Snowflake Challenge #8

[annavere]

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

YES. MY TIME HAS COME.

I am the polar opposite of a pantser. It starts with a craving for a fic I want to read, one which seems like it should exist, and (after confirming that it has not in fact been written yet), I write the synopsis for what it would be like. This grows into a full outline, scene by scene. Most of my unfinished projects are in outline form, with a few fragments of actual narrative (usually dramatic bits that would go in a trailer). Segue lines also tend to get written early on, connecting the pieces as I begin to fill in all the details, pulling it from the ether and making it concrete. It's like assembling a puzzle, with the edges quickly sorted out. Once I have my parameters, this leaves the vast empty space which has to be filled in, generally with a few missing pieces that I lack the skill to shape.

Dialogue tends to come together fast, because I can listen for it. I used to write dialogue first, like a play script, and then start filling in the descriptive material around it, but eventually I gained enough skill with narrative that it's now a toss-up, varying by scene and conversational depth. Very often I will be left with a nearly complete scene that just has a gap between Finished Dialogue A and Finished Dialogue B. Sometimes I will cheat and insert an entire cut scene just to avoid having to come up with some rational way to connect the two (this is also a great reason to have multiple points of view!).

Yes, most of my cheat codes actually inflate the word count rather than the opposite. So while I am feeling clever for my problem solving, I am in fact just making more work for myself.

As the writing gets well under way, I do a lot of mental revisions. I think about how the story appears from the perspective of each character, whether they get a viewpoint or not, to make sure their choices feel rational and in keeping. I grill myself relentlessly about canon, looking for little nods I can slip in. I like plot, but usually come up with one based on "wow, awesome." Then I am stuck having to justify it, having to ask the tough questions about action scenes, travel logistics, timeframes and all the other headaches which must be addressed. "But how?" is a frequent question. I usually am able to save the core premise I started with, but the whys and wherefores will sometimes drastically shift.

Themes are also important to identify early on. If I do that correctly, the ending becomes obvious, even if all the details need ironing out.

It takes me a long time to finish my first draft. I don't write in a linear fashion, hopscotching around to whichever part of the document I can most easily work on. This allows me to more easily insert foreshadowing, or even add in whole subplots, but it also means I generally feel like I'm both making huge progress, and none whatsoever. And while I'm slowly piecing it all together, whatever portions are closer to finished get edited, so by the time I finally have all the connective sentences strung together, without a single "recap for later," I'll be on the first draft of three sticky scenes, and all the way at the twelfth or twentieth draft of the rest.

Then comes the gingerbread. Reading over the whole story, or chapter, for pacing. Realizing I have three stubby sentences that would flow a lot better if reworded into one. Making the prose at least somewhat pretty. Noticing a total lack of useful scene setting and adding in some landscape description. Noticing that two paragraphs would make more dramatic sense reversed. Annihilating repetition (the only part of this process which ever makes the wordcount decrease, but too late; always far too late).

About the time I hate the sight of what I started out longing to read, and can no longer come up with a single thing to adjust, I figure it's ready to post! Or send to beta, when I have one. ♥

Then I get the last-second eureka moment where I realize there was a better way to tell the story and do significant rewrites, or add some bit of banter that puts the whole thing over the top. Then I hit post or send to beta, thoroughly questioning all my life choices and deciding it was probably the worst thing I have written. This feeling lasts for somewhere around a week, while my brain recovers.

Then I dig out another outline to begin assembling into a fic, and start feeling proud of the one I just finished. And so the process begins again.

Unless it's a gift fic. For those, the parameters shift a little because of inevitable time limits. I sift the requests for something I can do fairly easily, so in that case it's less constructing a puzzle and more frantically weeding. Anything at all that gives me too much trouble gets unceremoniously yanked out of the ground. I have not yet had significant trouble coming up with an idea (I'm fast at ideas), but once that's settled, gift fic are written in a permanent panic, day one onward, because I know I'm slow.

If there's one thing I would love to be able to learn, it's to write in a timely fashion. My free writing software does not include word counters or timers, but I'm sure my words a minute are appalling. And it's frustrating, because once I have that first draft, it makes the editing easier (you know, when there's actually something to edit all the way through).

Anyway, thank you, Snowflake Challenge, for letting me write so indulgently about writing.

Comments

[teratornis]

This is so fascinating to me. Outlines and planning my writing ahead of time is something I have always struggled with immensely, even for academic writing. I always absolutely hated research papers because it required a level of planning my work that I just couldn't get my head around. I love your description of it being like filling in the edges and then center of a puzzle, that's a neat way to put it.

Some of it sounds almost like painting or sketching, to me. Usually in that you start with the general shapes, and then begin to focus in on the details of different sections, moving around depending on what's needed where. And then sometimes you decide a whole big chunk isn't quite right and just paint over it completely.

This was great fun to read about!

[annavere]

How interesting! If I write like a painter, this might go a long way toward explaining why my results are so slow. Gotta write like a writer. It is always amazing to me when Shortcuts comes around, and I read all these poignant, pointed, precise stories, some of which are multi chapter, and then I see author commentaries indicating that they knocked these impressive works out in two weeks before deadline. That's like, black belt levels of skill. :D

Truly, I would not recommend my painterly puzzle method to anyone. Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck with it!

[scribblemoose]

"Then I get the last-second eureka moment where I realize there was a better way to tell the story and do significant rewrites, or add some bit of banter that puts the whole thing over the top"

Ah, that sounds very familiar!

[annavere]

It's the really fun moments like those which make the whole process so addictive!