WIP Challenge Day 1, Sunday

[jagnikjen]

Happy New Year to you all.

How y'all are doing with your new challenge...

Today, I have/plan to:

~ written/write
~ edited/edit
~ beta read
~ posted/post
~ done nothing and don't plan to--I'm still partying or I'm recuperating :)

Discussion topic...

Are you good at plotting? Can you come up with enough conflict to really challenge your characters and create a decent lengthed story? If so, how, how, how do you do it?? Is the fandom/are the fandoms you write for conducive to good plots?

Or do you prefer shorter one-shots, PWPs, and missing scene type fics?

Comments

[jagnikjen]

Yesterday, I did nothing, though I wasn't actually partying.

Today, I have the house to myself, so I am hoping to take a look at my challenge fic and see where I stand.

As for plotting, I suck. I'd love to write a good, juicy story with an interesting plot and lots of appropriate conflict, but I am completely challenged in that area. I'm okay at the short one-shots, PWPs, and missing scenes, but I really wish I were better at the plotting. My goal this year is to take some online writing classes to address that.

How about you?

[lacygrey]

Happy New Year!

I don't think you missed a day - as lilly_c did yesterday - although I've been a little confused about what day it actually is lately.

Ive certainly come to recognise the differences between short fics and longer, more complex, fics. The most important of these being time investment. I like complexity, but I'm not sure that I can deliver because of the amount of work involved.

Usually my ideas come from imagined 'sticky' situations, i.e., its the conflict that makes me want to write it in the first place, though what I consider to be a conflict is probably fairly mild.

[crowdog66]

Yesterday: worked, so nothing done on the writing front.

Today: wrote ~2360 words on Chapter 4 of "Ovum", and now must get down to paying work, so I'm unlikely to do more on the challenge today. (What I've written today can be found here if anyone's interested.)

I've been told that I'm excellent at plotting, and of course it's ultimately the readers who are in a position to judge such things. I've written stories as short as ~60 words and as long as ~140,000 words (that one's part of the WIP challenge this month), and the longer one has garnered some fairly rave reviews. To be honest I'm not sure how I do it: a lot of the plotting happens subconsciously, and comes to the surface when it's ready to be written. And I think that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is eminently suited to good, meaty, character-driven plots with plenty of sexual and political tension. :)

[lacygrey]

Where are you looking to do online classes? Do you know yet? I did a couple with Writer's Digest last year. The course materials and exercises were interesting but they suffered from low class size.

[jagnikjen]

Ooohhh...DS9 is my favorite of the Star Trek series.

[jagnikjen]

OMG, I am totally confused as to what day it is!! I have sorted my post to accurately reflect/correct my "duh" moment. Thanks. :)

[jagnikjen]

Well, I am a basic member at Savvy Authors (www.savvyauthors.com) and they offer classes all the time. I am also a member of Romance Writers of America (www.rwanational.org) and many of the RWA chapters offer classes as well.

I may pop over to Writers Digest then. Seeing as how I'm looking for classes on a specific area, finding other venues would be helpful.

[haruka]

I'm in the middle of writing, and hope later to be posting. :)

I'm terrible at plotting. I usually don't even try, I just start writing and whatever happens, happens.

[talibusorabat]

I haven't done any writing in days... not on the fanfic, at least. I've been busy working on an original project and just dealing with life things. I doubt I'll do any writing today, but tomorrow! Tomorrow I shall.

As for plotting... I'm pretty good at it in my original writing, but not really in my fanfic. I mostly write little snapshot fics. The one I'm working on now is a longer, more plotty piece, and I'm finding that a challenge. Fun, but a challenge.

[bay_alexison]

Yesterday I was distracted with New Years stuff and some errands, so I didn't get much writing done saved for a couple edits I decided to look over for any POV slip-ups. Today I'm considering writing another scene for my Big Bang I had been thinking about for a while that will reflect some of the changes that had been mentioned off-screen. I want to look over some of the stuff I had put in the story first so that everything's consistent, so we'll see.

I have been told I'm very good with plotting. I too not sure how exactly I did it, that just happens. Pretty much I have ideas what will happen in the beginning, end, and a couple things in the middle. Otherwise I come up with stuff in the middle on the fly and then try to get everything connected with one another. Sometimes if something I thought of before isn't working with the plot, I set that aside for now just incase I then thought of where to put that idea to use.

[sharpiefan]

I have actually done some writing, something more than open Word, open a doc and stare at the screen before clicking away and procrastinating by doing stuff to squash the fact I feel guilty by not writing.

(OK, I started it last night, but it was after midnight, so it counts.) About 780 words, which isn't halfway through telling the story I want to tell.

This is Really Good for me - I am writing again! 2012 is going to be great if I can keep on doing this writing malarkey!

Discussion...

I'm not fantastic at plotting. I used to be able to take a one-word prompt and spin a story from it, but lately I've needed more than a word, more than the germ of an idea. I've needed a really meaty idea, a bit of a scene, something I can hang onto.

