One of my biggest challenges with writing a story is getting started. As an example, I had a hard time working on my newest novel idea this past week. While this was partly because of other commitments in my personal life, another part of the struggle was understanding the high level story arc.

In my current story, I have great intro–a thousand words of action that give the reader a pretty good sense of the intended story. The intro came to me in moments, colors and scents of this new world rushing to me almost like a memory. These first thousand words were easy to write, in a large part because I just had to write down what my mind’s eye saw perfectly clear.

Even so, while the intro is compelling and exciting, I struggled with where to go next.

While I understood the high level idea (a conflict between two parties, where the reader has to decide who to root for), I struggled with getting the abstract down to something I can actually create.

I finally had to sit myself down for a frank discussion. “George,” I said, for that’s what I call myself…everyone else calls me ‘Mike’, “You know where you’re starting. Now all you have to do is figure out where you want to go. Once you figure that out, just think about the steps you need to get there.”

That helped. But it only got me halfway there. The truth is, I’m not 100% sure where it is that I want to go. The story is more important than the destination.

So I compromised.

Instead, I’ve planned out the next three chapters, and once those are finished, I’ll start to think more about where the story should wrap up. Sometimes I change my direction mid-course anyway, so not knowing where I’m going isn’t a big deal.

Besides, this is just the beginning. I know I have about a hundred thousand words to go, so there’s some time for me to figure out some of the details.

Why is the ending important anyway?

The big reason I want to figure out an ending is that I want to know when my story is complete. Once you know where the ending is, you can start to figure out how close you are to completing your novel. It’s something that helps for planning purposes, especially since my goal is to have this particular story ready for review by an agent in about 6 months.

Planning a book is like any other project. Having a plan helps you to understand whether you’re ahead of schedule or behind.

As of this point, I’m sure I’m behind. But now I have a plan to figure out the ending, and see how far I have to go. This will also help me to know how far I have to go in order to catch up. Six months is an aggressive goal for any novel-length work, but I’ve decided that I need to start setting goals so I can make progress every day.

I’ll keep folks updated with my word count each week. Eventually, I may even start showing graphs of the work. This should be a good way to encourage myself to keep making progress.

Current word count: 940 (~1% complete)

Have you looked at a painting or picture and wonder what the story is that the artist or photographers is trying to tell?

Pictures can be a useful source to inspire writing. Recently, my grandmother gave me a picture of my grandfather and her on their wedding day. They would have been married in June of 1948, sometime after my grandfather, a World War II veteran, returned to the States from a long deployment in Germany.

This is the first picture I have ever seen of my grandfather who died a decade or so before I was born. In the picture he is standing beside my grandmother who is sitting. With his black hair, handsome facial features and gentle eyes, I can understand why my grandmother married him. The background to the picture is the living room of my great grandparent’s farmhouse.

Looking at these two young people, I wonder about their stories. My grandmother will occasionally tell me about her life as a young wife. However, when my grandfather died, his stories died with him. My grandfather very seldom talked about his experiences in Germany after he returned home, but there are other stories there that he could have shared with his family, including how he met my grandmother and his stories of adjusting to civilian life after his experiences in Germany.

Could an author look at that picture and write a story about two young lovers and their lives and struggles as they married and raised a family in the years immediately following World War II? What else does that picture say that would help the author write a story? It is obvious in the picture, even in black and white, they were very happy on that day. Both them are grinning from ear to ear and as you stare at the picture you can sense that they have a wonderful secret that they are sharing only with each other. What could that secret be and how will it affect those two people as they start their lives together? Could there be trouble down the road and what would happen if the marriage is successful or if it fails? What happens if a major illness strikes? How does that change the other come of their story together.

There are just as many likelihoods in that story as there are authors who could be inspired to write a novel based on that picture and the events leading up and the events following the moment captured in the photograph.