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thewiggleofjudas replied to your post “taydev replied to your post “I’m always amazed at people who can just…”
hey i’m always ALWAYS happy to answer any and all questions about writing, for whatever my answers are worth. <3
jasmin’s tags:
#I think I’m gonna make a list #cause I’ve got questions on outlines #are outlines yay or nay?
outlines are… helpful if they’re helpful? *facepalms because holy crap their answer is unhelpful*
ok. so. i don’t outline drabbles (100 words), or 221bs, or really anything that isn’t chaptered. i *might* sort of sketch out a few scenes describing the emotional trajectory i want a short fic to take, if getting the pacing right is really important to me, but mostly my process of writing short stuff is sort of “start writing the thing, rough out what happens, go back a bunch of times and make it sound marginally less silly until it’s as un-silly (or, if it’s crack, as silly) as i’m capable of making it at this time.”
longer stuff though… augh, well, it still varies. i didn’t outline “brittle blossoms” at all. it shows. ;) not very even, whoups. i did outline “the sea in a chasm”; i wanted to follow the greek five-act play dramatic structure. (i’m a poet. i like structure. idek.) the outline helped me keep on track and figure out who was supposed to be feeling what when, and what could happen to help me get those feels across to the reader without me just being like “YOU GUISE THESE FEELS CAN YOU EVEN.”
your mileage may well vary. <3 if outlining helps you figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it, go for it. if it comes between you and getting words on the page, ditch it. the more you write, the more you’ll get to know what works for *you* (and for each thing you’re writing—i swear they have personalities, sometimes).
i use google drive because dropbox intimidates me because i am a weenie but i don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. <3
#How to you keep writing the thing even though you want the stop? #like when the story wants to be told but you don’t want to tell it anymore #or it wants to be told and you want to tell it but the words won’t come #and you just end up staring at the same place you left off weeks ago #how do i stop failing is what I’m asking here
ohooo. okay. so much richness packed into these questions. is fabulous. <3 sounds like maybe a few different stumbling blocks you’ve identified here? did i get the spirit of these right?
- "i keep thinking about this story but FAHHHCK I DO NOT WANT TO BE THINKING ABOUT THIS STORY because i (don’t find it that interesting/find other possible stories more interesting/decided i’m the wrong vessel for channeling this story/wish i could be the one to tell it but feel inadequate to the task/et cetera)": so being a person on the ocd continuum, i know very, very well that thought suppression is about as effective as stopping a train with a dandelion. do not recommend. what i practice instead is just letting the story that wants to be told have its say. maybe all i ever do with it is listen. maybe i write out a few headcanons or brainstorming paragraphs. maybe it becomes a fic one day. no matter what, i’ve found it a peaceful way to co-exist with the stories that, for whatever reason/s, i’m not turning into fics at this time.
- "i so want to tell this story i can feel it in my bowels but i am word-constipated and every time i try to drop a fic deuce NOTHING HAPPENS WHY DOES NOTHING HAPPEN IT HURRRTS": i know friend. i know. *hugs of constipated solidarity* however, there is ex-lax. erm, hope. yes. hope. that’s the one. because if this story is looming THAT large on your internal horizon, you already know *some*thing about it. is that thing the setting? the characters involved? the emotional arc of the protagonist? the mood? whatever element/s you already have, write ‘em out. just in a planning doc—don’t pressure yourself to write a draft or anything. you’re just acquainting yourself with some ideas, is all. the more you steep yourself in those ideas, the more comfortable and familiar you become with them, the more you’ll feel ready to write the thing.
- "i’ve already started telling this story, and i want to finish, but apparently this is ‘wheel of fortune’ and i can’t afford to buy any more vowels how the eff do i finish this effing thing eff eff effity eff": oh lord MY FAVORITE. D: okay. so. i have a few different approaches that i rotate through to bust through these kinds of blocks. one is to set a timer for ten minutes and bust out the next one hundred words. they can be shit. doesn’t matter. just get ‘em down. repeat until you’ve got a shitty first draft (hat tip annie dillard). another is to write what DOESN’T happen. go wild: kill everyone with the yellowstone supervolcano, have someone quit their job and become a silk aerialist, lower a disco ball from the ceiling (bonus points if the scene in question is outdoors) and start a dance party. it’s goofy, but seeing what *won’t* happen next often helps my brain realize what *will* happen next. a third option is to take a figurative step back and look at the big picture of the story arc i’m trying to tell. am i stuck because i’ve lost focus? did this fic really end three scenes ago? does it really start three scenes ahead of where i’m dithering? sometimes i’m off, is what i’m saying.
- general thing that helps me immensely on pieces long enough to require more than one session of work (i try to avoid those tho because economy boner :p): hemingway supposedly said that he always stopped writing for the day *when he knew what was going to happen next*. that way, when he plunked his arse down at his typewriter the next morning, he didn’t have to start from “fuck fuck what now”—he started from “fuck yeah and thennn….” i’ve found that really, really helpful for maintaining momentum on long(ish) projects.
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Some excellent writing advice here! I especially like the bits about how to deal with writer’s block at various times in the story. I use the sprinting technique a lot myself.
Also, sometimes when I get stuck on a particular scene or section of a longer story, I also say something like “***Sherlock ends up at Bart’s***” or “*** Sherlock solves a case that gives him insight into into what John is feeling***” and I basically skip the whole section I’m having problems with and get to something I do feel like writing. Then when I go through the story later and search for “***” so I can fill in all the missing bits, I somehow often find that it’s easier than I thought. (And sometimes it helps me distill the parts where I’m flailing down to their essence — to the point where sometimes those sections get filled in with just a few sentences, and I don’t fill in the unnecessary details.)
I find outlines immensely helpful for most stories longer than a chapter. But I also don’t feel a need to stick closely to my outline if I get to a scene and put myself in the characters’ heads and realize it would actually go a different way. I am constantly re-outlining. And I have outlines for DtD at several different scales — the whole book, the current chunk of several chapters, and the current chapter. I use/change/ignore all of them depending on what’s most helpful at a given point in the story. But it helps me avoid writer’s block — I flail too much if I don’t have any outline for where I should be going next and how the pieces should eventually fit together.
chequerootlurks
