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Neurosis of the writer

by sabeth
Posted to Diaries, Diary on Wed Mar 02, 2005 at 04:07:24 PM PST
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Or, the editor and the author doing battle inside my head.
So I've been playing with developing a story, mostly through weekly prompted writing sessions (graciously hosted by janra and led by ana, and which are both fun and a good kick in the pants to keep writing stuff -- end of free plug). After doing this for a while and having built up some material to look back on, I've started noticing some trends in what I've produced so far.

I keep forgetting to incorporate physical descriptions of my characters. Yeaaah, that's it, I forget ... truth is I tend to get wrapped up in their internal lives and motivations, that my characters lack a certain flesh-and-blood-ness to them.

My choreography tends to feel awkward, particularly in scenes with only one character. Maybe it's something to do with the POV character not being minutely aware of her own actions, and trying to get a sense of how much needs to be described or something, I dunno.

In scenes with two people, which I find more comfortable to write, my characters keep giving each other Significant Looks, and explicitly watching each other. I know exactly where this habit comes from, which is from the context of online roleplaying, where it becomes a habit to indicate where your character's attention is, so as to give other players cues to give you information. But when I'm pulling all the strings, I don't need to do that -- characters see what they see, and it can be assumed that it's because they're looking. (I even have this one nutty scene where I specify what a character's looking at but not what she sees.)

I've got a mild case of said-bookism ... I know "said" is the great invisible word, and that often a speech tag isn't even needed, but people keep telling, explaining, etc. I think I picked this up from books I've read from a young age -- I know it's an old habit. There's nothing too exotic or (hopefully) too terribly distracting, but still. Red pencil territory (or is that "ctrl-x" in the digital age of self-editing?)

Some other random observations: I've got two main characters, a he and a she, and switch POV between them from section to section. The bits from his POV are (so far) pretty much all about him. The bits from her POV are mostly about him, too. Yet I don't want her to become invisible, or only half-developed.

I also can't seem to write in a straight line, chronologically speaking. This doesn't really bother me, except that I worry that (combined with the POV switching) it won't make very much sense to someone not living in my head, or that the chronic flashback-iness will start to seem contrived.

Anyway, this is mostly based on very raw drafts, and I've tried to address some of these issues while rewriting. Some are more easily fixed than others, but there's definitely value in getting something down on paper, and fixing later.

Anyone else have habits they've noticed themselves falling into, that they have to watch out for when they're editing?

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Neurosis of the writer | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
Glad to see you writing (4.00/1) (#1)
by ana on Thu Mar 03, 2005 at 07:57:15 AM PST
and struggling with the ensuing issues.

I have some bad habits myself, notably lack of plot. If I outline the plot ahead of time it either turns out contrived (and so the characters, if they're realistic enough, choose to do something else) or the characters look over my shoulder and see how it's all going to come out.

I suppose such problems were only made worse by the NaNoWriMo experience; you must make it up as you're writing; there's no time for anything else. On those occasions where I had several successive scenes in mind, the earlier ones tended to foreshadow the later ones, and not in a literary way. More like ink bleeding through the paper.

Anyway, I'm glad people are finding the prompted writing sessions useful. For those who don't know what we're talking about, tune your irc engine to irc.write-on.org channel #writing at 1pm eastern time on a Sunday.
Exploring dark places since last Thursday

thanks (4.50/2) (#2)
by sabeth on Thu Mar 03, 2005 at 04:11:32 PM PST
for the encouragement, the echo, and of course for the prompts.

My plot problems have always been an issue of aimlessness -- one thing happening after another (as they often do in life) without adding up to anything in particular. So I, accidentally at first, turned it around. Here are these people, in this place and circumstance. How did they get here? (Rather than, here they are: now what?) So the whole thing becomes elaborate backstory, but story nonetheless.

So far the characters haven't squirmed too much, at least not on the big picture level of plot -- sometimes they let me know that I got them wrong, or they reveal aspects of themselves I didn't know before. I guess I can always wag a finger at a rebelling character and tell them, "This already happened, you can't change the past!" Though so far what I've got sketched out is fairly vague, so that the prompts can provide the details and perhaps introduce an angle that I wouldn't have thought of (the ultimate defense against characters conspiring against you -- take yourself by surprise?)

As far as unintentional foreshadowing, it's something I've had some experience with through roleplaying. There is a distiction between in-character (IC) and out-of-character (OOC) knowledge, and it's considered very bad form to use OOC info to inform your character's actions. So you have to learn to block out part of what you know so that your character's actions are more authentic. I've played dumb and sometimes erred on the side of acting as if I didn't know something I did (or rather, that my character didn't know something she might very well have -- sometimes it is hard to tell in a world that is constantly evolving without your active participation). Anyway, I also keep secrets in my writing, or sometimes let my characters keep their secrets to themselves (or from each other), maybe as an extension of wanting to keep "OOC leaking" to a minimum. It's a particular kind of discipline to keep yourself locked into one POV and limit yourself to only what that character knows.

Which brings me to another thing that should probably go on my list: overuse of "seems" and "appears" -- which is usually a sign of laziness on my part, or can be translated as "something the author knows and wants to say but the POV character doesn't really know, so let's give her some vague impression that this is the case." Doesn't help that it is a staple of my normal writing style that eschews absolute certainties. Definite candidate for a global search-and-delete.

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
[ Parent ]

plot (4.00/2) (#3)
by janra on Fri Mar 04, 2005 at 09:04:50 AM PST
While the specifics of what type of plotting is different for every writer, I just thought I'd share what works for me.

Both of you, I noticed, say you have trouble with plots that ramble, and when you try to plot something it comes out stiff and forced. I'll take those in reverse order ;-)

Any process, technique, or skill you aren't used to comes out as stiff, artificial, and often ugly when you try it. With practice, it gets better. That isn't to say you must do it that way, but only that you shouldn't dismiss it because it didn't work right away.

Now, for rambling plots: I let mine ramble a little while I get to know the character. Most of that writing is cut and saved as "character notes" and doesn't appear again directly. Then, I do what passes for plotting with me.

  • What does the protagonist want?
  • What does the antagonist want?
  • What do I want?
  • What kinds of sparks can I make between them when their wants collide?
  • What's happening around them that they can't control?
  • What kinds of sparks can I make between either of their wants and the world around them?

Then I start writing. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but my characters have goals, so they don't wander (too far) away.
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]
rambling (3.00/0) (#4)
by sabeth on Sun Mar 06, 2005 at 05:08:52 AM PST
Well, my concern with sounding forced is more with the structure of exploring the history of the characters through flashback, not so much the plot itself. I think the best way to handle this is to make the "present day" story stronger and interesting on its own, rather than just a frame to hang flashback off of. But this brings me back to some of the problems I've struggled with in the past, of creating a continuous (rather than episodic) storyline that actually leads somewhere -- but at least in this case I do have a vague idea of where it should end up, which is better than I've had before.

I agree with you that the motivations and goals of the characters are important, perhaps more than anything else. As long as you stay true to those, then even if they take slightly unexpected turns, it feels consistent and coherent, rather than swerving off the road for no apparent reason. Then you can throw almost any event, or chain of events, at them and they will react accordingly. Right now I'm still at the stage of getting to know the characters, so they bristle a bit at the way they're captured on paper, but I think I'm getting closer each time.

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
[ Parent ]

Neurosis of the writer | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)
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