After reading through a post over at writers_lair, I started C&P'ing writing scraps in a separate file I like to think of as a "scratchpad". Mostly it's sentences, sometimes words or phrases, occasionally a scene snippet. (Whatever window I'm typing a WIP in looks strange at the bottom.) I don't often have missing scenes, fully written and formed, but I do have a lot of "false starts". Kind of... "I think this is what I want to say, but no, that's not quite right, ENTER ENTER ENTER ENTER, this is what I was really saying... *pause, stare* No, I wasn't saying that at all!" By the time I finish the scene, there's all sorts of things down there, and I'll kindly cut and paste it into the scratchpad, so it's not deleted, but it's out of the way. So there's extras in that sense, but nothing I'd put on a DVD.
As far as structure... uh... it depends on the length? That always usually gets away with me, but if it's a short musing or one-shot, like "Penitence" it kind of congeals and coalesces around the thoughts and bits of narrative, and I have to draw the little bridges connecting them.
Something where I find myself having a plot, I treat it like a movie, in that each scene is separate and contained, and serves some purpose within the story as a whole, and they're steadily working towards the "climax". If I don't know what the "climax" is, that goal that I'm working towards, I'm usually flailing around like mad, and I think it shows. Which is probably part of the problem with the current story I'm working on, come to think of it. I've got no earthly clue what that point is. Just a series of interrelated scenes in my head.
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After reading through a post over at
As far as structure... uh... it depends on the length? That always usually gets away with me, but if it's a short musing or one-shot, like "Penitence" it kind of congeals and coalesces around the thoughts and bits of narrative, and I have to draw the little bridges connecting them.
Something where I find myself having a plot, I treat it like a movie, in that each scene is separate and contained, and serves some purpose within the story as a whole, and they're steadily working towards the "climax". If I don't know what the "climax" is, that goal that I'm working towards, I'm usually flailing around like mad, and I think it shows. Which is probably part of the problem with the current story I'm working on, come to think of it. I've got no earthly clue what that point is. Just a series of interrelated scenes in my head.