trains of thoughts and thoughts of trains
for
sciathan_file's How I Write mini-challenge which is supposed to give an overview of our writing process. lol, again, this is very...messy...and not at all done in an organized way with pretty scrapbook notes. Also, most my writing tends to fit into 'random drabble' category (as most of you know) which matches my thought process perfectly, and this is also why I couldn't just find one fic and trace its development...so instead, here's a (mashed up) bunch of (generalized) things I (sometimes) use.
& this got overly long somehow....
Step 1: something will get stuck in my head, a lyric, a saying, an experience, and it has to be transcribed somehow, the thoughts that arise from it at least.
(For example:
The line ‘winter will always be your favourite season’ somehow spawned a oneshot about two people parting ways for college as one friend leaves for a warmer place. The recurring theme was of their contrasting characters with one being winter and the other as summer.)
Step 2: Things can get more or less complicated depending on what element of the story or piece I want to pay attention to (and often, the thing I initially wanted to focus on ends up being very different than the end product). Generally, there tend to be three categories though:
i) character-driven - where the piece is meant to be introspective or traces development over time, or character dynamics.
Here, it’s usually a zoom-out process. An idea clicks, such as ‘left, right, and centre’ and then ‘Riku, Kairi, and Sora’ in that order precisely, and what that could come to mean. And zooming out, context comes into play, phrases become literal-because I do that a lot-and then after asking a whole lot of questions, especially 'what's the point? & why is any of this even significant?'...a picture starts to form. For instance: what would put Sora in the centre (to me, he has always been the thread between the other two) and then what about the other two? Why is Kairi right? Why was Riku left behind? And silliness like that eventually gets written down.
ii) sensation-driven - I hesitate to call this strictly image-based because people tend to equate imagery with pretty descriptions of pretty things. These are pieces where I try to squeeze in more than that. Here, a lot of it is about capturing and making you not just see but breathe and smell and taste what I'm cooking as best I can. Here, I try to use the age old advice of show don’t tell (and this is probably the thing that got me into the rut of writing in 2nd person).
Again, a few simple words or a phrase are sometimes enough to start something of this nature, otherwise a taste/smell/feeling experienced in real life. I remember a friend reading and commenting on something random using the comparison of ‘orange spice tea’ and just the thought of that spawned so much imagery in my head of oranges(!) and associated things like summer and fruit juice and soccer (yes, soccer, because in the kiddy leagues that my brother played in, they’d slice and give oranges at half-time) and so a character from fandom who embodied that was lucky enough to take over before I could turn it into ofic, and so another drabble was born.
iii) plot-driven - this is probably more relevant to WIPs, especially ofic since a lot of those rely on the storyline unfolding in a certain way.
Unfortunately, for every plot-related thing I’ve ever written, the process has been different. The easiest one I can think of right now would one that revolves around a wedding and the preparation that leads up to it. The way characters interact and the setting has to be explored all relates directly back to the context of the wedding-and-relevant-schedule so here, a central event is what drives the writing along. (I chose that one because it was probably the most sequential thing I’ve written.)
In cases where things are going back and forth, a great deal of planning and detailing is needed. For one massive project I’ve been working on for years now, I’ve even drawn several maps and sketches of places, come up with island names, capitals, summarized the environment for myself, so that I’ll have a consistent geography to work with. When too many characters are involved and it’s an original work, I usually make a little chart to detail little aspects I may forget (ex: # of siblings, living arrangements, random hobby, etc).
Also, depending on what’s being written, I can get pretty gritty about background (which is why I like making up places so much, and so I usually do). If something is completely out of my league then I won’t feel comfortable writing it unless I’ve looked it up. For ex: I wiki’d violin anatomy a few times, as well as looked up musical notation when writing about a girl who’d stand outside a music room and envy the people inside-because that stuff is far from my forte--whereas writing about something like physiological pathways in situations of stress and sympathetic nervous system activation come more naturally to me..>_>
Step 3: I can make a few to a ton of notes throughout, especially if it’s a longer piece. And I also talk to myself in my notes (yes, it’s just like it sounds). I'm trying and failing to find an example at the moment but I clearly recall writing in brackets after something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep "(omg…or you could do that, but wait…you don’t know if that’s true or not…and what if he does this…ack…look up this and that…etc, etc)". I kid you not.
Step 4: When ideas and things have been properly written out and turned into sentences, I read over & fix stuff up a few times (sometimes many, many times) until it’s at least coherent. Then, I go on to working out the kinks with things that need checking/editing/rewording/etc. (and not everything makes it to this stage…actually very little does, considering the massive quantity difference between my amount written vs. amount posted)
Step 5: I usually self-beta, which is badbadbad, I know, but I’m usually too impatient or I find that my pieces aren’t long enough to hassle others with. I’m sure if I ever wrote a long multichaptered thing I couldn’t figure out and wasn’t confident about, I’d find someone to give it a second look.
and then it usually sits for a bit before getting thrown on LJ or other fic-pits online or just rots in my folders until I feel it's at least presentable. Most things, even when finished, will actually take weeks to months to finally go up for no reason in particular.
the end =)