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*fistpump*
The 1.0 draft of my seekrit WC exchange story is DONE and away to beta! 67,000 words according to BBedit; 63,000 according to AO3. STILL QUITE LONG.
I think I mentioned in another post awhile back that I wanted to teach myself to properly revise, and I have learned a TON about revising from the experience of writing this story. I never used to revise much. Even my long stories, as posted, were pretty close to how I wrote them -- oh, I would do some editing for word choice and whatnot, but as far as major structural revisions ... not so much. I've had to work hard on letting go of the notion that I have to get it down properly on the first try. One thing I've realized is that this stubborn insistence on having it all in place on the first go-around is holding me back in two ways: obviously, part of the problem is that I just don't get things written at all, but there's another problem I never realized until working on this story -- my reluctance to revise means that I can only write certain kinds of stories well.
My forte has always been plot-driven action. My stories have never been particularly driven by a character arc; they are character focused, certainly, but my stories generally have not had a focus on the characters' change and growth over time. The better ones have included character growth that developed organically and spontaneously as the plot developed, but I haven't set out to write stories that were about changes in a character or in two (or more) characters' relationships to one another -- my high-level story concepts have always been more along the lines of "what if aliens invaded and a meteor hit the city and everyone had to struggle to survive?" rather than "what if this couple broke up and had a major falling out?" or "what if this character started working out their inner demons and began to develop healthy relationships with other people?"
One of the reasons why I haven't managed to write as much lately as I used to, I'm pretty sure, is because I've been getting more ambitious and wanting to do stories that are not just about the external action plot (though there's that, too; it's still my favorite thing to write, and what I'm best at) but also about a strong, continued thread of character or relationship growth. And I can't get that on the first draft. I can get plot on the first draft -- I might have to go back later and tidy up drifting plot threads or fix too-convenient coincidences, but plot, generally, is something I can get down on the first go-around. Character development, though, requires a second pass with pretty heavy revisions to get all the subtle nuances in the right places. I can hold plot in my head as I write. I can't hold character in my head as I write, though, at least not in terms of the subtler shades of "where would these people be at this stage in the development of their relationship? How do they relate to each other?" or "how is this character's emotional development from alcoholic to well-adjusted member of society coming along?" I have to be able to see the whole picture, to realize that I'm developing their relationship too fast and need to slow down, or to recognize that a character's heel face turn is happening too quickly or not quickly enough, or whatever. It can only be done on the second draft.
Anyway, this story is character-focused as much as plot-focused, and it's been really fascinating to discover how revising it is almost like writing it a second time -- the first time for the plot, the second time to bring out all the nuances of the characters' relationships and personalities that were either hamhandedly shoehorned in, or completely left out, on the first pass.
I think I mentioned in another post awhile back that I wanted to teach myself to properly revise, and I have learned a TON about revising from the experience of writing this story. I never used to revise much. Even my long stories, as posted, were pretty close to how I wrote them -- oh, I would do some editing for word choice and whatnot, but as far as major structural revisions ... not so much. I've had to work hard on letting go of the notion that I have to get it down properly on the first try. One thing I've realized is that this stubborn insistence on having it all in place on the first go-around is holding me back in two ways: obviously, part of the problem is that I just don't get things written at all, but there's another problem I never realized until working on this story -- my reluctance to revise means that I can only write certain kinds of stories well.
My forte has always been plot-driven action. My stories have never been particularly driven by a character arc; they are character focused, certainly, but my stories generally have not had a focus on the characters' change and growth over time. The better ones have included character growth that developed organically and spontaneously as the plot developed, but I haven't set out to write stories that were about changes in a character or in two (or more) characters' relationships to one another -- my high-level story concepts have always been more along the lines of "what if aliens invaded and a meteor hit the city and everyone had to struggle to survive?" rather than "what if this couple broke up and had a major falling out?" or "what if this character started working out their inner demons and began to develop healthy relationships with other people?"
