The "Patchwork Problem" · 1:55am Nov 7th, 2016
Writing good fiction is challenging.
Then again, writing fiction is challenging in general... but for even more reasons.
When I write fanfiction, the primary obstacle I face is straightforward: I want to say something, and I need to decide precisely how to approach expressing myself. That probably doesn't sound very deep or messy, but it can block me for weeks. If you follow my work, you've probably noticed that I've been write-blocked during these memory-erasing brain-electrocution treatments I've been having over the past month.
Babies are the devil: a common recurrent theme of Friendship is Magic.
I'd blindly guess that most of the best authors on Fimfiction aren't affected much by this, but it's critical to why and how I write. I'm very curious if this affects other writers in a similar way, hence this blog post.
The easiest way I can put my primary challenge as a writer is this:
I'm almost always filled with ideas and narratives and stories and personal interactions that readers would find interesting in fanfic form, but I'm not motivated to write by the desire to please my readers or gain a following.
The only thing that motivates my writing is having something to say. Everything else found in my writing is merely a tool in the toolbox I use to help me get those messages across. Characters are tools. Clever plot twists are tools. Interesting dialogue is a tool. Relationships are tools. Unique events are tools. Literary ideas of every flavor are tools. And so on, and so on.
Granted, this is an exaggeration... but not by much. For one example, Pinkie Pie is clearly best pony in every way. 
Yet, fewer than a tenth of my stories (two, both of them early: The Element of Surprise and The Laughter I Choose to Be) feature her as the protagonist. And I give Pinkie a significant supporting role in only a few others. You see, I don't write fanfiction about Pinkie Pie just because I like Pinkie Pie, even though I really, really like Pinkie Pie. And even when I do write about Pinkie, I use her because she's the perfect character for conveying some portion of the message I need her to convey. The same principle holds true for every character I work with.
This principle is also true for non-character literary devices: specific events and quotes and ideas are each there to fill a role, and I try to be selective with the good ones. I maintain a small storehouse of ideas I squat upon because I'm not sure where I want to unleash them. In many cases, I only get a single shot to do it. Usually it would be most powerful to dump my best unique ideas and original characters into a short story, but I need ideas to support my longer narratives, too.
As I type this blog entry, I have a complex story idea I've been hatching over the past week (I'm considering entering that EqD thing to motivate a bit more ficcing this month to help get me out of this confusion-related slump). I know what I want to happen in the story, precisely what the characters should be like, how they should react to each other, what they should do, what the twists might be, and what the symbolism will be. But I'm still not certain who I want the characters to be, or if the story should be a self-contained short story, or whether it should be something I supplement to boost the message of another, longer story.
So that's the rub: I'm not interested in stringing together my most interesting ideas for entertainment purposes—even though that's ultimately what I always end up doing in the long run when I get the writing out. I'm interested in conveying messages, and I have a patchwork of ideas to draw from in order to do the job. But each one of the little ideas in the patchwork is a mini-artwork that stands meaningfully by itself, and the best ideas can only be used once.
(Avoid overusing ideas with bold impact.)
It's sort of like having a box of crayons, and being afraid to use them because they're so pristine and you don't want to run out of the most beautiful colors. That might be another weird analogy also uniquely Trick-Question-neurotic, but for need of a label I'll call this dilemma the Patchwork Problem: the fear of using your interesting ideas because you don't want to waste them.
So, am I alone in this? 
I look at authors like Pascoite who are immensely successful at writing stories that readers will want to pick up (at least if EqD story approval is a good measure, which it probably is), and I wonder whether or not any of this idea sings to him—because he's also good with serious themes. (I could probably just ask him, but that would be much more straightforward and less passive-aggressive than commenting bluntly and positively on his stories in a blog post he's unlikely to read unless somepony directs him to it.) But he's just one convenient mineral/example, because I wonder these things about accomplished (or let's just say "serious about writing") authors in the fandom in general:
Do you write to tell stories because the stories are fun/funny/enjoyable, or otherwise just to get the clever ideas out in a form where they can be appreciated, irrespective of any larger message to the story?
Or, do you need an underlying message to share first, like most of what I do?
Or, is it sometimes the former way, and sometimes the latter?
