![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maudite_a_deuxAstronomy Tower posted my McGonagall/Hooch story! i realize this isn't, you know, on par with winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, but i'm still pretty excited, since it's the first bit of fiction i've ever submitted anywhere for public viewing other than the drafts i've posted here...
in other news, i'm going to be doing some traveling this weekend (visiting friends in Michigan), and i'm hoping to get some writing done on the plane. i was just itching to work on "Strange Attractors" last night, but i was so brain-dead i couldn't write anything that didn't sound like absolute crap. i seem to need a good solid day or two to clear my head between bursts of writing, when i'm writing for public consumption. my original stuff tends to come much more quickly, but it's also a lot sloppier (as i'm sure![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isiscolo can attest, if she's even worked up the courage to read the thing i sent her, about which i am already feeling horribly ashamed).
so far, though, as a writing exercise, the fanfic thing has already helped me a lot in terms of how to approach a scene with an actual goal in mind. when i write for myself, i write to see what happens, but when i'm writing for other people, i seem to need a mental picture of what's going to happen already, or i just ramble off in random directions and lose track of characterization. (i guess that makes a certain amount of sense, though -- here, i have to actually think about keeping things in character, whereas in my personal writing i can let my characters write themselves because hey, i don't know them any better than anyone else.)
i'm still working out the mechanics of what makes a good story on a very basic level. for instance, i've established the two main characters and one side character and given them their first encounters in the story; i've established the general setting; i've implied there's a significant amount of history, some of which will have to be explained in the future -- but what next? i know i need to flesh out the setting and the characters and introduce Draco's friendship with Snape (and the character of the friendship itself), but i'm not sure what to do when.
i guess i should dig out those old books on writing and refresh my memory.
in other news, i'm going to be doing some traveling this weekend (visiting friends in Michigan), and i'm hoping to get some writing done on the plane. i was just itching to work on "Strange Attractors" last night, but i was so brain-dead i couldn't write anything that didn't sound like absolute crap. i seem to need a good solid day or two to clear my head between bursts of writing, when i'm writing for public consumption. my original stuff tends to come much more quickly, but it's also a lot sloppier (as i'm sure
isiscolo can attest, if she's even worked up the courage to read the thing i sent her, about which i am already feeling horribly ashamed).so far, though, as a writing exercise, the fanfic thing has already helped me a lot in terms of how to approach a scene with an actual goal in mind. when i write for myself, i write to see what happens, but when i'm writing for other people, i seem to need a mental picture of what's going to happen already, or i just ramble off in random directions and lose track of characterization. (i guess that makes a certain amount of sense, though -- here, i have to actually think about keeping things in character, whereas in my personal writing i can let my characters write themselves because hey, i don't know them any better than anyone else.)
i'm still working out the mechanics of what makes a good story on a very basic level. for instance, i've established the two main characters and one side character and given them their first encounters in the story; i've established the general setting; i've implied there's a significant amount of history, some of which will have to be explained in the future -- but what next? i know i need to flesh out the setting and the characters and introduce Draco's friendship with Snape (and the character of the friendship itself), but i'm not sure what to do when.
i guess i should dig out those old books on writing and refresh my memory.