One of the reasons why I haven't managed to write as much lately as I used to, I'm pretty sure, is because I've been getting more ambitious and wanting to do stories that are not just about the external action plot (though there's that, too; it's still my favorite thing to write, and what I'm best at) but also about a strong, continued thread of character or relationship growth. And I can't get that on the first draft. I can get plot on the first draft -- I might have to go back later and tidy up drifting plot threads or fix too-convenient coincidences, but plot, generally, is something I can get down on the first go-around. Character development, though, requires a second pass with pretty heavy revisions to get all the subtle nuances in the right places. I can hold plot in my head as I write. I can't hold character in my head as I write, though, at least not in terms of the subtler shades of "where would these people be at this stage in the development of their relationship? How do they relate to each other?" or "how is this character's emotional development from alcoholic to well-adjusted member of society coming along?" I have to be able to see the whole picture, to realize that I'm developing their relationship too fast and need to slow down, or to recognize that a character's heel face turn is happening too quickly or not quickly enough, or whatever. It can only be done on the second draft.
Anyway, this story is character-focused as much as plot-focused, and it's been really fascinating to discover how revising it is almost like writing it a second time -- the first time for the plot, the second time to bring out all the nuances of the characters' relationships and personalities that were either hamhandedly shoehorned in, or completely left out, on the first pass.
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But I've tried the write something first and then revise way and I don't even get how to do it. D: I can't proceed to the next bit until I have the current bit the way I want it, because I don't know how the next bit is going to go unless I have this bit done! >_<
I do sometimes wish I could write that way, because I think maybe I would get more writing done? idk But I don't even know where to start...
As for the type of writing, I'm the exact opposite of you. I can write about characters, but any sort of big, involved plot, I don't know. I don't even know where to start or get ideas for that sort of thing.
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I know exactly what you mean! I described it over in the comments on LJ as feeling like picking a thread out of the center of a knit or woven object in order to change a small piece of the pattern -- that one little thread is interwoven with so many other threads that the whole thing starts unraveling. I always feel a little weird saying "I don't know how to rewrite" because, on the surface, that sounds a little silly; it ought to be simple, right? Except it's not simple, at all, and I've had to get past this gigantic mental block against rearranging the story once it's already written.
What's been kind of interesting for me, though, is discovering that it actually doesn't fall apart -- that I can add and subtract things, put in new scenes, pad out existing scenes, and still get the thing to hang together. But it's not simple at all. It's at least as mentally taxing as writing it the first time, if not more so! (When I was revising the WC story before sending it to my beta, I'd look at how much I'd actually written and feel as mentally exhausted as if I'd written three or four times as much.)
As far as the plotty writing vs. character writing, I do admire you being able to do that! And your characterization hangs together so well; you do these really lovely, very concrete character pieces, all zoomed in on the characters' lives and full of detail. My brain keeps feeding me these epics that are full of aliens and things going boom, and I don't know how to get it to stop. *g*
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That's interesting because, yeah, now that you mention it and now that I think about it, character really isn't something you can get down the first time around. It took me five drafts of my current original fic to finally "get" one of my characters, and I'm still tweeking.
I have to be able to see the whole picture, to realize that I'm developing their relationship too fast and need to slow down, or to recognize that a character's heel face turn is happening too quickly or not quickly enough, or whatever.
Yes, this! It doesn't matter how put together a character is in my head, it isn't until I read through that first draft that the character actually starts coming together. In fact, that's my favorite part of the editing process - taking what I have and putting it together into something more solid and consistence, and seeing the characters become actual people rather than just characters.
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And this epiphany about character is something that I've only realized in the last month or so, but it really seems to fit, and not only that but it also explains why I've found so many of my stories such tough going lately -- I keep expecting character to fall into place the way that plot does, but it doesn't quite work the same way.
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I think this is why I have such a hard time doing "group" stories and "team" stories, because it's hard enough just working with two characters, figuring them out, figuring their relationship out, etc. Stories with a group of characters scare the crap out of me.
But, on the other hand, a part of that also comes down to me being a very focused person and preferring fewer characters to focus on. It's why I enjoy, and have even thought up, the occasional "lone wolf" story, because I really like that kind of focus (I should say not completely lone wolf - there still needs to be friendships and relationships along the way, but I'm okay with them being fleeting. The latter, I think, stems from personal experience. Being a military brat, I'm used to friendships coming and going. I've been wanting to do a whole meta on that for some time but can never get my thoughts organized enough to do so).