Or, do you write in different ways for different reasons—to satisfy different urges?
Or, do you write unconsciously without thinking about any of this crap one way or another?
In short, why the hell do you write fiction? 
Inquiring wolves want to know. 
I do it, because it is the sole source of entertainment for me nowadays, and I want a way to express my thoughts.
Also, attention. That important too.
I have some stray conditioning that results in encountering the Patchwork Problem a bunch in the rest of my life, even though my vague flittering notion of trying to give writing fiction per se a try has utterly failed to materialize so far. Like, the rest of my sort of research/tinker-y things are all... there's a wonky force where it's harder and more awkward to use an idea multiple times because it sort of gets entangled the first time, because the memory primitives on these frickin' brainthings have this bias toward supporting move rather than copy so as soon as you've done it already it changes the context and aaa come on there's gotta be a better way to explore and
*huff* *puff* *huff* *puff*
er, yeah. So... yeah. Uh. You're not alone?
I suspect the answer involves "this is more reversible than it looks".
Very. Very. Much. Down to specific sentences specific characters could say to one another because they just fit so well.
Well, I usually don't have a message in mind. It's situations, interactions, fun ideas to be explored. Maybe that's why I'm so slow, I have nothing to say, I just have something to tell.
For me, there's two main problems:
1) I have a very hard time stringing scenes together into a whole. Plus, I have problems picturing surroundings, which makes it incredibly hard to describe them. Light? Colours? What are those?
2) I can't read what I've already written. When I try, all I see is subpar claptrap and wasted opportunities. It's so bad that I'm often scared I'll forget something I've written in a prior chapter because going back to check is painful.
More of my depressing, darker things are written as a sort of release, to be able to get bad thoughts out of my system.
My happier things are written for enjoyment of myself and for others.
I completely do understand your dilemma though. I have ideas that I don't want to fuck up, so I never end up writing them.
Mostly the final point really. My fingers just keep typing when I want to type.
First completed fic coming soon in case anyone tries to see what I've written so far and tries to call B.S.
I have a somewhat similar, exactly opposite problem:
I am, likewise, motivated in writing fiction by having something to say. While I do care about the popularity of what I say, this is not direct motivation per se – rather, it’s about the fact that if what I say does not get heard, maybe I wasted my time and should try another way. And maybe, another audience.
My problem is that want to say something that exceeds the amount of words I can expect to write in my limited lifespan.
I’ve been told by my editor that I’m writing the same book for the past decade, and it is essentially true: The idea, what I want to say, is so big, that everything I write fits into and connects to it. I cannot even think the whole thing at the same time. Smaller ideas that I have turn out to have been pieces I didn’t know were relevant. Characters merely live out the consequences of my overcomplicated personal ontology.
To make this mess readable, I am forced to try to organize it into a book with a beginning and an end, only, it doesn’t really have either, and writing about infinity should take infinite time, shouldn’t it…?
And I don’t have infinite time.
^ Yes. All of them.
Also:
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37540750/_ponies/gilda%20trixie%20i%20know%20that%20feel%20bro.jpg
I also completely empathize with you on the so-called Patchwork Problem. I, too, have a pile of ideas in need of a good home. My problem is, usually, that they're too small to stand on their own as a story. So they all lie in wait until I'm writing a story and it occurs to me 'oh hey, wouldn't that fit in nicely right here?'
Like most of us around here, I suffer from many types of writer's block. But I find more often than not that I'm simply unmotivated to be creative. For whatever reason, I could theorize all day about the current cause. The sad thing is, I love being creative! Secondary to that, though, I would definitely say that I have trouble putting a scene from my head into words. It's like having a vivid dream and waking up - you remember clearly that you had a dream so vivid, you remember roughly what happened, but trying to explain it or even remember it in the waking world is nigh impossible. A lot of times, that's how I feel when I'm trying to write something.
Obviously I don't always have these problems, or I wouldn't have had the humble amount of success that I've had. But it does seem pretty bad lately. We're all here with ya.
I wait for a writeoff deadline and then I write the closest thing to a story I can come up with in the remaining time. Most of the time it's mediocre. Sometimes I actually have an idea that goes with it. Usually it's 'Come up with some kinda thing I want to work on and go with it' - convey an emotion, write a certain style, whatever.
