December Talking Meme, Day 8: my writing process

[edenfalling]

December 8: your fic writing process (for sabriel) [Tumblr crosspost]

In brief: endless procrastination followed by compressed panic. *wry* More seriously, what and why I am writing has a significant effect on how I write.

Fifteen-minute ficlets are obviously tiny finger exercises with a time limit, so I spend a minute or three turning the prompt word over in my head and holding it up against various fandoms and original worlds to see if any associations click into place. Then I write something as fast as possible -- short works, with a single focus, and no time to overthink myself or get too fancy. (I do go back and edit some of the results at much greater length, if I'm not happy with the initial effect.)

If I'm answering a prompt that I solicited from someone, I have some added outside incentive to sit down and make myself type. Those also tend to be short works, because I want them done and posted in a relatively short time window. (The obvious exception here would be "Trollstuck: Make Her Pay," which began as a prompt fic and turned into a monster... which I need to get back to and finish. *headdesk*)

If I'm writing for a fic exchange, there is an actual external deadline, which I find is wonderful for concentrating the mind. Stressful as all hell, sure! But brilliant for making myself think and write so fast I don't have time to second-guess myself. Now, if I were better at time management I'd get stuff done well before the deadlines get scary, but I've always been regrettably prone to procrastination, so my usual exchange writing habits go like, "Receive prompt, ponder prompt, get idea, do a tiny bit of preliminary research/outlining... and then ignore the whole business until about a week before the deadline, whoops." (I am currently doing this for Yuletide, incidentally. I reread canon, came up with an idea, wrote a one paragraph scenario sketch, came up with the first three lines, and... yeah, I'll get back to it at some point. *wince*)

Things I'm writing solely for myself -- well, okay, there is always an implicit audience, but sometimes that audience is so tiny it might as well be only me -- are variable, to say the least. I do have enough of a work ethic that if I start something, I want very badly to finish it... but I am extremely lackadaisical about when that endpoint must be reached. Sometimes an idea burns up in my head and won't leave me alone until I write it right now. Other times things drag out for years -- one-shots as well as multi-chapter works!

I can often get stuck on a particular fic that's not working, but that my brain insists MUST come before any other projects, which means I don't write much of anything for weeks until I either gnaw through the difficult passage or finally manage to knock my brain into a different channel and focus on something else.

I am fairly lackadaisical about research as well. I mean, I do research things I don't know, and I always try to be canon-compliant unless I am deliberately breaking something (which requires its own form of 'research'), but I am much more likely to write about things I already know for one reason or another. I'm lazy, you see, and I have a fairly good memory for random things I've read over the years. (Stories written for other people tend to get more research than stories written mostly for myself, because they are gifts and I want them to look good.)

I don't usually outline one-shots, unless they are over, hmm, 5,000-7,000 words, or they're for an exchange. Past that, I do make outlines, though the level of detail is wildly variable: anything from a single paragraph roughly telling me how to get from Point K to Point Z (those happen when a one-shot ends up a lot longer than I expected, and I get a bit lost halfway through) to a full-fledged timeline split by days and multiple character POVs and plot threads. (You do not really want to see my outline for "The Guardian in Spite of Herself." It's a giant, confusing mess.) I also tend to write running background files, which contain notes on things like character profiles, the physical layout of certain locations, the rules of magic, cultural quirks, alien biology, and other stuff. Those are organized chronologically by the date any particular thing occurred to me, which makes them a little hard to sort through -- especially if I retcon something later on -- but useful as a journal of how my thoughts developed as the story grew.

My second drafts are almost invariably longer than my first drafts, because I am bad at remembering to include descriptive passages -- Vicky once told me one of my original works felt like a bunch of people talking in front of a blank white page, which was a fair assessment -- and also bad at little connective transitions, like how a person gets from Thought A to Thought D. So I have to go back and fill stuff in because, oddly enough, people cannot read my intentions if I don't actually put them down on the page. *wry*

That's all I can think of for now. If you have any further questions or want clarifications or examples, please feel free to ask. :-)

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December Talking Meme: All Days

Comments

[isis]

Interesting - and very different from my own process!

[edenfalling]

Writing (or any creative endeavor, I think) is the exact opposite of a one size fits all scenario. :-)

[transposable_element]

You have a process! Or processes. I'm envious.

Oy, "people talking in front of a blank white page" is a good description of many of my stories....For me this is partly a lack of visual imagination and partly because I'm using settings that the original authors have described, so I assume that I don't have to describe them. But I realize that it makes things hard to understand for anybody who doesn't know a particular fandom well, besides not being very good writing. But I'm trying to correct that.

[edenfalling]

Hail and well-met, fellow person with a non-visual imagination! I am legit terrible at describing my characters. I'm not even very good at imagining them for myself. The only descriptive things that come naturally to me are internal emotional/intellectual reactions and kinesthetic body language. Maybe a little bit of temperature/texture as well, but only a little. Everything else is pasted on after the fact... or sometimes sooner, but only because I have spent years reminding myself that visuals (and sounds and scents) are important to establishing a scene. Also, the particular TYPE of sensory detail that any given character notices can tell you a fair bit about them. Like, one character might notice clothes, another might notice any plants in the area, a third might pay extremely close attention to other people's expressions and gestures, a fourth might constantly get distracted by ambient noise, etc.

