Miracleman!! ([info]miracleman) wrote,
@ 2008-03-19 12:22:00
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Current mood: aggravated

Writing is annoying me.
I've got four chapters of my book done...ish. I keep getting awesome feedback from my readers (...it occurs to me that I don't know if they're on LJ or not. Well, if you are...WHOO YOU! Y'all dost rocketh!) so there is the process of going back, fixing the stupid shit I should have caught the first time (beginning was SO rushed it's not even remotely funny) and so on.

That is not what is annoying me.

What is annoying me is the inevitable "What's next?" process for every chapter. I wait days and days, write and erase, write and erase, fumble through the fog...and it is like fumbling through fog because it's always a bit at a time comes to me. For instance in chapter five (not yet written) I know my Dauntless Heroes will encounter a [thing] and probably [another thing] and, I think, will end up [place]. It's all the stuff in between...including in between the end of chapter four and the first encounter with [thing].

So I'm just venting spleen here. I know there are other authors and such on my flist...y'all have this problem?


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[info]spectralbovine
2008-03-19 05:17 pm UTC (link)
I'm having that same problem with a freaking skit I'm writing right now. I know the ending, but I can't get there. Damn you, Gilbert and Sullivan! WHY MUST YOU BE SO COMPLICATED?

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[info]miracleman
2008-03-19 06:01 pm UTC (link)
Never done a G & S skit, but yeah...been there, too.

Most of my skits are just kinda...I black out, et voila! There's a skit! Awesome! But sometimes it has been "GRRRRAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!! Get onto the paper! Get...out...."

My sympathies, in other words.

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[info]susanw
2008-03-19 06:17 pm UTC (link)
I know there are other authors and such on my flist...y'all have this problem?

Sometimes. Mostly I just push through it. When I don't know how to get there from here, sometimes I ask myself if I actually NEED bridging scenes--maybe you could just skip straight from whatever is going on in Ch. 4 to opening Ch. 5 with "OMG, look at that [thing]!"

If you can't do that, try saying, "OK, what has to happen before they encounter the Thing, and how do I make that either as quick as possible or as dramatic as possible?" I'm going through that with my WIP, because I'm approaching a key turning point in the book. A character I call the Big Damn General is going to be temporarily captured by the forces of the Antagonist, and the two are going to have a confrontation that changes the BDG's view of himself and his mission, and, incidentally, foreshadow the course of the rest of the SERIES. But I have all this other business to take care of first, and it's taken several tries to make it read like anything other than boring set-up. I'm on my third rewrite of the section (sigh), and it's just now starting to come together enough that I'm ready to move forward. What finally helped was sitting back and asking myself, "Just what and who is this story about, anyway, and how do I use these bridging scenes to advance that?" So I got rid of or rewrote everything that didn't focus on a key relationship or theme.

I don't know if that helps or not. A lot of this is just sorting out your process. I was at a Bernard Cornwell workshop at a writers conference, and he described it as like climbing a mountain, and you get a third of the way up and spot a better route, so you climb back down and start over, repeating as necessary until you find the right path to the top. I guess the writers who outline everything in advance don't have this problem, but I can't do it that way. I have some idea where I'm going, but I don't really know what's there until I write it.

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[info]arliss
2008-03-20 04:36 pm UTC (link)
I'm not a plotty writer. What I have is characters I'm interested in learning about, surroundings that are fascinating to me, events that unfold through character interaction, and cinematic vignettes. I really don't have stories to tell. I've had coaches tell me that's a perfectly cromulent way to write, letting the story arise from character behavior and interaction. Well, good!

As the writer though, I have to know where everybody's going. So as we stand at the gates with our little group of characters, there are seven or so tall pine trees between here and yon pinnacle, the end of our journey. The trees are events that must happen, that I know will happen, along the way. So I write point to point, and leave lots of room for characters to wander off the trail, because that's where the interesting stuff happens.

Bullet points, if you will. Put those in order of what has to happen before something else happens (Gregor must get his wings before half the group scales the cliff), and you have an outline, which becomes the skeleton of your story. I hate outlines, I never used them. In high school I had to finish the term paper that required handing in an interim outline so I could write the outline from the paper. But somehow, in longer fiction, getting events what must happen in the order in which they must happen helps with moving forward.

Otherwise, I'd just be over here playing with pretty jigsaw pieces that never cohered into a whole.

Edited at 2008-03-20 04:44 pm UTC

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Once upon a time there was a peanut...
[info]freitagkitty
2008-03-27 01:50 am UTC (link)
I have no suggestions as the best thing I ever wrote was when I was three. However, if you need other readers I'm available. I've also been reading since I was three. One of these summer breaks I'm hoping to try my hand at a children's book.

Jenny

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