What I have so far
Aug. 24th, 2011 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunarkeysI opened up my resume and I realized how depressing it looked, so now I'll go back to what I have on the writing front.
Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the fallout of Scoundrels and Liberators, I haven't written much at all. Very, very long story short, I originally wrote S&L as a fun little gift story to some friends of mine. I included their characters and some of my own in a fun little action romp that lasted about ten pages. Not only did they love it, it got passed around and my other friends enjoyed it too! As a result, I was inspired to continue and ended up turning a simple short story into a novel.
Sadly, there was fallout over how the story was going versus how the characters were progressing, so the story was stopped. Instead of taking it in stride and reworking the characters (I essentially had created everything but name and appearance), I got depressed and stopped writing anything seriously. Generally, the cycle was that I'd get excited about a concept, write out an outline, then get bummed out and throw out the idea because I'd never be able to finish it.
So! Let's go back to why I was writing S&L in the first place.
S&L was an idea largely born from reading TVTropes for hours at a time and recognizing what happened in most fiction. I wanted to write something in a unpleasant, corporate-controlled future where much of the population is coerced into working for minimum pay, and a lawless population desperately fights against a system despite knowing that in the end, they're helpless against the overwhelming power of corporate-backed mercenaries and gangs designed to keep the system in check. Roughly as stereotypical as you can get, right? From there, I designed each character to come from their own separate background and have interesting personalities, instead of just one group of 'badass' characters that would be able to take down anything. Certainly, some <i>are</i> pretty hardcore in their own right, but a few are cowardly, some are nervous and introverted...but each is very, very good at what they do.
Eventually, I worked towards a plot twist that undid a great deal of the 'stereotype' the story was based around, and intended to go forth and see how things worked from there...which was when the story crashed.
Rather than dwell on 'oh man, I was so happy working on this thing, but I just haven't been inspired', I wanted to focus on what I could do in order to bring the story back to life.
There were several main problems with the story (other than the mistake of writing it with other people's characters):
Things moved too quickly:
One of the things that bugs me in a lot of stories is that they move too slowly. The author spends an age and a half describing the beginning environment, the characters and their lives before the action started, and generally set a leisurely tone that slowly builds up to when things start going wrong. While this works for those who prefer a more leisurely pace, I wanted to hit the ground running. I wanted to build character through firefights and sneaking around, through planning and conspiring to get the bad guys. And while things did start off exciting, my constant need to keep the tension high meant that I revealed things too quickly - major backstory revelations ended up coming out after a very short period of time, and I didn't give the characters enough time to breathe in order for such revelations to actually have the impact they should have.
My solution here is to start earlier. The characters start off having already met one another and have already worked a few jobs together, so while they know one another quite well, the audience does not. While I nodded to the audience by showing some of the original meetings through flashbacks, my main assumption was that people would know that these guys are great buds and thus empathize with them when the major revelations came through. In the rewrite, I'll move it back about six chapters so we can see the characters struggle through their first few shenanigans together, making the times when things finally break down all the more important.
My transitions (and grammar) sucked:
Generally, to move from one scene to another in the same chapter, I faded to black (by using -- to indicate 'hey, this is now another scene') and transferred over.
This would usually happen, oh, say, four or five times a chapter. Not exactly an acceptable writing thing to do!
Unfortunately, I'm still adjusting to fixing this, along with fixing my terrible grammar (I overuse hypens, misuse semicolons, and use adjectives to personify things that should not be personified). To that end, I will credit Nyomi, my girlfriend, who continues to edit my subpar work and shake her head, all while nursing me into being a better writer. With her help, I'm hoping that I can improve to the point where I don't break an important scene by an improperly-worded sentence.
Plot holes:
As much as I'd like to think I did a good job making sure they didn't happen (especially since the major plot twist wasn't even in the original script!), they did show up. I forgot about Keys' broken arm almost immediately, and while he wasn't doing anything too impossible without it, I still missed it. Tyraeil recovered entirely too quickly as well, and the 'miracle medicine' I used would've left a gaping plot hole in an important part much later in the book. Point is that I need to write a complete outline this time, then get started, instead of doing stuff as I go. Even then, it needs to be a first draft until I've had enough people to read over it so that if I publish it, I'll know that it works.
I may end up writing the outline in this journal, though I'm not sure yet. I think I'll stick to writing the other story in here, which I'll discuss in my next entry. For now, though, it is now 4:30 in the morning, and I'd really like to get some sleep.
