Writing Process Ruminations

[hrj]

I think I've found another metaphor to describe a problematic issue with my writing process (to supplement the "surfing" metaphor). One of the issues I'm trying to address with my current "process experiment" novel is the tendency for the vivid scene-by-scene details to erode if I visualize too much of the story in advance. Having spent some time now exploring the right balance of advance visualization with knowing the general shape of where the story is going, the phrase that popped into my mind is "limited fractality buffer". That is, I seem to be able to hold in my head a more or less fixed "volume" of detail. If I try to hold a whole story's worth of detail at once, it's like looking at the Mandelbrot set from a 1000-foot level when the appropriate level of detail for any given scene requires looking from a 1-foot level. The ideal balance seems to be something like looking at the design with a fish-eye magnifier: enlarging the part I'm immediately working on while allowing the story-as-a-whole to be in the image at a much smaller resolution. As I approach the writing of a particular bit, it needs to expand in my visualization to just a slightly higher level of detail than is appropriate to write down.

Tonight, since I managed to leave the notebook with my current pages at work, I think I'll work on catching up with generating proper names and whatnot.

Comments

[kareina.livejournal.com]

As an avid reader who has never tried to write (fiction) it is interesting to read your incites on this topic--I've often wondered how much the author knows of the story before writing it.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The answer to your question is 'it depends'. Every writer is different, every story is different, and it is very difficult to tell anything about the process by the finished story.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

limited fractality buffer

That's a good way of putting it. And I hear you on not thinking too far ahead.