Making sausages and fanfic
Mar. 12th, 2005 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geovikiI'm always curious how other writers write, so I figured I'd give it up first and see if anyone else feels inspired to follow. So here we have my nuts-and-bolts approach to writing a scene. Or perhaps merely the nuts approach - you be the judge.
This is partly the result of reading Stephen King's book "On Writing", from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zionsstarfish's long-ago recommendation. I've never read a Stephen King novel; don't plan to, either. (ETA: because I thought he wrote only horror and I'm a big, fat wuss. Comments below have told me otherwise, so I'm much more likely to try his "non-horror" fic). But I thought it was an interesting book.
I've made no secret that I'm trying to finish up the sequel to A Thousand Beautiful Things (ATBT). Currently, I'm heavily revising and recasting certain parts of the plot. So where the first draft had 12 scenes, the revised version will have 7 additional scenes.
One of the writing issues that's caused me the biggest amount of work this time around is POV (point of view). The proto-draft used 3 different characters' POVs. My first beta suggested that 2 of these characters didn't play any important role in the story and probably shouldn't be highlighted so prominently. She was right, so I rewrote their scenes from the main character's POV - Draco, in this instance.
My second beta noted that the climax and resolution of the plot was fairly weak. She was right. My third beta mentioned it in passing as well. So I came up with a much more satisfying ending, discussed some of the pivotal changes with her, and began to rewrite. This new plot allows some of the other characters, who were sitting around not doing much of anything, to take an active role in the story - always a good thing! Because of the new dynamic, I realized that these characters would have scenes that only they could describe, so I knew that I'd need scenes from their POV. So I've gone from 3 POVs to 1 to 4. One of the results is that I will be writing the same scene three times over from three different POVs - an interesting exercise. But the final POV will probably be the most fun.
I've told you all that when I write long stories, I don't write the scenes in order - this has definite drawbacks, but it's the way it happens for me. The only way I can make this happen is to work from an outline, which is actually very sketchy: a table with scene no., whose POV, all the characters involved, the location and a summary, and timeline (e.g. Tues. morning). In one glance, I can look for some kind of balance in the POVs - I try to avoid a one-time-only appearance and try to intersperse the POVs for variety.
The scene I'm going to discuss is written from Harry's POV. I came to the decision to include his POV very late in the process - just last week, in fact. I'd finally managed to untangle the new ending from the wreckage of the old ending, and part of the plot gives Harry a role where he's the only character for a critical part of the scene. In addition, he has a brief POV snippet in the new prologue with an essential piece of plot. Because I have to use him both in the prologue and late in the story, I was looking to add a Harry-POV scene half-way through, for balance.
The main purpose of this new scene is to show Harry coming to a decision about what he learned in the prologue. But I also need a few things mentioned for set-up of the climax - because it's a bad move to spring on a reader all those "oh, by the way, these facts are important to the end of the story, but I didn't bother to set them up properly."
Also, this is the very first time in the ATBT universe that Harry gets to show what's going on in his mind, so I can let him expand on that just a bit. Nowhere in the earlier scenes do we get his take on how his relationship with Draco is going, so I'll let him think about that. This will also address my fourth beta's comment that the relationship issues seem too disconnected from the rest of the story.
Finally, there's an issue discussion I've been meaning to wedge in somewhere and this scene may be a good place. ATBT Draco is a fashion model. Ranks right up there with other fandom cliches like Veela!Draco, Abused-by-Lucius!Draco, or FlamboyantlyGay!Draco. But I want it to be more than a cliche - ATBT Draco is a working model, in a small studio, and I'm looking for realism as much as possible. I even have a beta to check the modeling parts -kattiya who has a background in the industry, and who points articles my way and is helping me keep it real. Many readers have commented (mostly in the background) about the cliche of Gorgeous-Model!Draco in ATBT, and I want to make it clear, this Draco is not gorgeous. I don't see him as movie-star gorgeous. I see him as someone the modeling world would use because he's got the build, the moves, and the versatility they're looking for.
