Leaderboard

I was looking at your stories written section just now and I saw Claire's Misfortune in Games and thought “Hey, I remember that one, why haven’t I reviewed it?” And I clicked on the reviews and I did review it in 2010, so I remembered the story but not the review and I forgot where I was going with this.

Creating stories can be a perplexing/confusing topic since everybody seems to have a slightly different way of going about it. For trivial details, I’ll use random generators/pickers, to get a list and see “what fits”. I’ve got a database which is close to the “lore bible” for my originals. I’ve written small programs to help my writing (date generator, that random picker from a file, database management, map aids, etc). I’ve drawn crude maps, both on paper and in drawing programs. I’ve experimented with 3D programs, mainly for layout of major locations, just to give an idea. I’ve got a bunch of spiral notebooks for my potter universe – which has turned out to be highly useful when returning from a decade “on-hiatus”. I’ve got a myriad of small text files for my potter universe, with backstory (also useful after that long on-hiatus). A three-ring binder with loose paper for the original universe. As to actual writing, I don’t write a super-fine outline, just a crude one. Write a few key scenes, if needed – just so I’ve got an idea of where I’m heading. Bring up the “inspirational” pictures, and start writing. I’ll write notes which I’m about to end for the day, so I can pick up where I left off. I’ll jot down a bit of an outline for a chapter, when it’s important. And I’m not afraid to cut/cull material or alter the outline if the characters aren’t agreeing with it. I also try to keep a spiral notebook handy for that occasion when I hear something, or come up with something, or even after a talk with a coworker – I’ll jot those ideas down, which gives things a better chance of being remembered. And I’ll typically find my brain the *most* creative, coming up with the *best* ideas as I’m trying to get ready for work after a long weekend….

Happy Birthday DG! ( @BronxWench spilled the beans …. )

The happiest of birthdays to our very own @DemonGoddess! I hope you at least get the day off today, or get to go home on time so you can celebrate!

I do this too. Pictures for mood. Usually something setting related, I use focuswriter, which lets me put a picture as a background to write on. If I write a scene that takes place in winter, I’ll put in a wintery cityscape as the background. Or an angsty scene will get an angsty picture.

I will say my visual aids are largely not explicit. I find I like to collect images that feed a mood, or a facet of the world I’m building. For the Tales of the Seaborn Crown ‘verse, I collect steampunk images, mostly objects, Carnivale masks, costumes, and other things that flesh out the little details. I might save various bits of armor, or weapons that amuse. The explicit stuff doesn’t need visual aids, other than perhaps a pretty toy here and there. I like chastity cages lately...

Mayhaps I will… just in what capacity… eh, I’ll figure it out.

Do it! Do it!

Kinda like when you RPG you have to get a feel for the character or characters. Keep a general idea. events usually happen that will get you from point a to point b. The last time I tried to be meticulous about it I rage quit and deleted the entire thing. The only notable exception is Oceania in general. Haha.

Very much a pantser. I do have a general idea of the ending I’m aiming for, but if I start analyzing the desires and antagonists and obstacles too much it stifles instead of making sparkles. Only in the last week did a revisit of old character friends made the story really flow. I work so much better as a pantser, but that leads to bigger issues for longer pieces. Short ones are usually light on those qualities like theme, development, and world building so I think I’m okay. I’m trying to figure out why my fanfic has gotten so much less spontaneous… and why my originals I’ve made so hard. I suspect it’s because the results of two novel length pantsing ended up messes and wasted of all the time spent on them. I desperately need an editor, but budget-wise that won’t happen anytime soon unless I win a lotto. So I muddle through as best I can with the occasional opinions. I love a good review that points out things… at least once I calm down. :p I get ideas from anything, and keeping them long enough to get them recorded is an issue. I break ideas into fandom/series and a bucket for original ideas. When I finish a story i may take a day or two to relax, and then check my idea files. That is best case, sometimes a plot bunny will not let go, hence a Neverwinter sequel has displaced my NaNo projects for the moment. Usually I have at least two active stories and one or two a semi active. (right now, active original, three active Star Wars, and a Neverwinter… NaNo has kicked my muse into high gear but not the direction I planned on) On a good week I post for two stories, on a bad one, nothing. (that is one thing about NaNo that leaves me antsy, I may not post anything that month) Once I have the basic idea down I usually have the starting point and a major plot arc. That can usually be sumarized in a single sentence or so, no matter the final intended length. Names, quirks, background, etc I make up as I need it. I use highlighting to mark areas to fill in and clean up later, staying a bit generic. ‘Search and replace’ is my friend. character studies killed my muse dead in 2010. There are random generators too for lots of details. I concentrate on the story flow and love cliffhangers, and hiding the answer in plain sight where I hope it was overlooked. Pushing and concealing answers in the story, means I prefer 1st person for the same reason its favored by mystery writers: a fair mystery! I don’t want characters to look incompetent in any genre by making the events too obvious. I also don’t want the readers to get frustrated because the reader didn’t know some obscure fact like one car doesn’t come in stick shift that year, so the clues should be given to the character and reader. That is a tricky balance and sometimes I lean toward underexplaining. One of my bigger problems is that I have too much going on in the last chapter so it ends up huge. But finishing a story is important so every one is a victory. The next big problem is editing and selling, but that’s more a publishing challenge than a writing one as I see the 1st draft as foundation and blueprint. All the revision in the world can’t help if it wasn’t written down.

