dragonlady7 | Entries tagged with on writing

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So I’m letting myself work on a new original novel– yes, the one that was sparked by my idle daydreamings of a TGE A/U fanfic, actually, and maybe I’ll post the synopsis of the fic that never was, because the story I want to make out of it won’t bear a ton of resemblance to the original idea after all.

But I just wanted to sort of… meander about the things that I think about, before I launch into a story nowadays. So I figure I’ll put it here, and see if anyone benefits from it, or has their own take on it, or if I can get a conversation going, largely because original fic is so, so, so lonely, and I just want to talk.

1) What POV? I’ve seen a ton of advice on this, lately. Tell the story from the POV of the character with the least idea of what’s going on, is a good one I recently saw and I’m not sure where. (It was definitely someone I follow on Dreamwidth.) But that’s a good idea; it forces you to show, not tell, and allows those among us who are absolute sluts for angst to work in some fantastic unreliable-narrator porn (I am particularly fond of really juicy “pov character thinks he’s going to die alone; everyone else is obviously in love with him and he is very clearly mistaken”, with a side of “stoic POV character is sure her emotions are well in check but another character’s reaction makes it clear they are not”).

But I have a few things I want to do that I am already thinking will require another POV, besides the primary, and so I pose to you a question, reading audience in general, because I’ve been slapped down for this before by a beta reader, who firmly believed that more than one POV character is inexcusable. I usually write my fics from no fewer than 2, and more often like 3 or 4 POVs, generally with 2 main ones and a few minor characters to fill in background events. I’ve read a lot of fiction written like this, but my last few reads have featured single POVs. So, the question:

Are multiple POVs unfashionable? Should I give a shit about that? For real though, does it make a work hard to follow? I want some opinions on this.

2) Names. I’m just brainstorming names. I tried recently to write a story and just enclose character designations in angle brackets to come back later and fill in, but it only worked for flat structural characters– [MERCHANT], [CITYNAME], [OTHERCITY], [LOVELY ASSISTANT], [DRIVER], [HORSE 1]– characters that mostly served structural purposes, and places we weren’t in, and the like. I found that characters with a lot of lines whose motivations mattered needed names pretty immediately. So that was a short-lived experiment, and now I’m finding that it’s useful to give myself a vague summary and assign names to all the characters I’ll need to refer to, and have a list of spare names to assign as the need comes up, all brainstormed around the same time for continuity.

This time around, I’ve picked baby name lists from a few languages, and then scrambled them up; I’d prefer not to have any traceable ethnicities in there, though I probably won’t succeed. The real benefit of this is that I can Google the slightly-gibberish names I come up with and make sure they’re not anything important, like oh, a major deity in a world religion, or something.

3) Setting details: I am going to try to assign a season and climate right off the bat to this story, because the Solarpunk Mammoths story got bogged down several times because I hadn’t settled on what season it was. Best to start with something, and if I need to change it, work backward from there. I want this to be in a different part of that same solarpunk world, so the seasons and the natural world are a big part of the setting.

Anyway. This is me speaking from my perspective of somebody who’s been writing a long time and can never really manage to produce anything under like, 50k in finished length, so like. I bet there are different concerns when you’re writing something short but I wouldn’t know; I can’t do it (I’m not bragging; it’s a problem). I find longer stuff needs this setting/character framework– and yet plot framework doesn’t work for me beyond a vague notion, and that might be because I’m ignorant and ADHD as fuck and can’t write a real outline to save myself, but it’s at this point an immutable truth about me, so. If you’re young and still have brain flexibility please learn to outline, but if it doesn’t work, I’m here as an example of someone else it doesn’t work for, and while my success rate isn’t fantastic it’s not nonexistent either, so there’s hope. Maybe. Sort of.

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continuing my pretending i know what i’m talking about,

(impromptu series here: 1) Worldbuilding Textures, 2) re: Worldbuilding Textures, and 3) Counterpoint: You Don’t Have To Research What You Don’t Want To)

I’ve been sort of mentally circling back to my first essay, where I talked about how great it was to already know stuff I was interested in so I could describe it in my writing.

