Writing discussion (looking for advice)
May. 21st, 2016 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI sat on these for a while after writing them up. A lot of them turned into more me figuring out what the problem was and, maybe, what to do about it as opposed to me being puzzled over the problem or wanting help figuring out a solution. I think that writing about this has been good for me in terms of figuring out where these stories stand. I’m not sure that it’s actually at all interesting for anyone who’s not me, but posting it here means I won’t lose track of it. And if anyone actually wants to discuss any of these, I’m definitely up for it. I’m still not going to fast about responding to comments, but I’ll get there eventually.
I have also decided to label a bunch of bits and pieces that I haven’t touched in at least fifteen years as 'abandoned.' I’m not sure that I will hold to that because I’ve thought for years that I would go back to one or another of those stories, but… I haven’t done it so far, and it’s not like I don’t have enough other WIP to think about. The abandoned stories include two things that I wrote more than 20000 words on, so letting go is hard, but… No new words in a decade and a half. If I finished those stories, they might be great, or they might be terrible, but I’m not going to finish them.
Auguries of Innocence (Harry Potter): I’ve written six and a half chapters of this, and I’m not sure that everything that I put in chapter 6 should be there. I had sex (extremely dubious consent. The only reason I think there’s any degree of consent is that the victim can see potential futures and decides he wants it to happen, but, if he didn’t, he couldn’t say no, so…) happen, and it might have been in character and it might not have been. It’s something that would happen eventually and in pretty much that way, but I’m not sure it should happen then rather than several chapters further on. This hinges on how well this version of Ron actually reads/understands people. This is a dark AU in which all the characters are, at best, kind of gray and pretty much everyone crossed some serious lines in the effort to defeat Voldemort (which they did. This is aftermath). I’m not convinced that even this version of Ron would jump from 'needs positive/affectionate touch' to 'needs enjoyable sex.' Not immediately, anyway. I also feel like even Ron should get that the other person almost certainly doesn’t think of sex as pleasant. Since Ron’s going about this fairly cold bloodedly with the goal of keeping the other person as sane as possible in order that he continue to be useful… I’m not convinced that he’d choose that route. Except… He’s not a master manipulator. His talents lie elsewhere. And physical intimacy can lead to attachment of a sort. I’m just not sure that this isn’t leaping from A to Q or some such and skipping some necessary intervening steps that would make the whole thing do what Ron actually wants. No, I know it is. I’m just not sure if Ron would know that. If yes, then it needs to happen later. If no, then now.
Occlusion (Weiss Kreuz): I keep saying that I’m not going to write any more of this, that the fragments that exist are all there’s going to be ever. Of course, I then go on and write a few more paragraphs. This started with a kink meme fill with a situation that’s a very long way from canon, so I built bits of backstory in my head to explain how the characters ended up where they were. It’s an interesting, very dark AU, but I don’t like any of the characters in it except Nagi. I want to leave the damned thing alone, but I can’t quite seem to.
Weiss Kreuz Time Travel: This one involves Yohji and Asuka being time travelers from a very bad future. Asuka came back to try to change history and ended up bringing Yohji along because circumstances required it. I think it needs to focus heavily on events pre-canon which means that it’s heading toward disaster for Asuka and toward Yohji needing to figure how to muddle through when he doesn’t actually know what needs to be done (which, I figure, is pretty much what he does through Kapital). I’ve written a few paragraphs of this, but I think that doing it right will require research into all sorts of things that I can normally handwave in a Weiss Kreuz fic. The two time traveling characters would have some culture shock and need to scramble to survive in a setting they’re not used to and where they don’t know the rules which means I have to have them interact with the culture which means I have know what it should be. Tokyo in the mid-1990s is well outside of my frame of reference. I like this story idea, but I suspect I won’t go anywhere with it because of the research needed and because I doubt that any amount of research I could do would give me what I need.
