More revisions

I've been silent lately, but I've been whittling away at my stories, both original and fanfictiony.

The editing on "Six" is starting to come together. Revisions on the first three chapters are now mostly completed, and they were the chapters that were giving me the most issues. I've still got quite a bit to do, but I belive the most intensive chunk of editing has passed.

(Also, I graduated high school. Cool. More on this may follow.)

News, plus stories?

Over the past few days I've been trying to warm myself back up into writing/editing "Six," so I can finally start tackling the task of editing or writing it again. I anticipate that I will probably have made some progress by the end of next week, so maybe all the "Six" fans out there won't have to steal my soul.

There's another thing on my mind, too. Writing original stories has become such a part of my routine that I can probably say that I spend more time with originals than fan fiction now, with exception of maybe a few periods a couple months ago when I was doing serious revisions for "Six" almost daily. I still have lots of old, unfinished, unedited stories out there that I started and left open for me to finish later in the world of fan fiction. This includes expected novel-length works like "The Ambassador," which I eventually put aside because I couldn't think of any advantages of working my butt off for fan fiction when I could write original stuff instead.

So, my question to you guys is: would you like to see these stories released? A while, I was thinking about posting a story on FFN that was nothing but a collection of story fragments, things that I'd never completely developed enough to be stand-alone stories.

Lemme know what you think.

More revisions

As of today, I've finished drafting revisions for chapter two of "Six to Bereavement." It's added around 1000 words, so the total that I've added so far comes to at least 3000.

It looks like the number is slacking off the farther I go. Let's hope I don't end up changing the later chapters too much!

"Six" revisions (and music)!

So, a little bit of news for "Six:"

Over the past few days, I've been going back and revising "Six," starting with the beginning. Basically, I'm tired of having to deal with a beginning that doesn't sufficiently set up for the rest of the story (at the time of posting the beginning I was thinking that the fic might reach a max of 15,000 words and three days).

It's been fun doing this, as I get to see the kinds of choices I made in the beginning again, and how they fit the original intention, but not my current one. I'm sure most of my revisions will be made on only the first few chapters, so I don't think the later parts of the story will be affected too much.

In other news, I've composed a small orchestral symphony for "Six to Bereavement." I'll be posting it with the next chapter. (Expect the next chapter to be relatively short, as I have a lot of authors-notey things to say when I release it.)

(These things are my ways of saying, "I meant to release the next chapter on Christmas, but I got distracted and decided to do other things instead.")

ETA: I posted part of a draft of the first chapter's revisions up on jaslazulstories.blogspot.com.

Six to Bereavement FAQ

Q. What's with the wonky update schedule?

A. At school, I usually have classes until six, with a few small breaks crammed in for homework and practice. Afterwards, I have individual practice time (I play in about four ensembles and I have private lessons), a few chamber music rehearsals per week, club meetings (also I'm crazy and am trying to start another club), homework, etc. It's a rarity that I go to bed before midnight.

Oh. And I have a roommate and there are crazy vocalists who like to stalk me. I can't write with people watching me, plus I don't like explaining why I'm writing gay furry fan fiction (still trying to figure that out myself).

Q. Will there ever be sex?

Maybe. Will it be explicit? No.

I think explicit sex can play an important role in a story, depending on how realistic you're trying to be, or what kind of message you're trying to convey. But any good I'd gain from it would be negated for these reasons:

1. Explicit sex is illegal on FFN, and I don't like having my stories taken down. If I tried to Break The Law by putting it up anyway, I'd have to at least put the fic as M, and then it's off the front page and nobody sees it.

2. Most of my readers are underage, and some of them probably aren't old enough to be reading even a T-rated fic. My view is that sex does not equal porn and rating systems result in a lot of unnecessary censorship, but my view is neither the law nor the common belief here on FFN. Plus, the last thing I want is having someone whose profile says they're thirteen telling me my story is hot.