I am very much a pantser. I’ll come up with an idea, a setting, and characters, and start going from there. I’ve had character arcs shift from original ideas and outlines entirely because it was what was working as I wrote. Current story I’m still not entirely sure what’s going to happen with one of my major characters and if she’ll be hero or villain. To me I find if I go too close to any kind of outline, things get a bit too wooden.

I am something of a pantser when I write by myself. When I co-author with someone else, I keep copious notes, but left to my own devices, I let my characters tell the story. It’s not even remotely efficient, but it’s how my brain works best when I don’t have someone else to bounce ideas off. The only thing I might make notes for are certain elements of the backstory, like pantheons, place names, and a very, VERY rough timeline. Otherwise, I wing it madly. I also do collect pictures as mental prompts, which I save to private boards on my Pinterest, just to fuel the imagination a bit, or aid me in describing something. I’m very visual in many respects, even if I prefer not to describe my characters in such minute detail as to rob readers of a chance to imagine the characters themselves.

When I started my potter fic many years ago, I did make some notes, etc, including “behind the scenes” shorts to the other side. Now that I’ve decided to restart that story, fifteen years later, I’ve been finding those notes useful, invaluable actually, in restarting it with some consistency. Overall, if it’s important to the story, or good backstory, I do write it down, either on paper, or in the computer. I even have a database for my original works. Another invaluable file I have, from years ago, is a spreadsheet for the potter story. Given its size, I had columns for each of the major/significant charactors, a row per day of the story, and for those interesting days, a thing or two about what was happening – useful, very useful, to refer to. (And, now that I’m revising, I’ve got some of the older drafts too.) As to writing the story itself, words definitely flow more easily at a keyboard, especially if I’ve got “inspirational pictures” up onthe rest of the computer monitor. Now, I don’t start with a comprehensive story outline….NO! I will write any key scenes, have a rough idea, and refine it as I write. So, this next section to the current chapter I’m working on, yesterday, I came up with a few points to write to, so I give one sentence snippets, and I’ll likely write to those goals as I work tonight/tomorrow at it. Any “later” ideas that I don’t have a spot yet, will loiter as one-liners in the rough order I intend, until I reach them.

I remember those word processers. My parents hHad a similar one in the house until we got our 486 PC in about ‘94/95, and then it probably went into a cupboard or classified ad. With my shorter flashfics up to 1000 words I often just have a rough idea, or a bit of word play, or a shit joke, and start typing to see what happens. Sometimes something pretty good happens. Other times it’s a load of horse cock. With my longer stories I’ve tended to come up with as many ideas and concepts to use, type ‘em in a text file, and then try and get them into a rough chapter plan order to work out how I’m going to do it, the plan will often include turns of phrase I’ve thought up to use. The plan will also sometimes get mixed around a bit with things being moved to other chapters or deleted. My current story plan is messed up a bit because I’ve found I can’t fit everything I wanted in part 3, so I’m rejigging part 4 and so on. Even with all that I sometimes have a really hard time getting things down as they are in my head. I sometimes sit here for minutes trying to find the right frigging word that’s on the tip of my tongue – sometimes I try and google for it. I don’t have any character sheets either, which probably means I’ll contradict the shit out of myself one of these days. Another thing with me was I did a lot of request stories for other people, and for some of those they had a paragraph or two about what they wanted to see so that part of the work was already done, in a way. To take an example from the forum – If I did one of T_B’s requests, say. These usually have a plot outline, a few details of characters to be included, and indicate the main fetish or fetishes involved. All I’d be doing there would be hanging the descriptions and whatever perversity occurs to me off that skeleton, and crediting T_B for it. I guess with requests like that, it’s like someone’s dug down three feet by six and you the author just have to dig another three by six. Sometimes it could be difficult because I’d say to the requester, “What about if X does Y?” and they’d say that they would never know arousal again, you monster, Harry would never felch Amelia, but otherwise it’s basically easier developing someone else’s story idea with those.