Nothing False and Possible (Amber): I keep wandering down rabbit holes on this one. I think the question of what pronouns a species of shapeshifters would use for each other is a distraction. I just need to pick something and go with it. The question of which characters with vague backstories are shapeshifters is more pertinent, but, if I don’t want to decide, I can just flip a coin for each one. I also have to decide what shapeshifting actually means. Zelazny really didn’t define it at all. I played Amber diceless for years, and that defines it pretty thoroughly, but I’m not sure that that version, which is based on balancing powers for game play, is what I want to go with. It’s a set of workable rules, but, in my experience, the shapeshifting rules tend to be the most often tweaked in actual games. Also, they may not make sense for the world building I’m doing. Those rules also assume fixed sex across all forms which I definitely want to throw out. The real roadblock to writing, however, is the voice. Zelazny’s Merlin has a very distinct voice that is very rooted in masculinity and heterosexuality. I don’t think I can keep the voice when altering the masculinity and heterosexuality to throw in a sense of sexual/gender fluidity which is likely to lead to some sort of pansexuality as the basic assumption for Merlin’s species, including xenophilia not being a big deal. I think I can write the character as they would have developed in canon given the shapeshifting stuff I’m defining. I just… There are five books in the character’s first person narrative. The voice is pretty firmly established. I don’t want to switch POV for various reasons.
Patternghost Amber story: This is an Amber story set in a far future where Random has more or less taken over Dworkin’s status. Random is regularly summoning a Patternghost of Merlin. What Random doesn’t know is that someone else is sustaining (Patternghosts can be sustained by drinking the blood of those who have walked the Pattern) that Ghost so that he doesn’t actually get a reset with each summoning. The story is the Ghost’s first person POV. The difficulty here is that I want the story to involve the Ghost finding a way out of the control of the person who’s been sustaining him. I’m just not happy with any of the ideas I’ve had so far. I’m reasonably pleased with the initial set up. I’m just not sure where to go from there that’s interesting. There’s a reason I haven’t touched this story in more than five years.
Untitled Narnia fic: A couple of years ago, I took Narnia prompts and someone asked for Rilian and the Lady of the Green with a theme of enchantment. That sounded like it ought to play to my strengths in terms of having layers of meaning and in terms of being a thoroughly messed up relationship. I’ve started the story about four times and keep finding that it sort of peters out. Possibly the problem is that I kept trying to write Rilian without his memory. Maybe if I juxtapose scenes of them when he doesn’t have his memories with scenes of them when he does?
Untitled Narnia fic: This Narnia idea comes from a dream that had Digory and Polly back in Narnia and on a boat on an underground river. In the dream, this was actually a book I was reading, a book that Lewis had actually written. The kids were on some sort of quest. I woke up with the sense that it was something that Digory needed to accomplish but couldn’t do without help because he was damaged somehow. I have a few images (and that’s very weird for me) rather than plot ideas. I worked out that the underlying thing was that Digory was still tangled up with Jadis and the Deep Magic of Narnia in ways that weren’t healthy for him (maybe not for Narnia, either. I’m not sure). I want to write Polly’s POV. She’s tangled up with the Deep Magic of Narnia, but it’s in ways that are either harmless or good for her because she never had the same connection to Jadis. Uncle Andrew isn’t connected to the Deep Magic because he so thoroughly rejected the reality of what he saw and heard. Without the Deep Magic connection, his connection to Jadis isn’t enough to do anything further to him.
One More Folded Sunset (Weiss Kreuz): I’m stuck on this one because I’ve set up a repeating cycle of horrors. I don’t need to break that during the story, but I would like to have an idea of how it could be broken so that I can include some sort of sliver of hope for the characters. I really don’t want to write "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." I don’t (and not just because that story traumatized twelve year old me), but there are potential echoes. I think the person I’m writing this for is reading here, and they asked not to be spoiled, so I don’t want to give specifics. (Which, I realize, makes brainstorming solutions pretty near impossible.)
Gathered from the Gales (Weiss Kreuz): I started this for a kink meme prompt by one of my friends. I’m pretty sure that the problem here is that I’ve gotten to the actual sex and am not interested in it except as it affects the participants. At this point, it’s all mechanical, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. Maybe I need to cut away and come back at a point when the characters are talking again. But this was supposed to be a PWP, and skipping the sex kind of undermines that. I don’t know. I suspect that, if I do write the explicit part, it will be clear that I’m bored and then readers will be bored, too.