I can tell from the get-go, this scene has the potential to be deadly dull. A one-person scene, the main focus is an internal decision. Could be a lot of "Harry thought this" and "Harry thought that". Blah blah blah. I can almost hear the back buttons clicking. Therefore, I need an external device to keep things moving, and I pull out one of my favorites: the journey.
Ever notice how many stories use a journey to drive the plot? Lord of the Rings - a huge epic journey. Well, I don't need anything quite so earth-shattering. I'll have Harry visit a few spots, though. A micro-journey. (I added the broom-chase scene over Belgravia in ATBT for just this purpose - it broke up what was going to be a very static "Harry-and-Draco talking" scene.) And because Harry is thinking about the past, I make him take that journey literally: he will go back to a place he saw a lot of during the war.
Before I set fingers to keyboard, I work out the scene in my mind. I visualize certain things; I can even hear some of the dialogue.
So I'm ready. I begin by making a note of the things I need to include in this scene so I don't stray too far:
-Harry thinks about Draco's appearance
-Harry goes to West London
-Harry comes to his decision
-mention facts needed for the set-up of the climax
Do I start at the beginning of the scene? Oh, poppets, you don't think that, do you? No, I start with my strongest visual image: Harry goes back to his favorite Chinese restaurant.
The front of the restaurant is one of those all-important set-up facts I need to show, so I let myself get carried away so it's memorable. I've got a whole backstory about the sign, the name, the owner -- I can tell you more about the owner than you'll ever read about. I won't use it, but I know it. This snippet lets me do one of my favorite things: write very intimately detailed slices of life.
Now I finally start to write.
I don't know what other writers' ratios of writing:rewriting is - mine's about 25:75. I spend 25% of my time writing new words, and 75% revising them. Most of the rewriting comes as I'm writing. I hack out a sentence, I go back and change a lot of the words, the order, the phrasing. Now I've read advice not to use a thesaurus, but I find it a useful tool. One of my strengths as a writer is that I happen to know a lot of words, and a lot of nuances and differences in their meanings. Not that I always get it right, but I'm better than average. And when I'm trying just to go for volume, I'll use a word I know is "almost" what I want and let it go until I can come back and find the one I know is better. But I often use the thesaurus feature as I write. I never use an unfamiliar word, though. I'm looking for precision.
Okay. Got that part done. Now I go back and really look at it more carefully.One of my weaknesses as a writer is that I'm really wordy. I'm too wordy. So I know I'll be paring away at what I've got, looking for useless additions. Delete, trim, streamline. I'm also looking for balance: Do the sentences vary in length, in structure, in content? Does the logic flow from one sentence to the next or are there jumps? Do I repeat words? Do I use too many big words when small ones will do the trick (another fault). After heavy pruning, I'm left with that description of the restaurant, Harry thinking about what he's learned in the prologue, and what he thinks so far.
I can see that Harry is subtly avoiding his final destination, and this makes sense with the plot, so I decide to emphasize that. So I'll make him visit his own flat before the restaurant. This way he can also show the current state of his relationship with Draco - he still has his own flat, it's barely used, he was here two weeks ago when they'd argued. Here, too, is where I put the Model!Draco stuff. This time, I use a flashback to a conversation - dialogue is always more interesting that "Harry thought blah blah blah." Here in this conversation, I let Hermione do the heavy lifting.
I struggle with this quite a bit. This story is written in third person past: Harry said... So to write Harry remembering a past conversation makes me have to use: Harry had said... Too much of this is ugly, IMO, so I try to use as few tags as I can get away with, which is hard with all the folks in the conversation.
I'm at the point where I can write the beginning of the scene, since I know where it goes. I add a little about Harry eating breakfast at Draco's flat, thinking about his goal for the day. Not too much. By this time, I'm running out of steam - I've been at this scene about 90 minutes. I know I'm fried when I try to entertain myself by translating some of my new paragraphs into the "tranzilate" feature of www.gizoogle.com to see what the hip-hop version looks like. (It was past tha lunch rizzush, n Harry hadnt had trippin' more substantial than tha eggs n toast hed nibbled on thizzay rhymin'.)
