Check-in post, days 12 & 13 + Weekly beta-seeking/snippet-posting/general chatter

[lola_mento]

Long time no seeing you. (Yesterday was one of Those Days when nothing gets ever done, including posts.)

Making any progress lately? Feeling like murdering someone already? Got completely distracted from whatever you were doing? Wait, that's me.

Today's discussion subject: are you more of a plotter (someone who has to know beforehand how the story goes) or a pantser (someone who makes it up as they go)? Plotter or pantser? describes some different types of each. I've seen these terms mostly from pro-writing novelists, where it's used as a thing of outline-or-no-outline, but for fannish writing, a more general planning-or-no-planning works better, I think.

And! This is also the weekly post where you can:

-Make a request for a beta reader/someone to bounce ideas from/something else you may need

-Post a snippet of your WIP

-Chat about anything else

Comments

[lola_mento]

I haven't done much in the way of fic writing this week and I failed almost all my sanity rolls, hence my lack of comments. Now I had sudden inspiration for one of the horribly, horribly late fanfics I still insist in finishing and posting somehow, so I'm feeling vaguely optimistic.

Re: plotter vs. pantser, I'm mostly a plotter, of the keeping-it-inside-their-heads kind. I need to have an idea of what I'm going to write about, or things don't go very well. But when I start writing, I often change my mind about what I wanted to do and have to rethink it. On the other hand, when I mostly improvise, like in my current never-ending WIP, I end up flailing a lot.

[raletha]

I failed almost all my sanity rolls

Weeks like this are hard (But what a great way to describe them!). I hope you're feeling a bit better. And even better to have fresh inspiration for old missed deadlines. I have a few of those lurking on my HD. I don't consider them abandoned, even though its been years for some of them. Oi.

Good luck with the never-ending WIP!

[crystal]

Isn't it funny how those late fics always seem to revive themselves?

I flail too, when I have to improvise. It always turns out remarkably stupid. Once I wrote an exchange fic and changed my plot four times in the week before it was due. Writing hell.

Hope your sanity rolls aren't failing anymore!

[jagnikjen]

*hugs*

I hope the coming week goes better for you!

[dragovianknight]

I currently hate the fandom I'm writing in and all things associated with it. So this morning, I wrote drabbles for my OTHER fandoms.

[raletha]

That sounds dire. But yay for other fandom drabbles! A change is as good as a rest, as they say. :)

[crystal]

What fandom is this? *curious* And why the hate?

I heart drabbles. They allow me to write something without losing my sanity.

[jagnikjen]

Drabbles are fun and find them to be quite the challenge. (One I've failed at miserably recently.) ;P

[raletha]

The last two days I have actually managed to write. This is good! Time and energy had been in such short supply, but life seems to be easing up just a little -- just enough to get some solid creative brain time in!

Have written only about 250 words today so far (but I am still going!) and yesterday ~750 words.

Snippet? Kinda rough and mediocre, but it's the cleanest part of the current chapter I am writing. ^^;;


Gundam Wing :: Treize/Quatre :: warning for mention of underage sex

Quatre is studying my hand with his own, his fingers trailing up each of mine, lightly, carefully. Descending to stroke ticklishly across my palm. “You pilot MOBILE suits,” he says.

“I do.” I see no reason to lie about this. It is not uncommon knowledge, though nothing I care to advertise while I am on a diplomatic mission.

Quatre nods. “And you helped design the Leo prototype.”

“Yes, the Tallgeese,” I say, giving Quatre its true name.

“Tallgeese,” Quatre murmurs, “It's beautiful.” I am surprised. It's a different aspect of Quatre, one I had not seen before: an admiration of the machines of War. He and I may not be so different after all.

“It's good when someone sees that,” I say. “It's more than a MOBILE suit, it's an ideal.”

“An ideal?”

“Of the proper conduct of war. Of who a warrior should be.” I stretch beside him, and prop myself up on my elbow. Conversations of war in the afterglow are an old comfort, one I have not enjoyed since Zechs.

