Creative Personalities, or How We Write

[dawn_felagund]

I am rather blue and blah at the moment; it is pouring rain outside (at least it's not snow?*) and the wind is howling something fierce. I'm wrapping up my contribution to the B2MeM review award grand prize banners, trying to think of how to represent mithril seasonally, and feeling like wasting some time but not on something completely fruitless.

Comments

[spiced_wine]

For me, a story starts with people,

As far back as I can remember mine started with people first, too. I always have a vague idea of the plot, but don't they say there are only a few plots anyway? One of them is some-one's looking for something, and the others are (commercial fiction) they find it or (literary fiction) they don't.

I don't care for, and cannot get attached to, books where the plot gets the characters in an armlock and marches them through the book. Why should I care what happens to the people if the writer has spent no time making them real? The whole planet could dive into the sun, and I wouldn't care because the people were boring anyhow.

One of my favourite living writers, John Connolly says he can get half-way through a book and have no idea what's going to happen next. He's a great writer :)

much of the purpose appears to be advancing a plot/dialogue with understandably little opportunity to wallow in characterization, world-building, or commentary on theme or the texts, all of which are what I enjoy about writing

I role-played for about five years, but what I did was write it like a novel, and the other participants acted within it. I created a world and they were free to do what they wanted.
That was enjoyable; whether rp (or collaborative writing) is any fun or has any real 'quality' depends who you're rp-ing with. If you're writing with some-one who can really write, it's great. Although I say I don't like prompts, what rp offered was really a series of prompts because it was clear we were all grown up and didn't care if other people flung sometimes shocking scenarios at us. We had to react to things which we'd not considered before, and although there was no time-limit on replying save our own determination not to let the stories lag, there was a lot of challenge in having to deal with things quickly. That was one of the things I enjoyed, apart from the world-building. There were other things I really did not enjoy, but good role-play can be a really fun challenge.
One of the downsides is you kind of have to take all the other characters 'with' you everywhere, whereas when writing alone you have control over all of them. I don't rp now, (I am not saying I wouldn't but it would depend on who with) but I have written with Pink Siamese and Esteliel as well as Anwyn, and that really kept me on my toes. It can sometimes shake you up, which to me is like a booster-shot every so often, because I am on my metal :)

[dawn_felagund]

don't they say there are only a few plots anyway?

Yes, I've seen it said that there are only like 30 different plots or something. I suppose a plot-centric writer would argue that the use of devices like suspense and plot twists keeps those dusty old stories interesting, but I find it's people. I don't even really need much to happen in a story to interest me if the people are interesting. I am fascinated by human nature, and fiction provides endless avenues to explore that fascination.

Why should I care what happens to the people if the writer has spent no time making them real?

Exactly. Some of my favorite writers can make truly reprehensible people nonetheless empathetic and relatable.

One of my favourite living writers, John Connolly says he can get half-way through a book and have no idea what's going to happen next.

And Tolkien was the same! He famously writes in his letters about how he discovered Saruman's treachery and that Strider was Aragorn the King right alongside his characters! :D

I will sometimes write a very brief outline before starting a longer story if I have an idea of where I want the story to go simply because I'll forget otherwise. I have no memory for plot and will sometimes reread my own stories and be surprised at what happens in them. (Never the characters, who are like old friends.) Likewise, I cannot tell you the plots of even favorite books or movies. But I've also written stories where I just let the characters lead and see what happens right alongside them.

Of my longer stories, By the Light of Roses and The Work of Small Hands were outlined in that I wrote a short note on major events in the order I wanted them to happen in and then kind of wrote to connect the dots. Another Man's Cage and The Tapestries were not. For The Sovereign and the Priest, I knew the endpoint (because it was for SinS and was the request I'd been given!) but let the story do it's own thing in how it got there.

I created a world and they were free to do what they wanted.

That's what I would find difficult. I can gladly wile away thousands of words on world-building or characterization, and unless the other person is willing to accept my view, then I could see myself become boring or perceived as heavy-handed. In truth, though, writing remains something that is so ridiculously personal to me until a story is finished that I rarely even reveal that I am working on a new story until it's done. I've too often had where, in the excitement to share a new idea, it feels like all the momentum goes out of something that was really interesting and inspiring. I am also very, very bad at any sort of collaboration because, even though it doesn't make me sound very nice to say it, I always think I know best. Being a fannish group admin has been good for me in this regard since I get to work with people who very often do know better or more than me! :D But creatively, my work is so personal, that I cannot imagine making it work.

