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

[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.

[raletha]

Having that insight time off gives you with a draft is valuable, and there's really no substitute for that time. if the time off has helped the story, then I'd say it counts as time well spent! :D

Long fics are very hard for me too. I can't remember who I've rec'ed this book to in the comm, but I'll give it another shout out since, despite its tendency to be repetitive and to spend too much time selling itself, it has some damned good & useful tips: Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, who also has a blog. It changed the way I approach structure and plot more than any other method I've tried. It feels really organic to me and not like I'm trying to bend elements of my story into artificially imposed plot points or deploy random plot devices to increase tension -- or whatever. It's given me back the confidence to attempt longer projects, too. HTH!

[lacerta]

Thank you, that's a much appreciated link. I hadn't seen the book mentioned before.