When To Switch To Another Idea

I bet you know this very well:

You are working on your draft when you get a new idea about something and then you switch. You follow the new idea, scrap big parts of your draft until you get another great idea and you switch again, scrap big parts of your draft, and after a while you lost because you have no idea where to go, which ideas to follow and how to finish that draft if it keeps on going like that.

It’s tempting to follow new ideas instantly. In the beginning, they seem fresh and exciting. But when you go about executing them, you start realizing that there are a lot of problems in execution that you haven’t thought of before.

So how do you go about that?

First of all, you’re always going to have “problems” with your execution. That’s what creative writing is about in a way. Problem-solving. So, if you’re hoping to catch that one great idea one day that will solve all your story problems altogether, scratch that. Your work as a writer is to know how to solve these problems because you’ve done it 100 times.

And second, if you are not sure which ideas to follow, try this simple rule: in the beginning, when you decided to write that story, there was something that excited you about it, some emotional core that you connected with.

So if you get new ideas and you try to evaluate them in order to find out which of them to follow and which to scrap, check if they honor that emotional core of yours. If they do, you may try to incorporate them. If they don’t, put them aside, delete them, save them for later, put them into another story, whatever. But they don’t belong in THIS story right now.

Once you know and realize what your emotional core is, it’s much simpler to weed out your ideas. You’ll be so much more creative, because it takes away a lot of guesswork and insecurity.

Learn to connect with your emotional core: