WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 31 -- Saturday

[linaewen]

It's Saturday!  What kind of a writing day has it been today?

•     I thought about my fic once or twice
•     I wrote
•     I did some planning and/or research
•     I edited
•     I've sent my fic off to my beta
•     I posted today!
•     I'm taking a break
•     I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Today is the day for general chatting/snippet-posting/beta-seeking activities. Do you have a snippet you'd like to share or a link to one of your pieces of writing? Do you have a question that needs answering? Do you need help with something that's giving you trouble?  Do you need a place to vent and complain? Leave a comment & we'll see what we can do to help you!

Comments

[graychalk]

I took a break today and did some thinking instead, and I'm also considering on participating in Camp NaNo for July.

I don't have a problem I need help with per se, but I've been wondering about short fic vs long fic... and thinking about the differences in approach, both in planning and writing style. I'm curious about how you all approach them and whether you feel that your own writing style differs when you write a long fic as opposed to a short one. Because I've been writing so much more short stuff (whereas I used to write only long fic), I feel like I've improved a lot in writing short stories... but have perhaps lost touch with how to write long fic. It's a bit of a weird revelation. :\

[linaewen]

In the past I've been very much a long fic person, as well, but the past year maybe, I've been doing a lot of short stories. I used to have trouble keeping it short, especially when there was a word count restriction, but I've improved with that. The main thing I have noticed that differs in the short pieces is much more conversation and less description. That is working its way into my longer work now, as well. Not a bad thing, perhaps, but I do think I have to make sure I don't become lax with description in the longer works, where I have the luxury of expanding on something as much as I want to! I still plan the same way, for both long and short -- I'm big on research and outlines, so in one sense, all my short stories could become long if I wanted them, too, because I've got the notes for it. ;-)

[graychalk]

Yes, I've sort of worked my way through something similar as well! One thing I definitely noticed about my writing is the way my descriptions have changed ever since I started on short stories. Not so much that there's more dialogue, but that the descriptions are shrunk down to the very minimum until sometimes, there isn't any. I don't particularly think it's a bad thing either, because if there's one thing I learned, it's cutting down on verbosity - and that can certainly be a good thing.

Now, I guess I'm at the stage where I'm trying to find a happy medium - to, like you said, make sure I don't become lax with description in longer work... but it's an odd struggle too, because when I try to put in more description, it keeps feeling like there's too much fluff now. *scratches head* That happy medium is still eluding me, hence all this thought, I suppose.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and work process on this. It really helps sort my own thoughts out. :)