To bed with me!
Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the fallout of Scoundrels and Liberators, I haven't written much at all. Very, very long story short, I originally wrote S&L as a fun little gift story to some friends of mine. I included their characters and some of my own in a fun little action romp that lasted about ten pages. Not only did they love it, it got passed around and my other friends enjoyed it too! As a result, I was inspired to continue and ended up turning a simple short story into a novel.
Sadly, there was fallout over how the story was going versus how the characters were progressing, so the story was stopped. Instead of taking it in stride and reworking the characters (I essentially had created everything but name and appearance), I got depressed and stopped writing anything seriously. Generally, the cycle was that I'd get excited about a concept, write out an outline, then get bummed out and throw out the idea because I'd never be able to finish it.
So! Let's go back to why I was writing S&L in the first place.
S&L was an idea largely born from reading TVTropes for hours at a time and recognizing what happened in most fiction. I wanted to write something in a unpleasant, corporate-controlled future where much of the population is coerced into working for minimum pay, and a lawless population desperately fights against a system despite knowing that in the end, they're helpless against the overwhelming power of corporate-backed mercenaries and gangs designed to keep the system in check. Roughly as stereotypical as you can get, right? From there, I designed each character to come from their own separate background and have interesting personalities, instead of just one group of 'badass' characters that would be able to take down anything. Certainly, some <i>are</i> pretty hardcore in their own right, but a few are cowardly, some are nervous and introverted...but each is very, very good at what they do.
Eventually, I worked towards a plot twist that undid a great deal of the 'stereotype' the story was based around, and intended to go forth and see how things worked from there...which was when the story crashed.
Rather than dwell on 'oh man, I was so happy working on this thing, but I just haven't been inspired', I wanted to focus on what I could do in order to bring the story back to life.
There were several main problems with the story (other than the mistake of writing it with other people's characters):
Things moved too quickly:
One of the things that bugs me in a lot of stories is that they move too slowly. The author spends an age and a half describing the beginning environment, the characters and their lives before the action started, and generally set a leisurely tone that slowly builds up to when things start going wrong. While this works for those who prefer a more leisurely pace, I wanted to hit the ground running. I wanted to build character through firefights and sneaking around, through planning and conspiring to get the bad guys. And while things did start off exciting, my constant need to keep the tension high meant that I revealed things too quickly - major backstory revelations ended up coming out after a very short period of time, and I didn't give the characters enough time to breathe in order for such revelations to actually have the impact they should have.
My solution here is to start earlier. The characters start off having already met one another and have already worked a few jobs together, so while they know one another quite well, the audience does not. While I nodded to the audience by showing some of the original meetings through flashbacks, my main assumption was that people would know that these guys are great buds and thus empathize with them when the major revelations came through. In the rewrite, I'll move it back about six chapters so we can see the characters struggle through their first few shenanigans together, making the times when things finally break down all the more important.
My transitions (and grammar) sucked:
Generally, to move from one scene to another in the same chapter, I faded to black (by using -- to indicate 'hey, this is now another scene') and transferred over.
This would usually happen, oh, say, four or five times a chapter. Not exactly an acceptable writing thing to do!
Unfortunately, I'm still adjusting to fixing this, along with fixing my terrible grammar (I overuse hypens, misuse semicolons, and use adjectives to personify things that should not be personified). To that end, I will credit Nyomi, my girlfriend, who continues to edit my subpar work and shake her head, all while nursing me into being a better writer. With her help, I'm hoping that I can improve to the point where I don't break an important scene by an improperly-worded sentence.
Plot holes:
As much as I'd like to think I did a good job making sure they didn't happen (especially since the major plot twist wasn't even in the original script!), they did show up. I forgot about Keys' broken arm almost immediately, and while he wasn't doing anything too impossible without it, I still missed it. Tyraeil recovered entirely too quickly as well, and the 'miracle medicine' I used would've left a gaping plot hole in an important part much later in the book. Point is that I need to write a complete outline this time, then get started, instead of doing stuff as I go. Even then, it needs to be a first draft until I've had enough people to read over it so that if I publish it, I'll know that it works.
I may end up writing the outline in this journal, though I'm not sure yet. I think I'll stick to writing the other story in here, which I'll discuss in my next entry. For now, though, it is now 4:30 in the morning, and I'd really like to get some sleep.
To bed with me!