And right here is a placeholder for something that I’ve realized I’m not writing because it’s the purest of Mary Sue crossover id fic and okay for day dreaming but actually extremely dull (even to me) when I try to write it. So that’s one WIP off my list.
Rooms of Falling Rain (DCU): This is another one that’s sprouting epic plot when I thought it would be a few thousand words, twenty thousand at the outside. I’m eight thousand words in and still doing set up. I’ve got a ton of AU backstory worldbuilding that actually matters to the POV character and that he doesn’t know at the beginning of the story. I just can’t work out how to get it to him because I’m not sure why most of the people with information would give it to him. They don’t trust him at all. The information he will get soon won’t make sense without more context. I wanted to give the context first, but I don’t think I can. I’m also very unsure of my grasp of the characters because the DCU is so huge that I know only tiny bits of it. If I was going to stick with the animated stuff, I’d feel more confident because I know that pretty well, but I want to pull things from other versions that I only know bits and pieces about.
Shatter Like a Cry (Weiss Kreuz): This was meant to be PWP, BDSM prisoner roleplay. Then, about two thousand words in, one of the characters kind of freaked out to the point that nobody’s willing to go on without serious renegotiation and possibly not even then. I’m not sure where to take this one from there. I like how the characters are interacting, but there’s absolutely nowhere for a plot to fit, and I’m not sure I can actually get the sex I’d originally planned to make sense. I think I have to work out whether there’s something else they could come up with that they would all enjoy that I’d be interested in writing about.
I should note that, both for the stuff listed here and in the previous post on the subject, I’m willing to let people see the fragments I’ve got if they’re willing to talk to me about them. I write better when I can talk to people about what I’m putting together. It’s just that a lot of this is darkfic or explicit or for obscure fandoms or otherwise not likely to interest 99.9% of the world.
I have also decided to label a bunch of bits and pieces that I haven’t touched in at least fifteen years as 'abandoned.' I’m not sure that I will hold to that because I’ve thought for years that I would go back to one or another of those stories, but… I haven’t done it so far, and it’s not like I don’t have enough other WIP to think about. The abandoned stories include two things that I wrote more than 20000 words on, so letting go is hard, but… No new words in a decade and a half. If I finished those stories, they might be great, or they might be terrible, but I’m not going to finish them.
Auguries of Innocence (Harry Potter): I’ve written six and a half chapters of this, and I’m not sure that everything that I put in chapter 6 should be there. I had sex (extremely dubious consent. The only reason I think there’s any degree of consent is that the victim can see potential futures and decides he wants it to happen, but, if he didn’t, he couldn’t say no, so…) happen, and it might have been in character and it might not have been. It’s something that would happen eventually and in pretty much that way, but I’m not sure it should happen then rather than several chapters further on. This hinges on how well this version of Ron actually reads/understands people. This is a dark AU in which all the characters are, at best, kind of gray and pretty much everyone crossed some serious lines in the effort to defeat Voldemort (which they did. This is aftermath). I’m not convinced that even this version of Ron would jump from 'needs positive/affectionate touch' to 'needs enjoyable sex.' Not immediately, anyway. I also feel like even Ron should get that the other person almost certainly doesn’t think of sex as pleasant. Since Ron’s going about this fairly cold bloodedly with the goal of keeping the other person as sane as possible in order that he continue to be useful… I’m not convinced that he’d choose that route. Except… He’s not a master manipulator. His talents lie elsewhere. And physical intimacy can lead to attachment of a sort. I’m just not sure that this isn’t leaping from A to Q or some such and skipping some necessary intervening steps that would make the whole thing do what Ron actually wants. No, I know it is. I’m just not sure if Ron would know that. If yes, then it needs to happen later. If no, then now.
