writing blah blah blah

[pauraque_bk]

So I'm writing kind of a novel. Or testing my ability to write one. I have it planned out enough that I think I can at least get a book's worth of material written, whether it's actually any good or not, and I'm writing it a little bit at a time and giving it to _hannelore to read. Like NaNo, but without the speed element. There are a couple of things that are hard about it.

The length makes it challenging because I usually do short stories, not so much because I like the form, but because when I try to write things that are long I get distracted or bored and give up. But I'm envious of people who write long things, because there's so much more time and space to explore what they're doing, to make arcs and watch them play out, and see the characters change over a period of time. It's not that I haven't wanted to try that, I just find it hard to motivate myself to try. Having a trusted person waiting to read the next part seems to help. Guilt is a good motivator... Approval is a good motivator too.

It's also hard because it's not fanfic. It's based on something, but loosely enough that it doesn't quite fit the fanfic category to me, particularly because I made up the characters.

As everyone in fandom likely knows, making up characters from scratch is really hard and most people are bad at it. Fandom is overflowing with opportunities to watch people fail at this.

I feel like I know essentially how to write good prose, or at least prose that some people like. If pressed I could probably get pretty technical about it... It's not magical, it's a specific process, and if I'm not usually very conscious of it, that's mostly because I'm just used to it.

But I'm just lost with how to make up characters that are interesting, and that some people will care about. You definitely can't try too hard to force it, we know what happens then.

I think I flourished really well in fanfic because it provides you with the characters already. And maybe you could say, well YOUR version of this character was different, and you took it in your own direction. Sure, but the existing character was there as a jumping-off point for me, and something that the reader could relate to and say "yes, I recognize that, I'm already interested and invested in that".

So yeah, I'm just trying to practice until I get something. The characters in what I'm writing now... I'm still trying to figure out what their deal is, and struggling with it, and trying to make it mean something without a "canon" as such to reflect and twist and interpret.

I'm using my usual writing process, which is to make a vague plan and then just write a LOT of crap -- anything I can think of -- some of which will eventually be distilled into something that is hopefully not crap. Some of it is stupid and will never see the light of day. Some of it is not stupid, but just not relevant or interesting enough to make it in, except perhaps as a passing mention, or unspoken background, or something I write through and then realize in the middle of the scene that it needs to go somewhere completely different.

And -- tangent -- this is something I haven't written before, characters developing a gradual intimacy, and a friendship, and a sort of marriage. So I'm writing to get a feel for what that's like at different points in time. Habits, ordinary days. I go through fits of writing variations on a theme, or similar scenes. This week I was writing them having arguments... About money, about sex, about who was supposed to take out the trash. About the temperature of the house.

I don't know! I hope this is doing something. I missed writing.