jack

1. The middle act should go in a NEW direction that's exciting and surprising, not be "and then some stuff happens you don't really need to know".

2. The character's concerns should be petty (for a comedy) or weighty (for a drama) but they themselves should take them seriously. The characters don't overreact. That would be forced. The characters react very naturally -- given the ridiculous nature of their hang-ups and predicaments.

3. Does the character shape the scene they're in? Does every line push the conversation in a new direction? Can no-one act without caring about what the character will think? Do they act with confidence even if stupidly? If so the character is probably interesting, and you can fit in as many interesting characters as you can.

4. What do you excel at writing? Stuff every scene chock full to the gills with that. What do you endlessly struggle with? Figure out how little makes the story suffer, and how much gets it to the end mostly ok.

5. Does this section sing? Does it make you want to know what happens next? Does it make you fall in love with the characters? Does it set up the events of the next page, the next scene, the end of the play? If not, can it do all those things? Not every scene has to be necessary, but as many as possible have to be great.

Crossposts: https://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1118314.html

Producing wordcount

Last month I did another NaNoWriMo month. I wasn't sure if I would, as I've been more wanting to work on techniques that work in shorter works, than in planning a whole novel, but idea that grabbed me was for a superhero novel I'd been doing bits on before that, so that's what I went with.

Details about the novel to follow, I won't try to force myself to cram all that into this post.

I set myself a more restrained goal, the same as last year, of about 30k, or whatever felt right. That was a good choice -- I can do a whole 50k nanowrimo when I push myself and did the first year, but it required using some time I was off work, and took my attention away from everything else a lot. And, it works when I have a good idea what I'm writing, but it was a real struggle to invent enough of the world and characters to keep up with what I could write.

In fact, this year, I came in slightly short of my original goal, but I'm fairly pleased with that. I feel like between the three years I got a good spread of what I could achieve pushing myself different amounts, and all of them have a place, and it's good to know that -- unlike how I used to be -- the alternative to "obsessive dedication" isn't "absolutely nothing got done" :)

That said, I think I would have benefited from being firmer about sticking to a daily word count target. I don't think I should have aimed for an average, as if I get behind I lose all my motivation, so trying to "catch up" to lost days when I wanted to pay attention to something else just wouldn't have worked, which is why I gave myself more latitude in the first place. But, despite (amazingly!) having cured myself of not starting *at all*, not having a specific target can translate to not getting very much done on a particular day. A specific goal would help with that, and I may try to do that more specifically in future: not every day necessarily, but decide something like a 1000 words "three weekday evenings and double at the weekends."

The other difficulty is that often I need to specifically come up with more plot to happen, and no amount of trying to write words helps, I need thinking time. But it's easy for that to turn into procrastination time. I think I need to find a level of outlining that works for me, and have a split target of "outline N lines, or write N words" or something like that.

Or maybe, deliberately feel out characterisation and worldbuilding choices by writing short vignettes which are NOT the novel, and then once it's more clear, try to do the actual writing at stronger pace. Lots of famous novels are mulled for years before they're written, and often "two novels a year" authors, while often really good, produce novels without the same depth as other novels of the same length.

Like, this blog post. I'm writing it about as fast as I can physically type it. But I don't usually write fiction like that, except for some scenes where I'm familiar with all the characters and what might happen and am just really excited to get to it actually happening.

Writing characters

Another big realisation was, if I have cool characters, ones I'm invested in, I'm excited to write. If I don't, then I'm not.

I never expected to do much creative stuff because as a child I found intellectual stuff easy and people hard, so I just always assumed I'd be an abstract-thought type person. I was pleasantly pleased to find that writing was a habit that DOES work for me.

But even so, I often had ideas for premises I found really interesting -- magic systems, virtual worlds, etc, and I just assumed I'd be like an old-school hard-sf writer who mostly wrote about physical sciences and didn't write about characters. But it doesn't turn out like that. I can write lots of worldbuilding, but actual prose tends to flow when I have characters, and even the worldbuilding is a lot better for looking from a point of view of "what's this like for people actually living in it?"