Occlusion (Weiss Kreuz): I keep saying that I’m not going to write any more of this, that the fragments that exist are all there’s going to be ever. Of course, I then go on and write a few more paragraphs. This started with a kink meme fill with a situation that’s a very long way from canon, so I built bits of backstory in my head to explain how the characters ended up where they were. It’s an interesting, very dark AU, but I don’t like any of the characters in it except Nagi. I want to leave the damned thing alone, but I can’t quite seem to.
Weiss Kreuz Time Travel: This one involves Yohji and Asuka being time travelers from a very bad future. Asuka came back to try to change history and ended up bringing Yohji along because circumstances required it. I think it needs to focus heavily on events pre-canon which means that it’s heading toward disaster for Asuka and toward Yohji needing to figure how to muddle through when he doesn’t actually know what needs to be done (which, I figure, is pretty much what he does through Kapital). I’ve written a few paragraphs of this, but I think that doing it right will require research into all sorts of things that I can normally handwave in a Weiss Kreuz fic. The two time traveling characters would have some culture shock and need to scramble to survive in a setting they’re not used to and where they don’t know the rules which means I have to have them interact with the culture which means I have know what it should be. Tokyo in the mid-1990s is well outside of my frame of reference. I like this story idea, but I suspect I won’t go anywhere with it because of the research needed and because I doubt that any amount of research I could do would give me what I need.
Nothing False and Possible (Amber): I keep wandering down rabbit holes on this one. I think the question of what pronouns a species of shapeshifters would use for each other is a distraction. I just need to pick something and go with it. The question of which characters with vague backstories are shapeshifters is more pertinent, but, if I don’t want to decide, I can just flip a coin for each one. I also have to decide what shapeshifting actually means. Zelazny really didn’t define it at all. I played Amber diceless for years, and that defines it pretty thoroughly, but I’m not sure that that version, which is based on balancing powers for game play, is what I want to go with. It’s a set of workable rules, but, in my experience, the shapeshifting rules tend to be the most often tweaked in actual games. Also, they may not make sense for the world building I’m doing. Those rules also assume fixed sex across all forms which I definitely want to throw out. The real roadblock to writing, however, is the voice. Zelazny’s Merlin has a very distinct voice that is very rooted in masculinity and heterosexuality. I don’t think I can keep the voice when altering the masculinity and heterosexuality to throw in a sense of sexual/gender fluidity which is likely to lead to some sort of pansexuality as the basic assumption for Merlin’s species, including xenophilia not being a big deal. I think I can write the character as they would have developed in canon given the shapeshifting stuff I’m defining. I just… There are five books in the character’s first person narrative. The voice is pretty firmly established. I don’t want to switch POV for various reasons.
Patternghost Amber story: This is an Amber story set in a far future where Random has more or less taken over Dworkin’s status. Random is regularly summoning a Patternghost of Merlin. What Random doesn’t know is that someone else is sustaining (Patternghosts can be sustained by drinking the blood of those who have walked the Pattern) that Ghost so that he doesn’t actually get a reset with each summoning. The story is the Ghost’s first person POV. The difficulty here is that I want the story to involve the Ghost finding a way out of the control of the person who’s been sustaining him. I’m just not happy with any of the ideas I’ve had so far. I’m reasonably pleased with the initial set up. I’m just not sure where to go from there that’s interesting. There’s a reason I haven’t touched this story in more than five years.
Untitled Narnia fic: A couple of years ago, I took Narnia prompts and someone asked for Rilian and the Lady of the Green with a theme of enchantment. That sounded like it ought to play to my strengths in terms of having layers of meaning and in terms of being a thoroughly messed up relationship. I’ve started the story about four times and keep finding that it sort of peters out. Possibly the problem is that I kept trying to write Rilian without his memory. Maybe if I juxtapose scenes of them when he doesn’t have his memories with scenes of them when he does?
