WIPs and feedback
Extrabitter did an essay over on housefic_meta looking at creating the series “Knots,” and I thought I’d essay a bit here myself. Hopefully some of this will be worthwhile, but I wanted to address a little bit about writing a longer story as a Work In Progress, and also how reader feedback can influence that WIP, or at least how it impacted what I’ve done. I apologize in advance for the length. I think I'm incapable of writing anything short.
A work in progress is a very scary thing to see either as a writer or reader, I think. As a writer, you’re making a commitment to a “writing project,” not just a one-shot concept that may be rattling around in your brain. As a reader -- unless I know the writer -- I’m very wary of reading a WIP since so many promising ones are abandoned.
This will, of course, be representative of what worked for me. Others may find something completely different worked for them.
Maybe it was beginners luck, but when I started on what would become “Tracking Time,” I didn’t have any big plans for what the story would become. If I had seen how it would develop, the angles and topics I’d touch on, I probably never would have attempted it, so producing it as a Work in Progress definitely helped me.
By contrast, I’m currently doing another WIP, multi-chapter story, but while “Tracking Time” was not planned, the current “Eight Days, Eight Months” has been laid out. I didn’t even commit to putting anything up until I’d completed three chapters and had the layout for the remaining chapters.
What joins the two WIPs, though, is that I approached both as having a finite number of chapters. I knew how both would end. I think many people get into trouble with WIPs because they have a great beginning, and then enjoy building on that so much that they lose sight of what they began with in the first place. The story simply gets away from them, and they can’t figure out how to end it.
With “TT” I began by wanting to do something very basic: write a scene I would have liked to see or read. From early on in watching “House” I had become fascinated by the concept that House himself had a very athletic background - that he had been physically very active. And I also liked the idea that he became friends with Wilson not because they were coworkers, but because they connected as friends first, then colleagues. Having them meet while running, I thought, would be interesting because no one who sees House as we first encounter him would expect that physical start to their friendship.
I’ve said before, elsewhere, that I lucked out in starting “TT” as a WIP on the “House Transcripts & More” site. It was enough out of the mainstream that I wasn’t overwhelmed by large amounts of feedback, but also had good writers who provided strong feedback with specifics.
-----
If you’re interested in seeing how it developed as a WIP you can find it here:
http://s3.invisionfree.com/House_Fans/index.php?showtopic=669&st=0
To compare to the finished version, go here:
http://www.fanfiction.net/secure/live_preview.php?storyid=2757242
-----
So that’s what I wrote. From the first chapter I intended to do more with it, though my first intention was to take it further back in time - to House’s athletic youth. The first chapter began with the present day, flashed back to the track late at night when Wilson was still a resident, and ended with House standing outside the entrance to the hospital after his first meeting with Wilson, somehow intrigued by this person he’d met. My first feedback asked for one basic thing:
The only thing I'd say in the way of constructive criticism is to close back the 'present' of the lead-in time - we've got House's musing and the flashback, but ideally we'd have a short reflection of some kind to end the piece circularly.
I doubt whether Sy Dedalus knows that one comment helped drive what the story would become, but there it is. It became one central driving theme of the fic - moving it forward from their meeting to the present day.
And it wasn’t a big request. No demands or requirements that I do something in terms of outlines for what I should do. No big suggestions. Just a request to close the loop. With that in mind, I could begin to see the potential of moving forward in the House/Wilson friendship timeline and show how they got from there to here.
A lot of the feedback I was getting wasn’t necessarily long and complex, but it was encouraging enough to keep me motivated to continue the story -- but also encouraging with specifics. Rather than just say “I like this” or “cute” I received comments noting specific lines or moments in the fic they liked. From that I could tell what worked and gain the confidence to try something more complex. I wasn’t certain I could pull off House/Wilson dialogue, but because of the positive reception I received for the specific lines I used, I grew more comfortable with allowing the characters to have complete conversations without my interrupting the flow as the writer.
One example from Benj:
“Two marriages and two divorces inside of five years,” Wilson countered. “If that doesn’t make me a screw up, then what am I?”
“Available.”
That's just so right-House offbeat but upbeat - love it.
Again. It may not seem like an extensive critique, but it allowed me to feel like I had a handle on things.
The fact of the matter is, without that feedback I was receiving, I don’t know if I ever would have tackled the infarction. It was a lot of angst and drama, which I know attracts many writers. For me, though, my view is that many others had handled it so well. Even the show had made it canon with “Three Stories.” I was afraid to charge into it for fear it would look bad in comparison -- despite the fact that I had a different take on it. But I’d had a good reception up to that point, so I went for it.
That infarction chapter is actually where I can see the whole piece begin to change. Up until that point, I’d been writing chapter of 2-3 pages in length. From then on, they were 15 to 20 pages. So yes. Even simple feedback can make a difference -- especially on newer writers to encourage them.
Comments from Auditrix following the April 2001 chapter helped me nail down the format of a chapter per year. (With 2001 being the exception with two separate chapters covering two very different House outlooks on his new life.)
