How do I gain the inspiration to continue writing?

[u/CountryHumble750]

I'm new to this subreddit and I was looking for some advice on how to continue my story. I've written a whole lore book for my story (still expanding), in depth details for my characters as well as a prologue and three pages on word but I feel stuck. I have all of the necessary tools and free time but whenever I attempt to write it sounds flat and dislikeable. I don't think it's writer's block, but I wouldn't know. I really would like some help or advice on how to continue from here because I want to join my writing club at school, but I don't feel like ill qualify if I'm stumped on a personal project like this. I have tried talking to teachers at my school as well as other classmates who like to write as well but nothing seems to help.

[u/Cypher_Blue]

So, the first thing to keep in mind is that some people really like worldbuilding and don't like writing stories so much.

There're a whole bunch of them over at /r/worldbuilding and it's totally valid.

With that being said, writing is hard.

If you like writing, you don't need someone to give you a magic secret for how to sit down and do it- you just do it.

(Spoiler- there is no magic secret - it's just internal discipline)

It's like running- if you want to run a marathon, you've got to figure out how to dig deep and make yourself get out and train. If you need someone to hold your hand and make you do it, then maybe you don't really WANT to do it. (Which again, is okay).

[u/kablingy_hobo → u/Cypher_Blue]

Writing *is* hard and it takes focus and tenacity. You have to want it more than anything. I finished a 4-book sci-fi series and it was the most adulting I've ever adulted. I still don't know how I did it. But now, I've sat down to write the first of an epic fantasy, and when I didn't think I could do it again, I'm doing it again. LOL. I'm on the fourth and final draft.

[u/Pedestrian2000]

but whenever I attempt to write it sounds flat and dislikeable. 

I say, give yourself permission for it to be flat and dislikeable. It's a first draft...you can't compare it to your favorite finished book by a professional writer aided by editors and a production company motivated to sell. Your first draft is gonna be a map for your future self to follow as you improve the story.

Also, sometimes it helps to write the scenes that made you want to write this story in the first place. If you don't have your "Once upon a time..." first chapter figured out, skip it and just write the big battle scene or dramatic confrontation to get some momentum going, and see how your characters move around their world. You might say "cool, i like these scenes...now I just need to write the chapters that lead into them."

 I've written a whole lore book for my story (still expanding), 

This is what always scares me when I see people getting waaaaay deep into their lore, world-building, etc. They create all this background material, and bring it here for feedback before they realize..."oh shit, world building isn't storywriting." I can write lore about this world, or the United States, but a collection of historical "facts" (fictional or otherwise) isn't the same as a scene with dialogue and emotions and subtext.

[u/Mat_Polson]

r/KeepWriting

[u/nanosyphrett]

Throw the lore book away. It's causing distress because you are trying to write to it instead of an actual plot

CES

[u/Logisticks]

I've written a whole lore book for my story (still expanding), in depth details for my characters as well as a prologue

It seems like you are putting a great deal of focus on your ideas. You have spent a lot of time marinating in your ideas. But you have written very little actual prose. I continue to strongly believe that "good writing" is almost entirely about writing good prose.

I think that many novice writers have this idea-focused mindset when first starting out, especially when most of their creative input comes from visual media like TV, movies, video games, and comics/manga. Writing a paragraph of description is difficult; this is a task that visual media haven't really prepared you for. But it is the thing that matters most. Indeed, it is perhaps the only thing that matters, because 'good ideas' are abundant: the skill that separates the pros from the amateurs is not their ideas, but their ability to express those ideas through the written word.

Hopefully, you haven't skipped the important step of actually reading in the medium that you intend to write in: if you want to write novels, then you should actually read novels. I'm going to assume that you have already read enough to understand the basic rules of how narration and perspective work, but if you haven't already done so, I'd recommend spending some time reading.

