What's the hardest part of your writing process?

[Sithking Zero]

Resisting the urge to do infodumps. I find it difficult to avoid writting too much about the setting and it's tech rather than the character and story.

I find it useful to write all that stuff up in encyclopedia-style format. That way it's available if I need it, and it gets the information out of my head so it won't keep insisting that it needs to be in the story.

You can always post it later if people are interested, and sometimes it's surprising what makes its way into the story.

Some cases, you can do infodumps "legally," so to speak. For example, putting a glossary for strange words at the end of your work can be very helpful to your reader. Really tiny infodumps, such as the footnotes in the Ciaphas Cain novels, can enhance and even provide additional humor to stories, as well as fill in details that might not be avaliable to your characters.

[Darth Yan]

writing the introduction.

[Crayz9000]

For my larger stories, I keep them separated by folders; background, drafts, completed chapters, etc. The story itself is a single openDocument file, which I keep versioning enabled in to let me track my changes over time. I also keep bits of written story that I found didn't work in their own folder, and from time to time I'll re-use them in a different place.

As far as background info goes, I've basically organized it like a story encyclopedia, which it seems is like what a lot of multiple-author projects both professional and otherwise wind up doing as well. I have one file for character bios, one for tech notes, timeline, plot outline and random plot ideas that come to mind, and anything else that deserves attention. That way I can always refer to the specs for my stuff consistently, without info dumping, and I can put only the information that's actually relevant in the story.

[Dass.Kapital]

Originally Peebo-T:

I started my first Fan-Fic by writing the images and ideas in my head into a large 'Notebook' type A4 Folder.

With the different scenes and ideas liberally 'spread' throughy out its pages and, I had hoped, far enough apart from each other that I could comfortably write them 'together'. (Some times I had left enough pages, other times not).

Then, as time went on, I added both more scenes/ideas as I had them and just kept expanding on the scenes/ideas that I'd already written down.

Also, when it comes to computer information..."Back up"...-_-

Much cheers to others.

[lordofchange13]

Other than that, I have a big problem coming up with character and place names, even when I have a good idea what I want their character to be. So I use a random name generator and sprinkle in some names I bum off a baby name register. They have some really cool ones online that explain the meaning and entymology of the names.

EDIT: So, I get mostly random names, with a sprinkling of meaningful ones. People who know me well say they like guessing that way.

I have a similar problem, would you mind giving me the links that exsplain the names given?

[lordofchange13]

Just build a when I finally force my self to actually write out my stories (most of the time I get an idea, I end up scribbling the basics of the plot in a notebook and never look at it again) I don’t know how to space the major events apart, and fill in the space but not make it seem obvious that it’s just filler. But if I let it just flow out of my mind with out really paying attention, the story that could have been a novel goes to 60 pages.