Category: storytelling

Words

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

A recent post on my flist mentioning NaNoWriMo got me thinking. Well, I was thinking before that, because Julie had asked me about my writing and I had to admit to her it was all fan fic these days, and no original fic. And I miss original fic. The challenge of it, the greater opportunity for self-expression it provides. Not to diss fan fic by any means; I am going to be sending Julie the first chapter of my old novel, Dis/inhibition, and I’m embarrassed about it because I ramble on unnecessarily. Fan fic has taught me to say a lot with much fewer words and improved my writing in important ways.

But I’m getting the urge to go back to original fic. The only thing stopping me is, well, finding the time between life stuff and finishing my fan fics, and still having no good ideas for original fic, ideas that are tangible enough to sustain a big writing project of the kind I inevitably do.

Probably for NaNo, I’ll just push on three TD eps simultaneously like I did last year (or was it the year before?). TD 214 is going slowly because I don’t want to do anything obvious for the episode, and have been waiting for my brane to come up with something a little different (which it is, slowly).

The original fic just has to evolve slowly. That’s how my other two original stories came about. Invent a few characters, put them out there, and see what they do. I don’t want to pick up those old stories and start them up again because I want to find out who I am now, not who I was at 29 or 35.

Halp!

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 29 Comments

I’m looking for a word. A word for a “percussion composition”. If it were a break in the middle of a song with other instruments, you might call it a “drum solo,” but it’s a stand-alone composition. And the word “composition” is too formal for the context I’m writing in. I need a *hip*, general word for “drum composition.”

Phew!

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 28 Comments

(This was supposed to be a couple sentences of the happy and turned into a TD 210 commentary. Hmmm.)

I finally got a bit of feedback on the new TD episode. It sat there for over a day with crickets chirping, and I started to seriously second-guess myself. m3sektet challenged me to do a comedy episode, and comedy just isn’t my strong suit. In addition, I started to realize as I was writing it that my idea of “funny” is very visual and physical, and that’s hard to get across in writing, even when you’re writing what’s supposed to be a “television show.”

Also, a lot of my jokes were pretty “inside”–as in maybe funny only to me. TD 210 spoilers

Writing update

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

May 20th? When did it become May 20th? I sort-of, kind-of finished the first draft of TD 208 on Friday, with a word count of 17,101. I’m waffling because, in going back to start the next draft, I realize I cut a lot of corners, especially towards the beginning of the episode. First drafts are, for me, like outlines are for other writers. It’s where I decide or, really, “discover” what the episode is going to be about. I have to do that with actual text/prose, not just the jotted notes of an outline, because there’s something about writing the *actual episode itself* with the dialogue and blocking and characters acting and interacting that enables me to get clear on what I’m supposed to write about.

Of course, I have a general idea what the plot is going to be before hand, but any given detail I might have in mind can fall apart for a variety of technical or artistic reasons when I start trying to fit all the pieces in place. This one has been a bitch to fit together. vague spoiler

Writing process stuff

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

In trying not to overwrite, I’m finally learning why I do overwrite. One reason, which I already knew is, outlines can only get you so far. The truth is, I hate outlines, and would never use them in the first draft of an original story. But I need them in a fanfic WIP just to keep myself organized. And yet, I can outline until the cows come home, but when I start to write, I will always think of ten things I need to have in the story but didn’t think of during the outline. So the story starts to expand beyond what I initially imagined it would

(Naturally, there will likewise be five things in the outline that just aren’t going to work, but they usually aren’t cut, they’re replaced with something else which serves the function they were going to serve in the story)

And then, of course, when I do start writing, I hate a lot of what comes out initially. It’s just not what I had in mind, but I can’t get what needs to be there down on the page. So I have to keep writing and writing and discarding and saving in a “maybe” file all sorts of stuff before the words start to come out right.

But in the end, overwriting (writing 20,000 words when the story’s supposed to be 14,000) isn’t about all the junk I have to write first and discard to get to the good stuff. In the end, the reason the 20,000 is a problem is that I’m past the junk and writing Good Stuff, and it’s 20,000 words of good stuff (or OK stuff, or decent stuff), and 6,000 of it has got to go (for tightness’ sake, for consistency’s sake).

No TD 208 word count this morning, I’m in flux–half-text, half-outline, none of it absolutely certain to end up in the final draft. People who start with a zero word count and just keep adding to it until they’re done befuddle the hell out of me.

An experiment

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 5 Comments

OK, to prevent the disastrous consequences of over-writing that vex me so often (these consequences being hours and days spent shaving thousands of words off a story after spending hours and days going to the trouble of adding those words in the first place), I am going to keep a running word count of TD 208.

I will try not to write more than a thousand words over 15,000.

Today’s count so far: 734 words.

Back in SF

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

Good trip to AZ. Very enjoyable/productive in many ways.

For some reason, this time coming back home on the airport van, I got thrown in with people heading downtown instead of the usual folks from the outer Richmond and Sunset districts. So I got to see the more romantic side of SF–Grace Cathedral, Chinatown, etc. And I’m thinking to myself (not for the first time), “I’d love to write a novel and *set it* in San Francisco.” Once you don’t live in a place anymore, it gets its mystery back.