But I discovered that actually, outlining removes a lot of the roadblocks to creativity (like not knowing what's going to happen next) and the writing process is still just as much fun.
Yes, exactly. Outlines aren't rules you have to follow to the letter, they're there to help you keep your thoughts and ideas organized, but once you start writing anything still goes. For me, writing an outline helps to keep the more important plot points in mind (because usually when I write something down it burns itself into my memory. Case in point, I rarely ever look at my outline once I start writing). But the story itself goes where it will once the actual writing begins, so the joy of discovery is still there.
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Oh, how interesting! I had never guessed that. I'm just the opposite, despite being a rather solitary person myself -- I absolutely love writing large groups of characters, having them all bounce off each other and interact in different ways. (I suppose this goes along with the way I fan on things, where I tend to be a fan of the whole group and the way that they relate to each other, much more so than any individual character in the group -- I do usually have a favorite character or two, but I'm more emotionally invested in the characters' relationships with each other than in any specific character. I like ensembles.)
But, then, it means that my writing abilities become very weak when I try to zoom in on a single character, or even a single character relationship, and develop them fully.
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You can do the same kind of character plot with a non-romantic bent - developing a friendship, the alcoholic's recovery as you mentioned - but that tends to be harder to do in fanfic, when a lot of those elements are already a developed aspect of canons (in most of my fandoms, the only way to show a friendship's development is either to flashback or to AU). So when it comes to fanfic, romance is often the easiest way to practice char development, and I think writing 'ship fic has helped me in that.
That being said, yeah, I've found tweaking can be a pretty crucial part of that process - though I think I do it even more for plot; I go back and rearrange events quite a bit, and there are some stories that I'm thinking I really need to learn how to outline, because I get too confused with them otherwise. I've also recently learned the value of jumping ahead - I usually try to write linearly, but I've discovered that if I really get stuck on a scene, the best thing to do is simply skip ahead to the next scene I know what I'm doing, and work out the intervening later (sometimes in the doing realizing that the intervening was in fact entirely unnecessary...) I don't like doing it, have to push myself into it - but it really has helped whenever I do, so, gotta learn how to accept it!
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Because, yeah, that's a really interesting difference! With a few exceptions, I've generally tended to write to the status quo, where my intention isn't to take the characters to a new or different level in their relationship, but to simply enjoy the character relationships that already exist, usually by running them through a scenario that could be an episode if the writers ever got around to it. Probably for this reason, the canons that have drawn me to write in them are usually the ones where I'm drawn to the worldbuilding as much as the characters.
I was thinking today about the fact that White Collar might be the only fandom I've been really creatively engaged with that hasn't been a scifi/fantasy fandom, but even so, the worldbuilding is still a major element in my love of the show and of writing fic for it -- I love the way that New York is an active element in the show itself, and I enjoy the challenge of researching and bringing to life an actual location, and the fun of coming up with creative heists and cons ...
Which isn't to say that I don't write fiction with emotions in it. I know there's a stereotype in fandom that gen is lacking in feeling or depth, and I don't think that's true, or feel that my fic is necessarily like that. But it's certainly less emotional, or emotion-driven, than the other kind. I don't think I really understood, until I started reading significant amounts of slash in SGA fandom, why genfic seems under-emotional to readers who aren't used to it -- because it is, or at least, the emotional arc doesn't have pride of place in it.
(And to me, plot-driven writer and reader that I am, a lot of slash and other sorts of romantic fiction feels under-plotted -- even some of the good writers will leave me wondering "... but when will anything HAPPEN?" when it's 30K or 40K of nothing but character development. Of course, it reads just fine to people who like that sort of thing ...)
You can do the same kind of character plot with a non-romantic bent - developing a friendship, the alcoholic's recovery as you mentioned - but that tends to be harder to do in fanfic, when a lot of those elements are already a developed aspect of canons (in most of my fandoms, the only way to show a friendship's development is either to flashback or to AU). So when it comes to fanfic, romance is often the easiest way to practice char development, and I think writing 'ship fic has helped me in that.