But overall I mostly just write stuff I want to be fun and/or interesting for someone to read. It's up to them what they take away from it.
I basically can't write without putting something of myself into a story. Even my stuff that's just silly has some connection to me somewhere. Clever ideas divorced from that personal connection wither and die for me.
I guess it's not really a "message", but there needs to be some element of truth as I understand it. For me, writing is my way of processing things. So if there's something that I need to really think about, it sometimes prompts a story. I may or may not always fully agree with my own message in the story, but it often represents at least an interim conclusion about things.
I plead the fifth.
Kind of yes, kind of no. A story's genre and/or set of characters might be influenced by personal taste, and/or how well they seem to match the overall thrust of what I'm thinking through.
I wish.
I've been waiting for a few days to have the time to really bang out a response to this blog, because it asks some of the most important questions. But with what's going on in real life right now I've realized that's not gonna happen. But suffice it to say these are absolutely valid difficulties and questions. I too struggle with having lots of ideas that aren't stories themselves which must be threaded together with other elements--but which to choose and in what way?? Also, when it comes to asking why anybody writes, it's my personal belief there are two basic, generalized motivations at play in every writer, but they usually only realize one and deny (and villify) the other: honest expression and audience reception/reaction. They're really two sides of the same desire--communication--which itself comes from a basic human desire to effect another individual. To reach out, to touch, to connect, to validate and be validated. Reconciling and not divorcing these two urges is key to better understanding yourself as a writer, which is always the first step to writing any story. Otherwise you cannot know what you want to express and how to express it.
> Do you write to tell stories because the stories are fun/funny/enjoyable, or otherwise just to get the clever ideas out in a form where they can be appreciated, irrespective of any larger message to the story?
The former but not the latter.
> Or, do you need an underlying message to share first, like most of what I do?
I need an idea for a scene that makes me laugh or cry. I can write around that, and it will have some message in it somewhere, if I can find it in time, because otherwise it couldn't make me laugh or cry.
> Or, do you write in different ways for different reasons—to satisfy different urges?
Sometimes I want to share something that feels beautiful.
Sometimes I want to make myself hurt just to prove that I can feel something.
Sometimes I want to hurt someone else, because misery loves company.
Sometimes I write feature-box clickbait to gain more followers.
4294799 4288284 I wish I'd gotten in earlier, but: What do people mean when they say "expression"? Can I expand that to "express a meaning", or can it mean something different? Because a lot of artists today say it's terribly wrong-headed to try to express a meaning. Can you express something that isn't a meaning or emotion?
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I have next to no knowledge on the finer points of literature.
If I had to guess, however, it would be possible. I have never thought about expressing anything beyond meaning or emotion, but I have no reason to believe it is impossible.
4296521 What sort of thing might it be, if not a meaning or a feeling?
4296612 If idea and messages are under the term "Meaning," then I can only say that O don't know.
4296479
Good question. The "no-meaning" idea is a deceit, because even no meaning is a meaning. They are designing a work with a particular goal in mind and framing how they want their reader to approach it. That's the same thing writers with themes do. Art that truly had no meaning would be art which didn't exist. It would be nothing.
Expression=meaning is a nice general way to put it. I want general. That way it coveys ideas, feelings, experiences--the whole gambit of things which can be communicated through art. That's why I try to use "express" instead of "say". It's more generalized, I think.
I say take heart, because every vogue is broken eventually. This one will be too. And boy I cannot wait. Though I suppose the next fashion will be as arrogant as the last, as they all are. :P
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I'm a little confused by this use of terminology, to be honest. The words "express a meaning" aren't parsing for me.
Meanings are things that can be conveyed, but to me the meaning is at least one step removed from what you can express. You express (or illustrate) an idea or a feeling: those are the things you're trying to directly get across to the other soul. The meaning is one level up from this: it's what the recipient takes away from the idea or feeling, through an interpretation.
In that way, I use "meaning" like I'd use "message" or "having something to say". That's always what I'm after when I write: for the reader to correctly get the ideas and feelings I'm expressing, yes, but also for them to take that information and correctly interpret a meaning/message, an underlying concept that I'm sharing indirectly—and it must be indirect because if the reader doesn't come to that meaning/message/conclusion on their own, it won't be impactful.