What parts of writing am I good at

Well, I don't want to over-egg the pudding here, I'm probably not as good at *any* parts of writing as people who are *good* at writing, but which tend to work out well for me?

As mentioned, premises -- people over-value premises as a good premise without a good execution doesn't bring much, whereas a good execution can shine without a good premise. But still, I think books with excellent premises benefit from it, and all my stories have a core idea which is really interesting when I describe what it's about, even without knowing about the content (at least to me, I often stumble describing it aloud).

And characters, I'm often giggling at the characters bouncing off each other, and I never expected that to be one of my strengths.

What about everything else. Poetic prose? Good plotting? I think those are things I can *do*, but aren't usually what drives readers to love them.

"Fun" ideas

I don't quite know how to describe this, but often I have an idea and think "that moment would be really cool" or "that cultural reference would be really funny there", but then can't tell if it looks sort of contrived.

Reading other people's writing, some moments stick out to me like that's what happened. It isn't always. I've heard people describing their process, and sometimes they built a scene around a payoff, adding all the necessary initial conditions to the scene that when I read it feels like it grew naturally out of what came before. And sometimes I hear an author talking about why they wrote "that line" and it was for some completely other reason than I guessed. But I think it is a common flaw, dropping in something that seems funny, trying to do slapstick in prose, or putting in a cultural reference that sticks out uncomfortably, or trying to do an emotional pay-off of character X telling character Y where to stick it that feels fake, because you liked it, and didn't realise or didn't let yourself realise it didn't stick.

Obviously this depends on taste. Sometimes it works for some people and doesn't work for others. Some things don't work but aren't cringe-worthy when they don't work, and some things really, really, are.

My philosophy has been, put it in (or at least put it in in square brackets), and then decide, LATER, whether it works or not, and if not, don't get hung up on taking it out. Rely on the scene to be good, don't stretch for that particular line.

At the time I'm writing it, I'm literally incapable of telling if it works or not.

Writing with people

I really like writing with people. But it's not actually an especially efficient way for me to write. Writing in a quiet room with mandated silence does help, but it mainly forces me to start and I've got a lot better at doing that anyway. And I find a lot of things, even just hearing people start and stop typing, quite distracting.

Meeting up with people with mandated quiet periods for working and short breaks for chatting would probably work well, but I'm quite content going along for a bit, filling up my encouragement and social meter, and heading home after a bit. And writing at home with people there is usually fine too.

And posting cryptic comments on twitter helps me a lot, for whatever reason! :) Although there hasn't been that much this month :)

Crossposts: https://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1085974.html

This is something that is likely obvious to other people but appeared in my head and I couldn't easily put into words.

Often, when plot happens in a book, it feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere. It feels like (and maybe was) that the author had written a note that at that point "then the main characters have a big argument" or "then the assassins guild attack them". And then that's what happens. Even if it feels out of character or doesn't make sense with what happened before.

But if instead, I think of it as, "X resents Y for foo but doesn't admit it as long as bar" and "Y thinks X is bad at baz but doesn't want to say so" and "the assassins guild put a bounty on them but have't found them yet", then that typically shows through in previous scenes, naturally creating some amount of factual or thematic foreshadowing.

Like, instead of the current status quo being a natural peaceful state and each plot development being instigated by a new impetus, imagine the status quo is an equilibrium between many opposing forces, both internal to the character (what they want to do, what they're scared of) and external (other factions, things that will likely go wrong, etc). And then every event occurs naturally if you just knock the situation off balance a bit, without needing to contrive new forces of motion.

Also, if the characters have a smaller number of motivations they pursue through many situations, it feels more like a whole plot instead of a series of coincidences.