As far as being a plotter or a pantser, I used to be a total pantser, but I have been exercising my plotter muscles so I can achieve longer, cohesive, and well structured stories. I am now something of a hybrid (KP or BP according to the linked article). I plan out the major points of my story, but let myself find my own my way between them as I write. It seems to be working out okay, kinda like playing connect the dots with artistic license. It seems to have the advantages of both approaches for me.

I also tend to write my scenes out of sequence. I struggle to write linearly. So even when I was only pantsing, I would get, not so much an outline, but a rough sketch of my story long before I finished it.

Hope everyone has had a great week!

[jagnikjen]

Awesome number of words you have there--great job, keep it going.

And that was a lovely little snippet. Thanks for sharing.

Beta request -- White Collar

[dragonfly]

So currently, I owe:

An Odyssey 5 fic for Queensland flood relief (begun but not finished)
A Blood Ties fic for Help-Japan
A Highlander long!fic for Help-Japan
Oh, and my writers' group have all agreed we would each write an original short story by the end of the month to submit to Glimmer Train (!)

So, of course, I'm working on a White Collar story. ::eyeroll:: Muse, why so perverse?

I could use a beta for the White Collar story. I've used flashbacks heavily, not to anything we saw in the show, but to earlier events relevant to the story, so what I really need is someone to tell me where it gets confusing. Because I'm sure it does.

Here's a snippet from my Odyssey 5 WIP. It's a bodyswapping fic.

Sarah thought she must have found her seat while the kleig lights blinded her, but when her eyes adjusted the lights inexplicably faded and it was not the newsdesk she was seated at. Her hands gripped the yoke of an aircraft. She froze in pure terror. Her gaze darted around; instruments, a man in astronaut uniform seated on her left, switches above her. There could be no doubt – she was flying the space shuttle. Her breathing came in swift pants as her body threw itself into overdrive; adrenaline, perspiration, pounding heart, but despite all of it she remained locked in position, unable to move. The astronaut to her left spoke. “Burn complete.”

Sarah’s eyes would move. She looked at the man at the corner of her vision. Her thoughts raced. She’d covered space and aviation news for years now (well, not now, actually. In the previous three years that hadn’t happened yet.) and she knew some things. She knew she was not sitting in the commander’s seat –- he was. Which meant he was the pilot in command and if he was deferring to her, she must be in training somehow. Also, she’d flown now on a space shuttle, and something here wasn’t right. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t –- smell right. “Angela?” he asked, his own gaze darting over the instruments with increasing urgency, “The burn is complete. The checklist?” Sure enough there was a checklist strapped to her thigh, but it wasn’t going to do her a bit of good. She was still reeling from the name he’d called her. Belatedly she realized that her hands squeezing the yoke in a deathgrip were white. White hands. Holy shit. Her vision began to gray at the edges. Hyperventilating, she realized. Oddly, her thoughts still worked rapidly. She’d seen pilots –- Chuck and Angela included –- speak a ritual that insured no one was ever uncertain about which pilot was flying. She swallowed, opened her mouth, and managed to say, “You have the aircraft.”

Re: Beta request -- White Collar

[raletha]

I can't offer beta services, but did want to send sympathy for the perverse muse problems. I am starting to think the only way to write the fic I want to write is to convince myself I'm actually trying to work on six different fics instead.

Odyssey 5 is in my Netflix queue! Your snippet is very visceral and frightening. I got a little breathless myself with the second paragraph. Nice work! Good luck with all the projects. ^_^

Re: Beta request -- White Collar

[crystal]

I know nothing about Odyssey 5, but that was well-written =)

Re: Beta request -- White Collar

[jagnikjen]

Thanks for sharing your snippet, quite interesting!

Re: Beta request -- White Collar

[dchan]

I would be up for doing a White Collar beta! White Collar is one of my main fandoms right now, so I'm very familiar with the characters. I'm also pretty decent grammar/spelling beta too, if I say so myself. (Despite my tenses being all over the place in my excepts, I do promise I can spot and fix all of that stuff in revision. :)) I'm also pretty good at confusing plot lines and I'm writing a fic where 1/3 of it happens pre-show so I should be able to help you out in pointing out places where you might be starting to lose people.

