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

[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. :)