How does it feel like... to write?
Sep. 17th, 2007 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ickaimpA recent comment over on Impfics about the 'the different tones of the characters in my writing' has had me puzzling about how we write off and on for several days. Because each character is different and they will all react differently because of that.
And as strange as it may sound, the conclusion I came to is that the closest way I can explain how we write is that it's like Channelling.
The plot idea, or plunnies I guess, shows up during some random point and will hang around, pestering, until I sit down and write it out, in which case it usually kind of flows out. Things get jammed up and stop when I go 'Wait, Whut?' or try to meddle with it or get caught up in some sort of grammerical detail.
... Pointing and laughing is perfectly acceptable, as long as I continue writing while snickering.
There's even beenseveral a few times when someone, usually a beta, will ask a question about what a particular character is doing/thinking/motivation and I'll stop and say "Wait, let me ask them." Then it's kinda like poking a sleeping person with a stick before running like heck, and getting some sort of muttered reaction or maniacal laughter in response, depending on the character and then I have an answer to give people.
... which sounds totally psycho or split personality, but it's not, really. But that's where a lot of the 'We' when I refer to ficcage comes from, because it's not just me, it's my own Voices and the characters and the plots and stuff.
Now that said, different fics have different feels to them as well.
Guard Dog feels like weaving a tapestry that we're not entirely sure what the picture is. Each sentence is another pass of the shuttle, each word another intersection of the threads. The current edits are tightening the warp and weft so it can bear the weight of the upcoming plots.
(That said, Jounouchi's the easiest to deal with, easy-going until provoked. Seto's sort of unpredictable because we never know when he's going to think with his pants. Mokuba and Yuugi are respectively the hardest, Mokuba cares about those around him but he's still a teen and is rather self-centred in his view of the world. Yuugi plays everything close to the vest, although he's not as hesitant as he was at the beginning.)
Shades of Grey, The Grey Zone and Grey Agency is kind of like a three-strand pearl necklace. Smokey grey pearls, each strand longer than the previous. Each chapter is another bead, or pearl, that gets strung onto the story.
-Grey Zone is still missing a few beads, but we have the ending clasp, fastened to the beginning of The Grey Agency. Grey Agency's got a few pearls on it's string, but we don't know how long the strand is.
(Kaito is Air, Saguru is Earth, Aoko is Water, Conan is Fire, Heiji is Metal, Mum is Air, Koizumi is Dark -which does not mean evil.)
Gordian Knot has a very peculiar feeling, kind of like ceramics and jewellery classes combined. It's not quite moulding clay or heating and hammering metal, and it's not like polishing or carving at all, but the result is like a multi-hued layered rock. How one creates a rock, I don't know, but that's what it feels like. It's much heavier in a lot of ways than most of our fics.
-It also looks heavier, visually with it's longer sentences and bigger paragraphs.
... How does it feel like to other people?
and we need to stop listening to Chemical Brothers singles while writing
And as strange as it may sound, the conclusion I came to is that the closest way I can explain how we write is that it's like Channelling.
The plot idea, or plunnies I guess, shows up during some random point and will hang around, pestering, until I sit down and write it out, in which case it usually kind of flows out. Things get jammed up and stop when I go 'Wait, Whut?' or try to meddle with it or get caught up in some sort of grammerical detail.
... Pointing and laughing is perfectly acceptable, as long as I continue writing while snickering.
There's even been
... which sounds totally psycho or split personality, but it's not, really. But that's where a lot of the 'We' when I refer to ficcage comes from, because it's not just me, it's my own Voices and the characters and the plots and stuff.
Now that said, different fics have different feels to them as well.
Guard Dog feels like weaving a tapestry that we're not entirely sure what the picture is. Each sentence is another pass of the shuttle, each word another intersection of the threads. The current edits are tightening the warp and weft so it can bear the weight of the upcoming plots.
(That said, Jounouchi's the easiest to deal with, easy-going until provoked. Seto's sort of unpredictable because we never know when he's going to think with his pants. Mokuba and Yuugi are respectively the hardest, Mokuba cares about those around him but he's still a teen and is rather self-centred in his view of the world. Yuugi plays everything close to the vest, although he's not as hesitant as he was at the beginning.)
Shades of Grey, The Grey Zone and Grey Agency is kind of like a three-strand pearl necklace. Smokey grey pearls, each strand longer than the previous. Each chapter is another bead, or pearl, that gets strung onto the story.
-Grey Zone is still missing a few beads, but we have the ending clasp, fastened to the beginning of The Grey Agency. Grey Agency's got a few pearls on it's string, but we don't know how long the strand is.
