Before I started writing fanfic, I tried to plot what I wanted to write, and make up characters, and write outlines. And I simply couldn't do it. I'd sit and stare at a blank piece of paper and then go off and be depressed.
Plan B. I have a start point and an end point that I want to reach, and I like having a title that's appropriate enough to keep me on track, and that's it. I walk in my head from start point to end point, and I write down what I see and hear (oh yes, there are voices in my head).
I rarely forget scene ideas, which is why I don't do an outline most times. But that's because I don't quite get the idea and then NEED to write it down. I get the idea and think about it and think about it and write it and rewrite it in my head and then BAM! Need to write it or I'll go crazy!
Me too. I generally remember the main ideas that come to me, but advancing age means that I'm going to have to start writing down a key word or two, I think! But some scenes just write themselves in my head, word by word, with matching visuals, whether I'm at that point in the story or not. Sometimes it's in the car on the way home from the supermarket, and then the shopping has to sit unattended until I write down what I heard - if I don't do it right away, it's never as good.
I'm very happy to talk over what I did in a story after it's written, but I never talk about my stories while I'm writing them. I don't want anyone else's ideas, because then they wouldn't be mine. That's very important to me. If I don't know something factual, I might well ask around about that, but not the story ideas, or general direction. Besides, how could I, when I don't know where it's going? If I'm writing for something specific, and I have serious choices to make that fundamentally affect the story - Dark Star's Project Paranormal, for example - I might ask if there are any preferences, but that just means that I keep the alternative choice for another day.
And I am really looking forward to reading this gigantic story of yours... I think once it's done you might find you have a brain left - I'm sure the story will give it back. Hope so, anyway. Can't have tkp sans brain...
And I agree that not every word and sentence in a story should be so polished, so brilliant and so sparkling that the reader suffers from brilliance-fatigue after a page and a half. Even in this, contrast is needed. And I am more than happy to send the reader off to find a dictionary, but not for so many words that they don't understand any of the sentences... Particularly for plot-based story-telling, the simpler the wording in critical points of the action, the more the reader is sucked in. That's what I'm learning, anyway.
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Plan B. I have a start point and an end point that I want to reach, and I like having a title that's appropriate enough to keep me on track, and that's it. I walk in my head from start point to end point, and I write down what I see and hear (oh yes, there are voices in my head).
I rarely forget scene ideas, which is why I don't do an outline most times. But that's because I don't quite get the idea and then NEED to write it down. I get the idea and think about it and think about it and write it and rewrite it in my head and then BAM! Need to write it or I'll go crazy!
Me too. I generally remember the main ideas that come to me, but advancing age means that I'm going to have to start writing down a key word or two, I think! But some scenes just write themselves in my head, word by word, with matching visuals, whether I'm at that point in the story or not. Sometimes it's in the car on the way home from the supermarket, and then the shopping has to sit unattended until I write down what I heard - if I don't do it right away, it's never as good.
I'm very happy to talk over what I did in a story after it's written, but I never talk about my stories while I'm writing them. I don't want anyone else's ideas, because then they wouldn't be mine. That's very important to me. If I don't know something factual, I might well ask around about that, but not the story ideas, or general direction. Besides, how could I, when I don't know where it's going? If I'm writing for something specific, and I have serious choices to make that fundamentally affect the story - Dark Star's Project Paranormal, for example - I might ask if there are any preferences, but that just means that I keep the alternative choice for another day.
And I am really looking forward to reading this gigantic story of yours... I think once it's done you might find you have a brain left - I'm sure the story will give it back. Hope so, anyway. Can't have tkp sans brain...
And I agree that not every word and sentence in a story should be so polished, so brilliant and so sparkling that the reader suffers from brilliance-fatigue after a page and a half. Even in this, contrast is needed. And I am more than happy to send the reader off to find a dictionary, but not for so many words that they don't understand any of the sentences... Particularly for plot-based story-telling, the simpler the wording in critical points of the action, the more the reader is sucked in. That's what I'm learning, anyway.