WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 23 -- Thursday

[linaewen]

It's Thursday and that means the weekend is almost here!  I hope it's been a good day for you, whether you got any writing done or not.  Here's the thought-provoking quote for the day:

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows.
The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
~~ Ernest Hemingway

How did your writing go today?

• I actually wrote
• I did research
• I did editing
• I posted
• I took a break
• I'm still staring at the page trying get started
• I had too much Real Life stuff to deal with and couldn't think about writing

For discussion:  I have found it true that a lot of the research I do to create a body of knowledge about what I am writing doesn't always get used when I actually start writing, yet the fact that I researched and know the subject matter still seems to give me a foundation which is somehow revealed in the story, even if I'm not writing about it in detail.  That's why I chose the above quote for today!  Do you find this to be true as well, or not?  Are details important for you to include when you write or are they not so important?

Comments

[insignia]

I wrote about 600 words of backstory for my Princess Tutu fic! Other than that, the day hasn't been great. But tomorrow will be better.

[crowdog66]

I wrote and posted a new chapter of "Visitations", a Garak/Bashir dom/sub story I started about six months ago and have been criminally negligent about updating. So today the fans got a treat. :)

I find your observation about the research iceberg to be utterly true. Even if I don't show all the details in the fic, the underlying structure of facts holds up the edifice.

[crowdog66]

Oops! Forgot to note today's word count, about 1500 words.

[roane]

Haven't written yet, but I'm about to, if I can settle my brain down from good RL stuff. I had a small plot breakthrough in my PWP last night (is that even possible), and the things that were kind of squicking me out now make sense.

Details are big for me, wanting to find the right telling detail, and sometimes that takes a lot of research. Which I kinda hate. My research mostly involves fact-checking. If it's much beyond that, I'll probably write about something else. Lazy!

[sharpiefan]

I didn't write because I got swamped my RL and ended up editing a post I made ages back wherein I've given pretty much all of my (minor) characters faces (if my characters are NPCs in a role-play game, they just all got faces! And names. I scare myself sometimes!)

I like having the knowledge because then it can show through that you know what you're writing about... but if you didn't have that research, then it'd be obvious you don't know what you're writing about.

After all, who write fic in a fandom they don't know anything about at all?

[bay_alexison]

Slowly editing my Big Bang. Still groaning over trying to make the main character less whiny, but it's getting a bit easier now haha. Will do more tonight after dinner.

I try to put as much detail as I can to show I put some thought into the story, but there might be times where I'm unable to fit all of it into the plot and that's okay.

[asecretchord]

I wrote 1300+ words today, but now I don't know how to get from here to.......there. There's a piece missing and I'm not yet sure what it looks like. I might just jump forward and come back to it later.

[pinstripefedora]

I don't know what's going on, but these past few days writing's been like pulling teeth. I finally managed to push out about another fifty or sixty words or so. The only thing keeping me going right now is knowing that every word I write now is one less I have to write later.

And oh man I have Thoughts(TM) about the discussion question and how it is so totally true, but my brain is so far gone right now that there's no hope of being able to communicate them in a way that makes any sense at all, so I guess I'm going to abstain tonight. Suffice it to say: I have thoughts! And they basically agree!