What to do with a 10-year-old manuscript?
I finished a novel manuscript about ten years ago (I was about 16 years old).
It was a fantasy story that was about 110,000 words long. I was never satisfied with it afterward, so I didn't do anything else with it. I remember a few years later, I wanted to do a kind of "remaster" of it, in gaming jargon—a version that would primarily enhance the language and narrative depth (like a kind of higher resolution).
In some cases it's even more of a remake (some say completely rewritten).
Ultimately, I stopped pursuing the project at some point.
Now I still don't know what to do with it and, to be honest, I've forgotten a lot of my own history.
Should I just let it continue to rot in my files, or should I try to do something with it again? Maybe reread it and work on a new remaster, or even a complete remake? That would even have the advantage of allowing me to better take on the perspective of the uninformed reader, which would be more likely to reveal plot holes and the like.
Or finish and try to write something again?
After my first novel, I never managed to write another story I was satisfied with enough to even begin to finish. I think the furthest I got was about 70 pages into another story, which was so heavily plagiarized that I apparently even deleted the document for good at some point.
I have a few concept papers for other stories lying around, and I'd actually like to write something again, but I'm kind of afraid to. What should I do?
(2 votes)
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There’s no “sollen” here. Do what you want. If you want to rework your old work intensively or even rewrite it, do it. If a project is very close to the heart, this urge is sometimes simple and that’s fine. But if that’s just a fleeting thought, I’d rather guess. The chance is high that you will lose the interest in it very quickly.
If you prefer to write something completely new, write something new. If you want both, change both. You could also just take some elements from your old story that you liked especially well and make something completely new.
I know that doesn’t sound very helpful now, but I don’t know what to guess. You know what you’re looking for, right?
There is no reason to trust. You have nothing to lose? Even if you should break the story back in the middle, because the idea doesn’t convince you, it’s not bad. This happens and doesn’t change the fact that you still wrote 70 or more or less pages (which is more than that created by many others) and had (hopefully) fun.
I wouldn’t delete the story. In fact, I almost never erase anything I wrote (except my hard drive goes up in smoke and I was once again too lazy for a back-up…).
I think best of all, you can judge yourself what thought you’re getting more excited. :
Love
I have stories that are 40 years old. You can also recycle them into individual parts.
Proposal: Read it through. Distance is something wonderful. If they tie you up, keep going. If you often have to shake your head, consider if you can rework it.
In the end, it was an exercise and the experiences will also flow into a new beginning.
Thanks for the tip!
Yes, I liked the basic idea, but the execution in a linguistic and narrative way was really so bad, especially in the first 7 of 16 chapters, that I would, if at all, review this chapter more than just.
After that, it gets better because as an author I stuck deeper in the story. From the eighth chapter there is a very strong turning point that starts the really interesting action. These later chapters are thought to be saved, maybe even really useful.
Another problem is that much cliché is. I have the following criticisms:
What makes the story good is that I think it can portray relatively exciting battle scenes and the Lore is not so bad and there is a reasonable moral conflict (it is something like the message of PETA for certain fantastic beings).
Presumably, a partial evaluation of a new project with a completely new setting, new characters, but a new action with the same animal welfare motive, similar combat choregraphs but better integration into the world would be better. Exciting subplots could be taken over.
Yeah, why not? Remember that a lot are on the move in High Fantasy. The competition is tough. Delimitation is a good idea. If it goes towards the Orient, it is necessary to know, even in the myth world. The names should follow a logic. Ask ChatGPT what it associated with certain names. I ask, “What do you think about this name first? What would a local think of? Would he realize that a stranger invented the names?” 80% of the names I can throw away even though I have long experience with it. On the other hand, there is a name whose meaning no one recognizes, but ChatGPT finds him good and I got used to it as my cat is called Leela. Strangers wrinkled the forehead, but for me this is not color. Take names that are very different and have not 5 syllables and more.
Steampunk isn’t as easy as you think. If you have many alien beings, then there is also a culture that lives with such beings. The Egyptians, for example, had a lot of chimera. In the Amazon there were high cultures that disappeared. You can attach everything to them. Indiana Jones would have his real pleasure. In Australia you can experiment with the dream paths of natives and New Zealand has the perfect Hobbit-Kulisse and too little folkore. So there’s still air. Or write about Atlantis or the rainforest that ravaged in the Sahara, where the Amazon originates and flows backwards.
If nothing fits: Off on another planet that was made urbarous and where special animals were bred to adapt them to the optimized ecosystem. Probably a lot went wrong. Of course, such beings can also escape the test tubes of the alchemists …
Yes, I spontaneously catch Markus Heitz with his “Drachen” series, in which this fantasy theme is transported to the 1920s and thus thematizes dragon hunt on propeller aircraft. This is much more interesting than if he had left the dragon hatz in a medieval setting.
In fact, dragon hunting (where the dragon’s term in phenotype was about as stretchable as with Dragon Hunters on Super RTL) was such a hanger of my story. If you want to remain technologically a little at the same level, you could have taken Scandinavia in the Viking period. That might have been too similar.
