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

[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.