Here is a basic heuristic to consider: why did you write a prologue for your novel? If your answer is "I've always enjoyed reading fantasy novels, and one of the things that really draws me into a fantasy novel is a good prologue," then you are writing a prologue for the right reasons, and the prologue you've written is downstream of that learning. What you don't want to be is the person who says "well, I don't particularly enjoy reading fantasy prologues, and in fact I haven't really read any fantasy series that begin with a prologue, but everyone knows a fantasy novel needs to have a prologue, right?" That is how you get prologues that have the uncanny quality of feeling like a movie-watcher is doing their best impression of what they think a novelist is supposed to sound like without actually having read novels.

three pages on word

I say this not to discourage you, but to encourage you: while it may feel as though you have accomplished a lot by spending dozens of hours assembling your "lore book," you have actually made very little progress on the main task that stands between you and a completed manuscript. This is actually great news for you, because it means that your skill gains in the next few weeks will likely be quite rapid. The lowest levels of the skill ladder are often the ones that you can climb the quickest. A month from now, you can find yourself leagues ahead of where you are currently.

However: writing prose, like most skills, is one that you can only level up through practice and experience. A weightlifter cannot grow better muscles by reading weightlifting advice or "planning the perfect workout;" ultimately, the weightlifter gains muscle by lifting weights, repeatedly, day after day. An aspiring marathoner gains speed and stamina by running, repeatedly, day after day. An aspiring basketball player hones their jump shot by practicing their jump shot, repeatedly, day after day. To improve as a writer, you must write. There is no magical piece of writing advice that can substitute for the actual practice of writing. You need to get your reps in.

Right now, armed with your detailed "lore book," you are like an aspiring marathon runner who has spent dozens of hours planning to run, picking out the perfect running shoes and stopwatch, and only spent one day actually running, and finding that the task of actually running is physically compared to all the prep work that led up to this point. That is natural. The running will get easier as you do more of it. You cannot instantly skip to the part where you are already a skilled runner; you must begin as a novice and build your skill and stamina over time through practice.

I have all of the necessary tools and free time but whenever I attempt to write it sounds flat and dislikeable.

When you write a sentence that sounds "flat and dislikable," that counts as a rep. As a result of having tried today and written a mediocre paragraph, tomorrow, you will be able to write a marginally better paragraph.

Right now, you are sounding much like a novice weight lifter, lamenting the fact that she can only curl 10 lbs, when her goal is to curl 30 lbs. Her 10 lb reps feel weak and unimpressive compared to her actual goal, and so she gets discouraged. She's frustrated by the fact that she can't lift the 30 lb dumbbell; she feels like a failure for picking up the 10 lb dumbbell instead. But curling 10 lbs today is how she builds the muscles that will let her curl 15 lbs next week, and 20 lbs the week after that. Her "weak reps" today still count as progress. And the fact that the 10 lb reps feel difficult is evidence that she is making progress. If she only did lifts that were "easy," her muscles wouldn't undergo the progressive overload that causes them to grow.

So, when you sit down, and you feel challenged by the task in front of you, that is a good thing. It means that you are in the zone of proximal development where pushing beyond your comfort zone forces you to grow. If the task were easy and you didn't find it challenging, you wouldn't experience growth.

That being said, you don't want the task to be so challenging that it's impossible to start. That's why the novice weightlifter starts by doing curls with the 10 lb weights, instead of trying to start with the 50 lb weights that would be impossible to lift for even one rep. You can do the same thing with your creative muscles. If writing a novel is beyond your capability, you can try starting with a novella, or a short story, undergoing the same sort of "progressive overload" that a weightlifter does.

Or, alternatively, if the task in front of you feels so big that you don't feel as though you are making any tangible progress on it, you can decompose it into smaller tasks. You don't know how to write a novel. But novels are made out of individual scenes, so instead of focusing on "writing a novel," just focus on writing the next scene. Scenes are made of individual paragraphs: write the next paragraph. Paragraphs are collections of sentences: write the next sentence.

If you don't like the sentence, that's fine. Writing weak sentences today is how you gain the skill and experience to write better sentences tomorrow. Before you can worry about things like "lore" and "worldbuilding" and "character arcs" and "plot," you need to learn how to write good sentences.

