The one where I bitch about my SGA fic.
*Points to title*. Yeah. For, you know, the two people on my f-list who care. Maybe.
So I was listening obsessively to "Tranquilize" by The Killers & Lou Reed, and thinking about SGA and DADT and whatnot, when John sauntered up and conveyed that he might, possibly, be willing to talk to me, as long as he didn't have to say anything important or revealing.
So I shout "Follow that trope!" and prepare to write about DADT, and it's going to be about John and Rodney and the different kinds of strength, and then Rodney butts in and starts telling me about his traumatic experience dragging Sheppard through the Stargate with an arrow in his shoulder. Then John told me, quite emphatically, that the first line was "John Sheppard isn't afraid of guns."
All right, sez I. So now I have a plot, and maybe a story with a slightly different focus. I blithely start writing from my first line, and before I know it, my theme ("the one about the different kinds of strength") is shoved aside, and the whole plot starts to wriggle out of shape in front of me. So I'm suddenly writing Sheppard backstory and Rodney flailing around and John "indisposed" in the infirmary and a random side-plot with the American Marine's Anthropologist, without any idea what I'm doing.
Right now I'm 6k down the line, staring the climax scene I just wrote where John wakes up from Afghanistan to Atlantis, and am pretty sure I just stopped writing a short story and started writing a novella.
*headdesk*
Things I Need to Do:
1. Keep writing, hopefully to the end. Though I suspect I may have put the beginning in the wrong place - I intended it to be a short, 5k circular story, where the Big Reveal is at the end, and I can't do that now. Must fit it in somewhere.
2. Sort out theme. While I was writing, a new theme ("the one about seeing what's really there") set in and started breeding like rabbits. Seriously. I have this whole running motif of things not being as they seem, and I only just noticed.
3. Figure out if this damn thing's a short story or a novella. If it's a short story, all I have to do is finish, and cut the extraneous 2k or so, leaving me with (I think) about 8k. If it's a novella, I need to fill in all the details at the beginning, incorporate more of the characters, allow the plot to broaden and find out where to place the important-scene-that-used-to-be-the-ending.
3a. (After Rereading) Okay, this thing's a novella. I can see where I've already incorporate other characters and hinted at much more theme and plot than I've actually written. Dear God. We're looking at at least 15k, here.
4. Make my plot make some sense. I need to give Rodney something to do, and figure out where the blue crossbow-brandishing aliens fit in. Then figure out the actual details of important-scene-which-I-currently-have-no-place-for, which reads in my head as "Scene where something important happens between John and Rodney, that doesn't work out" at the moment.
5. Find someone to beta, to make sure I'm actually making some sense. And that I didn't break canon.
So I was listening obsessively to "Tranquilize" by The Killers & Lou Reed, and thinking about SGA and DADT and whatnot, when John sauntered up and conveyed that he might, possibly, be willing to talk to me, as long as he didn't have to say anything important or revealing.
So I shout "Follow that trope!" and prepare to write about DADT, and it's going to be about John and Rodney and the different kinds of strength, and then Rodney butts in and starts telling me about his traumatic experience dragging Sheppard through the Stargate with an arrow in his shoulder. Then John told me, quite emphatically, that the first line was "John Sheppard isn't afraid of guns."
All right, sez I. So now I have a plot, and maybe a story with a slightly different focus. I blithely start writing from my first line, and before I know it, my theme ("the one about the different kinds of strength") is shoved aside, and the whole plot starts to wriggle out of shape in front of me. So I'm suddenly writing Sheppard backstory and Rodney flailing around and John "indisposed" in the infirmary and a random side-plot with the American Marine's Anthropologist, without any idea what I'm doing.
Right now I'm 6k down the line, staring the climax scene I just wrote where John wakes up from Afghanistan to Atlantis, and am pretty sure I just stopped writing a short story and started writing a novella.
*headdesk*
Things I Need to Do:
1. Keep writing, hopefully to the end. Though I suspect I may have put the beginning in the wrong place - I intended it to be a short, 5k circular story, where the Big Reveal is at the end, and I can't do that now. Must fit it in somewhere.
2. Sort out theme. While I was writing, a new theme ("the one about seeing what's really there") set in and started breeding like rabbits. Seriously. I have this whole running motif of things not being as they seem, and I only just noticed.
3. Figure out if this damn thing's a short story or a novella. If it's a short story, all I have to do is finish, and cut the extraneous 2k or so, leaving me with (I think) about 8k. If it's a novella, I need to fill in all the details at the beginning, incorporate more of the characters, allow the plot to broaden and find out where to place the important-scene-that-used-to-be-the-ending.
3a. (After Rereading) Okay, this thing's a novella. I can see where I've already incorporate other characters and hinted at much more theme and plot than I've actually written. Dear God. We're looking at at least 15k, here.
4. Make my plot make some sense. I need to give Rodney something to do, and figure out where the blue crossbow-brandishing aliens fit in. Then figure out the actual details of important-scene-which-I-currently-have-no-place-for, which reads in my head as "Scene where something important happens between John and Rodney, that doesn't work out" at the moment.
5. Find someone to beta, to make sure I'm actually making some sense. And that I didn't break canon.