Roleplaying

If anything, that's probably even more important in roleplaying, and was the way I was thinking of roleplaying scenarios even if I didn't put it in those terms. If you have an overall force pushing the players towards the main antagonist (revenge, macguffin, curiosity, he's hunting them down, whatever), and a force pushing them away (typically, "he's too tough"), then the scenario will likely end up with a big showdown somewhere even if it goes off the rails at every intermediate point. If the momentum is already in that direction, it's easy to improvise some of the details, e.g. they don't know where he is, all you need to do is drop an appropriate clue.

But if you don't have existing motivation shared and understood by the players (often subconsciously), then every event feels tacked on, with the players constantly looking for clues what they're "supposed" to do.

Caveats

Obviously, this is just a way of thinking, it's not actually a solution. And even if you do show problems coming they can feel fake: you repeatedly show a characters' anger, but the reader doesn't accept it and is shocked when it bubbles out of control; or you repeatedly reference the risk of death from something, but without even small consequences, it doesn't feel "real" and when it actually kills someone, it feels "unfair".

Crossposts: https://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1084099.html

Account created: 2010-04-11.

I think I signed up to read something specific, or something like that, and then didn't use my account for quite a while. I first actually posted a story for Yuletide three years ago.

Total stories: 4

One for each yuletide, plus one original fic I decided to post publicly. I've toyed with the idea of writing fanfic without a specific external motivation but it's rarely happened. I do have a couple of older stories I wrote once, some of which I quite liked, I might try to get on there.

Total wordcount: 49,203
Average wordcount: 12,301

Yup. I do have short ideas too! But when I've done yuletide the ideas have always kept ballooning into a reasonably long story.

ETA: The two middle stories were both Vorkosigan ones, although the shorter one, written first, *felt* like it had more happening. I think I need to learn from that, how to jump ahead to show the important scenes and not just keep writing "characters talking to each other" even though that works so well.

Longest story: Fief of Blood

24,651 words. My tongue-in-cheek vampire story, full of ambiguous morality and cambridge hijinks

This was written as a cut-down novel not a long short story, and ended up reasonably coherent even as I was learning to write at that length as I was writing it. I think it could reasonably be expanded to a novel length, except there's some bits that I think will never work.

Shortest story: Escape from the Orc Lair of Unnecessarily Revealing Armour

2,058 words. Yuletide #2, a crossover between Rat Queens and Oglaf. Content warning: It's a cross between Rat Queens and Oglaf. I wrote this as a script-for-a-comic format. I had plans for where it could go longer, but I was running out of time (I did full NanoWrimo that year) and decided it worked as reasonable story with what I had.

ETA: Oh, that's hilarious. I *love* my stories when I get to do humour. I really need to do more of that. It was also more R-rated than I remembered (there's instructions on how to skip the sex scene if you want).

ETA: And I had lots of other ideas, but I think I was right to stop it there.

That's very short for me. I mean, I've lots of "stories that never got started" that are shorter, but almost no stories that were a whole story :)

Total kudos: 166
Kudos per story: 42

The other two stories were Vorkosigan fics which still get occasional Kudos drifting in now :) Whereas I got almost none for the others.

Comment Threads: 26
Comment Threads per story : 6.5

Mostly, people saying "yay" on the Vorkosigan stories, and Rae excitedly reviewing each chapter of the vampire story :) Although the three comments on the Rat Queens story were all very very effusive :)

Subscriptions: None

None for me :) I guess no-one is excited to find more stuff like this, even the vorkosigan stories.

As other people pointed out, I never posted an unfinished story, so can't reasonably complain about not having story subscriptions :)

I am actually toying with an episodic story at the moment, I'll see if that gets to the point I start posting it (maybe not on ao3).

Total bookmarks: 6

Each fanfic has 2 each.

Stories with no comments or kudos

Nope! All of my stories were loved by *someone* :)

If I posted my back catalogue, I think there might be some stories that were niche enough people might not find them.

