Writing Thoughts #1: Jelly beans
Feb. 4th, 2009 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadesfireI'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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heretoutopia]
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]![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:42 pm (UTC)Trying to describe the synaesthesia requires more hand-waving than I can manage here (I'm not allowed to talk about writing while near glassware) but it does help, trying to pin it down a little.
One of the things that all the personality typing stuff has been really helpful for has been understanding that I just think *differently* to most people. It doesn't make either of us wrong, it just means that I need to take care when communicating because what's good for me will be gibberish to someone else. I'm learning to take the best bits from other people's advice and integrate it into what I do well. It's always, always a process :)