I would suggest marking more clearly where we are in the wayback machine -- perhaps making sure your frames are closed at the end of each chapter (don't worry about Wilson looking out the window in the "present day") and, in flashbacks-within-flashbacks, having more reminders of what's going on in the "present" so that we remember where we are. For example, during the part where Wilson is remembering Stacy after she leaves, you could break up the flashback with a couple of descriptions of Wilson's emotions as he remembers, or about what he's doing as he's driving, to remind us that the "present" of this chapter is Wilson taking House to Anton's.
If you do more with reinforcing that this is Wilson's memory, that will both help your readers keep from getting lost and give you more opportunity to show us Wilson's character through his actions and internal dialogue.
It was at about this time that Auditrix agreed to beta for me. (If there’s interest I’ll do a separate essay on the beta process, since this is already getting way too long.)
By helping me first see that I needed to eventually move back to the present day from that first chapter, and now helping me create the overall structure of the fic, the feedback I was receiving definitely influenced what “TT” would become.
By comparison, the current WIP I’m working on is far more structured, but I’ve been using lessons I learned from “TT” to help shape “8 Days.” To begin with -- it has a definite end. “Tracking Time” would be complete when I brought the characters back to the present day. “Eight Days” covers -- as it implies -- eight days within an eight-month period. So again, I’ve got my deadline set.
Because I’m dealing with more complex emotional issues in this, I did plan things out just to make sure I was capable of putting them into words. (And also, I needed to make sure I shouldn’t be calling it “Seven Days, Seven Months.")
--------
If you’re interested, it starts here:
http://namasteyoga.livejournal.com/3200.html#cutid1
--------
But while I had some chapters already roughed out -- and have outlined the other chapters -- feedback still can influence what I’m doing. I should note here that the primary feedback comes from Auditrix in the beta process.
In the case of this story, I’m trying to make an unliked character -- Stacy -- somewhat more sympathetic, while our loyalty is still to House at the end. The feedback lets me know if I’m pulling that off to a more general audience on a part-by-part basis.
At the same time, I enjoy putting little details into stories, which sometimes slows down the writing process: for instance, not just House goes skiing as a kid, but where he was living and where he skied. I spent hours researching ski resorts near military bases for that one. So to give a positive response to something like using “Wawa” rather than just the generic “store” makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time when I look up those details.
Of course one detriment to working with a WIP with a specific format or end point is that you sometimes get ideas that don’t quite fit within that format. I just see those ideas as stories to explore later. That probably also explains why so many of my stories would fit within the “Tracking Time” universe. If I didn’t have that basic layout of getting back to the present it would have been very easy to just keep adding chapters to it, and never finishing it.
So, have I completely confused everybody or are you ready to try a WIP yourself or encourage someone else’s WIP?
A work in progress is a very scary thing to see either as a writer or reader, I think. As a writer, you’re making a commitment to a “writing project,” not just a one-shot concept that may be rattling around in your brain. As a reader -- unless I know the writer -- I’m very wary of reading a WIP since so many promising ones are abandoned.
This will, of course, be representative of what worked for me. Others may find something completely different worked for them.
Maybe it was beginners luck, but when I started on what would become “Tracking Time,” I didn’t have any big plans for what the story would become. If I had seen how it would develop, the angles and topics I’d touch on, I probably never would have attempted it, so producing it as a Work in Progress definitely helped me.
By contrast, I’m currently doing another WIP, multi-chapter story, but while “Tracking Time” was not planned, the current “Eight Days, Eight Months” has been laid out. I didn’t even commit to putting anything up until I’d completed three chapters and had the layout for the remaining chapters.
What joins the two WIPs, though, is that I approached both as having a finite number of chapters. I knew how both would end. I think many people get into trouble with WIPs because they have a great beginning, and then enjoy building on that so much that they lose sight of what they began with in the first place. The story simply gets away from them, and they can’t figure out how to end it.
With “TT” I began by wanting to do something very basic: write a scene I would have liked to see or read. From early on in watching “House” I had become fascinated by the concept that House himself had a very athletic background - that he had been physically very active. And I also liked the idea that he became friends with Wilson not because they were coworkers, but because they connected as friends first, then colleagues. Having them meet while running, I thought, would be interesting because no one who sees House as we first encounter him would expect that physical start to their friendship.
I’ve said before, elsewhere, that I lucked out in starting “TT” as a WIP on the “House Transcripts & More” site. It was enough out of the mainstream that I wasn’t overwhelmed by large amounts of feedback, but also had good writers who provided strong feedback with specifics.
-----
If you’re interested in seeing how it developed as a WIP you can find it here:
http://s3.invisionfree.com/House_Fans/index.php?showtopic=669&st=0
To compare to the finished version, go here:
http://www.fanfiction.net/secure/live_preview.php?storyid=2757242
-----
So that’s what I wrote. From the first chapter I intended to do more with it, though my first intention was to take it further back in time - to House’s athletic youth. The first chapter began with the present day, flashed back to the track late at night when Wilson was still a resident, and ended with House standing outside the entrance to the hospital after his first meeting with Wilson, somehow intrigued by this person he’d met. My first feedback asked for one basic thing:
The only thing I'd say in the way of constructive criticism is to close back the 'present' of the lead-in time - we've got House's musing and the flashback, but ideally we'd have a short reflection of some kind to end the piece circularly.