Day 2: I begin by rereading what I've done so far. Right away, I see that the flashback conversation goes on too long. Another fault of mine - I do this:
Character A: Here's a comment.
Character B: Oh. Says something lame.
Character A: Here's another comment.
I prune Character B's lameness away, then take out another quarter of the dialogue, including some - to me - funny but unnecessary lines. Oh, it hurts!
Then I notice that I had echoed Harry's introspective comments in the restaurant with a similar introspective passage in his flat. Cut and paste time - I move the restaurant introspection to the flat and blend, trim, cut, streamline. Phew! The modeling comments similarly have an echo at breakfast, so off they go to that part.
Harry has one more stop to make: the place he's been heading for all along. He gets a bit of dialogue with a receptionist, comes to his decision, and the scene ends with a pithy comment.
Back over the new part - you know the drill now. Ninety minutes later, I've addressed what I needed to - oops, almost forgot to mention the second set-up; I go back and add it. Current word count: 2154.
Now I'll let this scene rest a bit. Before my betas see it, I'll go over each sentence at least twice more. In addition, there are a few paragraphs I'm still not happy with. They don't emphasize enough what I want them to emphasize and are dotted with cliche phrases.
And here's part of it so far:
____________
This part of town hadn't changed. The streets were still littered with trash, the same storefronts were still shuttered and begrimed. Harry wondered briefly if it was Monday – the days seemed to get away from him, and the Peacock was closed on Mondays. One glance at the neon sign proclaiming P COCK let him know it wasn't.
The beleaguered owner of the Peacock, Mr. Li, had had a running battle with the local hoodlums for as long as Harry had visited the place. Habit had become ritual – the word proved too tempting a target, leading to a sneaky nocturnal visit, a quick burst of black spray paint, and the erasure of the E and A. Every Monday afternoon, Mr. Li would take out his rickety stepladder and slowly drag it outside, carefully climb until both feet perched on the warning: do not stand on or above this step, frown intently, and scrub at the paint with a wire brush until it was mostly gone.
Every Tuesday morning, the paint would be back. None of Mr. Li's aggrieved complaints to the local precinct made a jot of difference in catching the culprits. Harry had once made the mistake of suggesting that Mr. Li might want to rename the restaurant something less tempting like the Peahen. Mr. Li had given him a look as though Harry had suggested he chop up and serve his revered mother in the daily special.
____________
ETA My ever-alert beta has Britpicked these three paragraphs since I've posted them. She notes that "trash" should more correctly be "litter", seeing that this is Harry's POV. I know a few of the trash/dustbin/litter differences, but I frequently miss them. Some American authors don't worry overmuch about Britishisms, but I'm in this thing to learn what I can and to do the best I know how, so I always make the Britpick changes that are shown to me.
She also told me that "precinct" is an American institution. I had a strong suspicion this was the case, but I didn't know the alternative and was counting on her to provide it. And she did, in detail, so that sentence will be revised. And I've learned something new about British culture in the meantime. What a cool hobby.
With her permission, her comment is here:
The notion of "the precinct" doesn't fit how British policing works. The police are in fact a number of locally organised regional forces. That for London is the Metropolitan Police Force otherwise known as "the Met". There are police stations, but they don't cover a defined area and you might not know which one your local cop-shop was. The term "the precinct" or the "precinct house" are never used. In any event, Mr Li would probably be complaining to the Local Authority (who would be a metropolitan borough council, probably Hammersmith or one of the Actons) about vandalism, even if he did also complain to the police about criminal damage. What you'd do would be ring (using the non-emergency number, which routes to a central switchboard for the force, tell them where you were) and they'd eventually send someone round. If they wanted you to attend in person at a police station they'd tell you which one, but normally they'd come to you.