4297272 I think a key distinction is whether it matters to you if the reader gets the same meaning that you meant to communicate. If it does, then this expression you're talking about is just language, an intermediary between your meaning and the received meaning. If you know what you're trying to express, then you're expressing meaning. If instead you're throwing out things you find evocative but mysterious, and hope it evokes something, anything, in those who hear it, then I'd be more inclined to say you're "expressing" something other than meaning.
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I don't have a problem with the reader having a different meaning than the author. In fact, I think that can be a great thing. In that case, however, it's not "the" meaning of the piece, because there are multiple meanings; and I generally allow for that possibility. There's an "intended meaning", plus many possible "interpreted meanings" which differ from it, in other words.
In that case, you're not "expressing the meaning", in a pedantic manner of speaking: you're directly expressing specific feelings and ideas that you're trying to use to convey the intended meaning. And while those largely-accidental, interpreted meanings can end up being significantly better than the intended meaning (sometimes even for very famous works of literature), the intended meaning is always something special because it motivated the work. (Unless you're balls-deep into literary theory, in which case anything means absolutely everything, and you're completely out of your fucking mind.)
So, here's where I'm headed with all this. If most readers don't get the intended meaning of something I write, I consider it unsuccessful even if it ends up being a great piece of literature. That doesn't mean I don't recognize it as a great piece of literature—it might even be the best thing I've ever written, and I would totally cop to that accidental masterpiece for what it is (my most recent story has one or two accidental interpretations that surpass my intended meaning, for the most relevant example I can recall ever having penned). It's just that such a story is good by accident rather than intent, and what I was trying to say didn't come through properly so I didn't remotely do what I set out to do. In a case like that, I'd probably write a second story and have another go at communicating what I failed to say the first time.
What I'm trying to share with this blog post is that when I write, I always have an intended meaning. Of course, sometimes I lean one way or another to make something more attractive to a wider audience or to scratch a particular literary itch (I'm only
humanpony, after all). But I don't think anything I've ever written has been devoid of an intended underlying message, and I'm not sure how I would go about trying to write something without starting with an underlying message in mind. That's a mystery I'm trying to understand better, because apparently I'm some kind of bizarre elitist asshole when it comes to writing (who knew?).4297635
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I think we are all saying the same thing, just in different ways.
Trick I believe you're just drawing a further distinction here. It seems to me you're saying "meaning=total effect of all story elements", and those elements can be ideas and emotions. I agree. Also, that the author expresses those elemental ideas and emotions, which then convey the total meaning. I agree again. However, I consider the total meaning something I still express, because I'm the one controlling and guiding everything here. I treat "convey" and "express" as equal synonyms. Also, the big total meaning can be an idea or emotion too.
So you have big ideas and emotions made of little ideas and emotions, all which I am personally expressing/conveying. Now, the big meaning feels indirect, which is why I think you're using "convey" for that, but it really isn't indirect. I'm exerting just as much control over it as the smaller elements, and it can be just as personal and emotional for me, too. It's just as much an expression of my heart. More so even, because the big total meaning is the whole reason my story probably exists in the first place. To perhaps put in clearer terms:
I express little ideas and emotions.
I express a big idea or emotion.
The smaller is what creates (conveys) the big.
(big expressions through little expressions.)
The big stuff is the total meaning.
The small stuff are small meanings.
Like I said, I think we all agree on these things, we're just saying them differently.
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The distinction is more pronounced for me because those ideas have completely different purposes. The "little ideas" are completely incidental to the work. They're no more critical to what I'm trying to say than which language I write the work in, or whether or not I allow myself to use the letter 'q', or what rating I choose for the piece.
"What I'm trying to say" or the "big idea" is always indirect: you can't find it anywhere in the work, because it has to be inferred. That's why I can fail to say it properly if nopony successfully infers it. But the little ideas are always obvious: Twilight walls herself off from her friends, Pinkie Pie travels through time, Rainbow Dash accidentally uses alliteration when she talks (wait I haven't used that one yet it goes back in the box).
So I agree in general with what you're saying, but for me the difference isn't the "size" of the ideas. It is legion.