I doubt whether Sy Dedalus knows that one comment helped drive what the story would become, but there it is. It became one central driving theme of the fic - moving it forward from their meeting to the present day.
And it wasn’t a big request. No demands or requirements that I do something in terms of outlines for what I should do. No big suggestions. Just a request to close the loop. With that in mind, I could begin to see the potential of moving forward in the House/Wilson friendship timeline and show how they got from there to here.
A lot of the feedback I was getting wasn’t necessarily long and complex, but it was encouraging enough to keep me motivated to continue the story -- but also encouraging with specifics. Rather than just say “I like this” or “cute” I received comments noting specific lines or moments in the fic they liked. From that I could tell what worked and gain the confidence to try something more complex. I wasn’t certain I could pull off House/Wilson dialogue, but because of the positive reception I received for the specific lines I used, I grew more comfortable with allowing the characters to have complete conversations without my interrupting the flow as the writer.
One example from Benj:
“Two marriages and two divorces inside of five years,” Wilson countered. “If that doesn’t make me a screw up, then what am I?”
“Available.”
That's just so right-House offbeat but upbeat - love it.
Again. It may not seem like an extensive critique, but it allowed me to feel like I had a handle on things.
The fact of the matter is, without that feedback I was receiving, I don’t know if I ever would have tackled the infarction. It was a lot of angst and drama, which I know attracts many writers. For me, though, my view is that many others had handled it so well. Even the show had made it canon with “Three Stories.” I was afraid to charge into it for fear it would look bad in comparison -- despite the fact that I had a different take on it. But I’d had a good reception up to that point, so I went for it.
That infarction chapter is actually where I can see the whole piece begin to change. Up until that point, I’d been writing chapter of 2-3 pages in length. From then on, they were 15 to 20 pages. So yes. Even simple feedback can make a difference -- especially on newer writers to encourage them.
Comments from Auditrix following the April 2001 chapter helped me nail down the format of a chapter per year. (With 2001 being the exception with two separate chapters covering two very different House outlooks on his new life.)
I would suggest marking more clearly where we are in the wayback machine -- perhaps making sure your frames are closed at the end of each chapter (don't worry about Wilson looking out the window in the "present day") and, in flashbacks-within-flashbacks, having more reminders of what's going on in the "present" so that we remember where we are. For example, during the part where Wilson is remembering Stacy after she leaves, you could break up the flashback with a couple of descriptions of Wilson's emotions as he remembers, or about what he's doing as he's driving, to remind us that the "present" of this chapter is Wilson taking House to Anton's.
If you do more with reinforcing that this is Wilson's memory, that will both help your readers keep from getting lost and give you more opportunity to show us Wilson's character through his actions and internal dialogue.
It was at about this time that Auditrix agreed to beta for me. (If there’s interest I’ll do a separate essay on the beta process, since this is already getting way too long.)
By helping me first see that I needed to eventually move back to the present day from that first chapter, and now helping me create the overall structure of the fic, the feedback I was receiving definitely influenced what “TT” would become.
By comparison, the current WIP I’m working on is far more structured, but I’ve been using lessons I learned from “TT” to help shape “8 Days.” To begin with -- it has a definite end. “Tracking Time” would be complete when I brought the characters back to the present day. “Eight Days” covers -- as it implies -- eight days within an eight-month period. So again, I’ve got my deadline set.
Because I’m dealing with more complex emotional issues in this, I did plan things out just to make sure I was capable of putting them into words. (And also, I needed to make sure I shouldn’t be calling it “Seven Days, Seven Months.")
--------
If you’re interested, it starts here:
http://namasteyoga.livejournal.com/3200.html#cutid1
--------
But while I had some chapters already roughed out -- and have outlined the other chapters -- feedback still can influence what I’m doing. I should note here that the primary feedback comes from Auditrix in the beta process.
In the case of this story, I’m trying to make an unliked character -- Stacy -- somewhat more sympathetic, while our loyalty is still to House at the end. The feedback lets me know if I’m pulling that off to a more general audience on a part-by-part basis.
At the same time, I enjoy putting little details into stories, which sometimes slows down the writing process: for instance, not just House goes skiing as a kid, but where he was living and where he skied. I spent hours researching ski resorts near military bases for that one. So to give a positive response to something like using “Wawa” rather than just the generic “store” makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time when I look up those details.
Of course one detriment to working with a WIP with a specific format or end point is that you sometimes get ideas that don’t quite fit within that format. I just see those ideas as stories to explore later. That probably also explains why so many of my stories would fit within the “Tracking Time” universe. If I didn’t have that basic layout of getting back to the present it would have been very easy to just keep adding chapters to it, and never finishing it.
So, have I completely confused everybody or are you ready to try a WIP yourself or encourage someone else’s WIP?