Untitled Narnia fic: This Narnia idea comes from a dream that had Digory and Polly back in Narnia and on a boat on an underground river. In the dream, this was actually a book I was reading, a book that Lewis had actually written. The kids were on some sort of quest. I woke up with the sense that it was something that Digory needed to accomplish but couldn’t do without help because he was damaged somehow. I have a few images (and that’s very weird for me) rather than plot ideas. I worked out that the underlying thing was that Digory was still tangled up with Jadis and the Deep Magic of Narnia in ways that weren’t healthy for him (maybe not for Narnia, either. I’m not sure). I want to write Polly’s POV. She’s tangled up with the Deep Magic of Narnia, but it’s in ways that are either harmless or good for her because she never had the same connection to Jadis. Uncle Andrew isn’t connected to the Deep Magic because he so thoroughly rejected the reality of what he saw and heard. Without the Deep Magic connection, his connection to Jadis isn’t enough to do anything further to him.
One More Folded Sunset (Weiss Kreuz): I’m stuck on this one because I’ve set up a repeating cycle of horrors. I don’t need to break that during the story, but I would like to have an idea of how it could be broken so that I can include some sort of sliver of hope for the characters. I really don’t want to write "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." I don’t (and not just because that story traumatized twelve year old me), but there are potential echoes. I think the person I’m writing this for is reading here, and they asked not to be spoiled, so I don’t want to give specifics. (Which, I realize, makes brainstorming solutions pretty near impossible.)
Gathered from the Gales (Weiss Kreuz): I started this for a kink meme prompt by one of my friends. I’m pretty sure that the problem here is that I’ve gotten to the actual sex and am not interested in it except as it affects the participants. At this point, it’s all mechanical, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. Maybe I need to cut away and come back at a point when the characters are talking again. But this was supposed to be a PWP, and skipping the sex kind of undermines that. I don’t know. I suspect that, if I do write the explicit part, it will be clear that I’m bored and then readers will be bored, too.
And right here is a placeholder for something that I’ve realized I’m not writing because it’s the purest of Mary Sue crossover id fic and okay for day dreaming but actually extremely dull (even to me) when I try to write it. So that’s one WIP off my list.
Rooms of Falling Rain (DCU): This is another one that’s sprouting epic plot when I thought it would be a few thousand words, twenty thousand at the outside. I’m eight thousand words in and still doing set up. I’ve got a ton of AU backstory worldbuilding that actually matters to the POV character and that he doesn’t know at the beginning of the story. I just can’t work out how to get it to him because I’m not sure why most of the people with information would give it to him. They don’t trust him at all. The information he will get soon won’t make sense without more context. I wanted to give the context first, but I don’t think I can. I’m also very unsure of my grasp of the characters because the DCU is so huge that I know only tiny bits of it. If I was going to stick with the animated stuff, I’d feel more confident because I know that pretty well, but I want to pull things from other versions that I only know bits and pieces about.
Shatter Like a Cry (Weiss Kreuz): This was meant to be PWP, BDSM prisoner roleplay. Then, about two thousand words in, one of the characters kind of freaked out to the point that nobody’s willing to go on without serious renegotiation and possibly not even then. I’m not sure where to take this one from there. I like how the characters are interacting, but there’s absolutely nowhere for a plot to fit, and I’m not sure I can actually get the sex I’d originally planned to make sense. I think I have to work out whether there’s something else they could come up with that they would all enjoy that I’d be interested in writing about.
I should note that, both for the stuff listed here and in the previous post on the subject, I’m willing to let people see the fragments I’ve got if they’re willing to talk to me about them. I write better when I can talk to people about what I’m putting together. It’s just that a lot of this is darkfic or explicit or for obscure fandoms or otherwise not likely to interest 99.9% of the world.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 05:48 pm (UTC)I've got about 40000 words on that one, and I expect it to be a lot longer if I can ever finish it (I think the longest thing I've actually finished was about 12000 words).
no subject
Date: 2016-05-23 08:39 pm (UTC)Feel free to PM me with the access info if you don't want to post it publicly.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 11:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-22 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-23 06:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-23 09:59 pm (UTC)I found it interesting, going through these, to see the common threads of what's tripping me up and to see the variety of things, too. Some of them are things I think I can address, and some of them aren't. I'm sure, for example, that I can do something with the Harry Potter WIP. I'm equally sure that I'm never going to go farther with the Weiss Kreuz time travel idea.