3. On FFN sex is too big of a deal, probably because the majority of people who write it write porn. Instead of a story with sexual content being a story, it's called a lemon. I write stories, not lemons. (Consequently, if I were to write sex, it would not be porn, which I think is what a lot of people would want anyway.)

Q. I found a plot hole! Will you give me a nickel?

No. Chances are that I've already found it myself, or that you're overlooking something that makes a plot hole less holey. Chances are more likely that the plot hole isn't really a hole, but it's contingent upon something that's implied and not directly stated. If I wrote a story where everything was completely explained and justified, it would be a history textbook.

If it really is a plot hole, tell me about it. But note that my job isn't to completely fill all of the gaps; it's to fill enough of them so that the readers can fill in the rest. That sounds a bit crude, and people will probably accuse me of being lazy, but it's true. If I have to add a paragraph that will confuse 200 readers and clarify a hole to one, I will choose to omit the paragraph and have that information be implied instead.

Q. I found a typo! Will you give me a nickel?

No. But tell me where it is so I can fix it. I edit my stories extensively, but I have no editor or beta-reader, and trying to catch all of my own typos is impossible. It's not that I don't try to find them; it's that when I do, I just read straight through them and never notice.

Six update

So, for those of you who haven't noticed yet, I posted the next chapter to Six. Hopefully the next one won't take too long, but I'm buying myself GPO for Christmas so I'll probably be stuck behind the synths for at least a week or two. We'll see.

And since this might be the last update until then, happy holidays to everyone!

"Six" chapter up

So, the latest chapter of "Six" is up. You should all go read it now.

I'm now making my blog the official "afterthoughts of posting a chapter" place, since placing notes in the story itself is slack.

So, afterthoughts. Basically I said "Screw it" and posted it after my last set of revisions, so there are probably some errors, but after working with editing the same chapter for weeks, I think it's time to for it to go on out.

Also it ventures dangerously close to M-rating, but eh, the story will go where it goes. The few times I've tried to resist the natural flow of a story, it's always ended up bad.

Anyway. I am tired, so I will now go to sleep before I start typing jibberish.

Quick update

In light of an upcoming performance and a lot of hefty schoolwork, I've been slacking for the past week or so on "Six." I would've posted the next chapter by now, but I added some content and I don't feel confident enough with the new content to post it.

I might spend a good bit of time editing this next chapter. There are some parts of it that I am very tempted to delete. Right now, it's mainly a struggle of exactly how much information to give.

Progress update

So, the new chapter of "Six" has been done for a while. Right now I'm working on writing up the chapter after that.

I anticipate the next chapter will be lot of people's favorite chapter. I'm a bit unsure about some of the stuff I'm doing, and there's a lot of stuff near the end of it that seem a little wonky and I might eventually be taking out. But eh, it should be a fun chapter, if I do it right.

New chapter

So, there's a new chapter of "Six" up. Go check it out; it's not as "OMGWTFBBQSOMEONESETUSUPTHEBOMB" as the last chapter, but it's still okayish. (If every chapter was "OMGWTFSOMEONESETUSUPTHEBOMB," then it would be boring, anyway).

I've got most of the next chapter written and I'm starting on the one after that. Hopefully it won't take too long to get the next one up. I anticipate that a lot of people will really like it. Some won't, but the ones who won't probably shouldn't be reading my fics to start with.

Overall, I can say that so far I've had plenty of time to write here, maybe more than I did at my old school because I'm getting distracted by video games a lot less here.

But as I usually say, We Shall See. "Six" keeps getting longer and longer in my head, but maybe it won't be too long before we start to get near the end.

Difficulties

So, I've been stuck in the same place for the past few days with "Six." The trouble isn't that I don't know what to write; it's that I don't know how to sequence things for the best possible read.

I've written and deleted a few scenes, but that's fine. Right now I'm trying to figure out where things need to go, and though this isn't the funnest part of writing, it's definitely worth it.

Progress

So, I finally have a decent handle on the face, and I'm back to working on "Six." This next chapter's going to be a pretty fun one to post.

