Style · 9:11am Aug 24th, 2014
If any of you have read Worm (which you should—not being MLP be damned, it's a fantastic piece of writing), then you'll probably understand why fanfics of it are really common, at least in certain places I frequent. I've been reading a few of these fics, and something has occurred to me. Specifically, about how some of these writers manage to churn out 5-8 chapters in a week.
1. The chapters are short.
2. There's very little descriptive narration, if any. Lots of dialogue and internal monologue. First person.
3. There's almost zero florid prose, and less of the purple variety.
4. The plotlines tend to be largely unplanned and unforeshadowed, with some authors going so far as to roll dice to determine whether a given character lives or dies.
5. General reliance on an extremely simple departure point from pre-established canon—generally a change in the main character's abilities.
And I enjoy some of them immensely regardless. So lets see... how many of those bullets do I work with myself...
1. Nope.
2. Lots of that.
3. Alas, not so.
4. I have twenty arcs planned for one story and two for another, plus an entirely new story to tie a 'verse together.
5. I wrote a language for one fic. I invented multiple civilizations from scratch for another.
Huh. So THAT'S how you do speedy updates.
So... if I wanted to write quickly... would this be the route to take? Is my tendency towards florid prose and heavily structured plotlines holding me back?
Dunno. Maybe taking Worm itself as an example would be a better idea, since it's been an influence on me in a number of ways. It managed weekly updates with a world that was far and away more complex than anything I've ever managed, foreshadowed it PERFECTLY, tied easily hundreds of plot threads together, and did it all without even the base structure of being a fanfic.
Does that merely speak of higher skill? I have no doubt that Wildbow is a better writer than I... but is that really all there is to it? Discipline, maybe? Focus?
I don't know. Maybe this is just because it's 5AM and I haven't slept yet, but I don't know.
Focusing. That might help. Wish I knew how to do that reliably. I keep coming in, staring at the page, and then forgetting what I'm doing. I don't know how I manage to write these long, rambling blogs.
Damn it, I'm complaining again. Not constructive. I'd probably delete this whole thing if It wasn't five in the morning.
Fuck it. I can live with a little more regret.
So, zillion dollar question: How do you concentrate? Is it just a skill to be trained? Should I try taking up meditation again?
Realistically speaking, OLH is just not going to come out unless I can sit my ass down and write it. I know where it needs to go. I know what I need to do. I just don't know how to actually do it.
Damn, this is frustrating. I really feel for people with ADHD, if this is what it's like trying to focus as someone who's ostensibly one the psychological baseline.
So, seriously, how do you focus?
Holy shit that blog changed completely from where it started.
I need to sleep. I need to sleep. I need to sleep. I need to
I just typed that without even thinking about it. I'm not making that up, I literally just typed "I need to sleep." four times without even blinking. It wasn't for dramatic effect, that was just something I DID.
God damn it. I need to sleep.
This is just as trippy as I thought it would be.
May delete this later.
2398704
Horizon Runner, if you switch to the Fast Chapter Mode steps, I will hunt you down and mail you a brick with an angry face carved into it from the post office closest to your house. I will carve a face so angry that you'll wish the face wasn't so angry, but it won't work because I carved it into the brick that I shipped from the post office nearest your house. You will find the entire experience as unpleasant as it is confusing.
Here is a face that is angry, but nowhere near as angry as the face that I will carve into a brick before shipping it to your house from the nearest post office in retaliation for such a grave transgression.
>:[
2398704
)
I mean, uh... I love your work so far and I hope you keep it up.
(That one kinda got away from me. I haven't slept in... slightly over thirty hours.
2413478 30 hours... We are alike, I think.
In any case, I don't think this is actually going to happen. I wrote this at... a strange time.
Not to say I'm not looking for ways to get OLH out faster, but this isn't one of them at the moment.
Hi. Uhm, so, I stumbled across your blog and it made me think. Here are my thoughts. Maybe something here will be helpful.
1. I don't think chapter count is a good measure of productivity. Word count is better, though imperfect.
2. For me, descriptive narration is the easiest part of writing. It's dialogue that I get stuck on. So I would present the idea that this is a matter of preference, not a matter of one element being inherently quicker to write than the rest.
