Random Ramblings CCCXXXIII · 5:45am Nov 10th, 2018
IN WHICH I ANSWER A QUESTION
Greetings, all. Before we begin today, today's MV will be… Clapton.
Now, on to the show…
Surprisingly, despite my public inactivity, I do still communicate with a few of my friends on this site. Recently I was asked about what my writing process is like. I've written (irony?) about it here a few times but never really laid out how I do it. Like Gary Larson, I feel like instead of being asked how I get my ideas, asking why I get my ideas may be more appropriate.
I replied that my writing process involves whining like a bitch in these blogposts for two months and then randomly smacking my keyboard until words happen. But of course reality could never be that interesting.
How I create my crap stories is very dependant on the nature of it. Given my tendency toward the experimental, this shouldn't be a shock. Allow me to explain.
I was specifically asked if I used outlines. The answer to that is yes, but only for longer stories where I actually give a shit and need to figure things out for continuity purposes. Most (not all) of my Sunset's Recovery Arc stories used at least a rudimentary outline of major points I wanted to get across. Any longer stories I do have typically been outlined to some extent.
Sometimes I don't follow my own outline once I actually get to writing. The Fluttershy chapter of Reconciliations deviated wildly from the outline and it's infinitely better for having done so. The original version of that story got bogged down in 'Shy being unwilling to forgive Sunset and basically gave her a "You Suck" talk before finally forgiving her. Yeeaah. Changing that to 'Shy just waiting to hear Sunset give a heartfelt apology and showing that she'd already forgiven her was the way to go, to the point that another one of my horseword friends demanded I not change a single word of that chapter (later on I did alter some words and added a few to get the word count back to even).
For my experimental stories or really short ones, I usually just start at the beginning and see where things go. I used no written outline whatsoever for my latest, Shitty Rainbow Dash Story. That one is so short and I already had a basic idea of where I wanted to go that outlining would have been pointless.
The Burritoverse stories are a combination of both techniques. Sometimes I'll jot down a synopsis of what I want to happen in the "real world", but the internal monologue is always written on the fly -- it's supposed to be stream of consciousness, and I can't really do that if I've planned it out beforehand, can I. Now, with Maud's burrito story, I did more research than I should have into how asphalt and bricks are made so she could ramble about them and compare the layers of road surfacing to the layers of a burrito, but how any of that would be structured just sort of happened.
I want to believe the spontaneity of the Burrito Monologues makes the stories more interesting.
One thing that continues to amuse me is that, if I let Sunset loose, she'll just snark at everyone. There are a few stories now where I've had to consciously rein her in. Sasha, being written after most SRA fics but being first chronologically, was a challenge because I needed to force her character back into the abyss even though she'd already mostly crawled out of it. I tried my best but, if you read closely, Sunset isn't nearly as depressed as she should be; she's too willing to crack jokes and make snarky comments.
Maybe y'all, my readers & followers, don't notice things like that, but I do. If you read SRA fics as I put them out, it might not seem as out of place given you'd have foreknowledge of Sunset's future character growth. However, reading SRA chronologically -- which I still haven't done -- might be a bit more jarring, I don't know.
So… yeah. Outlines. Those can be a double-edged sword. I can (and have) outlined stories but then just kind of sit on 'em for years as I work through other things. There's a story I really want to do but probably won't be able to get to before this site dies that I outlined most of nearly three years ago but haven't even started on because, in order to write it, I have to publish two other long stories first -- one, Anon-A-Fix, is completed and in the Cloud ready for tweaking, but the other, Blooming Friendship, I only have the first three chapters done, and those probably need rewrites. Still, I have outlines for some future chapters either in my head or jotted down.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to write two hours of awkward silence yet still make it almost worth reading?
My mother and former teachers insist I'm good. I know I'm not. I'll still try though… except when I don't.
This should really have been obvious, but the title of Shitty Rainbow Dash Story has a double meaning. It's not just the fact that Rainbow Dash herself wrote a shitty story; it's also that I put in the minimum effort for it because, after having a nervous breakdown on Halloween, I felt like I needed to do something completely different to try to regain my writing mojo -- I settled on writing a Rainbow Dash story because she's the main character with whom I have the least in common, and I don't think I did her justice in Reconciliations although I tried.
I'm pleasantly surprised -- and frankly shocked -- that those who read SRDS thought it was funny. That was in fact what I was going for, but I almost never tag anything as "Comedy" because I worry no one else will find what I write humorous. If someone does comment that it's funny, then I'll go back and add the tag. Yes I'm insecure. Of course if you've been following me for the majority of the past 330+ posts, you'd know that already.
It's late, and I'm sleepy, so…
Peace out!
This was really enlightening! Also I have a tendency to sit on my outlines for awhile too before getting to them, but I work better with an outline when there are certain events that HAVE to take place in order for things to be coherent with the whole of everything else. The details of what happens during those bullet points are left up to the time it happens. And like I said, and you do, I occasionally deviate from the outline or add new things in.
Due to the fact I have a lot of details I need to keep bringing up for the sake of not making anything hit the reader in the face abruptly, and I need to go over details that explain others, the outline helps keep everything in order. I've had to go back to chapters a couple times to add a thing or two.
Roleplaying is so much more by the seat of my pants. But everything else that's purely my own is spawned from ideas of things that NEED to happen to stay interesting, and everything else is on the spot.
I beleive you are a fantastic author Soufriere!