Yeah, and not just in fanfic. I've noticed that I'm writing more romance in my original fic than I used to, especially in short stories, not because I'm that much more interested in romance than I used to be (though I *have* mellowed on it considerably) but because it gives a clearly defined, built-in trajectory for the characters and for the plot. Even in original fiction, writing a non-romance relationship trajectory ("X and Y become friends" or "sister X and brother Y grow apart as they grow older") is harder to figure out, more challenging to plot its emotional "beats" and decide where to begin and end.
But, like you said, it's even more difficult to do in fanfic. I think that's at least part of the appeal of AUs: throwing the characters together under different circumstances, and getting to write those first times all over again, as well as taking them to different places than canon did.
Meanwhile, in original fiction, I'm struggling with the fact that I do want to have that sort of character and relationship growth, but I'm SO used to writing long fanfic in which I only have to keep one ball in the air (the plot) as opposed to two (the plot and the character arc) that I don't really know how to do it! It's not completely different -- it's not like I'm having to figure out writing all over again -- but it's definitely forcing me to engage a brand-new skill set.
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Hmmm, yes...this is usually true for me (even in my slash, I often prefer a status quo, little changing in their relationship except the addition of sex). The one major exception in my stuff was Smallville, in which I was writing very deliberately counter to canon - and (oddly? or perhaps not) that remains one of my favorite fandoms...hated the show, but I loved writing for it, and of my own fics that I reread, those I wrote for SV are some of the top of the list...
I know there's a stereotype in fandom that gen is lacking in feeling or depth, and I don't think that's true, or feel that my fic is necessarily like that. But it's certainly less emotional, or emotion-driven, than the other kind.
Heh, yeah - and I had such a hard time understanding this view when I first heard it, because I got into fic fandom in that window where slash was still somewhat undercover and smarm was an accepted practice instead of a dirty word. So "gen" for me often meant "smarm", and romantic friendship every bit as emotionally intense and focused as slash/ship fic (and often following similar story arcs, just with the consummation being declaration of friendship/family/brotherhood rather than sex). But smarm falls in this very narrow subset of taste, and most gen is outside it...especially since I think the majority of gen fans are just those who prefer strong plots.
(I'm perhaps a little weird in that I can often enjoy plotless, relationship-focused fic - at least if I'm into the 'ship at the time - but I get impatient with loosely plotted books/original fic. I think I bond with characters & relationships more if I get to know them in the context of an interesting plot? Or maybe it's just that it often takes me a while to fall in love with chars, so I need the plot to carry me through to the love. Definitely it's something I'm struggling with in my own writing - my current novel probably isn't plotted enough to satisfy me, were I reading it cold - but I know that there are tons of books that people love even if I found them under-plotted, so I keep telling myself it doesn't matter, since I'm not the one I need to satisfy for it to be successful...!)
I've noticed that I'm writing more romance in my original fic than I used to, especially in short stories, not because I'm that much more interested in romance than I used to be (though I *have* mellowed on it considerably) but because it gives a clearly defined, built-in trajectory for the characters and for the plot
Heh, this - since I started writing slash, I've sometimes found myself thinking while writing gen that it would be so much easier if it were a romance. It's usually when I'm reaching the end and am at a loss for an appropriate conclusion - romantic consummation is such a simple and satisfying way to tie up a story! Even if it's obnoxiously cliche...it's cliche for a reason! (Have to figure out ways around this, though, because I definitely want to be writing some gen low/no-romance original stuff, the kind of stories I love to read...)
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That's really interesting analysis of your process. I'd like the ability to analyze my own writing that way. I know some pieces — that my characters tend to be pretty static across the story; that I tend to use plot to explore how one or more characters will react to an event or to reveal something about a character; what parts of stories give me the most trouble — but I haven't really learned analysis.