I mostly write one-shots and missing scenes. My only finished multi-part fic was basically retelling a story already seen on screen from the POV of an original character caught up in it - no, I am not talking a Mary-sue self-insert type. I'm talking a bit more what the Star Wars Extended Universe has done: Taken a minor character seen on screen once and fleshing him out, showing known events as he saw them. It's rather fun, if you've never done it!

[talibusorabat]

Oooh, that does sound like fun! What fandom was it for?

[littlebutfierce]

Wrote just over 1k today -- still trying out the various prompts my yuri_challenge recipient gave in their signup. I'm not sure the one I'm working on will go anywhere, but I won't know until I poke at it a little more.

I'm rubbish at plotting! I mostly do feeeeelings & slice of life & moments. Most of the plots I have done tend to be v. discrete: a baseball game, or someone gets kidnapped. It's easy to figure out where the plot begins & ends. I have a series I'm working on now that will require even more plot for the 3rd installment, &... this might have something to do w/it not being finished or posted yet. >_

[sharpiefan]

The multi-part thing? It's Age of Sail fandom - Hornblower, in fact. If you're even vaguely interested, Part One is here. (Each part links to the next, no need to go hunting for links.)

[sharpiefan]

Mine too! :D

(Though I never was involved in the fandom, and haven't watched it for years. :D I really ought to see if I can get back into it.)

[proseac]

I'm new here *waves* and looking forward to the accountability this community provides.

Right now I'm working on my daily drabble, a rather insane project I took up on July 1, 2011. It's much more time-consuming than it sounds because it includes watching an hour-long TV episode, every single day, (and I usually watch it twice), in addition to writing the darned thing. I stick to the strict 100-word definition of a drabble. My daily check-ins will probably be pretty much the same until this project is completed around the beginning of February, so pretty boring...

As for plotting, I seem to have a knack for it. It's an evolutionary process for me - I start out with a single over-arching idea, and as I write, additional complexities and twists come to mind and I rework the story arcs as I go along. The NCIS fandom is particularly well-suited to this kind of writing, because of the case/procedural element that can be tied in nicely with situations that generate character development. I am partial to the case-fic genre because it provides so much more 'meat' to a story and it's much less 'fan-girly' and gratuitous. Oh my, that sounded pompous, didn't it? I only mean that in terms of what I know my own writing would be like if I didn't have the case element added to it.

I think one-shots, tags etc. have their place too, and it's fun to try writing stories of different lengths because it stretches you as a writer. In many ways, for me at least, the shorter stuff is harder because you have to jam your entire arc into fewer words and still capture the reader's imagination with your language. And of course the drabble format is another type of challenge again - they're the haiku of prose. XD

[pinstripefedora]

I managed a little editing, but other than that, not much happened today I'm afraid. There has been a parade of relatives at my house today.

Plotting is both a strength and a weakness of mine, in that I love it and am always thinking of new twists and further scenarios to work out... to the point that I can go really, really overboard. I need to find a balance between "cracky one-shot with no plot" and "ten million word epic," because it seems like those are the only two writing modes I have.

I can also get into trouble because I tend to outline my stories by figuring out all of the major plot points, but I generally don't have much of a plan for what happens between those plot points at all, so what happens is that I either get stuck and give up writing that story forever, or I just go off in whatever direction I feel like and the story goes way off the rails. I should probably get better at working out those little "how they get from point A to point B" parts, but... I don't know. My brain always shuts down when I try.

[talibusorabat]

Cool, thanks! :D

[jagnikjen]

Also great job on your word count. I love when the words just flow like that. :)

[jagnikjen]

Were you able to post??

[jagnikjen]

Sorry to hear you haven't been able to write fanfic, but an original project is good too. :) I hope you can get some fanfic writing in today. :)

[jagnikjen]

Any little bit of writing or editing is better than none.

I wish I could plot like that.

[haruka]

Yes, 600 words worth. :D

[jagnikjen]

Yay for getting back to writing. May 2012 bring you many, many words!

[jagnikjen]

1K is still pretty good-- :)

[jagnikjen]

Welcome!!

What fandom's your daily drabble in?

[jagnikjen]

A little editing is better than nothing, right??

I wish I had the "ten million word epic" problem. :)

[proseac]

It's NCIS. They're all linked in my Master post at the top of my journal.

I didn't find out about the show until late in season 6, so eventually I bought all the DVD's and this was a way for me to get caught up on all the previous episodes, in sequence, while giving me a reason to write every day. For some stupid reason the reruns were being shown all out of order and I was getting very confused! LOL I'm all the way up to the middle of season 8 now, and I've really enjoyed the process. :)

[proseac]

Oh, I can relate to your "balance" problem. I started a story last year that was supposed to be 10 chapters, and it ended up at 26!

[talibusorabat]

Not a lot, but I did get some. :D