Words of Encouragement: Your Story Ideas Will Never Give Up on You

What if I told you that sunsetting one of your story ideas is not necessarily a bad thing?

There comes a point where working on a project is no longer the best thing for it or you. When resentment appears, and you get the sense that another story idea is calling your name, sometimes the right thing to do is to answer that call.

I completely understand why there can be so much shame surrounding that decision, though. I’ve experienced it myself. I was never shy about sharing what I was working on with friends and family, so when people asked about past projects only to be told I was no longer working on them, their frowns wounded me. Readers want you to finish. You want you to finish.

But if you’re avoiding writing more than you’re making progress, it could be time for you to walk away from an idea. It might feel like giving up, but it isn’t; it’s giving the idea room to grow and morph and change into something else.

I have just come across evidence from my own archives that your story ideas will never give up on you.

Back in 2022, I was active on an app called Dorian, a platform for writers to build visual-novel-like stories. (If you’ve ever gotten an ad for mobile games like Episode and Choices, you know what I’m talking about!) Though I’m primarily a long-form fiction writer, I’ve experimented with many storytelling mediums, and interactive stories like those on Dorian have always intrigued me. At one point, I was active enough in the Dorian Discord server to gain the attention of Dorian’s staff. They offered to evaluate my game ideas and advise me on which would do best on the platform. What an opportunity, right? I was like, “Sign me the hell up for that!”

So I presented eight ideas, none of which I ever ended up making on Dorian partially because, at the time, Dorian didn’t have the functionality to support my vision. Just for shits and giggles, I opened that doc up the other day because I remembered it existed. Know what I found?

• Two ideas were adaptations of a book I’ve written, or am in the process of writing.
• One idea turned into my 30 Day Road Trip Word Crawl Workbook.
• Three ideas are now printable writing prompt games—Robin Goodfellow’s Matchmaking Café, Pythia, and Return to the Ocean—you can play now to knock yourself out of writer’s block.
• Two untouched ideas made me raise an eyebrow think, Oh, wait a second, I might’ve been onto something there…

For those of you keeping score at home, half of the ideas in that doc blossomed into a completed project. Three quarters of the ideas have a project attached to them, completed or not.

Like I said, I hadn’t touched this doc in nearly half a decade, and I haven’t done anything on Dorian in a few years (though I’d never rule out returning!). These story ideas were supposed to be dormant; instead, they came back to the front of my mind exactly on time and became something I could not have anticipated when I jotted them down in Google Docs so long ago. Pythia, in particular, was a life trajectory-changing creation for me!

What does this mean for your abandoned WIPs?

You shouldn’t consider shelving a project to be giving up on it because it will never give up on you!

When you intuit that you need to step away a WIP, listen to your intuition. Don’t fret or wring your hands about whether you’ll ever get to play with those characters, themes, and worlds again. You will return to those ideas sooner than you expect. Put them down, give them a kiss, and walk away confident that this isn’t goodbye—it’s, “Rest well, because I’ll put you to work later!”

I also want to encourage you to allow yourself time and energy for creative expression in mediums beyond the novel. Experimenting with different ways to tell stories can only strengthen your understanding of the tools at your disposal, and doing so could lead to new opportunities that excite and surprise you.

You might balk at the idea of leaving your novel to rot while you entertain other flights of fancy, but that will not be what happens. What’ll happen is you’ll find another way to fill your creative well when you get stuck in your story, or you’ll realize that an idea you treasure is meant for something else without getting mad at yourself for not being able to force it into the shape of a book. You’ll create more, which will light you up more, which will lead to creating more, and so on and so on, until you and your projects are all aglow.

Want help retooling your story idea into a page-turning novel—or fit it for another medium entirely? Book a story coaching session with me!

Rest assured: even if you’ve lost just about all hope in your story idea being salvageable, I haven’t. Borrow my belief in your ability to bring it back to life, and let’s get to work.

PS. Not sure if you’re ready for coaching? Book the free 15-minute fix, and let’s talk about it! Or sign up for my newsletter below to stay in touch!