I've also been doing a bit of thinking about some of my other stories, and I still want to write a oneshot to get my mind out of Six-loops. We'll find out where all this goes, eventually.

Six'd

I post'd the next chapter of "Six" over on FFN, for anyone who's interested.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to write some nifty posts.

Editing

So, right now I'm going through chapters of "Six" and of some other stuff I've written and trying to tidy them up for publication. I'm noticing that a lot of the stuff I thought I did well, I actually did horrible; and some of the stuff I was afraid would be bad is actually decent.

The point is: nothing is ever going to be as you think it is as you are writing it. No matter how good you are or how much experience you have, you're always going to be surprised when you go back and read through what you've written. Most of the time, the words on the page are not exactly what you'd intended to say, and you have to fix that as you go back through and read.

But that's not all editing is. Sometimes, the story, not the words, doesn't go in the right direction. Sometimes you realize that you're trying to intrude on it, force it to go where you want it to (I'm as guilty of that as anyone else). That's when editing gets hard, because you have to use your discretion to decide what needs changing.

I'm at a point in "Six" right now that I have some major plot decisions coming up, and I'm not really sure how to tackle them. Sure, I've tackled them roughly; but I can do better, and I know that the story, as it is, is not heading in a good direction. That means I'm going to be spending a good bit of time editing these next chapters to get it on track--that means getting rid of some of the stuff I'd originally felt was necessary and modifying some pretty important plot points to make the story stronger.

(Note: this is not butchering the story to make it read better to the fandom. This is undoing the butchering I've already done and returning the story to the state it should be. You have to learn the difference.)

With each scene I introduce in these next chapters, I focus on tension. The problem is that the story has enough tension as it is.

When you're writing, especially with drama and suspense, you need to ask yourself constantly, "What will make the readers want to turn the page?" (I think that's something that just about every writer has to be aware of in order to be a success.) But you also need to ask yourself, "Where is this story going?"

Right now, I have the suspense and drama building to a boiling point. What I don't have is a direction, and my task in editing for these next few days is to find it.

(For the record, I have to do things like this regularly. Nothing that I or anyone else writes will ever automatically turn to gold; writing is about work ethic as much as it is about talent.)

In music, everything one plays needs to lead somewhere, else it's just a bunch of noise. It can be good noise, but it won't be music. The same can be said with writing. Focus on fundamentals and readability all you want, but without a clear character arc (or something to follow), it is not a story.

rantrantrant

Whoa, a month with only two posts

...but really, it has been a busyish month for me, despite school wrapping up and everything.

So, since I have a lot of stuff to say, I'll just lollist:

1.) The next chapter of "Six" will be up either tomorrow or Friday, depending on some lifey stuff that I'll find out about tomorrow.

2.) Robindf1 and I have a little surprise we might be unveiling soon. Well, more accurately, I have a surprise that was Robin's idea. Dunno when we'll be unveiling it, but it won't be too long from now, I don't think

3.) I am having quasi–heart surgery the monday after next. It's not anything too major--just a catheter ablation, and it has a 96.5% success rate--but it's not exactly comforting. Wish me luck!

4.) I'm going to attend a residential school of the arts next year for music. So, uh, I may be retiring from fanfiction later this year. Or after "Six" is done with, at least, and maybe The Ambassador. We'll see.

5.) You should all go stalk nordguard.blogspot.com. Gogo Blotch girls!

Back with an update

Sorry I had to disappear off the face of the planet for a while, but eh, like some lulzy post from chaos Leader, (sh)it happens.

Most of said stuff is done with now, and I have loads of free time that I have no clue how to manage. So, hopefully that'll mean moarwriting.

I posted the next chapter of "Six"--it has a few typically not-my-style elements in it, and nothing really happens, but eh, it's a necessary evil. (Or so I think.)

As always, drop me a line to let me know what you think. Hoping these updates will be coming a bit more frequently, but eh, it's been a month or so since I've set fingers to keys in OOo, so we'll see how that works out.

Busy

Just a heads up: in light of a few things that have been going on in The Real World (and my jumping back and forth between "Six" and a few other things), I anticipate progress on my fics to be slow for the next week or two.

