored, the reader's bored" is true for many but not for all. The following tweet (and thread, click through) is good reading for when it's not, but the tl:dr summary is a writer will often spend a lot longer on writing a page than the reader will reading it, and come to it in a different emotional place, and of course sometimes you will have a different experience to the reader. I know I've written work where I've had to really grind to get it done and people have gone "wow".

https://twitter.com/x/status/1458848335129976841

p.s.

Ambitious/easier/complicated - there's lots of ways stories can be this, and perhaps it'd be useful for you RandomSimpleEvent to say what you think would make your favourite project harder than the others.

I know for me, it comes down to wanting to achieve a higher level of plot logic and worldbuilding than in other projects, and using more PoVs that have markedly different life experiences to mine. The plot logic I can learn best by doing the ambitious project. The use of PoVs with different life experiences to mine requires a lot of research. The worldbuilding lies in between. If it was all things I could learn through writing, maybe I'd prioritise it. But since there's a lot of research involved, it's a different kettle of fish for me.

 

[Guanazee]

Keep a log of all your ideas. Let them sit for awhile. Sketch out scenes or thoughts as they come to you. If you sustain the passion for that story then dive in.

The reality is you don't have to choose. You may get bored for short periods of time and need a break to switch to another project. You may not be in the mood to write that particular style for a week. Some other idea may grip your mind until you at least do a quick sketch to get it out. You can go back and forth between a main project and side projects.

I do think there is a difference between writing several complete short stories and plugging away at one novel. It is not a word for word exchange as far as gaining experience. You will gain the experience of plotting a full idea with shorts. You will gain experience fulfilling character arcs throughout an entire story. You will gain the experience of critiques once you swap your shorts.

However, if you aren't passionate about any short story ideas then it's all for naught anyway. Is there a scene you could write for your longer novel idea that could read like a short story? Then you could still gain experience, swap with critique partners, work on skills while still writing what your passionate about.

 

[DLCroix]

You also need guidance, which you can get through two means: one, increase unbelievably, and I mean A LOT, the number of books you read a week. Yes, I said okay. In the week, not a year. Because if you want to progress, and I imagine you want to do it fast, you have to become a true piranha that devours everything that passes through its eyes. A fifteen-year-old reads an book a day, to give you an idea. Even read medicine labels. But he also reads critically, that is, paying attention to how those books have been written. An excellent guide to help you know how to read, why to read and what to read is obviously the eternally endearing Harold Bloom. It may be redundant, but I assume you have already read Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Borges, Chandler, James Ellroy, Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), Don Quixote de la Mancha, Madame Bovary, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Savage Detectives, etc. . And if not, start now. Because it happens that many beginner writers make the mistake of believing that just writing is enough and it is not. That's like rowing with only one oar.
Two: the second reading that you should increase significantly is the one related to the theory of writing. For that, my best bedside guide is still On Writing, by Stephen King. That name sounds familiar to you, doesn't it?
But the road is long. It's a mountain you want to climb, so go slowly. And don't forget to live either.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

You also need guidance, which you can get through two means: one, increase unbelievably, and I mean A LOT, the number of books you read a week. Yes, I said okay. In the week, not a year. Because if you want to progress, and I imagine you want to do it fast, you have to become a true piranha that devours everything that passes through its eyes. A fifteen-year-old reads an book a day, to give you an idea. Even read medicine labels. But he also reads critically, that is, paying attention to how those books have been written. An excellent guide to help you know how to read, why to read and what to read is obviously the eternally endearing Harold Bloom. It may be redundant, but I assume you have already read Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Borges, Chandler, James Ellroy, Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey), Don Quixote de la Mancha, Madame Bovary, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Savage Detectives, etc. . And if not, start now. Because it happens that many beginner writers make the mistake of believing that just writing is enough and it is not. That's like rowing with only one oar.
Two: the second reading that you should increase significantly is the one related to the theory of writing. For that, my best bedside guide is still On Writing, by Stephen King. That name sounds familiar to you, doesn't it?
But the road is long. It's a mountain you want to climb, so go slowly. And don't forget to live either.

Yes, I used to read voraciously and no doubt I benefitted from that. However, since I've been writing I tend to approach it a little differently. These days if I read a passage that I particularly like for some reason, I think much more about what makes it so effective.

 

[DLCroix]

But you also reads critically, that is, paying attention to how those books have been written.

I just said it, didn't I? Still, some will like the way a certain passage sounds (the rhythm); how it is written (stylistic choices and there the range shoots up in syntax, style itself, narrative voice, etc); and as for what makes it so effective, as you say, that's where things really get uphill. Some even try to discern one, or several, formulas. As if it were algorithms. But do you know what I have discovered after twenty years of writing? That there are no formulas. It's actually like being in love. For example, in several universities they study Melville, Flaubert, Roberto Bolaño, Borges, Vargas Llosa, etc., and they still cannot discern why their writing is so fascinating despite the fact that they tell, do not show; their data dumps are so encyclopedic that they gave rise to list theory and their story plots could even be called basic. If they exist. At the end of the day, it's just about the pleasure of reading. An aesthetic enjoyment that can be compared, due to its level of complexity, with an exquisite violin solo or a baroque oil painting. Everything is form, ultimately, and most art, as Dickens said, is essentially useless.

 

[worldofmutes]

I like how you mentioned The Savage Detectives. Hold the phone, I thought this was a SFF forum!
Not exactly a classic everyone has read broham. xD

 

[BAYLOR]

The most amazing thing about writing a story, any story for that matter is, that in doing so , the writer spins into existence , peoples, places and things that previously didn't exist in any way shape or form . With words , one can create a whole universe and more .