So I thought I’d talk about that: it seems to me that the main point of fiction, really, is that it presents people with things that they can relate to, and can experience in their imaginations. I was making the point that you don’t have to force yourself to learn about stuff you don’t want to, you can find ways around it, but I didn’t mean for that to imply you just shouldn’t include stuff.

Not at all! Don’t be shy about describing things you’re passionate about! Of course you should research stuff you’re interested in, and put in at least some of the research you did, if you can possibly fit it into the story– and if it’s something you discover that you’d like to know about, absolutely seek out as many sources as possible and dive as deeply as you can manage into this thing that is interesting to you.

You have to balance it, as you have to balance all things– sometimes you wind up so sucked-into research that you never write the thing. And sometimes you wind up stuffing the first draft so full of gigantic dumps of the information you uncovered that the story itself gets completely lost.

But sometimes, in reading up on (or watching videos about, or talking to experts in, or however you learn about) the thing, you discover entire plot points and storylines you would not have thought of on your own, suggested by the very nature of the thing. You have farmers in your story, so you read up on how farming is done, and settle on what crops they must grow, and there you have the pacing of your events– something happens during planting, something else during tending, a third thing during the harvest, your timeline is all worked out. You learn about the realities and rhythms of the worlds of these different kinds of craftspeople, and realize that your nebulously thought-out storyline must wind through that structure, and suddenly you have a whole plot trellis!

It can go either way, and sometimes both ways at the same time, and you just have to try to balance. You’ve also got to be honest with yourself, and see where your disinterest is showing– writing about nomads with very little idea of how their pastoral system works is probably going to wind up showing off your ignorance, so maybe either suck it up and do some light research OR rejigger the plot so they’ve got a different reason to be traveling. You’ll learn, once you’ve got some practice and if you stay honest, the difference between “I am disinterested in this because it does not serve me” and “i am being lazy because I don’t know where to begin learning about this”– mind there’s no such thing as laziness, but it’s the easiest description. Laziness always has an underlying cause and you’ve got to find it to move past it.

There are no hard and fast rules about this, no secret formulas– or, if there are, I don’t know them– and you just have to use your judgement.

But. To sum up this impromptu and very drawn-out series– no, you don’t have to research things you’re not that interested in. There’s no requirements for specific topics to appear in your writing. But you ought to include the things you do love, because those very things are what people are going to wind up hooked by and drawn into your story. I have had so many responses from readers over the years who have Noticed that one detail I added in from experience, and have been so delighted by it, so drawn-in and included, and that one thing was what will stay with them– in some cases, for years.

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ajkal2
reblogged your post “worldbuilding textures”

[image description: tag art reading #hey look! another fencer! #ive been an epeeist for like 8 years #and some swordfights in fiction… hoo boy. #catch me screaming at pirates of the carribean #just stab them #some of the slashes in films wouldnt even make contact! #wheres the footwork #in books its a lil less Hoo Boy #but sometimes its like ‘they clashed swords!’ #GIVE ME MORE #which line are they on? why dont they disengage and hit? was it just a beat or a proper lock of blades? WTF IS GOING ON]

See, while this is also Extremely Valid™, don’t get me wrong [Hi! I fenced epee intermittently, but wound up mostly fencing sabre because otherwise we couldn’t field any sabreurs, and I only did it for like two or three years and really sucked, it is impossible to overstate how terrible I was], I don’t even think it’s super necessary to describe it a whole lot? I don’t need to be shown every gory detail, though in visual media I do like it when you can follow the action somewhat realistically– like, make the effort!! But it’s like any worldbuilding thing– I’ve seen this ruminated on before. If you’re going to put two suns in the sky for aesthetics you better goddamn have some idea what having two suns would actually do to the setting. You don’t have to explain it all, but the difference between an okay work and a great work is things like that. what does it mean, practically speaking– is it ever night, then? The author really ought to spend a while and work it out entirely, so that it can then be slipped back into the description– and even the plot!– seamlessly enough that the audience isn’t left wondering. And it’s such a great feeling when you work out that, say, a moon orbiting a gas giant could plausibly have an occasional very cold long night despite otherwise being tropical, and then you can work that in to your plot and have it matter where they really are, beyond just being a pretty backdrop painting for your action.

