May
19th
2015
I'm gonna regret this... · 10:12pm May 19th, 2015
BUT ASK ME ANYTHING!...That's how the reddit people do it? Tumblr folks call it 'TMI Tuesday' (I'd rather not go to the extreme on either of those). Yes, I know this isn't any of the aforementioned sites, but apparently a few dozen people will see this, so consider me reaching out. If you're online and see this, gimme your questions. I'll answer (almost) anything (gotta leave room for just a little human decency...)
Artist's Impression of the Author:
And if none of you have questions for me, I have one for you: What should I do next? TLRH will keep being a thing, but is there something you guys want me to write, or think I do well? Let me know!
-Sage
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Vermilion and Sage · 147 views
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I'd honestly like to see more military pony stuff. There's not nearly enough of it.
3081858
Is that military as in 'Royal Guard' in the high midevil times, military as in parody of modern military, or military as in the 'Timberwolf' Saga I've been working on? Or all of the above?
Showing up a few minutes before the TMI-Tuesday ends....
oh well
I've always interested about how authors get inspiration. If content ideas just show up randomly or if there is a brainstorming method.
After that, is the entire gist of the story in your head all at once when you start, or do you build it piece by piece as you continue?
Obviously certain things change, but would you start writing knowing most of the major events and the ending?
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In your time zone, maybe. I'm on EST, and my lesson learned for today is to put up TMI Tuesday before I go to bed on Monday, so the rest of the world has time to work with it.
Inspiration...ah, the second half of the Heisenberg's Author's Law. If you are inspired, you lack motivation. If you have motivation, you have no idea what to write about. Are you asking about novel-length stories, or short stories? The process is different for the two, and I'll recount the process for a novel below.
As for myself, content ideas usually just pop right into my head when I'm not occupied with something that requires a lot of thought. If I'm busy at work I won't be brainstorming/daydreaming. That is best done when walking, driving, or accomplishing some kind of mindless task (INYTF was all puzzled out while stocking shelves at a grocery store, TLRH was initially conceived on a cross-country drive). Now, unless I'm deliberately planning a story, ideas come along more as a 'That would be cool!' sort of mush that honestly would be quite embarrassing to give in raw form. It's the act of collecting the useful tidbits from brain vomit that can make a story.
Good contributing factors to this are reading other stories. It's like throwing more things in a cooking pot, with the general idea that more meat/seasoning/whatever will help the stew. Music helps direct the emotion of whatever I'm picturing at the time, but rarely ever builds the story. For me, it's a great tool, because it's difficult for to picture character or story emotion without a crutch (I'm just not a very emotional person by nature). As an example, INYTF was kick-started by reading Ciroton's 'For Want of a Dawn', and then given an entire summer to stew while I worked listening to too much workout music.
The order I built stories in is somewhat backwards from what most folks I know use. Those 'tidbits' usually coalesce around the ending of a story I want to see, and when that ending is clear, I go back far enough to some acceptable/interesting starting point. With a beginning and end in mind, the planning turns to finding a path between the two. Usually this consists of finding character motivations to take actions necessary to advance the plot where it needs to go. That planning/outlining/detailing varies from story to story, requiring a different amount for each one. As a good rule of thumb, I need to know at least the theme of each section/chapter before I'll embark on that quest, though for TLRH I had to settle on 'Here is the theme for each arc, and a bunch of things that need to happen before the end.'
Hope that wasn't too much, I get a little long winded about this.
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Long winded responses are the best kind, reading is one of my hobbies after all.
It's pretty cool to look at a creation process in depth.
It makes sense to start with a beginning and end for a long story. that kind of content volume is probably too much to keep in mind all at once. I wasn't really expecting the use of other stories for inspiration, but it makes sense. A common trait of good stories is the capacity for creating new ideas/emotions in the reader.
"Heisenberg's Author's Law"
That is an excellent way to put it, I think I'll adapt that to an art version.
3081949 All of the above sound good. I'd definitely like to read that Timberwolf one.
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Well, then I have no problem in saying I'm in the process of editing INYTF (and I've seen the first few pages of the graphic novel version of it) in preparation to write part 3.
3083717 I await with baited breath (or skittles breath, hard to tell in the dark).
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Mayhaps skittles are Chiashi bait?
3084136 Eh, I'm more partial to starbursts.