I’m a little bit with high fantasy on the foot of war or in a kind of hate love. In the past, I found it very fascinating (I would not have tried myself for this), but precisely this oversaturation, not only in the novel world, but also in film, series, etc., has disturbed me more and more in the European medieval setting.
It would also be funny to reprocess something like the historical Emu war in Australia, only then maybe it is not just Emus, but Raptoren or something similar. It is also possible to incorporate the Aborigines with their culture and mythology. Or, in general, the conquest and new development of Australia by settlers. Down Under is described anyway as Hellhole, where you can find all kinds of dangerous fauna. Why not overdo this?
I would have a lot more like to deal with the subject again.
Thanks for your input!
Unlike another user here, I would not delete the manuscript.
If you really want to rework it, do it.
I myself also have a manuscript in the drawer with which I am never really satisfied. Nevertheless, in the last ten years I have rewritten, deleted and written new ones.
If you really want to write something again, try a few short stories for the beginning. Maybe to your fantasy project? Perhaps you can awaken the lust for the main project and who knows what might arise from it.
Otherwise I can only advise you to read some typists. Writing is a craft, maybe you still lack a suitable tool that allows you to get more motivated about writing.
Yeah, short stories sound good, so it’s more likely to get what done, I thought about it too. I just don’t know how to design or plan short stories, because that must be much more pointing because it’s shorter.
I even have a huge book to write at home, but also not the muse. Sometimes I feel too lazy to be the author.
As far as the craftsmanship is concerned, it is precisely the point that this first work is still at such a low linguistic and partly narrative level that I wonder how far it is profitable to deal with the work.
I once compared the first chapter in the finished version with the first chapter in the broken “Remaster” and there was a huge difference to notice.
Even as small things as names were completely all over the place and zero consistent, imagine you have something like Holger and Karl, but then Sung and Phuong and Cecilius and so on …
In the meantime, I also tend to shift interest and would perhaps prefer to embed sci fi or dystopias or at least the fantasy more into our world (the old work was total high fantasy and rather cliché; nowadays I would rather do something in the modern world but with fantasy elements there).
But thank you, you motivate me to deal with the creative writing again in principle.
In a novel, you have many side acts that fall away in short history, so in the end you have your pointed history. I usually take a core theme and get into action as late as possible and finish it as soon as possible. I’m also trying to introduce a tension sheet to prevent the happening from being robbed. But to have a successful experience, short stories are wonderful. If possible, you can also participate in alerts. If one manages to be taken up in an anthology, it will lead you all the more.
I also have a huge stack of typists on my desk. I also had to get up, read them and learn to work with them. But they gave me some craftsmanship that I feel safer when writing.
And to beat the bow to the main work: The first version/the first work is always bad, we don’t need to talk. That’s what hobby writers do and that’s what the big writers did. And for that, the revisions are there to grind and polish this raw diamond and to make the best of it. Even my short stories run through several versions until I send them to tender.
My 13-year-old manuscript, which I mentioned above, I started as a 16-year-old, with 20 I finished it and left it in the drawer for years because, although I liked the story, I was not satisfied with what was probably the way I was telling back then. I often brought it back out, chapters rewritten, changed, etc. At some point, it will meet my demands, I am sure and I think that will be the case with them. Some stories just need a little longer than others.
I’d leave the high-fantasy project in the drawer if you’d rather do something else. Then focus on your new project. Maybe you can connect the two as Stephen King often does with his stories. One project does not exclude the other. But that’s all yours.
I wish you every success in writing
A short story is usually so long that you can write/read it in a slide. I do not know a real measurement, because the transitions of miniature, short story, short story, narrative, novel and novel are flowing.
If you want to participate in alerts, you can here look. I have already participated in some competitions and some of my texts have already been published.
Thanks to you, just technically asked: what length do short stories usually have to be titled as such?
But yes, something like a recording in an anthology or similar sounds interesting and theoretically it is also easier to see whether an idea could not possibly be further elaborated but a kind of novel could become later.
Reminds me as a little as the so-called oneshots in the manga area, which are often used to hide the interest in an idea and then to see if a successful manga could not be done.
Just hang in and just try it, all right if you like it again.
I don’t know if I’m going to write a new one or to discuss the old story again. Does that make any sense when you wrote it at such a juvenile age and you’re barely in it in the world?
You can just try it, and if you can’t put yourself into the one written earlier, you start with something new. Or just write on it and see what’s coming.
Thank you, that was inspiring!
Clear it and good. no one
It was too bad for me to completely delete. The file does not take a lot of space and may sometimes provide Schmunzler for family reasons.
Who reads books in times of youtube and netflix. Think logical boy. That’s as if you were getting Wadenwind at the doctor
🙄
Maybe you should start reading some… Too bad your horizon seems so limited.
These are people who buy the books as decorations and give them in it.
The German book industry still accounts for over 9 billion euros per year …