Wrestling with Unfinished Stories
Rescuing stories from development hell
Nothing feels more frustrating for me as an author than an unfinished story.
It’s a creative vision interrupted. Think of it like a canceled TV series that ends on a cliffhanger. You are left with more questions than answers and those questions are in danger of never getting resolved.
My path to being a published author is littered with unfinished stories. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Failing to finish one story often teaches me how to build the next one.
The lessons I learn from unfinished stories have helped me return to some of those characters and worlds later, armed with a new purpose and a different perspective on a story I once shelved.
Clearing the Rubble
Rescuing my past unfinished stories from development hell has turned into an ongoing personal goal. I’m driven to unlock characters and plots I once tossed aside and sealed inside a forgotten trunk stored deep in my memories. I want to find a way to eventually complete all those stories because they are important to me.
My recent science fiction novella, Hollow Planet, stands out as a successful rescue from my unfinished story slush pile. I started writing my first draft of Hollow Planet in my early college years. It endured several title changes (including The Strange Journey and Haven) while I puzzled through how to develop the story.
The central plot of Hollow Planet always involved human astronauts finding signs of an ancient alien race on a barren planet. I ran into a major roadblock once I sent the astronaut protagonists beneath the planet’s surface.
What would happen if they encountered aliens?
How would the aliens react to their new visitors?
What would influence their reaction?
I struggled to answer these questions until I tied elements of the story into my Alien People Chronicles universe. When I decided the astronauts were also Earthian colonists who settled on a planet called Colonia in a neighboring solar system, their motives for contacting an ancient alien race suddenly progressed beyond simple curiosity. Colonia repelled an invasion by hostile alien forces in Among Hidden Stars, so these astronauts were searching for resources and allies to aid in planetary defense against future attacks.
Connecting characters and settings to my Alien People Chronicles universe also helped me understand both my protagonists and antagonists in Hollow Planet better and imbued their actions with greater meaning and purpose. It turned a once-unfinished story into a compelling sci-fi thriller that opened a new world and new characters to explore in future stories.
Rebuilding Stories
Discarded stories don’t need to be consigned to stay in an unfinished slush file forever. No story is beyond redemption or rescue when you devote enough time and energy as an author to get to know your characters and the worlds they inhabit.
Character development drives storytelling. Once you resolve to learn everything you can learn about your characters, your story development will run as smoothly as a high-speed bullet train. Their thoughts and actions will become clear to you when you drop them into a specific setting and a story will unfold in ways you never imagined when you generated your initial idea.
World building is also essential in crafting a story. Characters are influenced by their environment much like people who live in the real world. If you create an exoplanet populated by aliens, for example, you breathe life into those characters when you sketch out planetary history, geography, geology, biology, culture, religion, and so forth. These factors truly influence how your characters approach a situation and where they drive the plot.
My original approach to storytelling involved writing whatever popped into my head and sorting out the details later. Several early unfinished story drafts pushed me to plan out important elements in later stories. When I write a novel, novella, or short story these days, I sketch out key details for main characters and their worlds before I write a sentence in the actual story.
I still have many files containing unfinished stories waiting to be completed. One day, I’ll eliminate that slush pile and bring those stories all to life.
Ironically read this just after rummaging through my library where I found all my old discarded stories. They were really quite bad, but the main character that appeared in them still seems interesting. Who knows, maybe I’ll try putting him in something on Substack
Thanks for the article, John. Certainly got me thinking 👍🏼
You’re absolutely right about characters driving the story! Once you know your characters in and out, you can drop them in ANY situation and BOOM-- you’ve got a story. So fun!