What I'm doing today
Dec. 23rd, 2006 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhMy current problem: I have 700 words of- if I say so myself- rather nice writing, with a great deal more in the back of my mind waiting to be typed out, but I have no idea what story it's all part of.
Which sounds bizarre, I know: this has never happened to me before. I've got all this description and action and even some dialogue, but I need some point for the story to be about, something for the characters to discuss, some central tangle of their relationship or backstory or meaning or whatever for everything to turn on, and that's what I can't come up with.
It's not unusual for me to start a story with little bits and pieces; various images usually, or a line of dialogue, and to write these single sentences down as soon as I get them, so I don't forget how they go. It's part of why I always carry a notebook on me, so that I can jot down the "Everything in GenSouKai is more real than in reality" that, really, is already the whole story for me, just waiting for the rest of it to be nailed down in words. Later I'll fit these bits into their appropriate paragraphs, once I've written all of that slower stuff. But I've never had a setting and a plot and all the rest without a purpose for it; I'm used to the point coming first, and then the ideas of how to tell it.
This is the strangest sort of writer's block I've ever had.
Which sounds bizarre, I know: this has never happened to me before. I've got all this description and action and even some dialogue, but I need some point for the story to be about, something for the characters to discuss, some central tangle of their relationship or backstory or meaning or whatever for everything to turn on, and that's what I can't come up with.
It's not unusual for me to start a story with little bits and pieces; various images usually, or a line of dialogue, and to write these single sentences down as soon as I get them, so I don't forget how they go. It's part of why I always carry a notebook on me, so that I can jot down the "Everything in GenSouKai is more real than in reality" that, really, is already the whole story for me, just waiting for the rest of it to be nailed down in words. Later I'll fit these bits into their appropriate paragraphs, once I've written all of that slower stuff. But I've never had a setting and a plot and all the rest without a purpose for it; I'm used to the point coming first, and then the ideas of how to tell it.
This is the strangest sort of writer's block I've ever had.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 05:59 am (UTC)Is this a YnM piece?
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Date: 2006-12-23 06:14 am (UTC)Nope, Swordspoint. I am still in giggly-and-bemused obsessive love!
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Date: 2006-12-23 06:28 am (UTC)Mind you, not only can I not follow this advice, but I tend to be cross when confronted with the results of other people carrying it to extremes: I like for things to have structure, and theme, and shape. But I feel sure that if she were here listening, she'd yell at you too in more or less the same terms, so that it seems only right for me to do it for her.
I had to write out a hell of a lot of the last thing I finished before I had any damn clue what I was doing, for what it's worth. It was disorienting in the extreme. But if I hadn't written it all out before I knew exactly what I was doing, I don't think I'd have figured it out at all before the deadline.
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Date: 2006-12-23 07:02 am (UTC)Clearly I should just start writing until I figure things out, as it seems to be the surest way to fix this problem. But it seems like such a labor-intensive solution; I'm reluctant to accept that there isn't an easier way to come up with an answer. You know, like magic. Or through reading livejournal, which is what I am obviously actually doing.
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Date: 2006-12-23 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-23 08:27 pm (UTC)