Crossposts: https://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1076655.html

Procrastination

I never did enough writing for it to be a major source of procrastination, but when I did, I often did "not starting" or "having started, not wanting to stop because I don't expect to be able to start again tomorrow".

That was a very similar sort of procrastination I'd have first thing of the day at work, when I had a good task in front of me, but I was scared of starting it and having to stick with it all day.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that has almost vanished for my writing. I wouldn't like to say it was permanent -- I'm sure it will rear it's head again if I'm writing something I *am* intimidated by. But I think once something becomes "I'm used to the idea that I can do this well enough compared to the standard I expect", it's a lot less intimidating to start, there's not the uncertainty, just an assumption if I put some time in I'll get commensurate results.

Writing vs coding

I've said I sometimes have a similar process with writing and coding. Not a formal process, just a similar pattern of mind. But it occurred to me it might be interesting to try and actually examine it.

Something like, I'm having some trouble starting something. Usually a chapter or a function, but sometimes a larger scale design decision. Why? Usually because I'm not sure what's actually going to go into it.

I usually have some things I WANT to include. If I write those out, those usually are a combination of "what I want this to achieve", "what I think a nice implementation might be" and "this is just cool, I'd like to have it".

And when I do that, I can usually see the problem -- usually, I had multiple, contradictory, assumptions about what it should do, usually because I thought of a simple constraint I expected to be able to fulfil, but it was contradictory to my other expectations.

But when I write it out, I can usually see what may be contradictory. And then decide which top-level requirements are most important, and accept any ugliness elsewhere which is necessary to achieve those, and then fulfil as many of the things I thought would be very good as possible.

If I had more time, I'd contrast a couple of particular examples, and this would be a lot less vague.

Liv

Unrelated to the above, but I was very pleased to realise, after a while of practising bridge bidding, and cycling, together, we're pretty much just on the same page: we usually understand our bidding, and cycling somewhere in town is mostly automatic, rather than an adventure.

Crossposts: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/1004384.html

There was a bishop who really loved golf. Whenever she got a bit stressed, she'd slip off to the golf course for a quick 18 holes. All she could talk about was reducing her score for one particular hole, and it got to the point where she was spending more time on the golf course than with her congregation.

One Easter the archbishop was visiting, and the bishop was getting more and more worried about getting everything right, the bishop's assistant just knew that it was just a matter of time before the bishop slipped off to the golf course on Easter itself.

In her daily prayers, she kept asking God to check the bishop's obsession. On Good Friday she sees the bishop slipping away leaving her work undone and she says to God "Good friday is just too bad, at least make her give up before Sunday", and is startled to hear a booming voice say "Very well, my child, if it means that much to you, I'll take care of it."

She's amazed, and can't resist following the bishop to see what happens. Eventually the bishop reaches the fatal hole, and tees up, and the ball sails into the woods behind the hole, then bounces off a tree, and rolls onto the green and falls into the hole. The bishop jumps up and down with elation.

The assistant is furious. She angrily calls out to the sky "How is a hole-in-one supposed to put her off playing golf? It's just made her more excited than ever!"

A quiet voice in her ear says, "Ah, but wait until she realises. Who can she tell?"

I always make a mental effort to translate jokes to be a bit more balanced. This one wasn't awful to start with, although I didn't think it made a lot of sense. I think it keeps the salient features, although most people don't think much of my versions of jokes, especially when I just explain "from an ethnicity stereotypically known for X" rather than giving an example :)

Examples I consider:

- can the genders be less stereotypical?
- is there an appropriate religion with (a) women bishops and (b) a tradition of praying for specific things?
- is fictional God being vindictive, petty, helpful, humorous, incompetent?
- is there an instigating incident? In many versions of the joke, God is arbitrarily angry about Sabbath-breaking, and St Peter urges him to take action. I think it works a lot better if the sabbath breaking is specified as the culmination of dereliction of duty, and a human prays for intervention.

Crossposts: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/845834.html

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