Just hanging out
Nov. 25th, 2007 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI learned many years ago that there's no point in trying to fly home from Darkovercon on Sunday night because I'll just end up getting stuck in some airport somewhere all night, and a hotel bed is much comfier. Besides which, it gives me a chance to enjoy a leisurely post-con dinner with JG and associates (which usually includes the GoH so I get to do any left-over fan-geeking that I haven't gotten out of my system previously ... ok, ok, so I don't really fan-geek, so sue me). The Monday plane schedules can be a bit odd, though. Some years I can catch something that only requires me to get up promptly to catch a shuttle; some years I get a mid-day flight that leaves the transport options wide open. This time I had my choice between a really outrageous hour of the morning and something around 5pm. I went for the latter, but that means I'll have a lot of time to kill tomorrow without having a very good way to kill it. (Trying to do a few hours of sightseeing or anything else similar while dragging a roll-away suitcase just doesn't cut it.) But it does mean I have plenty of time to take the light rail to the airport rather than springing for the shuttle van.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'd started up a habit of writing a little every day. I've been carrying around a notepad all weekend and scribbling at any moment when my attention isn't otherwise engaged and I've just about manoevered that surfboard right into the sweet spot of the curl. (See previous post for a key to the metaphor.) I'm about half a scene short of being caught up with the portion of the story that I've worked out in detail on the brain-movies. Somewhat contrary to my usual pattern, I actually started at what appears to be the beginning of the story (rather than jumping around to the vivid action bits), so I've gotten through the basic introduction to the characters, setting, and Event That Changes Everything (which sets the rest of the story in motion). I have come up with another major plot element: one that converts the story from something more or less along the lines of a Ruritanian Regency-era romance to more of an out-and-out alternate-history fantasy with quasi-magical elements. It isn't entirely a matter of thinking (way too far) ahead to marketing questions -- it gives me a more solid framework for the action in the middle part of the story, as well as giving the originally-weaker of the two protagonists something more meaty to sink her teeth into. So there will definitly be a little backtracking on the currently-written parts to weave that element in from the beginning.
It's nowhere near ready for anyone else to read because I've only laid down the first layer at this point. When I'm writing longer works, it's as if I'm creating an oil painting by the classic techniques: start out with a rough charcoal sketch, add in the shading and modeling, layer on the translucent colors, then add the details. What I'm doing now is somewhere in between the sketch and the underpainting -- primarily a lot of dialogue, character movements, and basic stage directions. A little bit of description, but not much. And a fair amount of detail noted in short-hand code (like personal names and whatnot that I haven't come up with yet). The next pass will start adding in the major descriptive elements, convert some of the original dialogue to narrative and tone down the stage-direction elements. The third pass is for the blending and detail work: getting the right balance between description, action, and dialogue; fixing any issues with continuity, motivation, foreshadowing, etc.; and working on polishing things up to a sparkly finish. These passes don't normally come as separate and distinct re-writes -- usually it ends up being a rolling process so that the leading edge of the story is all skeletal and the trailing edge is almost at finished stage.
But the cool thing is that I'm succeeding in writing that first structural layer just as it's emerging from my imagination, when it's freshest and most detailed. And doing that is driving the rest of the story to start revealing itself. I now have at least a general notion of what the main sources of conflict will be and what the protagonists need to accomplish before the climax. A trivial side-character has emerged to become my primary antagonist, and there are shadows of off-stage backstory flickering around the edges. In terms of getting back into the whole writing process, I think we can count this one as a success.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'd started up a habit of writing a little every day. I've been carrying around a notepad all weekend and scribbling at any moment when my attention isn't otherwise engaged and I've just about manoevered that surfboard right into the sweet spot of the curl. (See previous post for a key to the metaphor.) I'm about half a scene short of being caught up with the portion of the story that I've worked out in detail on the brain-movies. Somewhat contrary to my usual pattern, I actually started at what appears to be the beginning of the story (rather than jumping around to the vivid action bits), so I've gotten through the basic introduction to the characters, setting, and Event That Changes Everything (which sets the rest of the story in motion). I have come up with another major plot element: one that converts the story from something more or less along the lines of a Ruritanian Regency-era romance to more of an out-and-out alternate-history fantasy with quasi-magical elements. It isn't entirely a matter of thinking (way too far) ahead to marketing questions -- it gives me a more solid framework for the action in the middle part of the story, as well as giving the originally-weaker of the two protagonists something more meaty to sink her teeth into. So there will definitly be a little backtracking on the currently-written parts to weave that element in from the beginning.
It's nowhere near ready for anyone else to read because I've only laid down the first layer at this point. When I'm writing longer works, it's as if I'm creating an oil painting by the classic techniques: start out with a rough charcoal sketch, add in the shading and modeling, layer on the translucent colors, then add the details. What I'm doing now is somewhere in between the sketch and the underpainting -- primarily a lot of dialogue, character movements, and basic stage directions. A little bit of description, but not much. And a fair amount of detail noted in short-hand code (like personal names and whatnot that I haven't come up with yet). The next pass will start adding in the major descriptive elements, convert some of the original dialogue to narrative and tone down the stage-direction elements. The third pass is for the blending and detail work: getting the right balance between description, action, and dialogue; fixing any issues with continuity, motivation, foreshadowing, etc.; and working on polishing things up to a sparkly finish. These passes don't normally come as separate and distinct re-writes -- usually it ends up being a rolling process so that the leading edge of the story is all skeletal and the trailing edge is almost at finished stage.
But the cool thing is that I'm succeeding in writing that first structural layer just as it's emerging from my imagination, when it's freshest and most detailed. And doing that is driving the rest of the story to start revealing itself. I now have at least a general notion of what the main sources of conflict will be and what the protagonists need to accomplish before the climax. A trivial side-character has emerged to become my primary antagonist, and there are shadows of off-stage backstory flickering around the edges. In terms of getting back into the whole writing process, I think we can count this one as a success.