I've found one thing that's helpful is to describe a character in one fairly complete paragraph when they first appear -- whatever combination of height, build, posture, clothing, eyes/hair/skin, habitual gestures, and other characteristics seem most important -- and then pick one or two details that you will later use as a metonymy for the entire description. Like, whenever Xanthe Delaflor appeared in "Secrets," (an old HP fic of mine), I mentioned something about her untidiness. With Tonoike Naga, a character in "The Way of the Apartment Manager" and "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," I tend to mention her heirloom mother-of-pearl earrings. It's a bit like a call-sign, I think.

[transposable_element]

That's an interesting point about what different characters would notice. I'm going to have to ponder that.

My big problem (tabled for now) is a character who needs to look enough like his biological father that some people immediately see the resemblance and others don't. That means I need to have a good sense of what he, his biological father, his mother, and his mother's husband all look like, which I don't. Sigh.

[edenfalling]

In one stalled-out original novel, I have one main character who tends to notice stuff about his physical environment, from terrain to weather to the specific plants that make up a field of wildflowers, etc. The other main character notices her social environment, which means she pays attention to interpersonal relationships, vocal quirks, and things like how clothing gives status cues. If they both happened to be in a party in a garden, Talin would notice the lighting and the construction of the walls and where the exits are, and the details of the wrought-iron gates, and the clouds slowly clearing from the sky as the sun crawls downward from its zenith, and the ambient level of noise and how it disguised his footsteps, and the arrangement of the climbing roses on the trellis which need a better gardener to keep insects off their leaves, etc. Meanwhile Ranna would be cataloging shifting power alliances and the tone of people's voices and hey is that a new style of skirt that she'll need to copy and outdo within the next couple weeks and is her guard getting distracted -- yes she is, is it dangerous? no, just admiring a passing man -- and goodness the centerpiece is pretentious and says interesting things about the host's insecurities, etc. And all they'd notice of the other's preoccupations is that, hey, there are a lot of people in fancy clothes laughing too much about things that aren't really funny, or that yeah, it looks like it won't rain after all and there are some brightly-colored flowers on the walls.

Hmm. I'd start with the basics of hair color, eye color, and skin color, then move on to general body type (tall, short, skinny, muscular, plump, whatever), then maybe refine things a little with facial shape or length of fingers or whatnot. Also, apparently familial resemblance is often carried as much by actions as anything else. For example, some people think my sister and I don't look related at all -- they are probably judging by body shape and facial structure, since I'm kind of solid/soft and round-faced and she's skinny and long-faced -- whereas others think we might almost be twins, which seems to be based partly on shared hair and eye color, but mostly on our similar postures, gestures, facial expressions, and sometimes even word choices and vocal intonation.

[transposable_element]

Yes, if you looked at photographs of my sister and me you probably wouldn't guess that we were related, but our voices, mannerisms, and speech patterns are very similar. We're always getting mistaken for each other on the phone, and when my sister introduces me to her friends they often comment on how much we sound alike.

Sometimes family resemblance can be very fleeting--someone turns their head and grins, and for a second they look exactly like their maternal grandfather, or whatever.

I've thought a lot, too, about identity when there's no photography and portraiture is stylized. If you're trying to decide if someone looks like a person who's been dead for 10 years, and for whom there doesn't exist a good portrait, it gets a lot harder.

[edenfalling]

Yes, comparing anyone to a dead person who didn't leave behind a good photo or fairly accurate portrait is difficult. Human memory is notoriously fuzzy and prone to rewriting.

[rthstewart]

I love how you have the running background files method of research. That sounds VERY useful.

[edenfalling]

It's more a conversation with myself than a strict research record, but it is nice to have everything in one place. The trouble is that I don't always realize I would WANT a record of any particular thing until after I've had to go look it up in three separate chapters to make sure I haven't contradicted myself already. *sigh*

I also tend to keep a running file of alternate and/or deleted scenes -- which usually sits after the words "the end" and a divider line at the bottom of my rough draft -- in case I change my mind and want to use something from them after all.

[sabriel]

Thanks~ This was vastly interesting to me (and I asked the same question of another author on my flist) because I don't actually have a set process personally and I have trouble writing anything unless I can see the scene laid out for me in my head. And trying to connect these 'scenes' is also a problem.

[edenfalling]

Interesting! I have an extremely non-visual imagination, so I sort of more... feel my way through a scene? What I track is mostly mental/emotional reactions and kinesthetics, by which I mean body movements and facial gestures and stuff. So the most I will tend to 'see' is the relative positions of characters, so I know if Person A reaches out to Person B, which arm they'd be using and whether they'd need to step forward in order to make contact, and even that level of detail is something I have to actively think about because on an instinctive level I'm just thinking, "and then Person A reached out to hold Person B's shoulder, the thin fabric of his shirt warm under her palm, trying to give him an anchor point against the shock. Person B twitched away." Which tells you how things feel, both emotionally and physically, but not much else.

[transposable_element]

Sometimes I find myself trying to describe an action that I can see perfectly well in my mind's eye but can't articulate gracefully. For example, that thing people do sometimes, where someone is sitting down and another person comes up behind them and leans on their shoulder and hugs them. So far all of my attempts at describing this seem either clunky or too convoluted for such a simple gesture.

[sabriel]

I'm on the opposite end. If I read a fic or any piece of fiction I can usually kind of imagine it as if I'm watching a movie. This translates (somewhat) into my writing where I try to describe the scene with internal monologues, feelings, etc... included. Or at least, that's what I try to aim for.