In which I am daunted by the enormity of the task before me:

[verhalten]

I've been considering for a while now taking a crack at proper fanfiction, complete with a plot and an arc and possibly a moral and actual events. There's this AU plot I've been toying around with forever and it's finally started to pour out of me, the way stories do when I finally find a voice and a rhythm and a direction. (Seems like that's

Comments

[awarrington]

From what I can gather, talking to other writers, pretty much everyone has their own idiosyncratic way of writing and I'm guessing you're probably already finding things that work for you. When we do anything, we tend to play to our strengths, so it's good to figure out what yours are.

My personality type suggests I'm someone who enjoys detail and tends to do things or work through things sequentially and that absolutely shows in my writing. I enjoy plotty detail, have certain scenes mapped out in my head, but generally work in a sequential way towards them. What comes out first time is actually quite publishable, although I always do an edit even when I don't use a beta. I'm an extravert, which suggests in writing that I'd be action orientated - writing and describing what's visible, and that's true too. I find the internal stuff, like writing motivations, thoughts, emotions and emotional reactions much harder and have to work at it.

Introverts who are natually more inner-oriented, reflective and thoughtful, are more likely to find writing action-and interaction-oriented aspects of stories more challenging, but will likely find inner monologues and inner emotions easier.

More intuitive people I know write scenes here and there, completely out of sequence, and then figure out how to link them together later -- some don't even write the whole scene, just write bits of dialogue, or some imagery that will be central to that part of the story.

As you can probably tell, I find it really interesting finding out the processes people use to get to their end result. :-)

[verhalten]

My initial instinct was to use your method, I must say. Write things sequentially with an idea of where I'm going. But since two of you wonderful LJers have now pointed out that I can write whatever I want whenever I want, I just write what I'm inspired to write at the time.

It's going SO much better. I don't know why my brain wouldn't allow me to do this before now, why I needed some oddball form of permission from somebody else, but I will save that for later introspection.

For now, just know you have totally helped.