And so you don’t really have to have studied fencing, or whatever specific technical thing I’m talking about, I don’t think, to write it well, it’s just that it’s so much easier. As with any action sequence, the author really has to block it out and understand what is going on in order to describe it. That’s what so often makes fight sequences so unsatisfying both in visual and written media– the creator just sort of put in a few cool action shots, but never addressed what actually happened. Sometimes, again, this is okay– like in the Goblin Emperor, the assassination attempt, the POV character is so terrified and also his view is entirely blocked by the person defending him, so he has no idea what happened, and the scene is told faithfully that way; there’s one clear visual, then there’s reactions and noise and then his bodyguard is lying bleeding in his lap and he’s like “what the– actual– fuck” and it’s a great vivid scene.

But you can’t always do that, and as an author, it’s good to have another approach available. The point is, you have to understand what’s going on in order to describe it. You can’t just say “their swords clashed!”, or, worse, have a visual medium and have the fight consist of random chopped-up aesthetically-pleasing movements that have no possible tactical explanation, and expect to wind up with a powerful scene. A clash of steel! A dramatic parry to nowhere! A close-up of a determined face! More ringing of steel foley effects, the actors are very clearly aiming to hit one another’s swords and there is very clearly no effort whatsoever to hit the person, that’s not the point of this fight Doylistically and there’s no Watsonian attempt whatsoever because who cares, swords look cool. Boring. Nobody really likes that, come on! Tell a better story.

(This goes for sex scenes too, but I’m not necessarily going to get into that– my point is, you can fade to black or tell it euphemistically or be super explicit or whatever but you have to convey the important information thereby, it’s really crucial. Sex and action scenes alike– there’s a world of choices there, and they’re not necessarily the choices people wound up hung up on. I recently saw someone on Twitter I think who was like “omg please writers, yes write sex acts you haven’t done but for the love of god research them first” and uh… yes. seconded.)

But here’s the entire level of detail in the fencing sequence that prompted me to write that previous post, and bonus, I’ve just realized it’s written from the POV of a character who does not understand fencing at all and totally sees it on a “their swords clashed!” level and I literally use that line I swear I did not edit this: (semi-spoilers for a near-future chapter of Continuing Education, but I don’t think it ruins anything to find out that Csethiro’s mania for swordplay does not vanish overnight when she becomes Empress)

*Everyone else present seemed to think this was a perfectly lovely way to spend an afternoon. Telimezh hadn’t noticed their arrival, and looked in turn at each of the two participants, who saluted him with their swords, and then saluted one another with their swords, and–

“What are we doing,” Cala said, as the goblin and the Empress leapt at one another, swords clashing.

“A solid parry,” Beshelar said mildly. “Oh! Fantastic disenga– ah! Oh! She has him!”

“Point to Zhalered,” Telimezh said.

“That was her touch!” Beshelar said loudly, finally sounding indignant.

Telimezh turned and saw him, and did a double-take, but then said, frowning, “She didn’t have right-of-way, she did not complete the parry.”

“It was a disengage!” Beshelar said. “It’s a valid–”

“If one does not stop the attack,” Telimezh said, “then it doesn’t matter if the return blow lands.”

“Ah,” the Empress said, “but his attacking blow did not land, there was only one contact! Avoidance of the attack is just as good as stopping the attack.”

“This is valid,” Zhalered said, “she won the angle, and only her touch landed, so it is just as effective as if she had stopped the attack. We concede the touch; the point is our lady’s.”

“We thought your attack had landed,” Telimezh said.

Both participants shook their head. “It fell short,” Zhalered said.

“Ah,” Telimezh said, grimacing. “This is why we need line judges.”

“Or sharp blades,” the Empress said, grinning toothily.

“At any rate,” Telimezh said, “that brings the score to–”

“Why have we not stopped this?” Cala demanded, finally catching up to Beshelar. “What is going on?”

