![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writing filter
Sep. 16th, 2008 11:42 amIt's a little depressing to realize that I need to cut, gut and utterly rewrite a full day's worth of work not because it's bad story but because it's the wrong story. The characters in the scene aren't the characters in the rest of the story. They're not implausible, based on canon (Weiss Kreuz is one of those canons that allows a rather vast number of interpretations of the characters. The possibilities aren't infinite, but canon contradicts itself in places and is gauze thin in other places). They're just not who I was writing in the first seven thousand words.
I suspect that I was simply too caught up in following a particular narrative kink of mine. The fun of writing something that works for me can be powerful. Then I hit the point where I had to admit that it made no sense to go further along that line. As I thought about why the scene wouldn't go further, I realized that it was because the scene had taken a wrong turn a few pages back. I can probably salvage some pieces. I *need* to salvage some pieces. One character's internal monolog goes mostly in the right direction and is exactly what I need even if it won't flow the same way in a new context.
False paths like this happen to me fairly often in my writing. They're more likely to happen when I'm still trying to figure out where the story will end up. I don't outline or necessarily plan. I tend to find a thread of story or a scene and worry at it to find out what's around it, why it's there, how the characters feel about it and respond to it. Sometimes, that means playing with point of view until I get the right angle on things. Sometimes that means selecting a different point at which to start a scene or to end it.
I find the false paths frustrating. I keep the fragments I produce that way in case I can mine them later for something, but mostly I don't go back to them after I have the version I really want. That they're not what the story needs doesn't mean that they don't have something worthwhile, but they're orphans that I can't take in and feed and make something of. I have to abandon them.
I suspect that some of it is that I've always been sentimental about roads not taken. That's what these are. They're roads I shouldn't take because they don't go where I need to go. Some of them probably don't go anywhere at all. I just want to know where they go and what I'd find along the way.
I suspect that I was simply too caught up in following a particular narrative kink of mine. The fun of writing something that works for me can be powerful. Then I hit the point where I had to admit that it made no sense to go further along that line. As I thought about why the scene wouldn't go further, I realized that it was because the scene had taken a wrong turn a few pages back. I can probably salvage some pieces. I *need* to salvage some pieces. One character's internal monolog goes mostly in the right direction and is exactly what I need even if it won't flow the same way in a new context.
False paths like this happen to me fairly often in my writing. They're more likely to happen when I'm still trying to figure out where the story will end up. I don't outline or necessarily plan. I tend to find a thread of story or a scene and worry at it to find out what's around it, why it's there, how the characters feel about it and respond to it. Sometimes, that means playing with point of view until I get the right angle on things. Sometimes that means selecting a different point at which to start a scene or to end it.
I find the false paths frustrating. I keep the fragments I produce that way in case I can mine them later for something, but mostly I don't go back to them after I have the version I really want. That they're not what the story needs doesn't mean that they don't have something worthwhile, but they're orphans that I can't take in and feed and make something of. I have to abandon them.
I suspect that some of it is that I've always been sentimental about roads not taken. That's what these are. They're roads I shouldn't take because they don't go where I need to go. Some of them probably don't go anywhere at all. I just want to know where they go and what I'd find along the way.