This is partly the result of reading Stephen King's book "On Writing", from
zionsstarfish's long-ago recommendation. I've never read a Stephen King novel; don't plan to, either. (ETA: because I thought he wrote only horror and I'm a big, fat wuss. Comments below have told me otherwise, so I'm much more likely to try his "non-horror" fic). But I thought it was an interesting book.I've made no secret that I'm trying to finish up the sequel to A Thousand Beautiful Things (ATBT). Currently, I'm heavily revising and recasting certain parts of the plot. So where the first draft had 12 scenes, the revised version will have 7 additional scenes.
One of the writing issues that's caused me the biggest amount of work this time around is POV (point of view). The proto-draft used 3 different characters' POVs. My first beta suggested that 2 of these characters didn't play any important role in the story and probably shouldn't be highlighted so prominently. She was right, so I rewrote their scenes from the main character's POV - Draco, in this instance.
My second beta noted that the climax and resolution of the plot was fairly weak. She was right. My third beta mentioned it in passing as well. So I came up with a much more satisfying ending, discussed some of the pivotal changes with her, and began to rewrite. This new plot allows some of the other characters, who were sitting around not doing much of anything, to take an active role in the story - always a good thing! Because of the new dynamic, I realized that these characters would have scenes that only they could describe, so I knew that I'd need scenes from their POV. So I've gone from 3 POVs to 1 to 4. One of the results is that I will be writing the same scene three times over from three different POVs - an interesting exercise. But the final POV will probably be the most fun.
I've told you all that when I write long stories, I don't write the scenes in order - this has definite drawbacks, but it's the way it happens for me. The only way I can make this happen is to work from an outline, which is actually very sketchy: a table with scene no., whose POV, all the characters involved, the location and a summary, and timeline (e.g. Tues. morning). In one glance, I can look for some kind of balance in the POVs - I try to avoid a one-time-only appearance and try to intersperse the POVs for variety.
The scene I'm going to discuss is written from Harry's POV. I came to the decision to include his POV very late in the process - just last week, in fact. I'd finally managed to untangle the new ending from the wreckage of the old ending, and part of the plot gives Harry a role where he's the only character for a critical part of the scene. In addition, he has a brief POV snippet in the new prologue with an essential piece of plot. Because I have to use him both in the prologue and late in the story, I was looking to add a Harry-POV scene half-way through, for balance.
The main purpose of this new scene is to show Harry coming to a decision about what he learned in the prologue. But I also need a few things mentioned for set-up of the climax - because it's a bad move to spring on a reader all those "oh, by the way, these facts are important to the end of the story, but I didn't bother to set them up properly."
Also, this is the very first time in the ATBT universe that Harry gets to show what's going on in his mind, so I can let him expand on that just a bit. Nowhere in the earlier scenes do we get his take on how his relationship with Draco is going, so I'll let him think about that. This will also address my fourth beta's comment that the relationship issues seem too disconnected from the rest of the story.
Finally, there's an issue discussion I've been meaning to wedge in somewhere and this scene may be a good place. ATBT Draco is a fashion model. Ranks right up there with other fandom cliches like Veela!Draco, Abused-by-Lucius!Draco, or FlamboyantlyGay!Draco. But I want it to be more than a cliche - ATBT Draco is a working model, in a small studio, and I'm looking for realism as much as possible. I even have a beta to check the modeling parts -
kattiya who has a background in the industry, and who points articles my way and is helping me keep it real. Many readers have commented (mostly in the background) about the cliche of Gorgeous-Model!Draco in ATBT, and I want to make it clear, this Draco is not gorgeous. I don't see him as movie-star gorgeous. I see him as someone the modeling world would use because he's got the build, the moves, and the versatility they're looking for.I can tell from the get-go, this scene has the potential to be deadly dull. A one-person scene, the main focus is an internal decision. Could be a lot of "Harry thought this" and "Harry thought that". Blah blah blah. I can almost hear the back buttons clicking. Therefore, I need an external device to keep things moving, and I pull out one of my favorites: the journey.