Update and advice

A quick update on my progress with "Six:" I have two and a half chapters completed ahead of schedule as of right now--but they're tentative, at best. I'm going to be doing some weird stuff in the next few chapters, so I'll have to see where it takes me before I'll feel comfortable posting any of it.

Because I am lazy and still haven't finished the stuff I'd planned to post on here (characterization, diction, scene decisions, etc.), I'm going to cop out and pull up a David Marnet article KG linked one day on his LJ. (Which is a bonus because I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, anyway; professional advice trumps anything I could say.) See it here.

It's an article from a screenwriter's perspective on how to write drama. Though not everything in it directly applies to writing, most of it does, and the understanding of several of Marnet's points are essential for good writing.

Along with said posting on LJ came these notes, which I feel obligated to reproduce because they also touch on some issues I hear about fairly often in this fandom:

My favorite excerpts (but you really need to read the whole thing):

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?


and

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT.

YMMV, as always, but you could do a lot worse than keep the above in mind when trying to write something dramatic. For novels, the standards are a bit looser--you don't *want* every scene to be FULL OF DRAMA. You need to pace it out, build tension, and so on. I also think you can stretch the "two characters talking about a third" when the third is a dramatic figure--think about Al Capone in "The Untouchables." One of the most memorable scenes is Sean Connery telling Kevin Costner in the church "that's how you get Al Capone."

But if you're worried that your story is too flat, not gripping enough in the places where it should be, well, go back and re-read those rules. It's also possible to have a lot of STUFF happening in an action scene and still have it be boring because while it is active, there is no drama. Again, check the points above. What does the character want? What's stopping him/her from getting it?

Happy writing! Hopefully the update to six might maybe possibly perhaps be finished sometime within the next year. Or two weeks.

Six update

So, uh. Next chapter of "Six" is up. Sorry it took so long, but I took most of this last week off for personal reasons. I'll also be taking most of this next week off for business reasons, so don't expect another update for at least another week or two.

In other news, I've been contemplating writing a short FFIX oneshot/twoshot. I'm going to start it tonight, but who knows? Maybe it'll end up as another thing that never gets in shape or fully written. (I certainly won't finish it tonight, and like I said earlier, this next week will be murderous for me.)

Six and Appearance

So, turns out I got up the latest chapter up six after all. It's kinda shortish, but oh well. Now, on to the appearance thing.

When creating a character, a common fault is to create the Cool Look you think the character should have. You like those tight, holey jeans, so give him some tight, holey jeans. You like orange, so give him an orange shirt. You like Pokémon, so give him a Pokémon-flavored shirt. An orange, Pokémon-flavored shirt. When designing the appearance of a character or a room, you have to aware of what your appearance is saying about your character, because whether you (or they) realize it or not, people are going to analyze the crap out of your character's appearance.

Consider those jeans: they're common now among the goth/emo crowd. Does your character identify with that particular group? Consider the shirt: is your character a gamer or a card-collector, or is the shirt a hand-me-down from a sibling who was one of those?

One of the best examples of characterization by appearance I've seen is from Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path."

It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.

There are some great details in here that you'll process without even realizing you're doing so. For example, consider her umbrella cane and sack dress. Is she poor and unable to afford a real cane or dress? She must also be resourceful to think of using those common items as utilities. There's also the rag in her hair (implying that she's too poor to have her hair done), the blue eyes (cataracts), the tree in her forehead (symbol of strength), and the golden color ("Phoenix" Jackson).

Writing like Welty is something that I believe is neither desirable nor necessary (not that she's a bad writer), especially in fan fiction, but this short passage has lessons from which almost anyone could benefit. To drastically improve your description, just remember this: when working with appearance, do not put in what you think is Cool; put in what will help to create the character the story needs.

(That's something I always come back to, it seems; the story always is and always will be more important than anything from the author's preference.)

* Also see my description mini-tutorial on Apocrypha, which has a short section on this.