(no subject)

[acchikocchi]

Shamelessly swiped from meretricula. Comment by tomorrow morning and you'll give me something to do on the plane! (edit: obviously, later comments are okay, too. that was just a shameless ploy to keep me busy.)

I think it would be fun to talk about stories, but the usual memes are like, "What happens next?" "Tell me about Character A?" Which isn't so much talking about stories as it is writing more of a story. But you know how sometimes you read something and you're like, "I got ___ out of this story, I wonder if I have that right?" or "What on earth was ____ supposed to be?" and it's too awkward to ask the author? Now you could totally ask!

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions!

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? Why did you decide to do this? And so on.

--

Also, can someone familiar with Yuletide answer a couple questions about sign-ups/matching? I am confused and looking through yuletide unfortunately hasn't helped. DDD:

Now I will finish packing and go to sleep. Er, soon.

edit: fic snippets in comments!

Comments

[wintersjuly.livejournal.com]

actually i want to ask, because i find it interesting - how do you start writing something? as in, what gets you to the point where you go, "i have a story i want to write?" do you need to plan it all out? or it is pure imagination/where the pen (hur hur hur) takes you?

and also, what's the easiest and the most difficult fic you've written?

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

I've never had success with extensive planning ahead of time, but I've never written anything with plot threads complex enough that they *needed* to be plotted ahead of time. It varies a bit - sometimes I have a general idea where I want the story to go and the marks I want to hit along the way (TAY*J), sometimes I just know the end and make up everything else on the fly, and on very rare occasions I have literally no idea what's going on until it comes out on the page. And by very rare, I mean it happened once. Maybe twice. XD

Incidentally, the longer I wait to start, even for the best intentions - like wanting to flesh out an idea that really needs it, say - the less likely it is to happen, no matter how much I love the idea and how clearly I see it. The majority of my completed fic is *not* ideas I loved and cherished and really wanted to write, it's ideas spontaneously generated for challenges and such. Which doesn't mean I'm not pleased with how they turn out in the end, it's just I've got even more trapped in my head! The other effective goad is seeing as how I write mostly RPS fandoms, if there's a really inspiring canon situation that's pinging me, I'll be more likely to try and jump on it before it becomes irrelevant.


Easiest: TAY*J. Like falling off a log.
Hardest: toss-up between Can't Go Home Again and Dry Season. Which are not incidentally probably my two best. XD

[wintersjuly.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the longer I wait to start, even for the best intentions - like wanting to flesh out an idea that really needs it, say - the less likely it is to happen, no matter how much I love the idea and how clearly I see it.

...I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU MEAN. i wonder if it's because the instinct to edit as you write can cripple you? or maybe it's because the idea is so perfect in your head that you agonise yourself to death while writing it and get no where? i mean, it's the perfect fic! so EVERYTHING has to be right! and so you edit and edit and rewrite and rewrite and plan and set things up and then... it never gets finished ):

(it may have been hard to write but can't go home again is basically amazing, so, yay? XD)

also i love how a meme about writing means there are writing snippets. it's like, Hey, Have A Magical Surprise On Mer! \o/