Ever notice how many stories use a journey to drive the plot? Lord of the Rings - a huge epic journey. Well, I don't need anything quite so earth-shattering. I'll have Harry visit a few spots, though. A micro-journey. (I added the broom-chase scene over Belgravia in ATBT for just this purpose - it broke up what was going to be a very static "Harry-and-Draco talking" scene.) And because Harry is thinking about the past, I make him take that journey literally: he will go back to a place he saw a lot of during the war.
Before I set fingers to keyboard, I work out the scene in my mind. I visualize certain things; I can even hear some of the dialogue.
So I'm ready. I begin by making a note of the things I need to include in this scene so I don't stray too far:
-Harry thinks about Draco's appearance
-Harry goes to West London
-Harry comes to his decision
-mention facts needed for the set-up of the climax
Do I start at the beginning of the scene? Oh, poppets, you don't think that, do you? No, I start with my strongest visual image: Harry goes back to his favorite Chinese restaurant.
The front of the restaurant is one of those all-important set-up facts I need to show, so I let myself get carried away so it's memorable. I've got a whole backstory about the sign, the name, the owner -- I can tell you more about the owner than you'll ever read about. I won't use it, but I know it. This snippet lets me do one of my favorite things: write very intimately detailed slices of life.
Now I finally start to write.
I don't know what other writers' ratios of writing:rewriting is - mine's about 25:75. I spend 25% of my time writing new words, and 75% revising them. Most of the rewriting comes as I'm writing. I hack out a sentence, I go back and change a lot of the words, the order, the phrasing. Now I've read advice not to use a thesaurus, but I find it a useful tool. One of my strengths as a writer is that I happen to know a lot of words, and a lot of nuances and differences in their meanings. Not that I always get it right, but I'm better than average. And when I'm trying just to go for volume, I'll use a word I know is "almost" what I want and let it go until I can come back and find the one I know is better. But I often use the thesaurus feature as I write. I never use an unfamiliar word, though. I'm looking for precision.
Okay. Got that part done. Now I go back and really look at it more carefully.
I can see that Harry is subtly avoiding his final destination, and this makes sense with the plot, so I decide to emphasize that. So I'll make him visit his own flat before the restaurant. This way he can also show the current state of his relationship with Draco - he still has his own flat, it's barely used, he was here two weeks ago when they'd argued. Here, too, is where I put the Model!Draco stuff. This time, I use a flashback to a conversation - dialogue is always more interesting that "Harry thought blah blah blah." Here in this conversation, I let Hermione do the heavy lifting.
I struggle with this quite a bit. This story is written in third person past: Harry said... So to write Harry remembering a past conversation makes me have to use: Harry had said... Too much of this is ugly, IMO, so I try to use as few tags as I can get away with, which is hard with all the folks in the conversation.
I'm at the point where I can write the beginning of the scene, since I know where it goes. I add a little about Harry eating breakfast at Draco's flat, thinking about his goal for the day. Not too much. By this time, I'm running out of steam - I've been at this scene about 90 minutes. I know I'm fried when I try to entertain myself by translating some of my new paragraphs into the "tranzilate" feature of www.gizoogle.com to see what the hip-hop version looks like. (It was past tha lunch rizzush, n Harry hadnt had trippin' more substantial than tha eggs n toast hed nibbled on thizzay rhymin'.)
Day 2: I begin by rereading what I've done so far. Right away, I see that the flashback conversation goes on too long. Another fault of mine - I do this:
Character A: Here's a comment.
Character B: Oh. Says something lame.
Character A: Here's another comment.
I prune Character B's lameness away, then take out another quarter of the dialogue, including some - to me - funny but unnecessary lines. Oh, it hurts!
Then I notice that I had echoed Harry's introspective comments in the restaurant with a similar introspective passage in his flat. Cut and paste time - I move the restaurant introspection to the flat and blend, trim, cut, streamline. Phew! The modeling comments similarly have an echo at breakfast, so off they go to that part.
