Reinventing Old Story Ideas | #amwriting

previously published on my Halcja's Place blog

I've written a new synopsis for one of my projects (you can check out the whole list here). The working title of it is KJUB or Young Entrepreneur's Club and it's a story about corruption in Ukrainian universities which is heavily based on my own experience.

When I first started writing the story in 2013, I thought that this is my plot. Corruption! But when I sat down to re-write the synopsis today, I've realized that it's only the setting. I don't have a conflict. It's just a story where a bunch of stuff happens. My characters don't have a problem to keep them up at night. They have some opportunity for growth but what I had in mind was not enough to actually be considered a novel.

So I gave it some thought and came up with a conflict for my novel. Then I asked my sister to read my new synopsis and she said "Why don't you add here some supernatural stuff? That would be fun." So I thought about it some more and came up with a way to do that. It feels kind of strange because I've never thought that this setup has the potential for a supernatural story. I'm not sure if that's the way I should write it. I guess I'll just have to try and see.

As I've mentioned before, I'm writing KJUB in Ukrainian and I've even found a way to self-publish it online. I'm quite content with myself about it. I was hesitant to continue writing in Ukrainian because I didn't want to get involved with our publishers. And now I know that I don't have to do that to get my books out there! So now I can just sit down and write.