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Have been picking away at a few things that, for various reasons, are not listed on my "stuff I'm writing" section of my ff.net profile (and also, I don't keep word counts on them in my own "stuff I'm writing" file), so it feels as if I have not been doing anything even though I have. Argh.
Anyway, one thing I've been writing is the little Yukiko-and-Naruto ficlet I owe![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aishuu from the sequel meme I did a while ago. It's at 950 words now, and has mysteriously acquired Iruka as a supporting character. I dunno, these things just kind of happen to me; it's not as if I ever had much of a plan for the ficlet in the first place.
...
On that note, it is interesting to me that my approach to writing can vary wildly from one story to another. Some stories I plan out very carefully -- I am extremely conscious of word choice, of little structural games, of themes, of narrative voice, of balancing this against that and the other things -- but with other stories, I just pick a few characters, dump them into a scenario, and write whatever happens to happen. Then I go back and tidy it up, sure, with an eye to phrasing and voice and theme, but I'm not worrying about that at the outset.
It's not that I like one kind of story more than the other. It's not that one takes more time and effort to write than the other. It's not that I think one kind is better than the other. It's maybe... the first kind of story is something where I am conscious of structure, and have decided that the structure and theme are elements of equal importance to plot and characterization. And in the second type, I am saying, okay, here are some characters and some plot; all other elements will grow out of these two or not, and I am not much bothered about said other elements in any case.
Maybe it's the different between plain storytelling and storytelling as conscious act of art? Except that's not quite it either, because I do think plain storytelling is art. It's just not the same shape of art, for me, as that other kind of story.
Um. Maybe I should provide examples? Stories that I am being or have been very careful about include "Paint the Town," "The Courting Dance," "Undertow," "Debts," "Ephemera," "Knives," "Little Sister," "Samsara," "Every New Beginning," "Hindsight," "Heritage," and so on. Stories that I just write and see what happens include "Secrets," "The Way of the Apartment Manager," "First You Have to Get There," "Restoration," "Lessons," "Strange Likenesses," "Two Guys and a Girl," "The Affairs of Dragons," and so on.
Some that fall in between are "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" (which I have to keep a very detailed timeline for, and make sure I am balancing out POV sections, but within each section I basically wing it), "Lemonade" (which again requires careful consideration of POV and world-building issues, but is basically written on the fly), and "An Ounce of Prevention" (again, very careful consideration of timing and crossover mechanics, but actual scenes written on a very catch-as-catch-can basis -- when a theme developed, I actually had to go back and edit the first four chapters to bring them in line with the conclusion).
Mmm. "Tides," I think, is also an in-between story. I put a lot of thought into various thematic ideas, chakra mechanics, and the balance of a three-person friendship... but again, each chapter was me sitting down with a vague idea and seeing what happened. Also "Fixation, and Other Stories" and "The Transient and the Eternal" -- in both cases, after a certain point I had a fairly fixed outline of how the sections would line up, and of some thematic points I wanted to hit, but each section was written pretty loosely. And "Along the Way," where I had a structure, a theme, and a planned character arc and conclusion from the word go, but picked the individual scenes more or less out of a hat as I went.
(I am not counting any 15-minute fics for this, because those are written under such tight time constraint that there isn't room for planning, though even there, I am sometimes much more conscious of the rhythm of language while in other cases I am thinking more about dialogue and stuff happening.)
Anyway. I don't think I had much of a point to this, except that it's interesting to me that I treat different stories so differently, and often I have no idea why until I realize that they're going to be...
Oh. Maybe it's that the first type is more of a 'message' story -- a story whose entire point is to get across an idea or a mood or a theme -- while the second type is story for the sake of story, whose point is first and foremost to entertain, with any messages being secondary. That might be it.
Huh.
...
Well, anyway, I have been writing, but now I need to go do my laundry while the day is still gorgeous.
Anyway, one thing I've been writing is the little Yukiko-and-Naruto ficlet I owe
aishuu from the sequel meme I did a while ago. It's at 950 words now, and has mysteriously acquired Iruka as a supporting character. I dunno, these things just kind of happen to me; it's not as if I ever had much of a plan for the ficlet in the first place....
On that note, it is interesting to me that my approach to writing can vary wildly from one story to another. Some stories I plan out very carefully -- I am extremely conscious of word choice, of little structural games, of themes, of narrative voice, of balancing this against that and the other things -- but with other stories, I just pick a few characters, dump them into a scenario, and write whatever happens to happen. Then I go back and tidy it up, sure, with an eye to phrasing and voice and theme, but I'm not worrying about that at the outset.
It's not that I like one kind of story more than the other. It's not that one takes more time and effort to write than the other. It's not that I think one kind is better than the other. It's maybe... the first kind of story is something where I am conscious of structure, and have decided that the structure and theme are elements of equal importance to plot and characterization. And in the second type, I am saying, okay, here are some characters and some plot; all other elements will grow out of these two or not, and I am not much bothered about said other elements in any case.
Maybe it's the different between plain storytelling and storytelling as conscious act of art? Except that's not quite it either, because I do think plain storytelling is art. It's just not the same shape of art, for me, as that other kind of story.
Um. Maybe I should provide examples? Stories that I am being or have been very careful about include "Paint the Town," "The Courting Dance," "Undertow," "Debts," "Ephemera," "Knives," "Little Sister," "Samsara," "Every New Beginning," "Hindsight," "Heritage," and so on. Stories that I just write and see what happens include "Secrets," "The Way of the Apartment Manager," "First You Have to Get There," "Restoration," "Lessons," "Strange Likenesses," "Two Guys and a Girl," "The Affairs of Dragons," and so on.
Some that fall in between are "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" (which I have to keep a very detailed timeline for, and make sure I am balancing out POV sections, but within each section I basically wing it), "Lemonade" (which again requires careful consideration of POV and world-building issues, but is basically written on the fly), and "An Ounce of Prevention" (again, very careful consideration of timing and crossover mechanics, but actual scenes written on a very catch-as-catch-can basis -- when a theme developed, I actually had to go back and edit the first four chapters to bring them in line with the conclusion).
Mmm. "Tides," I think, is also an in-between story. I put a lot of thought into various thematic ideas, chakra mechanics, and the balance of a three-person friendship... but again, each chapter was me sitting down with a vague idea and seeing what happened. Also "Fixation, and Other Stories" and "The Transient and the Eternal" -- in both cases, after a certain point I had a fairly fixed outline of how the sections would line up, and of some thematic points I wanted to hit, but each section was written pretty loosely. And "Along the Way," where I had a structure, a theme, and a planned character arc and conclusion from the word go, but picked the individual scenes more or less out of a hat as I went.
(I am not counting any 15-minute fics for this, because those are written under such tight time constraint that there isn't room for planning, though even there, I am sometimes much more conscious of the rhythm of language while in other cases I am thinking more about dialogue and stuff happening.)
Anyway. I don't think I had much of a point to this, except that it's interesting to me that I treat different stories so differently, and often I have no idea why until I realize that they're going to be...
Oh. Maybe it's that the first type is more of a 'message' story -- a story whose entire point is to get across an idea or a mood or a theme -- while the second type is story for the sake of story, whose point is first and foremost to entertain, with any messages being secondary. That might be it.
Huh.
...
Well, anyway, I have been writing, but now I need to go do my laundry while the day is still gorgeous.