(Kaito is Air, Saguru is Earth, Aoko is Water, Conan is Fire, Heiji is Metal, Mum is Air, Koizumi is Dark -which does not mean evil.)
Gordian Knot has a very peculiar feeling, kind of like ceramics and jewellery classes combined. It's not quite moulding clay or heating and hammering metal, and it's not like polishing or carving at all, but the result is like a multi-hued layered rock. How one creates a rock, I don't know, but that's what it feels like. It's much heavier in a lot of ways than most of our fics.
-It also looks heavier, visually with it's longer sentences and bigger paragraphs.
... How does it feel like to other people?
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 12:53 pm (UTC)That's long fics. Smaller things tend to be born from one searing image, and then spun around it like making cotton candy.
You know, this is a fascinating question, thanks!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 01:34 pm (UTC)I've kinda got this mental image of a tea house/ internet cafe, and a big round table, and all the characters of a story gathered round speaking over each other, telling their bit of the story. I have to bribe them to get enough silence for one to speak, or sometimes one will see me gesture, and sneak off to a corner to whisper at me while I type. And there's a small riot in my head since my home pc is broken, and I turned off the mics so they can't speak to me anymore and drive me nuts while I can't type. :)
What's even worse is when you have an all out brawl between several stories at once, and end up writing a mush mash and having to cut and paste stuff into the right stories and order. :P
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 02:16 pm (UTC)Insomnia + Edmondia Dantes about eight months ago showed me how I should have been writing all along and things have just continued to flow out of my head and onto paper ever since then.
And yeah, I totally identify with the way you use 'we' when referring to ficage. I've commented to my siblings and friends more than once about having gotten rid of the imaginary friends and such during childhood only to regress when becoming a writer. Muses, plot bunnies, chatacters . . . it's more crowded in my head now than it ever was when I was little! IM's with another writer friend of mine end up looking like a massive party when in reality, it's just the two of us and all the other voices in our heads.
But really, I've decided that writing feels like my mind telling me wonderful stories, and me struggling to capture them and set them on paper before they get away.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 03:15 pm (UTC)Or I take the characters I want, stick them in a situation, and see what they do.
Sometimes I tell my sister an idea and we each take the position of some of the characters and go back and forth with what we think they would do. I end up with way too many crack!fics between her and the 3 a.m. plunnies.
If I try to do anything to a plunny's fic before I get it all out, I lose the plunny. Or it takes crack while I'm not looking, and completely destroys any plot the story may have had.
I understand saying 'we'. I have my own Voices to listen to. ...and now Hakuba-voice is back to suggesting I get help so that I don't hear voices anymore. Kaito! Stop laughing!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 05:21 pm (UTC)1a. Backtrack. How the eff did that happen? What needs to have occured to get here from canon? (Optional.)
2. Character. Who fits best/reacts most interestingly to/is required by X?
3. Threading. X + Who = Y, "X as affected by Who" ("plot").
4. Addition. Y continues, X1 occurs.
5. Repeat 1-4 with X1 to get Y1 ("subplot", "other side of crossover", "plot as seen by antagonist or foil").
6. Weaving. Y affects Y1, vice versa.
7. Begetting. Y + Y1 = X2.
8. Repeat as necessary.
Plotting sometimes feels like weaving, and sometimes feels like... a very complicated game of pachinko or something, where I keep throwing balls in and they go bouncing off each other.
Characterization is entirely different. For convenience's sake, I call it "listening", but it's usually a mix of visuals that I only sometimes have to translate into text. The characters are doing things in my head, but I rarely hear them. The synapses being fired are visual, book text and movie motion. It's sort of like reading in reverse.
Different stories have different feels starting with their universe. DC/MK is black and white, gritty murders and laughing thieves and a shadowy murderous syndicate, with a few points of jewel-tone color studding it. It's newspaper crisp, light and rippable and crinkly. HP and YYH have grown soft and comfortable with wear, but have gotten almost completely interwoven in my head and are heavy like upholstery cloth. HxH is the third point and center of the DC/MK triangle spectrum of life and death; it's colored like jungle and has a certain primal vitality to it that demands present tense.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 08:19 pm (UTC)...ahh, metaphors! @.@
But I still know exactly what you mean.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 11:24 am (UTC)...I seriously should be getting rent for all the characters sharing head space in my brain.
\
For the actual writing, I'm weaving, each bit another not, each twist another thread to later loop through, but n the end, it's all combined into one beautiful tale, so long as I remember where all the strings go...and I havne't tied my readers into a jumbled ball.