*

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in terms of fanfic, having participated in a fencing club in university is the gift that keeps on giving, you would not believe how much fictional mileage I’ve gotten out of having a basic grounding in the rules of right-of-way from foil/sabre fencing, and like, understanding what the difference is between a parry and a disengage, and an attack and a riposte. you don’t even have to like, know what the different lines are (your fourth, your sixth, your fifth, god i had a terrible fifth for a sabreuse) or follow all the ridiculous FIE rule changes (IDEK what they’re doing with flicks now), just the basic 101 stuff will get you really far down the path of being able to credibly throw swordplay into your fiction.

i guess it’s only certain fandoms, but for real. you don’t need to know any of it, but it’s such an easy, like, filler thing, to just have a fencing match in there somewhere that your characters can discuss knowledgeably. or if you’ve got an action sequence, you don’t have to think through how it would work, you can just kind of think of a basic fencing match action and just describe it. lord! so useful.

there’s probably other stuff like that. horses. i was a horse girl. that’s been incredibly handy; just your baseline knowledge for worldbuilding that a horse is not a car and so does not have an off switch and so will poop and not wait where you ask it to and you’re going to have to collect it or have someone in charge of it if you’re too busy being the Plot.

and guns. actually i haven’t used guns much in writing. no that’s not true, i based an entire SGA epic off knowing how a gun works. but i have not yet used my understanding of flint-locks for anything.

sewing, definitely; historical fashion; being aware that your character in any premodern setting would be dressed in layers and none of them zipper or have underwires, and some idea of how they behave differently than modern clothing– it all tends to add richness to worldbuilding.

you know what i wish was more popular for authors/screenwriters? understanding how pre-electric lights worked. everybody just uses candles one hundred percent of the time regardless of social caste or situation. nobody ever ever has rushlights or fat or oil lamps. nobody has ever had to trim a wick. they just– light a candle, somehow, as if by, hmm, flipping a switch. [there are exceptions. every one of martha wells’s universes has detailed worldbuilding around what kind of lights they use, for example. she first hooked me when in the opening scene of the first book of hers i read, a character had to deal with a malfunctioning wheel-lock pistol. who even KNOWS what a wheel-lock is! there’s slow match muskets in that same work, too. amazing.]

None of these things are deal-breakers or -makers, and maybe they don’t matter that much to most people’s worldbuilding. Maybe it’s just that I find it satisfying to think of them. I really like consuming fiction that has those kinds of toothy worldbuilding textures in them, and I find it so satisfying to use them as frameworks for my own worldbuilding– just an awareness that the world the characters are in is different than mine and so the things I assume, like a lightswitch being next to a door, like a car being waiting for me, with gas stations at convenient intervals, like the way modern clothing stretches to fit you and is easy to launder, like the way I have a thermostat in my house that I only occasionally have to adjust– none of those would be there, and there’d be other things instead.

but man. in 1999 when my roommates were super into fencing and i thought the road trips sounded like fun, i never really knew how much goddamn mileage i would get out of that. it would probably have consoled me, given that i was the absolute worst fencer at basically every event, and yet my muscle memory of fencing lunges has fucked me up irrevocably for every goddamn aerobics class ever. (”Why is your back leg straight? What are you doing!” “uhhh a full extension?” “Stop doing that!” “I CAN’T” protip: they mean different things when they say ‘lunge’ and in aerobics, you don’t get to stab anyone in the throat.)

