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[Flaming Dorf]

Speaking of which, does anybody who has some experience with writing have any tips on getting around that?  I'm at that awful stage where I've got these characters and a story that I love, but I can't write any of it because nothing I type can do justice to my vision.  Stupid OCD perfectionism.

If you can manage, try to get something down on paper. You'll feel a lot better with a fuller story.
Then, you can let your inner editor perfect the crap out of it. Once the story is written, you can do your story justice through careful refinement.

[Aqizzar]

That always was the plan.  I wrote three pages on mis-en-scene loaded exposition before I forgot where I was going.  That was four years ago.  I've done a lot of rethinking since then and tried to jot down a structure several times, but always stopped short of actually writing something.

Just recently, I've finally come up with a new way of approaching the gaping hole where an introduction should be.  Screw this contest, I'm going to get started immediately.  Well, this weekend anyway.  Stupid college.

[Jackrabbit]

This is something I need to try.

[Dasleah]

Tis better to have wrote and failed, than never to have wrote at all. Lest thou then take yon writing and destroy it in disgust - then, alas, it is as thou hast never written in the first place.

And all that jazz. You're not a writer until you actually write something. Yes, it will be bad, and it will be awful, and you'll hate it and despise it and wish to simply throw it out the window, smash that delete key, and be rid of this affront to your assumed talent forever.

But don't. As hard as it may be to realise, you need to write a thousand bad sentences before you can learn to make decent sentences. And you, of all people, are the least qualified person to make this assumption. You are far too emotionally attached to anything you write to have any sort of constructive comment on it so early in your writing career. So you may hate it, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Doesn't mean it's good, either, but the truth is you're not in a position to judge your own work.

So just shut up, sit down, and write. Cellotape a live scorpion to that Backspace key, and god help you if you give up and start again. You write. You write and write and write and stop listening to yourself and write and write and write. And then, when it's done?

You write more. You are only as good as the next thing you write. Hand off the earlier work to an editor, an enemy, a forum. Forget about it. Come back in a few weeks with fresh eyes and then you can find someone else to edit.

[Servant Corps]

I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.

[ToonyMan]

I like long novels the same way I like long movies.

They last longer.

[Cthulhu]

I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.

100 words isn't a story though, it's a paragraph.

[redacted123]

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[Cthulhu]

Be like HP Lovecraft.  Put two female characters total in your entire body of work, and make them both evil.

[redacted123]

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[Armok]

Chapter 1: Hell to Pancakes
"Yes, you do deserv to go to me! So sweet and tasty on the outside, and yet by that very propety you are trecherus, luring peaple into the trap of bulimia!"
Chapter 2: New Management
"Headlines: Hell, due to the recent recesion in the metaphysics industy, has ben sold for the price of 3 000 000 souls!"
Chapter 3: Apes Could DO Better
After his recent purchase of hell, mr Wikkins, the CEO of Orans&Chimps united went there for a visist. He would make the trains run on time goddammit.
Chapter 4: Screw You Laptop
"Hello there sir Wikkins! YOU, YOU have got 347986687 new emails! To celebrate this event, lets play the Vista Dance!"
Chapter 5: Sticky Beesiness is Sticky
Apperantly, giant cybernetic wasp mechas are non-refundable, and biopolymer armor might be high-tech, but not in a place made of fire, like for example hell.
Chapter 6: Is Time Enough?
"So, we simply go into the wormhole, grab Tesla and... Wait, does this dial here say we have only 264 milliseconds before it closes once we enter?!?"
Chapter 7: Jump Back From Reality
In wich the protagonist finaly get powerfull enought to confront the author
Chapter 8: Oops There Goes Gravity
"Mister Tesla, are you SURE this is a good ide- AAHRUUG!!!"
Chapter 9: DUN DUN DUN
[spoiler!] Also, a climatic battle between the wasp mech hotwired and improved by Tessla, and the Orangutan army.
Chapter 10: Resolute!
"And so they lived happily ever after"

[ToonyMan]

Pretty much yeah.

XD

[userpay]

I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.

Have ye ever heard what they say about talking in elizabethan (read renisance-ish times) if ye can say it in 4 words say it in 12. Then again I do prefer the if ye can say it in 100 words say it in 100 words when it comes to schoolwork. But if yer going for a creative project usually more is better.

As for me I've got a story I've been working on and off, mostly off, over the past few years. Maybe I'll start working on that again.

[Muz]

My sister did this a few years ago. Gave up in the middle of it, but she had fun.

If I'm free in November, I think I'll do this too. Depends on whether or not I get that lucrative job

[Dasleah]

I don't like having to write 50,000 words, that's too long. If you can explain a story in 100 words, then explain it in 100 words.

If you can explain a story in 100 words, then frankly you aren't taking it seriously. If you story can be so diluted and watered down that you can cover all major events, plot points, backstory, characters - including motivations, history, profound changes in personality, relationships - in 100 words, then that should be seen as a damning indication that you suck as a writer.

It's a common misconception that you should be able to describe a character in one sentence. That is complete bullshit. Dilute for me the entire sum of existence for any individual on this planet in one sentence, and you'd be selling them short by at least another 10 pages. Characters are complex. They are not gimmicks or throwaways that can be summed up in "He is a man looking for vengance, and he has a dark and mysterious past", because in making them so shallow as to be able to describe them as such, ruins their potential. Anything and everything they do falls back into the barriers created by that one sparse sentence, forever remaining nothing more than a barely standing skeleton that yes, you may build upon, but all you're doing is layering on something so thin it will eventually collapse under the weight of all those half-arsed hacks and retcons as you desperately try to make them something more than a two-dimensional sentence.

An idea can be 100 words, sure. But something worth reading - and worth writing - contains thousands of ideas.