#1: "He knew what he had to do next." - Wait...He Did?
So, first, I've signed up to do The One Hundred Things Blogging Challenge (thanks to race-the-ace for the link).
My subject matter is 100 Musings on Writing Fanfiction. This will range from thoughts one individual stories that I'm working on/have written, to the writing process, how writing fanfiction changes my experience of the world, and other aspects of fanfiction in general.
Without further ado (under a cut to save your flists)...
A fic I've had in my works in progress folder since last June without being touched ends in the line: "He knew what he had to do next."
That would be great, if I could just remember what it is he was had to do. Fortunately this was a fic where I foresaw myself taking several long breaks while writing (which I tend to do when writing depressing things, but more on that in another entry) and I helpfully wrote down the details of how the case plays out so all the foreshadowing will make sense later.
I started this piece one year ago now, shortly after I saw the episode Memoriam (season 4 episode 7 of Criminal Minds). Incidentally it's one of my favorite episodes, one that I've rewritten or written reactions to in a dozen of ways and will probable continue to do so. Criminal Minds was one of those shows that grabbed me fast and hard and I fell deeply in love with the characters. Most of the plot lines I can live without, but I love the character interactions and the way they think, and the way the earlier seasons were shot and how information was relayed.
So, today, I reread this currently untiled piece that's coming up on its first birthday as a work in progress, and I realized that I already knew what it was that Reid had to do and why I had hit such a brick wall in writing it. I needed to switch viewpoints for the next scene, even though my outline suggests that I should continue with a Reid viewpoint. It's incredible how much having the wrong character can lead to this horrible wall that I can't break past until I realize who needs to be the focus of that section.
I ran into a similar problem when I was writing Strength of the Pack, directly after chapter five. I had my outline, I liked my outline and thought it still worked, but I was coming down after 30 days of NaNo and I was a little bit brain dead.
I think the last thing I want to say about this right now is how much my writing style has changed over the past year. I say this every year, and every year I think that's absolutely true. There are so many pieces I look back at and go "Did I really write that? I don't remember writing it, but I clearly did. How strange." Strength of the Pack made a huge shift in my writing style, particularly in sentence structures. It's a little odd to go back to a piece that I was writing when I very first joined the Criminal Minds fandom, both stylistically and in my understand and interpretation of the characters.
Now that I remember what Reid had to do, I'm going to see if I can get a scene written on it, so I don't forget again.
A topic for a future post: Why do I always find something else to work on in the middle of a longer piece that has a due date, even when that due date is only self-imposed?
My subject matter is 100 Musings on Writing Fanfiction. This will range from thoughts one individual stories that I'm working on/have written, to the writing process, how writing fanfiction changes my experience of the world, and other aspects of fanfiction in general.
Without further ado (under a cut to save your flists)...
A fic I've had in my works in progress folder since last June without being touched ends in the line: "He knew what he had to do next."
That would be great, if I could just remember what it is he was had to do. Fortunately this was a fic where I foresaw myself taking several long breaks while writing (which I tend to do when writing depressing things, but more on that in another entry) and I helpfully wrote down the details of how the case plays out so all the foreshadowing will make sense later.
I started this piece one year ago now, shortly after I saw the episode Memoriam (season 4 episode 7 of Criminal Minds). Incidentally it's one of my favorite episodes, one that I've rewritten or written reactions to in a dozen of ways and will probable continue to do so. Criminal Minds was one of those shows that grabbed me fast and hard and I fell deeply in love with the characters. Most of the plot lines I can live without, but I love the character interactions and the way they think, and the way the earlier seasons were shot and how information was relayed.
So, today, I reread this currently untiled piece that's coming up on its first birthday as a work in progress, and I realized that I already knew what it was that Reid had to do and why I had hit such a brick wall in writing it. I needed to switch viewpoints for the next scene, even though my outline suggests that I should continue with a Reid viewpoint. It's incredible how much having the wrong character can lead to this horrible wall that I can't break past until I realize who needs to be the focus of that section.
I ran into a similar problem when I was writing Strength of the Pack, directly after chapter five. I had my outline, I liked my outline and thought it still worked, but I was coming down after 30 days of NaNo and I was a little bit brain dead.
I think the last thing I want to say about this right now is how much my writing style has changed over the past year. I say this every year, and every year I think that's absolutely true. There are so many pieces I look back at and go "Did I really write that? I don't remember writing it, but I clearly did. How strange." Strength of the Pack made a huge shift in my writing style, particularly in sentence structures. It's a little odd to go back to a piece that I was writing when I very first joined the Criminal Minds fandom, both stylistically and in my understand and interpretation of the characters.
Now that I remember what Reid had to do, I'm going to see if I can get a scene written on it, so I don't forget again.
A topic for a future post: Why do I always find something else to work on in the middle of a longer piece that has a due date, even when that due date is only self-imposed?