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sarasa_catWriting is hard. Fanfic is hard. Orig fic is ridiculously hard.
Was reading about an organic approach for growing and structuring a novel-length plot in a manner that mixes aspects of pantsing with aspects of planning/outlining. The approach spoke to me because it was an inside-out (actually, middle-out) approach that structures itself around key scenes. This is naturally how I write. But it had a few twists.
Rather than risk diving in with one of my annoying orig projects, my first thought was "test drive this method by backfitting it to an existing half-planned fanfic WIP." Was busy and away from my computer for the past day so the exercise was mostly mental: give actual structure to a flagging subplot that runs the length of one of my DA WIPs.
80% of a breakthrough occurred (just noting that a specific subplot *was* flagging and needed structure was 50% of that breakthrough), and now I just want to fast draft that entire subplot.
...
And that realization reminded me of why I drifted away from fanfic when AO3 became the amazon.com of fanfic-land.
I despise writing long fiction in chapter-by-chapter order. My very unpopular opinion is that unless you are a rare talent, this is a recipe for stale fiction.
AO3 is an archive. ARCHIVE of our own. It's a place to post fiction once you are ready to forget about it and move on to a new project.
...
Thinking right now about an onion-skin layered model for pulling together well structured long-form fiction that remains fully character-driven yet is still tightly structured (dare I say plotted? except the goal is not plot-driven genre fiction). Thinking about giving this method a test drive with one of my DA WIPs and growing it organically, which means posting scenes radically out of order until the entire draft is "done" and then doing a fast "bake-and-edit" pass from beginning to end.
Also looking at the clock/calendar.
Trying to figure out how little time I can given this such that it doesn't eat too much into my primary writing commitments (not fanfic) for 2016.
The most obvious risk is that once I learn everything I need to learn from this exercise, I just plain stop. ;) (something I have done many times before because fanfic is primarily my writing workshop).
...
Also, yet again I have abandoned reading of another tall pile of bookmarked fanfics on AO3. I just ... could not.when skimming become speed-scrolling I know i'm done. Which, in turn, grudgingly pushes me to write fic.
Was reading about an organic approach for growing and structuring a novel-length plot in a manner that mixes aspects of pantsing with aspects of planning/outlining. The approach spoke to me because it was an inside-out (actually, middle-out) approach that structures itself around key scenes. This is naturally how I write. But it had a few twists.
Rather than risk diving in with one of my annoying orig projects, my first thought was "test drive this method by backfitting it to an existing half-planned fanfic WIP." Was busy and away from my computer for the past day so the exercise was mostly mental: give actual structure to a flagging subplot that runs the length of one of my DA WIPs.
80% of a breakthrough occurred (just noting that a specific subplot *was* flagging and needed structure was 50% of that breakthrough), and now I just want to fast draft that entire subplot.
...
And that realization reminded me of why I drifted away from fanfic when AO3 became the amazon.com of fanfic-land.
I despise writing long fiction in chapter-by-chapter order. My very unpopular opinion is that unless you are a rare talent, this is a recipe for stale fiction.
AO3 is an archive. ARCHIVE of our own. It's a place to post fiction once you are ready to forget about it and move on to a new project.
...
Thinking right now about an onion-skin layered model for pulling together well structured long-form fiction that remains fully character-driven yet is still tightly structured (dare I say plotted? except the goal is not plot-driven genre fiction). Thinking about giving this method a test drive with one of my DA WIPs and growing it organically, which means posting scenes radically out of order until the entire draft is "done" and then doing a fast "bake-and-edit" pass from beginning to end.
Also looking at the clock/calendar.
Trying to figure out how little time I can given this such that it doesn't eat too much into my primary writing commitments (not fanfic) for 2016.
The most obvious risk is that once I learn everything I need to learn from this exercise, I just plain stop. ;) (something I have done many times before because fanfic is primarily my writing workshop).
...
Also, yet again I have abandoned reading of another tall pile of bookmarked fanfics on AO3. I just ... could not.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-20 01:35 pm (UTC)Is the concept/exercise you have found shareable?
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 07:06 am (UTC)If I am writing something long with a single plot line that is in the 25,000 to 60,000 word range I can handle it chapter by chapter if I have a solid story planned out in, say, 5000 to 10,000 words.
Once I am dealing with something more complex: 90,000+ words and multiple plot lines, I prefer to write test scenes and think about what works, what doesn't work, and I like to jump around until a structure starts revealing itself.
.
The approach is a little tricky to share because part of it is a few chapters from a booklet and the rest are handwritten notes from a workshop.
The booklet is "write your novel from the middle" but james scott bell. Mixed opinions on how to recommend this booklet because it is aimed at people who are already have experience with long chaptered fiction. The gist of it is identifying what bell calls the "mirror moment" which is usually located in at the midpoint of a story or the midpoint of a major plot line. The character looks into him/herself (metaphorically looks into the mirror) to take stock of where they regarding their story conflict and then the character wonders what kind of person they have been or are becoming, and/or the character considers the drastic odds they are facing. This mirror moment forces the character to make a commitment. Thus, everything before the mirror moment is the character struggling with a conflict that is beating them, and everything after the mirror moment is the character confronting the conflict with a *transformed* psychology.
I find that when I have a long story in mind, if the story has legs one of the first key scenes that comes to mind is what bell calls the "mirror moment," and then I usually start working backwards and forwards from it. I have done this for a long while but I didn't realize until recently that this mirror moment scene was usually one of the first scenes that would jump into my mind. Knowing this is helpful. Also, whenever I have a good idea for the beginning of a story but I cannot push it past the first 10,000k words, it is always because I haven't identified the mirror moment. Again, I sort of vaguely understood this but never realized it to the point that I could name and describe it until now.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-22 09:09 am (UTC)