My email is protonsinthedark [at] gmail [dot] com and the best formats for me to beta in are either MS Word or Google Docs if you want to send what you've got over to me. :) I'll try to get back to it ASAP although it may take a couple days since my brain is still a bit fried from the car crash I was in yesterday (I'm not injured, thankfully, but the car is a complete loss.). Just let me know if you need it by a specific date and I do my best to make sure I can get you feedback by then even if I'm not able to pick through everything with a fine-toothed comb like I usually do.

[crystal]

I think I'm a bit of both. I tend to just accumulate ideas and then scramble them around until they fit in my head. If I'm really desperate I'll ask someone for a prompt and just run with it, trying to make it fit. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I've written tens of thousands of pages with no plotting, only to come up short halfway and have to abandon the project, or start over! XD So it definitely pays for me, I suppose, to plan everything out.

I have a birthday fic for a friend (Oniisama E/Rose of Versailles femslash crossover) that I want to write, and also a fandom auction fic that needs to be fulfilled -- it's a continuation of Saiyuki police AU drabbles I did for a timed writing community a while back. Both are exciting projects to work on after so long of no fandom writing at all, but I just feel like I have now writing energy right now.

Am looking forward to Saturday's IM session XD

[raletha]

It feels good to have the writing energy return, especially if it's been gone a while! It helps to have exciting projects. :D Best of luck to you with them.

As far as plotting goes, I too have wasted plenty of pages trying to write my way through a story concept without a plan. I don't know what methods you may use to plan, but I've found it's worth at least blocking out the major plot points of my story with a good brainstorm about the premise, theme, and characters. A good method -- for me at least -- is to keep asking myself 'what if' questions about my premise. Plot elements kind of snowball from there.

[littlebutfierce]

Sooooo tired today--typical me on a Friday. Did some unexciting snippets for my 750 Words for today, but nothing else. I feel like this week has hardly contained any fic-writing at all for me, so I'm hoping the writing session tomorrow will get me back on track a little; I kind of miss feeling really stuck into a particular fic!

I'm a little bit of a plotter & a little bit of a pantser, but given that I don't write longfic, this has less impact than it might.

[raletha]

I tend to think anything is better than nothing when it comes to writing, but it is even better when you can get into that deep groove with a story.

I think you're right about length. I was fine pantsing my way through stories of up to ~10K words and thought my method was okay. It was falling flat on my face with a longer story (A WIP I was posting while pantsing had readers asking for more, and I totally stalled on it at ~25K. It's been years since I updated. It blew my writing confidence into smithereens.) that finally got me thinking seriously about narrative structure and the necessity of planning.

I hope you have a relaxing weekend with some good writing time!

[lacerta]

With my bigbang, I'm pretty much exactly where I was two weeks ago. Which is not good. (And rather embarrassing because I've had to send this mess to my artist. I'm so sorry, artist!) Otoh, I guess taking time off a rough draft helps to get some distance and see not only the plot holes a little clearer, but also the parts that do work as they stand. I've peeked at some parts through my fingers today and luckily it's not all as bad as I feared.

Still, I'm feeling a bit hang-wringy over my own writing recently, especially re my capabilities of putting together a structure that carries such a long fic (long for me, that is).

[jagnikjen]

Sorry to hear about your fic and the not writing.

I hope you can get up and running again soon.

[dchan]

Most of what I've written before has been vignettes in the 1-2k range, so there isn't a lot of plotting involved, really. I sort of decide the theme of the stor and let the characters run from there.

For longer, more plotty pieces I have a tendency to fall mostly in the KP category, but that actually doesn't describe all of the prep work I do because I have a tendency to obsessively worldbuild and/or research. I may end up having a single page bullet list of all of the basic plot outline, and then five or six pages of notes on setting and even what the characters are wearing in each scene and huge long character profiles (if I am writing something with original characters I haven't worked with before). I spend a lot of time building up the setting and getting familiar with the way the characters think, and then I sort of let them run from there.