3. If you think in a florid, purple sort of writing style, it should be natural and not take much longer than writing plainly.
4. And I'll bet that your stories are more cohesive as a whole, rather than feeling episodic or meandering in nature.
5. Worldbuilding is definitely a time investment. When writing my sci fi, I think I spend half of my writing time Googling things to make sure I understand them.
So, to answer your question: no, yes. The florid prose is probably natural for you. The heavily structured plotlines, whether natural or not, do take extra time. But I think it would be rather... inaccurate, to say that they're holding you back. This implies that speedy updates are superior to quality.
Higher skill? Probably. I think it likely that he's had more practice.
One has to consider how much time the author devoted to the work, and what his other time obligations may have been.
Another point to consider is the nature of the planning. It's pretty easy to decide "I want X event to happen later on" and then foreshadow it in the current chapter. Tying plot threads together is mostly a matter of planning.
I think planning is a huge part, as well. Outlines, notes, etc. No one can just sit down and churn out something like that without any forethought.
Hmmm... Well, I have ADHD. Severe ADHD. From my experience, I haven't seen any evidence to convince me that focus is a skill that can be practiced. As far as I've read and experienced, it's largely a matter of brain chemistry.
However, there are several additional points that must be made alongside that one...
I should point out, before going further, that ADHD is not a disease, it's a disorder. I.e., it's a question of degree, how MUCH you struggle with it. Everyone has the symptoms; in most people they don't interfere with the individual's ability to function. It's not like diabetes or something which is a distinct condition you either have or don't. The relevant implications of this are that most things that are true for ADHD brains are true for 'normal' brains as well, just to a different degree.
a) FOCUS is not a skill. But the ability to ignore distractions is. This is not a contradiction. Eventually, with any task, you'll get sick of it. That's focus, directed at the thing you are doing. Attention span. But distractions are external and unrelated. You might be focused on something, but then a distraction comes along... the inclination to say "no" to the distraction is a habit.
b) Brain chemistry is not only genetic, it's heavily influenced by diet, sleep, stress, environment, health, etc. Look at all of those for potential issues. And I would advise that you do your own research on diet, and assume that everything you've ever been told is wrong. There are a lot of studies that were horribly inaccurate, yet accepted as fact because no one bothers to do their homework. I found significant benefits in changing my diet.
c) Are we 100% sure that your issue is one of focus? If you have a massive project looming over you, and just thinking about it makes you feel exhausted, no reasonable person could just 'focus' and push through it.
I never found the slightest benefit from meditation because I CAN'T meditate. It's just literally not possible for me to think about one thing for extended periods of time. I think, if there's a benefit, it's not an increase in focus but a decrease in stress.
The way you worded that gives me an idea. You know where you need to go. Do you know how to get there? Perhaps your outline is not as clear as you think... I've had that issue before.
Perhaps, also, you're crushing yourself under the weight of expectations, which is understandable — Homeworld is bloody fantastic — but counterproductive.
2419686 First, thank you. You've put far more thought and feeling into this than I expected anyone to.
Second, I should be clear that this blog post came out of a place of deep frustration. It's a long road, and between college and life in general I've found myself with rapidly dwindling time to write. I ran into the aforementioned work, watched this guy put out good-quality, decent-length chapters after working on them for sometimes less than a day, and had a bit of a breakdown. That breakdown is mostly over, now. Hopefully.
But despite all of what I just said... thank you. Your advice has given me some interesting ideas to experiment with (raw focus vs available distractions wasn't something I'd thought about nearly as much as I should have), and—perhaps just as importantly—it pulled me back here and reminded me that this place and these people are still here. As silly as it may be, I did say I was going to finish this bloody thing, and damn it... I'm going to.
2421720 I'm glad to be of assistance, and even more glad that you're still determined to finish. :3
If you ever feel like messaging me, go right ahead. I'm a huge Homeworld fan and a student of many creative pursuits. I'm sure we'd be able to help each other with writing.
Hmm. Do you daydream? If so, could you write that down when you daydream about OLH? It would need to be polished before publication but at least you would be halfway there.
I wrote my best and fastest short story that way for a college writing class. The ingredients were basically daydreaming, writing and polishing, repeating that, and also having intense enough feelings that they automatically shined through into what I wrote.