Maunderings of a semi-literary nature

[lassarina]

Often when I read a particularly well-crafted story, it makes me ashamed of myself. I am not so brave as the main characters, so able to drive myself forward based on mere will or faith. Neither am I so deep, I think; there are many things it does not occur to me to think on until I have seen it set forth in print by someone else. I think I am,

Comments

[celeloriel]

1. False comparison: you are not a character in a story. Life is a constantly-changing self-created story - as far as you know, you have no plot to fulfill. Scary but freeing

[lassarina]

Have I mentioned lately that I adore you? *pets*

I think I may have been overtired when I wrote this; I was just kind of unhappy generally (this week has been AWFUL) and started emoing all over the place. I will stop now. (Then again, as we both know, I'm very prone to comparing myself to unreachable standards, right?)

[laylah]

Mostly brain-dead (as is too often the case in the evenings, these days), but a few thoughts --

a) real people are almost never as coherent, as focused, as explicable as fictional ones. There's a reason for that; they have roles to play in their stories, and they're guided by someone who knows at least more or less what that role is, and who (one hopes) will edit them to make sure they get where they're going and their extraneous bits deleted. Real people by contrast are poorly edited and in one of those meandering multi-chapter epics whose plot got lost about 27 chapters ago.

2) The nice thing about that, when you're writing, is that you can go back and fix stuff up later. And you can say, "...I meant to do that!" when somebody else notices something you hadn't realized you were doing. And then you can go try to make it happen more consistently. Or take it out, if you don't care for it. I often find that I don't know exactly what's going to motivate a character or until halfway through a story, and then something clicks and I go

[lassarina]

Thank you :) That's very kind of you to say.

I do a lot of wandering through stories and then having bursts of inspiration, usually sparked by discussing something with celeloriel, but I often look around fandom and go "Wow, so-and-so is so good at this" and then I feel bad and hide in my corner because my writing is not so shiny.

[laylah]

Oh, man, me too. There are a few people that I read who just make me painfully envious, going, "I wish I handled emotional scenes that well," or "I wish I could plot like that," or even just "I wish I could eat her brain and absorb her talent."

I suspect most people -- except for the really self-absorbed narcissistic ones -- feel that way at least sometimes. *pets*

[lassarina]

:) Your icon is so appropriate for this conversation. XD

celeloriel is amazing at detail and brainstorming and planning, and also at making those wonderful logic points that I somehow manage to miss when I'm writing. It is why I cling to her whenever I need help with stories, because she fixes it.