B2MEM 2011 Day Nine: Loyalty or Betrayal

[azalaisdep]

Today's Challenge:
Write a story or poem or create artwork where the characters have to decide between loyalty or betrayal.

It's not only for Legolas that the Sea-longing has cruel consequences:

The Elven-King's Choice

Thranduil begins to sense it in dream; knows it the moment he wakes, from the leaden weight of sorrow which settles over his heart.

Comments

[espresso_addict]

I'm looking forward to seeing these as a series in order when you're finished.

[azalaisdep]

So am I, to be honest! When one doesn't know what all the prompts are going to be there's a certain feeling of Russian roulette about the whole thing - it may yet blow up in my face ;-) or I may have to cheat and add one or two extras to fill in gaps...

[espresso_addict]

So far the prompts seem to have worked extremely well for your subject.

[azalaisdep]

I didn't start till the first three or four prompts had been posted - then they all started associating on the mental back-burner and I thought, hmmm, maybe this would work. And it's a flexible enough story, especially written through drabbles and having decided to allow myself not to be chronological, that hopefully everything will work out somehow!

If I hadn't chosen a plot I'd just be floundering around trying to decide where to start with every prompt; I easily get paralysed by choice, so having restrictions is paradoxically quite liberating (why I write fanfic in the first place, I think!)

[curiouswombat]

If I hadn't chosen a plot I'd just be floundering around trying to decide where to start with every prompt;

That's exactly how I feel about the Tolkien Weekly ones!

[azalaisdep]

Sometimes the tolkien_weekly prompts work as a series for me - especially if I can predict the prompts in advance (like the Seven Deadly Sins ones). I find it quite hard to write a series if I don't know how many prompts there are going to be - at least with B2MEM I know it's 31!

I wasn't intending to write a series for the current TW prompts, of course, but then the game of Twin Tennis somehow got started... ;-)

[espresso_addict]

I easily get paralysed by choice, so having restrictions is paradoxically quite liberating (why I write fanfic in the first place, I think!)

Paralysis by choice is a problem I have too, but I tend to find I'm overliteral with prompts and find them too constraining.

[azalaisdep]

Drabbling regularly at tolkien_weekly for the last year or so has really helped me respond laterally, twistedly or cheekily to prompts - I have produced some appalling puns there in my time! (The prompt in the 'mealtimes' series in which Gollum counted to "elevenses" being possibly my worst!)

[espresso_addict]

Do you find it helps you to write longer pieces, too?

[azalaisdep]

I haven't written many longer pieces to prompts; Powers and Chances took up just about all my writing energy for longer pieces for literally years - drabbles were about all I could manage on top.

But yes, sometimes they do as long as they're not overly constraining; Night and Fog, frex, was written years ago for a H-A challenge but it was on the very broad prompt of "Show me your Fear!" (yes, pun was intended) ie something spooky for Hallowe'en; and more recently, thinking about it, there was The Gates of the Kingdom, which had an interesting combination of prompts - the overall theme of the fic exchange (celebration), and the recipient's preferences (Dwarves and/or Rohirrim) - again, enough to channel some thoughts but not too restrictive.

I suppose what always really panicks me is the idea of signing up to something before I've seen what the prompt/request is, in case it's something I really feel I either can't or don't want to do - one reason (as well as the timing) why I've never dared sign up for Yuletide (3fan_holidays is rather less

[espresso_addict]

Ah, by 'it' I meant 'regular drabbling'. I keep forgetting that, unlike me, you clearly don't have my trouble with keeping up the energy to write the novel-length stuff!

I quite enjoy that panicky feeling when the Yuletide request plops into the inbox and it's ... tricky. Or at least I do when I've finished something that doesn't entirely fail to meet the prompt. Sometimes the most unlikely idea seems to spark something interesting, once I've tossed it about a bit.

[azalaisdep]

Whoops, sorry! I think where drabbling helps is in "keeping my hand in" - over the years of writing Powers I had very productive periods, and then long stretches where RL or lack of inspiration prevented me doing anything. I think if I'd been doing a weekly Tolkien-themed drabble for all that time, it might have helped keep my head in both a writing and an LoTR space.

It's probably a good writing discipline for me too in that ordinarily I'm prone to very long and overly complex sentences (too much thinking-as-I-write), which drabbling doesn't allow for!

[espresso_addict]

Eh, my fault entirely for being overly laconic. I'm very much the same on the periods of productivity & lack of it. I don't know whether drabbling might have kept my head in a writing space -- my real dry patch was due to RL throwing me some stuff that was genuinely hard to write through. Once I'm done with this writing challenge (or it's done with me), I might try to find a drabbling comm that inspires me. (Or at least write for my own earthsea_fic drabble prompts!)

...ordinarily I'm prone to very long and overly complex sentences (too much thinking-as-I-write), which drabbling doesn't allow for!

Interesting. I find drabbling can promote long complex sentences! (Not that I've done very much; I think my grand total of true drabbles stands at six!) It does make one think very carefully about the rhythms of the sentences, and how they fit together. Also about hyphenation ;)