Flah. Bullshit.
Apr. 8th, 2009 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evilbeejLook through any window, yeah, what do you see? The issue I've got with just writing until words come out and there are words that other people don't have to look at because they're bullshit, just writing for the sake of it, until it doesn't suck anymore, is that I have the words of so many other people already in my head. They fall out. They drape themselves across my field of vision and then I can't see what I'm trying to think about long enough to actually set it down. Borrowed thoughts.
On PI, there was a lot of that going on as a posing style. On MU, too. Different places, that was cool, that was good. That was acceptable. Narration through reference. It's a valid style. It's a valid way of communication. Hell, if Bumblebee could get away with it instead of actually *talking* in the Michael Bay TF movie, I should be able to get away with it, too.
But it's fucking *lazy*. I need to be able to put in the *atmosphere* I'm looking for, I need to be able to put down the dialogue, the actual useful narration, the actions, the words. I need, I think, to try my hand at scripting for a while. Television, comic book. Purely visual. The most I'd be describing is body language, positioning, blocking. Show, don't tell. Show, don't refer. Show, don't hand in a Works Cited page.
I can talk and talk and talk out loud, but writing--
--I'm better than I was. I can *roleplay* after all. I'm good. Some days I'm better than others. Sleeping helps. Red Bull helps. I'd like more focus because I miss being able to write or RP with music on, and right now, I can't. It cuts in too much. Too much information, info overload, all the input has the same value, it's incredibly hard to filter it and sort it. Like the people at work learning what a terrifically bad idea it is to try and talk to me while I'm on the phone. Ahahaha no don't. I bite.
Why is it harder to write than it is to RP? Lack of a sounding board, for one. Responsible for more than one character, for another. Responsible for the multiple parts of an interaction. Responsible for a plot. I've had this discussion so many times. I've been told a plot is just coherent movement from one part to the next, something where something happens. It can be completely character based. That should be easy, but it's not. I have to have something for them to react *to*. I keep feeling like my hands are tied. I've been told that I -do- have ideas, I do have things that would make great plots, but I can't think of what to actually *do* with them.
I wish I had a goddamn ATTENTION SPAN. Why is it so hard to RP? Tired, unfocused, distracted, blah blah blah. Sometimes I can sit down and actually write something, mostly I can't. Right now I'm just writing this and bitching and it's not creative writing but at least it's writing. Words in my head, now on the screen. Hurray.
On PI, there was a lot of that going on as a posing style. On MU, too. Different places, that was cool, that was good. That was acceptable. Narration through reference. It's a valid style. It's a valid way of communication. Hell, if Bumblebee could get away with it instead of actually *talking* in the Michael Bay TF movie, I should be able to get away with it, too.
But it's fucking *lazy*. I need to be able to put in the *atmosphere* I'm looking for, I need to be able to put down the dialogue, the actual useful narration, the actions, the words. I need, I think, to try my hand at scripting for a while. Television, comic book. Purely visual. The most I'd be describing is body language, positioning, blocking. Show, don't tell. Show, don't refer. Show, don't hand in a Works Cited page.
I can talk and talk and talk out loud, but writing--
--I'm better than I was. I can *roleplay* after all. I'm good. Some days I'm better than others. Sleeping helps. Red Bull helps. I'd like more focus because I miss being able to write or RP with music on, and right now, I can't. It cuts in too much. Too much information, info overload, all the input has the same value, it's incredibly hard to filter it and sort it. Like the people at work learning what a terrifically bad idea it is to try and talk to me while I'm on the phone. Ahahaha no don't. I bite.
Why is it harder to write than it is to RP? Lack of a sounding board, for one. Responsible for more than one character, for another. Responsible for the multiple parts of an interaction. Responsible for a plot. I've had this discussion so many times. I've been told a plot is just coherent movement from one part to the next, something where something happens. It can be completely character based. That should be easy, but it's not. I have to have something for them to react *to*. I keep feeling like my hands are tied. I've been told that I -do- have ideas, I do have things that would make great plots, but I can't think of what to actually *do* with them.
I wish I had a goddamn ATTENTION SPAN. Why is it so hard to RP? Tired, unfocused, distracted, blah blah blah. Sometimes I can sit down and actually write something, mostly I can't. Right now I'm just writing this and bitching and it's not creative writing but at least it's writing. Words in my head, now on the screen. Hurray.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:03 am (UTC)Why is it harder to write than it is to RP?