On the writing front, I got into a car crash this morning and totalled my car, so my writingbrain is shot for the next few days at least. I think I'm going to try to do some canon review and/or playlist building in the meantime to keep my brain primed until I start feeling coherent again.

[jagnikjen]

Oh my goodness, I hope you are okay...(I'm assuming you are, then, since you're here posting.) Definitely take it easy and recover from that.

[curuchamion]

I am such a pantser. I used to think that was because I wrote tiny pieces of fic too short to plot - I'd start with a single mental "snapshot" of an important moment in the story and build the intro/ending framework around it, most times - but now that I'm writing a 50k-word novel where I started with a few character ideas and a general setting, I guess I've got to accept it. *g*

(I do like it. My biggest talent in fiction writing is letting my characters run away with me... and with 50,000 words, 35 years, and the entire North American continent to do it in, BOY, are they ever running away! *still loves MCs* I can't imagine having this ride be any other way.)

I plan, of course, but not about the plot. I'll do a lot of jotting, whenever I'm stuck or even when I'm not, about my characters - I'll sit down and scribble "okay, somebody did such and such. Who? It feels like Mort. Why? What does that say about him? How does it jibe with the other things I know about him?" Etc. I'll answer the questions as I think of answers, and wind up with a couple pages of typed jottings that give me a clearer picture of my character. The plot grows out of that information, with a whole lot of input from my subconscious.

[raletha]

Those kind of snapshots are often the way my stories start, too: some vivid image, emotion, or atmosphere I want to capture and develop.

Asking those kind of questions really does help develop plot points, and it does it organically, too, which works really well for me, too. I don't like imposing an arbitrary plot on my characters and setting; I like it to flow more naturally from that starting concept.

Hope the 50K is going well! *shakes pom poms*

[snowynight]

I haven't done much about writing in this week. Fail. Sigh.

In some way I'm a mix. I need to know the beginning and ending when I write. But the middle? I make it up on the go.

[raletha]

I can rarely write all of the middle of my story until I have both the beginning and the ending written. Heck, sometimes I start with the ending.

Good luck with writing this coming week!

[glitteryv]

This is me hanging my head in shame for not checking in during this past week. One too many social commitments ate up on my online time.

That said, I've added 3,020 new words over the course of this week (so far) so, yays?

As for today's question, I've been a plotter since back when I first started writing fics. While I might not have the exact> story developed in my mind before I sit down to write, I *do* know what are some of the main scenes I want to tackle. Most of the time, I also know what the ending will be.

I know that some writers find the planning or outlining way of ficwriting somewhat boring, but it works for me most of the time.

Have an unbetaed snippet from what I'm working for this round (a due South/Bandom spy!verse fic):

It was early enough that no one else was at the track. This solitude gave him the opportunity to think about the day ahead. There were the Ostrava, Bangladesh and Barranquilla debriefs, a conference call with CIS and the analytical meeting for this week’s missions. He would be lucky if he had enough time to get something to eat before three.

While occasionally thankful for his everyday routine—consisting of morning workout, meeting after meeting and catching up on his western novels once home (if he wasn’t too tired)—there were days he longed to be out in the world. Chasing after Rogues like Fraser, Kowalski or Jill. Or working alongside Smithbauer, Franklin and Sherry in the Shadow division.

"Sometimes," Renfield thought as he pushed his body into a full out run, "I’m less an Elite Operative than a paper pusher."

[jagnikjen]

3020 new words is fantastic! Keep it going. :)

[mystiri_1]

I wrote a 3k fic last week without ever stopping to think about what I was writing once, or if I even had a plot, so I'd have to be a pantser. Thinking too hard about it only seems to get me stuck.

Yeterday I left my current flash drive behind, and so couldn't work on current WIPs. But I had an old one, so I checked that out and found many unfinished fics and saved prompt lists from various challenge comms. I started a new AU, and found an old one I really need to finish. On the whole, not bad. At 41% of my monthly goal - 8256/20k.

[jagnikjen]

Awesome job with your word count. :) Keep it up!