[heartofoshun]

The Sovereign and the Priest definitely has that flavor of events unfolding much as they do in real life.

About collaboration. I consider it collaboration when I steal things from your stories or people steal from me! Usually in fic swaps I get prompts from strangers and feel like a pretzel, twisting myself into knots trying to fulfill them or cheating and just tacking them onto a story of my own. But there was one time, when someone very close to me at the time gave me a prompt--the was for my story No Justice to Yourself, about Erestor, Arafinwe, and Earwen (I threw in Elrond and Celebrian because I had to get to Valinor somehow), but his prompt was so specific and detailed it amounted to a plot outline. Writing that story was like falling off a log. But that was because we had very close ideas as to what makes a good story at the time.

I have three points I make about collaboration: 1) I don't really want a partnership, I want someone to clean up the typos for me; 2) I largely imagine the entire story before I ever sit down to write it, so there is not a lot of room in my vision for other twists or details. (I fall asleep every night imagining a story I am working on--or sometimes, not the one I am supposed to be working on at the moment but another one (which is why I do not like deadlines and hard commitments for fiction). When the muse is hot and screaming in my ear, if I refuse to listen it might leave and not come back. I lose serious momentum when I interrupt a project to work on something else externally motivated like a fic swap or something like B2MeM. I got lucky this year because of the very flexible prompts and only one hard commitment instead of dozens of temptations and the pressure not to lose in the contest.

[spiced_wine]

I am also very, very bad at any sort of collaboration because, even though it doesn't make me sound very nice to say it, I always think I know best.

LOL! :D

Well, the people I rp-d with did agree beforehand to let me have free rein; it suited them as they didn't want to do all the world building themselves, but they did enjoy 'acting' in it. Although we were in Middle-earth it was into the Fourth Age. I set up different kingdoms in the south and east, I wrote back-stories for them, and basically said: 'Right, if you want to use them, feel free.' and they did. But we'd come to know one another very well, and there was a lot of rapport.

As for me, at that point, it helped me get over a decades long phobia of letting people see my writing. I didn't even realise it at the time, but it was setting me up for when I publicly posted fanfic.

Reading role play is completely different; it feels like listening to a conversation you don't really understand. It's only interesting for those who do it, while fic is (hopefully) interesting to readers.

But creatively, my work is so personal, that I cannot imagine making it work.

At the time, I was working out my long-held ideas about Fourth Age Arda. It was not like Tumblr where you have to directly answer people on one thread. We used a message board so you could make as many threads as you wanted, even different Ages, and run different story-lines on each one. So I could go off and write somewhere about an empire in the Harad, and go back to a story in Imladris.
It helped me, at that time, to explore my ideas without pressure. But rp is so often about instant gratification now, it seems. Very few people are interested in creating or fleshing out characters from the beginning; they just want to 'be' so-and-so, and interact with others. I was never into that. I wanted to write stories.

I still look at my rp years as a bridge that helped me to write for a (theoretical) audience and got me into writing male characters and slash, so I would never consider it a waste of time. It showed me, over a period of years, what I really wanted to do when I went back to writing on my own.

Nowadays, well in a sense I am still writing those stories.

[silver_trails]

Well, in my case inspiration just happens. Always has been like that though I have learned to write better with time. I've been doing it for more than ten years (started with vamp chron), but it will always be writing in another language for me, so I guess I cannot really develop a style unless I write in Spanish. I am working on that, non fiction, and I have a few non fiction arcs in English as well.

I like deadlines, but I don't like waiting, which is why I didn't commit to this one (apart from the compilation). I also had real life problems going on at the time, or I would have written at least one non compilation story. I might write it anyway, but not as part of the B2MeM. =)

I see there are many stories. I have read a few. After being a fanfic writer for so long I no longer read everything, but I loved what I read!

Congratulations to all the mods! =)