For me it's the lack of immediate gratification. You write a pose, you can expect one in return in a few minutes. You try to write a book, you're throwing words into a void. I guess you kind of covered that with "lack of a sounding board."
There's also the fact that I can't convince myself that people would care about my own characters and ideas. They just look stupid to me when I try to write them.
That's when I can write them at all.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:29 pm (UTC)...what? Why are you looking at me like that?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:03 am (UTC)Basically, he breaks writing -- and plot -- down to its elements: conflict ("scene") and reaction ("sequel").
And alternate. Have a conflict; show the reaction to the conflict, ending with the protagonists' next action. Even things that are completely character-based, you'll note, tend to have people or things for the character to have conflicts with -- they're just heavier on the reaction than the conflict.
(Also, yes, sleeping helps. Neither of us gets enough sleep on a regular basis, and that means our brains are pretty much clogged up with crap. :D )
Then there's the other evil bit:
Writing looks easy.
Writing looks like it ought to be easy.
Then we try and do it, and guess what? Writing is easy if you have the toolbox.
A whole lot of the first half of that proverbial million words is both derivative -- ask me about the novel I wrote when I was fifteen sometime, then stand back when I weep in agony -- and crap. Someplace in there, you start getting frustrated with other people's words (notice what you just did?) and trying to work with your own. And that too is crap -- for a while.
Right now, you have a decent toolbox for putting words together in a way that will get people interested. You have a decent toolbox for characterization and description and, yes, body language.
You are working on the toolbox of what to do with that, and it is very easy to think that that should be easy. (After all, you've been putting together the toolbox you have now for more than a decade, but it's easy to forget that; you were just playing after all, right?)
There is, of course, also the great savior of writing:
... you can always note it down in your secondhand shorthand, and then rewrite it without the references, and work on showing what you mean before anyone else ever sees it.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:25 pm (UTC)Oh no no no no no don't laugh: it's /true/.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 12:22 am (UTC)Um.
Date: 2009-04-09 04:41 pm (UTC)...that, however, is my pretty little neurosis, and probably not yours.
You want a sounding board, lovely, then share your stuff. I *love* your RP, ergo, I'm sure I'd love the REST of your writing.
...and if I didn't, I'd politely tell you why, and maybe I could share MY stuff with /you/, and the two of us could, y'know, actually help one another get this stuff our of our HEADS and onto something that GOES somewhere.
LOVE!
Re: Um.
Date: 2009-04-09 04:51 pm (UTC)(Every time you clear your LJ there is a little wail of despair from my direction about all the writingbit posts that are no longer where I can see them. :D )
(... also, because I am a dork and Gmail has been malfunctioning for me? I let you know just in case it hasn't that you shouldfinally have mail. :D )
Re: Um.
Date: 2009-04-09 06:24 pm (UTC)And, okay. You shall all be subjected to crap under cuts. Obv I am an exhibitionist.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 12:18 am (UTC)I pretty much quit writing when I was playing online, and it was really frustrating. You probably remember it--I was the guy who always had a plot on, and the plot always failed because people never showed up. When I graduated and my day job put paid to my RP career, well, I started writing stories again and almost immediately made my first sale.
Just write, that's all there is to it. Try doing it every which way: plot an outline first, or start on page 1 with no idea what happens. Try stream of consciousness. Try different media. Just get used to writing without interaction.
As for being heavily referential, well... Quentin Tarantino and Alan Moore have both made careers out of that. I'm not saying that to be snide, they're two of my favourite writers.
-- JF
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 12:26 am (UTC)The problem I run into is when there's nothing underneath the other peoples' words. And-- well. You -were- the guy who always had the plots on. I never did, I was just like 'lol I will throw a tentacled pizza monster at you from under Bart's bed'. That is totally not a plot.
But! As you, and infinitepryde, and thenowhere, and nanowrimo, and any number of guidebooks say-- yes. Just writing. Will try it again. And it'll be crap, again. Until it won't be.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 12:42 am (UTC)IF you have trouble with plot and structure it might just be the angle you're looking at the story from. Sometimes it's hard to see it from inside one character's head. My favourite trick is to write a section from the antagonist's point of view... that way I can work out what they wan and what they know that the protagonist does not.
Course, I've always preferred to write the baddies, anyway...
-- JF
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 01:16 pm (UTC)Maybe you and I need to, I dunno, write books at each other or something.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 09:43 pm (UTC)(i come out of workhell and eventhell either the 17th or the 19th, btw)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-11 01:16 am (UTC)