Harry has one more stop to make: the place he's been heading for all along. He gets a bit of dialogue with a receptionist, comes to his decision, and the scene ends with a pithy comment.
Back over the new part - you know the drill now. Ninety minutes later, I've addressed what I needed to - oops, almost forgot to mention the second set-up; I go back and add it. Current word count: 2154.
Now I'll let this scene rest a bit. Before my betas see it, I'll go over each sentence at least twice more. In addition, there are a few paragraphs I'm still not happy with. They don't emphasize enough what I want them to emphasize and are dotted with cliche phrases.
And here's part of it so far:
____________
This part of town hadn't changed. The streets were still littered with trash, the same storefronts were still shuttered and begrimed. Harry wondered briefly if it was Monday – the days seemed to get away from him, and the Peacock was closed on Mondays. One glance at the neon sign proclaiming P COCK let him know it wasn't.
The beleaguered owner of the Peacock, Mr. Li, had had a running battle with the local hoodlums for as long as Harry had visited the place. Habit had become ritual – the word proved too tempting a target, leading to a sneaky nocturnal visit, a quick burst of black spray paint, and the erasure of the E and A. Every Monday afternoon, Mr. Li would take out his rickety stepladder and slowly drag it outside, carefully climb until both feet perched on the warning: do not stand on or above this step, frown intently, and scrub at the paint with a wire brush until it was mostly gone.
Every Tuesday morning, the paint would be back. None of Mr. Li's aggrieved complaints to the local precinct made a jot of difference in catching the culprits. Harry had once made the mistake of suggesting that Mr. Li might want to rename the restaurant something less tempting like the Peahen. Mr. Li had given him a look as though Harry had suggested he chop up and serve his revered mother in the daily special.
____________
ETA My ever-alert beta has Britpicked these three paragraphs since I've posted them. She notes that "trash" should more correctly be "litter", seeing that this is Harry's POV. I know a few of the trash/dustbin/litter differences, but I frequently miss them. Some American authors don't worry overmuch about Britishisms, but I'm in this thing to learn what I can and to do the best I know how, so I always make the Britpick changes that are shown to me.
She also told me that "precinct" is an American institution. I had a strong suspicion this was the case, but I didn't know the alternative and was counting on her to provide it. And she did, in detail, so that sentence will be revised. And I've learned something new about British culture in the meantime. What a cool hobby.
With her permission, her comment is here:
The notion of "the precinct" doesn't fit how British policing works. The police are in fact a number of locally organised regional forces. That for London is the Metropolitan Police Force otherwise known as "the Met". There are police stations, but they don't cover a defined area and you might not know which one your local cop-shop was. The term "the precinct" or the "precinct house" are never used. In any event, Mr Li would probably be complaining to the Local Authority (who would be a metropolitan borough council, probably Hammersmith or one of the Actons) about vandalism, even if he did also complain to the police about criminal damage. What you'd do would be ring (using the non-emergency number, which routes to a central switchboard for the force, tell them where you were) and they'd eventually send someone round. If they wanted you to attend in person at a police station they'd tell you which one, but normally they'd come to you.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-13 02:23 am (UTC)I avoid scary movies at ALL costs not to mention literature. There's so much I can tolerate.
But nowadays Holliwood seems to like formula of remaking of horror movies based on Japanese ones (how original *bleck*).
I can't deny they arouse my curiocity but you know what they say about the cat. So there's no way they can convince me to see those things. So I just urge my friends to go see it and then tell me about it. Why waste money and go thru' agonizing two-hour suffering when I can avoid it? *hehehe* >:D
no subject
Date: 2005-03-14 12:20 am (UTC)I don't like being scared, either. My little brother (well, okay, he's in his twenties and is close to six feet tall, but still!!) made me watch The Ring with him last summer. It was dreadful. I recoil into the club. :)