New Year New Starts 2025 - Results
A debrief
About a month ago, at the start of the new year I threw a gantlet. New Year New Starts, which I will be running again in the beginning of next year. With things as they are my three are posted and will be linked at the bottom of this post should you be interested. By doing this again, I ran it across my social media in 2022, I have a bit more to reflect. Here are the unordered take always:
- Run this for the month of January
- Stick to three stories as the goal
- Have a theme for next year
- Explain the reasoning for my doing and your doing
To break it down a bit further I’ll be going over each point.
Run it in January
When I did this little challenge back in 2022 it was December into January. At the time my idea was to start the year with the story seeds already to be planted. After doing it, I realized there was too much going on in December. Between the run up to Christmas and then New Years, the amount of free time I had was rather limited. If I have limited time I can assume that the majority of you would have limited time as well. By moving the challenge to January, after all the trips and holidays should be largely over. While there may be some stragglers held over from the previous year. January is a much easier time to create these stories and get them written.
Three’s the charm
In the 2023 challenge I had about three ideas I wanted to get started, so I picked that number I knew I would be able to produce and figured if I have that many, it would make a good number to shoot for every year. It should be enough to offer some verity, be enough of a challenge for people like me who spend more time wanting to write that book that writing that book. While easy enough to seem do-able. This is why the challenge is ‘write the opener to three stories’ not ‘write three short stories’ although I suppose that can be the challenge for the well written amongst us.
Teeming with theming
This year I thought about putting in a theme, and I did in a way: Princesses. Each story either is about, or would have a princess in a leading role. This was partly on accident. I had one, The Lady from the Sky, that I knew was going to have a princess. The other two could have had princesses and I decided I might as well make it a theme. Next year I will add a theme as an option. May have a suggestion of themes, perhaps a genre, character, or characteristics. As I did this year with Princesses.
Why I do this, and will keep doing it
To build a granary of story seeds so that when I have time to write and don’t know what to work on I have options. This may be a weak reason for those who are creating book after book, building series dozens deep. Yet it may be apart of the challenge to find something outside of what one has been established. Now I may have a problem. One of too many story threads to pull on. I have the one from 23 that I am pulling on, currently with the working title of Alex:0 two more that could be good stories to work on as well, either short or long form. A half dozen I’ve never mentioned to anyone that are saved on my hard drive. Another dozen still sketched out on paper within Slonminma, and now three from this year.
Yet if find myself in a mood to write and wanting something to write on I have gotten past the first start. The dreaded, blank page problem is solved. Open any of these and get to work on them. Likewise if I’m tired of thinking about the void of space I have planet bound stories. If I want to write about a different set of characters, because the last set have annoyed me, or something about the plot isn’t working I have others.
On a more technical front, hooks are important for good story telling. Opening a story is debatably more important than ending one. If one starts three new stories every year there are three hooks to try and to test out what one likes. Likewise since these are functionally seeds, trying things that are experimental, see if they work or if they don’t. With this being a semi-organized thing if you or someone in your group creates these stories have them read them and judge the hook. From this angle it helps improve the craft of writing. that said I believe my best hook is the one that opens Circuchron, which I’ll link down below.
That all said I hope you’ll join me next year and let me know what you think of my entries to the challenge below.
This year’s story seeds.
Grathew
Grathew
Grathew
My best hook to date. Or so I believe
Grathew
