Writing Thoughts #1: Jelly beans

[jadesfire]

I'm thinking a lot about writing at the moment, and am trying to organise those thoughts into something resembling coherency (no sniggering at the back; I can hear you!). Rather than create a separate filter – I met many of you through writing, after all – I'm going to be very strict about cutting the thoughts, in order to save the scroll fingers of those who'd rather pass on by.



Yesterday, I put up a meme for people to ask me questions about my stories, and I discovered a rather odd thing. While I had certainly learned a lot from each story I wrote, and while some of them had potential sequels, very few of them had things 'left out'. I'm not sure if this indicates a lack of imagination on my part, or if it's another expression of my weird synaesthesia-induced writing method, so I thought I'd ask the rest of you about it.

When answering the question 'what did you leave out?' of a story, my answer was almost always 'nothing'. The only exception to this was my Martha-walks-the-world story, and even then, I didn't exactly leave things out. There were other stories I could have told that weren't sequels to it in a strict sense, but I don't actually know now whether they were part of A Life of Joy and Peace or not. My instinct is that they aren't, that they're part of a bigger story arc. That story is complete as it stands, like all my stories.

My betas will be able to correct me on this, but I don't think I usually have 'missing scenes' from my stories. I'll cut paragraphs, scenes, thousands of words from them, of course. That's not because they don't flow with the story, but because they're not part of the story. They don't belong there, which is why I delete them and re-work the ideas and lines I'm happy with back into the main story.

I'm fairly sure that my synaesthesia plays a big role in this. I write in a wholly linear style, starting at the beginning and working through to the end, and while I'll expand in editing, I rarely re-structure the whole story or write out of order. Even when my story structures play about with time,* I write in the order that you read. That's because I can 'see' the story taking shape in my head. Most stories are sort of jelly-bean shaped, and I can't think of any that have actual corners, although some have spikes. They're mostly blue-toned in colour, although that ranges from near-lilac to midnight-blue, and I have the odd crackfic that's pink. But if I start the story in the wrong place, it just doesn't work, like trying to blow up a balloon from the wrong end. Actually, a balloon's probably the best analogy for how I feel my way through the story. If a part isn't getting filled out properly, or it's not getting filled out at all (don't ask me how I can tell. I just know) then I have to take a deep breath and start again.

I think that's why I tend not to have lots of missing scenes from my stories. If they're not in the story, it's because they're not part of the story. I might find that they're parts of other stories, which are connected to the story I'm writing, but ultimately, they're not missing.

* Like Vegas or Difficulties in Mathematics where the scenes are not shown in chronological order. They weren't written in chronological order either. They were written with much scrolling up and down the page to check I was getting it right.

What about people who take a saner approach to the art of story structure? Do you find that you have missing scenes, the fic equivalent of DVD extras? Or does everything that you write end up in the story?

[apologies for spamtasticness today, folks. Cross-posted link to heretoutopia]

Comments

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Sanity is overrated.

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.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's interesting about your scratchpad. I'll cannibalise lines and phrases and plot bunnies from failed drafts, but I tend not to actually save the stuff like that. For me, it's distracting and I'm better off getting rid of it and starting over.

Instinctively, I would have said I agree with you about structure being different in short or long stories, but I found with writing "Resonance" that actually it isn't for me. All my stories that I'd consider *have* a structure (there are some little character studies that don't, really) tend to fall into three or four parts - set-up, action, [results/more action], conclusion. My brain works in threes so I think it's comfortable there, and again, it's part of the shape - the bend in the middle of the jelly bean.

Um. That one sounded better in my head. moving on.

Out of interest, do you literally 'see' the story as a movie. I ask because that's how it felt to me in 'See No Evil' - it's how I write, and I suspect it's common to writers who like to write action scenes. That you block it out in your head and write it down? Those scenes really *worked* for me, so I just wondered.

the movie analogy is a good one, I think - every scene should push the story along. Is your goal usually a character one or a plot one? I thought I had a point for my Criminal Minds WIP, but it's proved to be a plot point rather than a character one, and the story is floundering as a result. I have to know what I want the characters to have learned/experienced by the end - even if I don't know the method - or I just can't write the story.

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Re: Scratchpad

I've found it to be really freeing for me, but I'm also a packrat. I think I'm going to need those words. Every single one of them. What if I'm five pages down the road, and suddenly I want to use something I deleted? (These are my thought processes, not necessarily the sanest or most logical, but ya know.) It sort of... gives me permission to just keep trucking on, because I'm not deleting anything.