Sometimes I think I'm not really very good at blending into the fannish community. I like it, it's nice, but I don't... work like that.
I've seen a lot of people doing this thing where they're... is it a generator? One of those Buzzfeed-style personality quizzes? (Or... those were the first memes I remember on LJ, and you'd do one and it would give you a chunk of HTML to post your result with a picture in your blog. What Kind Of Doc Martens Are You etc. Why doesn't anyone get HTML results like that anymore, hm?)
Anyway I'm not sure, but you do something that helps you rank the tropes you like best in fiction from most to least.
I've been looking at the lists they come up with and I'm like... I have read both good and bad things in those examples? There are a couple things that are mild squicks, for me, so I'll avoid them if I see them called out because they almost always gross me out or make me uncomfortable, or ruin the story for me because I feel the author didn't really consider the fundamental ways in which such a dynamic would genuinely function, but that's usually more a mechanism of the story than of the trope itself.
(Like, for example, 7 or 8 times out of ten, if there's a wedding scene, it grosses me the fuck out, and most of those times it's because the wedding is a substitute for an actual character resolution and super often weird rituals that are highly specific to our culture just get transplanted wholesale into the fic's culture without any questioning and it's bad worldbuilding guys*, and some of the times it's because I'm a bitter old harpy who has never managed to get anyone to wife me and so is twisted by jealousy, and yet! People don't call out weddings as a trope and generally don't tag for them, so I just deal! Also, i have written wedding scenes, so clearly this isn't bulletproof for me!)
*(This is based on 0 specific examples for the moment so please do not think I'm vagueing about anyone in particular, please, because I'm not, this is like 35 years of reading distilled, here, and not anyone I actually would be able to remember the name of.)

I've read amnesia fic that was awful and unredeemable, but the very best SGA fic I've ever read, long before I ever watched the series, was about amnesia. (It was on LJ and I don't remember the title or author and it was probably 2004 so.) I fucking love meet-cutes except about half the time they make me want to barf. I cannot fucking stand soulmates/soulmarks any of that stupid bullshit, except sometimes people write them and it's weirdly compelling. (That's not how love works! And yet sometimes fiction's not about how love works and is good anyway!) A/B/O is gender essentialist and super gross, and yet sometimes people write it and it's super hot so just don't think that hard. And so on, and so forth.

I think this is similar to sexual tropes, too. Like, some people are just super into reading about specific sex acts, and that's never really how it's been for me. Like-- cunnilingus in a sex scene is probably a good sign that there are specific dynamics going on between characters and so I'm going to overall enjoy the rest of the scene, but that doesn't mean that I'm super into reading about cunnilingus (and it has no bearing whatsoever on whether I enjoy giving or receiving that sex act in real life with my actual real life body!) just for itself. (And like, it means there's a woman in the story, which I generally like, so. But it doesn't necessarily, y'know?! And sometimes it's written super gross so there's that too.)

So like. I might love bedsharing in a fic, but I might not. I might really enjoy a snowed-in kind of story, or I might not. The tropes are often a good shorthand for the shit that's going to happen, but sometimes they're not! (So many of them are just ways to put specific pressures on characters to overcome those characters' boundaries that make them the character they are, so that they can do things they'd never normally be permitted to do without going OOC, but because of this external force, they're squeezed into a place where they can do super vulnerable things. So those are kind of redundant tropes, but the different shapes the squeezing takes can give the vulnerability different forms and so that's interesting, and yet. well. i never was good at reducing fractions, so someone with a more analytical mind might have a better go at figuring out how distinct all of those really are.)

It might be an interesting writing exercise sometime to go through various of the tropes in that list and distill out the thing about each trope that is actually what people are looking for to get their specific dopamine releases, and then write a series of ficlets where those tropes happen without the specific element anywhere in them. Or, alternately, write a series where those specific elements happen totally independently of the tropes. But I don't have the patience for that sort of thing anymore, really.

I get why the tropes are a useful shorthand but my brain wiring doesn't really seem to work that way. Or, at least, isn't currently.

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icantbearsedtothinkofone replied to your post “on writing erotica”

Huh. I struggle more with action.

It’s a struggle for literally all writing, and I’ve especially been having the issue that I’m not exactly blocked, I can write tens of thousands of words, I just can’t write anything significant, in any work. so. i hope i’m managing to break through that, but if not, well.

i’ve survived January, which is a huge struggle every year, and every year I’m oblivious to the fact that I’m grimly hanging on, and I think I’m doing fine until I look back and was Clearly Not, so I’m trying to be kind to myself about it.

But yes– this happens with action scenes too, and lately has been happening with literally everything except endless indeterminate dialogue scenes, for me. I just thought it was most succinctly and hashtag-relatably summed up when it came to erotica, which I know is a bugbear for a lot of people.
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