draw my words on your machine
These days, I seem to be only able to work on one story at a time. It's very weird. Part of it is the deadlines - remix and summergen - but part of it is being busy at work and not having the focus to do a lot of writing at night when I get home. I am used to having four things open and being able to write here and there as I am moved and then homing in on one thing when it starts to click. Doing it one after another instead of all simultaneously is weird (I think I wrote one story at a time for my first two months of writing fanfic; by month three I had two or three things on the go and have worked that way ever since).
Right now, I am revising the second remix, which I like better now, having put it away for a couple of days (and also having been reassured by luzdeestrellas that it doesn't suck). I mean, I didn't dislike it, but I felt like there was something missing and I wasn't sure how to fix it. So I am throwing more words at it and hoping that works. *snerk*
I'm also contemplating this pinch hit remix, trying to figure out how to make it different from the original story in interesting ways. The first things I came up with won't work for various reasons, so now I am looking at structure. I like structure - I like numbered sections and drabble pyramids and stories built around poems and stories that are told backwards or out of order for a particular reason - so I am contemplating what might work in this case.
When you are stuck on a remix, when you think maybe the original story works and doesn't need to be told from a different POV and doesn't really have any missing bits to be filled in or whatever, pulling it apart structurally and rebuilding it can work. Rearranging the order of events - or the order in which the events are told - taking flashbacks and making them the narrative present, or inserting flashbacks to expand on something mentioned in passing, shifting the focus from the A-plot to a secondary theme, taking a drabble and making it ten sections of 100 words instead of one... all of these are potential remix strategies. It's just a question of looking at the original story, pulling it apart, and seeing how to put it back together again. I mean, that's the strategy for any remix, but I think it's a lot less conscious when you do a POV shift or a "wait, there's this paragraph here that could totally be a whole story in and of itself" - there, the remix possibility slaps you in the face and you go (clearly, you means me in this paragraph), whereas with the structural changes, it's more of a "huh, I could totally take that three-line flashback and make it the first (or last) section of the story" etc.
It's always an interesting process to me, to work with someone else's outline; in some ways it's easier, because the beats are already there - I just have to find and hit them. In some ways, it's harder, because there are beats I would never have come up with in a million years, and I have to figure out how to play them.
***
Right now, I am revising the second remix, which I like better now, having put it away for a couple of days (and also having been reassured by luzdeestrellas that it doesn't suck). I mean, I didn't dislike it, but I felt like there was something missing and I wasn't sure how to fix it. So I am throwing more words at it and hoping that works. *snerk*
I'm also contemplating this pinch hit remix, trying to figure out how to make it different from the original story in interesting ways. The first things I came up with won't work for various reasons, so now I am looking at structure. I like structure - I like numbered sections and drabble pyramids and stories built around poems and stories that are told backwards or out of order for a particular reason - so I am contemplating what might work in this case.
When you are stuck on a remix, when you think maybe the original story works and doesn't need to be told from a different POV and doesn't really have any missing bits to be filled in or whatever, pulling it apart structurally and rebuilding it can work. Rearranging the order of events - or the order in which the events are told - taking flashbacks and making them the narrative present, or inserting flashbacks to expand on something mentioned in passing, shifting the focus from the A-plot to a secondary theme, taking a drabble and making it ten sections of 100 words instead of one... all of these are potential remix strategies. It's just a question of looking at the original story, pulling it apart, and seeing how to put it back together again. I mean, that's the strategy for any remix, but I think it's a lot less conscious when you do a POV shift or a "wait, there's this paragraph here that could totally be a whole story in and of itself" - there, the remix possibility slaps you in the face and you go (clearly, you means me in this paragraph), whereas with the structural changes, it's more of a "huh, I could totally take that three-line flashback and make it the first (or last) section of the story" etc.
It's always an interesting process to me, to work with someone else's outline; in some ways it's easier, because the beats are already there - I just have to find and hit them. In some ways, it's harder, because there are beats I would never have come up with in a million years, and I have to figure out how to play them.
***