I'll have to show you those bits at some point, just because they're so darn odd.

Re: Structure

Okay... I might have been lying a little, because at some point, I do usually realize where I'm going with something. That something doesn't always necessarily resemble it, but in my head that "somewhere" is what I've been calling the climax. Architecturally speaking, it's the "support beam", without it the story is never going to hold much weight.

Out of interest, do you literally 'see' the story as a movie. I ask because that's how it felt to me in 'See No Evil' - it's how I write, and I suspect it's common to writers who like to write action scenes. That you block it out in your head and write it down? Those scenes really *worked* for me, so I just wondered.

I do! And I mean, I literally see it as a movie in my head. With cuts, close-ups, rising swell of music, dramatic pauses, the whole shebang. A lot of the time, I'll generally "block" it out in my head, I know who's standing where, where they move, what happens after that (generally). If there's dialogue, I kind of have an idea of what it's about, sometimes it's fun and snappy and fully formed, other times it's marked as [ACTORS IMPROV] in my head. I usually do this either late at night when I'm falling asleep, while I'm in traffic, or doing some mundane task with my brain turned off and my music turned on.

When the actual prose starts to accompany the action and the movie, that's when I know I'm in trouble.

Is your goal usually a character one or a plot one?

Except on the very rare occasion, it's almost always both. While the plot and characters are separate things in my mind, they both move along at their own pace and are distinct entities, they influence each other constantly, to where they're almost like a piece of string, several threads twined together to make one stronger narrative. (If that analogy fits.)

Sometimes one will overshadow the other in its importance for that climax/something/it moment. The plot, the actual action and motion of the story in "See No Evil" wound up providing the story-wise climax (I still haven't figured out if it was the motorcycle chase or the final fight with Marrick), but both John and Rodney wound up having distinct, emotional arcs that came to a head right around the same time. John's in general had to do with finding his purpose again, in this case in protecting Rodney. Rodney's was in choosing his friend, definitively, over his assignment/getting his life back.

"Wit's End" was all about getting Rodney to his breaking point, so every single thing in that story was working toward that moment, and how he would come back. So there was plot in that story, but it was the character arc that drove it rather than the story's mechanics.

Out of curiosity, what's the issue you're having with the Criminal Minds WIP?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

On keeping stuff - normally I'm a packrat too, and like to keep everything, but I tend to keep ideas or 'what ifs' rather than actual words. I'm terrible at letting go, so unless I actually delete what isn't working, I can't get free enough to write what does, if that makes sense. Would love to see the outtakes, though ;)

On seeing things - *g* I knew it! For me, I blame too much Buffy at an impressionable age, but I could block out the fight scenes in Bibula Harena in my head. If it had been a movie, I could have directed it. And someone once told me that they could see the camera angles in my stories, which I took as a compliment :) I think it's why I love love love having art for my stories - because for me, writing is as much visual as anything else, and the art just backs it up. My dialogue has to be more spontaneous, and early drafts are littered with John says, "You're worse than [something funny]" It's fine as well as I remember to edit them out...

My CM fic is tricky. I have A Point to make, but it's not about the characters, so they don't see the point of cooperating with me :S Once I give Reid an actual arc, he'll be happier, I'm sure.

[azure-chaos.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I don't think I've ever started and changed the beginning. I usually have such a clear first couple of paragraphs in my head I think they're usually the strongest part of the process for me (I dunno if my readers would feel the same) lol.

nate

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Ah, the readers don't know the difference! ;)

I used to not change almost anything about what I wrote, because it was absolute painstaking process to get it down in the first place. It's still rather painful, but it's a little more fluid for me now. But I also tend to think in overall scenes, so the paragraphs and words are a little more flexible and forgiving in that way, I think.

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

I learned the same thing from writers_lair. For example, when working on my story for the gen ficathon last year, I wrote no less than 5 (count 'em FIVE) completely different beginnings before I found one I liked. The other beginnings have morphed into completely different stories (well, one still to go, but it's in the works).

[greyias.livejournal.com]

(God, that icon never fails to crack me up!)

Wow, that's quite a few beginnings! I think the most I had was about three, also for the gen ficathon. I wound up finishing two of them, the third is still straggling along. Maybe one day...

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the best icon! :)

That gen ficathon fic really is the hardest thing I've ever written. I almost fainted when I got the "slave" prompt simply because there is so much slave fic out there (and some really, REALLY good ones). I went a hundred different ways before I finally found the right way for it.

I'm just glad to still have hair because there for a while...