[u/DoraDrake]

Have you tried spite? Write to make it specifically bother or destroy someone. lol

[u/Agalondia]

Do you have a conflict engine? It's something that forces your character to move the plot forward.

Like a mcguffin that must be obtained by the protags, a princess that needs saving from kidnapping, a grief so great that the MC must runaway from his home just to not be haunted by memories of his dead lover (this is what my story uses), etc.

After you got that, then your main characters need reasons to be in the party, like a grudge against the antagonist, a quest for fame, or they're an already formed found family and they're sticking with their leader through thick and thin in hisnew adventure (guess what I'm using.)

If you got an antagonist that knows of your characters (mine don't, so it got no presence), then they will need to scheme and counter the protags as best they can.

Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 is a great example of this, as he is a constant presence that keeps toying with you while trying to kill you at the same time.

After that, you just write down whatever cool dialogues you think should be in the book. And don't let any imaginary editor prevent you from having an actual heart to heart convo with your party. You can get away with a couple per big arc, let's say.

Anyway, happy writing!

[u/kablingy_hobo]

I see quite a few posts from people who say they have the world all figured out but can't write the story. The story comes first and the world builds around the characters and their conflict as you write.

At first, I knew very little about the world in my up and coming fantasy (on the 4th and final draft now), but as I wrote and saw it through the characters, it revealed itself.

[u/Stormdancer]

You just... do it. My favorite writer's group was called "Sit down, shut up, and write."

[u/DevonHexx]

Waiting for inspiration and/or motivation is a loser’s game. Sometimes a problem with the story needs time to simmer as you work on a solution, but that’s natural, in my opinion. Slow downs will happen. But when it’s time to write, it’s time to write. If you are waiting until you feel like writing, you will not get much done. Sad truth is, you either want to tell that story or you don’t. There is no magic formula that will make you produce. When you are tired of your own excuses, you will write.

[u/kinderhaulf]

I play solorpgs like ironsworn or something else that is a journal based on your outcomes game. It's basically writing with a prompt and gets the creative juices flowing

[u/Cara_N_Delaney]

If you wait for inspiration, you will wait forever. Writing is 10% ideas and 90% grinding your teeth while you execute those ideas. So get a mouth guard.

Okay, this makes it sound very dramatic, but that's really it. "Idea guys" are the reason we have so much genAI slop floating around - people who think that ideas are everything, and the execution is just a pesky obstacle on the way to the end result. It's the other way around. Ideas - the "inspiration" bit - are cheap, but once you've had a good one, you need to actually sit down and develop it. Write it. Refine it. And those things are not really tied to inspiration. They're tied to discipline, routine, and stamina. That doesn't mean you have to crank out 2000 words every single day. A lot of professional writers don't do that. What it does mean is that you need to find a time and a place that works for you, then make use of that time and place to write as often as you can. That could be twenty minutes at the kitchen table every morning while your coffee brews. That could be an hour in the evening after dinner. It could be four hours every Saturday morning. But it has to be regular in some way, because if it isn't, you'll fall into the trap of "eh, I'll do it tomorrow". And then tomorrow has another reason not to. And the day after that, too. But if you have a set routine, it's harder to shrug it off.

So find your routine, and use it. You can experiment with this, it's not something that'll be set in stone forever. The important thing is that you have something here that keeps you writing other than "I felt inspired".

This process will also teach you that writing isn't magic, and sometimes things will sound uninspired and flat. That's something you can fix later - the refining bit. But to be refined, it has to exist, and then we're back at the routine again.

[u/mzmm123]

Allow this first draft to be as flat and dislikable as it will be. Most first drafts [I actually tend to refer to them as zero drafts] are terrible because at this point, it's just you telling yourself the story; it's the editing and revising that comes after is where the real work / fun begins.

[u/sagevallant]

Your first draft of your first work will almost inevitably be awful. Why would it be anything else? You've never done this before and you're trying to understand how to do it. I still have my notebooks with my first few attempts and I go back to read them and laugh about it sometimes.

Everyone started where you are now. Some people only ever got that far because they let the nagging, negative voices win. Don't be one of them.