Giving continuation to the story

This seems to be a recurring problem with me, probably because I'm amauterish in this area.

The thing is, after starting a story, I can't think on how I should continue. I have the world and characters' concept in my head, but it doesn't help me with the plot progression at all. Most of the time I have a feeling that I'm building bridges that lead to nowhere, and it bothers me.

Tips? Help?

Don't plan ahead, just write and see where you end up. Make the characters do stuff, and have that stuff move the story along. If you don't like where you ended up, that's fine, because the creative energy is flowing.

On the other hand, try plotting it out step by step and use the points as guidelines.

Or, do what I did once and end the first chapter with a cliffhanger.

Maybe if you gave us more details on the story we could help you easier, BTW.

The problem is, I have many unconnected ideas flying about. For example, in the story that I am writing, Kingdom A declared war against Kingdom B because their diplomacy fell to the bottom. After Kingdom A invades Kingdom B (unsuccessfully. The war goes on for 10 more years), I plan to use a time-skip and focus on the real "protagonists" who live at the side of Kingdom B. I'm not sure what to do with said protagonists or how I should procceed from there (note that I am still thinking about how I'm going to write out that invasion from 11 years ago). I have a goal planned for them, but I've yet to find out how to reach there.

Try just planning it out, like I said. Or just think about what the characters want most in their opening scene, even if it's just something small and mundane like food, and roll with it.

The trick I use is the write the end of the story first. That way, I know where I am going when I write the rest of it. Oftentimes, I have to change the ending due to new ideas I've thought of, but at least I still have an idea where the story is headed.

I have always wanted to do that for my stories, but because my friends like to read it while I write, it keeps me writing linearly so they don't get spoilers or anything. :P One day, though.

Well, you could write the end, and then just not show it to them .

Haha, true. Though I also worry that if I did it out of order, I'd end up doing all the big scenes first and then the boring parts will never get written

That's basically what I've done. I have the ending in my head but no ideas about how I'm going to reach it. I'll try your advice and see if "rolling with it" helps me.

Great, I hope it does

Do you have a good grip of your premise? As in, you can explain it in a complete and concise way? If you don't have a good grip on your story's core, that might mess up your plotting.

I'm not sure I understand what premisse means in storytelling. However, if it can be simplified to "what the story is about", then I believe I can.

If I had to put the moral of story, it'd be something like "More often than not evil is born from good people's misguided actions". Sounds cliché, but instead of putting good vs evil, I intend to use Grey and Grey Morality, some sliding more toward White Morality than others, and see whether I can make it interesting by showing the good sides of every POV. No villains, only tragedy wrought by folly.

For example, Kingdom A (yes, I have a name for it) invades Kingdom B because they feel abused by said kingdom. For a century they fell into some sort of vassal state, fulfilling Kingdom B's demands as a condition for being helped.

The problem is, their demands were absurd, ranging from lands to resources and gold to pay their debts later on. Even now that Kingdom A has recovered (and paid most of their debts), Kingdom B utilizes its political influence within the country to aid popular revolts demanding the anexation of lands to their own, place pressure on the payment of the remaining debts and raise importation taxes and tributation for their products when they seem to not comply.

... Yes, they called for it.

Yet Kingdom B is only truly 'bad' toward Kingdom A. They have a healthy relationship with other countries and are by themselves a great power within the continent, being the richest and the best country when life quality is involved... Their King appeals to both nobility, the merchant elite and the folk (or so it seems) and thus gets a very high approval rate. Politics wise, they are a strange mix of populism and elitism, trying to keep both satisfied by any means. I suppose you could compare them to the description of The Prince, by Machiavelli. Their diplomacy with the rest of the continent is stable enough to not have any particular enemies.

My protagonists start on Kingdom B, living amidst the war. They paint Kingdom A as the villain in their POV, whereas the other side paints Kindom B as the villain. Stuff happens along the way, some of which I have already planned in my head.

... This is basically it, I guess.

edited 1st Jun '14 3:27:44 PM by Rapier

Sounds interesting.