There's still a huge part of me that looks at a story and says, "But that's what happened, what do you mean I should change parts of it? Those events in that order shaped the character; the character's reactions shaped those events; they can't change!" Which is pure silliness; I don't actually buy that I'm simply channeling something that actually happened on some dimension. And yet, generally speaking, I still approach the editing phase as small-scale adjustments rather than major reworking.
Then again, formlessness terrifies me, so. Heh. I may not strictly outline, but I need some sort of guideline to hang everything else on, however illusory that may be.
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I think there is definitely an element of that -- this is what happened, how can I change it? -- to my resistance to editing. The thing is, when I write it or say it, I think it sounds a little silly: of course one can always revise, what's strange about that? But I can't quite explain this heavy resistance that I have to the idea. For me, revision has always felt like taking a piece of knitting or woven fabric, going to the middle and picking out a thread in order to make the pattern a little different. All of a sudden the whole thing starts to unravel, because it's all interrelated, and changing one thing potentially changes everything else. Like you said, it's not that I believe I'm channeling voices from another plane or anything like that; it's just that I like the story to be in balance as I write it -- this thing happens, and it affects this other thing -- and it's really hard to start taking it apart and suddenly having to come up with a different reason why this character does that thing, or another way of getting these two characters into the same room because I've changed their plotlines until they don't intersect.
... er, in theory, anyway. In actual practice, my dire predictions of my story collapsing like an underdone soufflé have not come to pass -- actually, what's been happening is that I've been adding scenes, fleshing out other scenes, and while I have run into a few continuity issues, they're usually pretty easy to resolve.
The one thing I have not yet managed to do is make my stories SHORTER by any appreciable amount. Theoretically, one of the things you're supposed to do when you revise is trim off the excess fat, but I just keep finding more fat to add.
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I find
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Isn't it annoying how much more difficult writing seems to become when one is "getting better"?
Oh man, I know! The more I learn about writing, the more pressure I put on myself and the harder it seems to get.
That's really interesting about switching back and forth as a reader. I do think there are not just a different set of tropes, but a whole different feel and style to the two kinds of fic -- I used to notice in SGA that I could often tell when a genfic was written by a slash writer, not because there was slash subtext in it, but because there was a whole different feel and style to the story than one normally gets from gen.
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I'm still struggling a lot with plot, though. My brain tends toward epics and long, sometimes convoluted plots, and I'm really not very good (yet) at keeping it all under control. Which is why I a) rarely finish a longer project, and b) even when I do finish something, it can take a lot of false starts. (Sigh.) I really want to learn to do that better, but I suppose that's one of the things where only practice makes perfect. (Again: Sigh.) But plot-heavy or no, my stories are always driven by a character arc. (Well, I say always ... There's the occasional exception, but those stories always feel flat to me even if they may not necessarily to someone else. I don't necessarily need that from other people's fiction, but in my own writing it doesn't make me happy, as if I'm missing my own point, so to speak.) Anyway, generally I want my characters to arrive at a certain place, and the entire external plot - fun though it may be in itself - is there to facilitate them getting there. I still get in trouble way too often when the two start drifting apart, and then I have to stop and do a lot of brainstorming and tweaking until it all goes in the same direction again. I really want to learn to plot better so I don't get myself into this kind of calamity quite so often. *g* But the end-point - or rather, the climax and its outcome - is never really in question, in my fic. I always know where I want to go.
my high-level story concepts have always been more along the lines of "what if aliens invaded and a meteor hit the city and everyone had to struggle to survive?" rather than "what if this couple broke up and had a major falling out?" or "what if this character started working out their inner demons and began to develop healthy relationships with other people?"
Heh. My story concepts go the other way round - not "what would happen if the characters got tossed into X situation" but "what would have to happen for the characters to end up in X situation". For example, take one of my favourite tropes, mortal enemies having to work together and ending up trusting each other. You could go about it from the start, for example "what if those two were thrown in that situation together" - or you could go about it from a specific ending - "what would have to happen for one of a pair of mortal enemies to end up wagering everything on the other not abandoning him", or something of the sort.
Gah, I'm not sure I explained that very well at all. I struggled with this comment a bit since my brain still isn't fully cooperating, so I hope this makes sense to you ...