[chibifukurou]

I'm some mix of a plotter and a pantser.

I originally start out with a plot, ending, outline,etc. (So I guess that makes me a BP plotter.)

Then I start writing and let the inspiration take me, and in most cases I end up with a completely different story than I'd first planned. Sometimes for better sometimes for worse.

[raletha]

The hybrid approach works well for me too. I like being surprised by my stories, but I don't like getting lost with them! :)

[jagnikjen]

For me the last two days have been mostly a bust (yesterday by choice).

Thursday I tried, but I had no inspiration for much anything old or new. But then I was getting my kid read for his band trip this weekend and attending their dress rehearsal.

Then last minute Thursday night I decided to take a road trip Friday--to see my kid (and the rest of the band) play on the south steps of the Texas State Capitol Building. That's a 3.5 hour drive each way. So my daughter and I hopped in the car yesterday morning and zoomed down to Austin, checked out the Texas State History Museum and the headed over to the capitol building and watched the performance. After sending the kids on their way on the next leg of their trip, my daughter and I headed homeward with a pit stop in Pflugerville, Texas to try to find the high school.

Any fans of Friday Night Lights out there??? They filmed many/most of the Dillon Panthers football scenes at the Pflugerville HS football stadium.

Anyway, we found it easily and I got a couple of pictures and we headed home.

After that, I got back in the car to meet some friends for an annual JAG (anyone remember that TV show?) meet. There will be little/no writing for me today either as JAG fan meet activities continue later this afternoon.

Panster vs. plotter--I tried to be a plotter for a long time, but could never pull it off. I'm about 85% panster and 15% plotter. Luckily most of my fic are short so it's not a big deal. My Robin Hood epic started with a combination of two things: a premise from an unfinished fic I read that left the fandom hanging after like three chapters. From there, it was a 'what if this happened'? I had made some notes in the beginning and then I started writing. I was imagining about a dozen or so chapters and what I ended up with was like thirty-eight installments (thirty-six regular chapters, one bonus chapter, and an epilogue). Would an outline have helped me? Probably, but I discovered (like many of my panster friends have said) if I outline and know what's going to happen then I lose interest and have no need to write the story since I already know how its going to end. :(

And here's a snippet of an HP fic, not yet posted but should be soon:

“What the bloody hell?”

Ginny blinked and sat up, rubbing her eyes. Why was Ron in the girls dorm and how had he breached the sliding staircase?

“What's your problem, Ron?” asked Harry with a sleepy voice.

Ginny's stomach dropped.

Oh, no. . . .

“My problem? What's my problem?

“My little sister's in your bed, mate! My thirteen-year-old sister. That's my bleeding problem.”

Harry looked over at her, squinting. “Oh. Good morning, Ginny.”

Though she felt the blush rush from her toes to her hair, she followed his lead and said, “Morning, Harry.”

By this time, Dean, Seamus, and Neville had been roused, and they stood like a wall behind Ron looking down at her and Harry. Dean and Seamus exchanged grins.

“Way to go, Harry,” offered Dean.

Harry smiled, but she saw his cheeks pinken.

Ron turned on Dean. “Not 'way to go, Harry',” he bellowed, grabbing a fistful of Dean's pajama shirt, “that's my sister. You say one word about this and I'll send Fred and George after you.”

That threat sobered Dean right up, and the smile slid from Seamus's face as well.

Neville just stood there the whole time looking uncertain.

[raletha]

if I outline and know what's going to happen then I lose interest and have no need to write the story since I already know how its going to end.

I totally get this too. I can't outline, but I am learning to plan in a way that doesn't suck all the juice from my interest in writing longer stories. I've found a method that leaves me feeling more 'I can't wait to write that scene!' instead of 'oh, that scene'. I think plans work best for me if I have intentions for the scene planned (like, x needs to happen at this point in the story somehow) but not necessarily the specific details (p, d, and q in this scene, therefore x). That way I can still have fun with the somehow, but the intention keeps me on track. At least I think this is how it is working for me these days. ^^;;

Your snippet is fun! I should probably feel sorry for Ron, but I don't. XD