Post Ideas I’ve Scrapped

Hey everyone, it’s Sabrina 🙂  Today I want to talk a little bit about some blog post ideas that I’ve scrapped.  Not every idea is a winner, and though sometimes I can push through with an idea that I initially don’t think is great and end up with something I am proud of, there are a lot of posts that have not made the cut.  I’m not saying these ideas are necessarily bad, just that they didn’t work out for me and the direction I found myself going with them.  By putting them all together in this post I’m hoping I’ve found some use for them and the time I spent on them hasn’t go entirely to waste!

5 KINDS OF PLOT TWISTS I DO LIKE

What it was:  The follow up to my Wednesday post of plot twists I don’t like, was of course going to be the opposite.  I came up with four kinds that I usually love:
🌸 When Character A and Character B turn out to be the same person
🌸 When the villain has a surprise accomplice
🌸 When the narrator turns out to have been the villain all along
🌸 When a character has been dead the entire time

Why it didn’t work:  Unlike with the plot twists I don’t like, I don’t have many specific reasons for liking these ones outside of the fact that they’re shocking and play with your emotions.  Plus, I could only come up with four, not five like I had wanted to.

QUIET BOOKS WITH BIG IMPACTS

What is was:  You tell me, because I have no idea what this means.  The examples I have listed in my notes are: Platform Seven, Still Life With Tornado, The Secret History and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.  I guess they are books that seem to be about normal, everyday life and then turn into something else.

Why it didn’t work:  I think I’ve about summed it up above – I didn’t really know what my definitely of a “quiet book” was, so it was difficult to explain why I chose the examples I did and to find more.

RECOMMENDING BOOKS TO YOUTUBERS

What it was:  The title is quite self-explanatory, but I had picked out some of my favourite Youtubers outside of Booktube and started thinking about books I thought they might like.  It was going to be like my post earlier this year where I recommended movies to my favourite book characters – there would be no real way to know if my suggestions were truly good.

Why it didn’t work:  I honestly couldn’t think of any books to recommend that seemed right enough.  I said to myself that I didn’t want to suggest books for Booktubers because it was too much pressure – it might turn out that they’d already read and hated the books or they could read them in the future (coincidentally, not off my recommendation, lol) and I’d be proven wrong (and I hate being wrong) – but I think that would have actually been a lot easier.  Most of the people I had picked were makeup or fashion or art Youtubers, and outside of their specific topics, I didn’t have much knowledge of what they liked when it came to stories.

READING THE ENTIRE THRONE OF GLASS SERIES

What it was: I had the doomed idea that during lockdown I could dedicate all my reading time to the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, finally get it all finished, and then write one or two posts about my thoughts and experience.

Why it didn’t work: I’m ridiculously bad at reading the books that I already own.  I may actually have an addiction to clicking the “place hold” button on my library website and, as I have recently discovered, on Libby as well.  Books with a return deadline automatically get priority to books I own, in my mind.  So, I am still yet to read both Tower of Dawn and Kingdom of Ash both of which have been sitting on my bookshelf since they were released.  Additionally, I don’t think I would have done a great job of explaining my feelings as I read the series or hiding spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the books.

THE ONLY BOOK I’VE FORGOTTEN

What it was: I gave Don’t Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout 4 stars when I read it.  But I can’t remember a single thing about it now, except that it was apparently a mystery and probably had a romantic side plot.  I was going to talk about this, read the book again and then compare it to what I remembered.

Why it didn’t work:  I must have forgotten this book for a reason – it wasn’t memorable.  So what was the point of going back and reading it again?  Also, it’s really hard to talk about a book you don’t remember at all.  Do you see the problem?  Somehow that didn’t cross my mind as a potential problem when starting to write the post.

THE JOY OF DISCOVERY VS THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: A COMPARATIVE REVIEW OF MIDDLEGAME AND THE LIBRARY AT MOUNT CHAR

What it was: The idea is that I would write what was essentially an essay about how my experience reading these two books mirrored the mindsets of their main characters – all of whom were on trajectory to gain almost limitless power.  In Middlegame, Roger and Dodger experienced joy when discovering and developing their powerful abilities and that was part of what drove them.  I continued to read the book because I was excited to see what would happen next – even if that ended up disappointing me in the end.  In The Library at Mount Char, Caroline pursues power so that she can have ultimate knowledge and control.  I finished that book because I wanted to know what would happen, even if I wasn’t necessarily enjoying the journey.

Why it didn’t work:  Did you read that title?  It was not destined to come to fruition.  What I had wanted to be complex and coherent was always a jumbled mess of me constantly repeating myself whilst also trying to sound smart, lol.  It was also definitely not a comparative review.  I quickly ran out of things to say, especially since I read Middlegame mid last year and have forgotten a lot about it.

What do you think?

Do you reject post ideas very often, or do you follow through with everything in one way or another?  Any thoughts on the ideas I have scrapped?  Let me know!