The difference between ideas and plot

I've been away for a while - mostly because I found this awesome site called AW (Absolute Writer). Well worth the visit if you have time.

But back on topic :)

I've been writing stories since I was 12 - one story in particular, which is finally reaching completion. Now, I know this story, inside and out. I would be irritated if I didn't after all the work I put into it.

Now I'm having to face up to the fact that I might actually finish this story. This means coming up with something new to write about. Which, if you knew how many ideas I come up with a day, wouldn't seem all that difficult.

But there is a huge difference between ideas and plot. I'd just forgotten how much. Take Varrick for example. I started off with an idea, one that I liked. I created a plot, using three act structure as a basis. I wrote the first twenty pages. They weren't bad - I liked the characters, ect.

But what they did was stale. Incredibly so. Because what was happening to them (and while active protags make do their way and some of their problems, obstacles are often not of their creating) was not boring, but had been done. So many times. I'd read books like this more than once. And while plot points can be archetypal, this wasn't archetypal - it was crap.

I think the main problem is that before hand, when I sat down and plotted my other books (namely THE MANDA) - I had already written the entire thing out twice with no plan. So lots of random and wonderful things had to be tied together, and that created something new. I already had the originality, I just had to figure a way of getting it under control.

But I can't write 6 drafts every time I want to write a book. I just won't have the time - university will eat it up like nothing on earth.

So I have to figure out a way to plot that allows for random ideas. And what I've been doing so far (following three act structure) obviously isn't working. It needs to be part of it, but not all of it.

If that's all I use from scratch, all I end up with is staleness.
T
*sigh* back to the drawing board.

Optimism vs Election depression

Well, sometimes things are just weird.

Let's start with the good news. As long as she doesn't disappear into the net, I now have one very nice beta, who is doing a very good job. Hopefully she sticks around. She picked up on some things (namely that I'd been a little over savvy in my cutting) that made me rewrite some of the first chapters. Well and good. At least she didn't hate my characters :)
I started part time work. YAY! Money! I have to move all the way to Queensland next year (image moving from Texas to Canada. About the same distance) and it's going to take a bit.
I don't dislike my job. Okay, it can be boring at times, but the people I work with are nice, the customers are generally nice, I didn't have to do anything horrible, and I get paid according to a quite nice EBA. Which means I get paid more on Sunday.
So, there's two things going well.
And then there's this bloody election.
This is one topic of conversation that definitely is not going to be part of a checkout conversation unless someone brings it up. I live in a country seat, and we've been Liberal (the conservative party) for so long that the Liberal's MP office is starting to rust. If Labor ever did win, they'd have to move into the Liberal's old building, so "rusted-in" is that office.
So yes. I'm a fan of biggish government. Which means I will probably die before I consider voting for the Liberal party. So we're not going to have any conversations about politics, cause they will turn into debates :)
In other news, Australia now has a hung Parliament. Which means we have ANOTHER WEEK OR TWO of this until someone actually forms minority government. And then, stuff will only happen if Labor is that minority government, because the Greens control the Senate. A bill has to go through the House of Reps and the Senate to be passed. If the Libs form minority government with the independents, they will be able to pass things through the House of Reps. However, Can you see a right wing policy (the Liberals lean to the right, for those wondering) getting through a GREEN CONTROLLED SENATE (the Greens are the leftest leaning party you can go while still being pragmatic and practical IMHO)? Nope. Not going to happen.
So, yes. We get another three years of BS.
I think that's enough depression on the the national scale to offset the happiness in personal life. Delightful.

As I said. Sometimes things are just weird. In an awful way.