Finding weak spots
Jun. 16th, 2013 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dotsandlinesDuring an overnight trip, I spent a couple of hours copy-editing a story that my husband had written, then did a bunch of editing on the Kindle on my story. It's improving, I think.
We also talked a bit about the value of outside opinions / viewpoints, which made me a little sad that my stuff is still unreadable by humans. Yes, you need a strong idea of what you want and shouldn't be guided solely by others' opinions. But a second opinion can be very valuable. I started outlining the plot as it stands, and realized why I'm having issues: I'm accidentally writing the sequel first.
Before split, today: 142,463
Broke it up into two prequels, the core beginning story, and its three simultaneous sequels. There's one short section that crosses over two of these and was duplicated for now, so it doesn't quite add up.
Breakdown (with narrators):
Prequel 1 (K) - 1,056 * this story might be too depressing to write, but at least it's optional
Prequel 2 (R) - 3,234 * this story is cute, but optional
Core (E/A) - 10,684 * everybody meets and sets up the plots of the following three stories
Sequel 1 (R) - 33,108 * cute, but optional again
Sequel 2 (A/K) - 94,404 * i.e. 66% of the current draft. Though this section also contains several thousand words that have been thoroughly retconned and need to be pitched.
Sequel 3 (E/M) - 909 * I have no idea what happens in one-half of this story.
Most of the written material is in Sequels 1 and 2. Anyone attempting to read them would immediately run into "Who The Hell Are These People" Town. The core story is the nucleus, where the characters all meet and set up the plotlines that they're going to carry out in the sequels. But I have this ongoing problem with actually wanting to write that part.
I've split up the documents so as to focus more. It would behoove me to try to write more of the core story, or at least do more detailed outlining of what happens.
In other words, my habit of writing out of sequence has led to a lot of free-form ideas, and that's useful sometimes. But it's also led to constant rounds of edits, every time that I make changes early in the story that impact everything else that has already been written. And it's made it impossible to get any outside opinions even if I did want to get any. So it might be worthwhile to give order a try for a while, and write sequentially.
We also talked a bit about the value of outside opinions / viewpoints, which made me a little sad that my stuff is still unreadable by humans. Yes, you need a strong idea of what you want and shouldn't be guided solely by others' opinions. But a second opinion can be very valuable. I started outlining the plot as it stands, and realized why I'm having issues: I'm accidentally writing the sequel first.
Before split, today: 142,463
Broke it up into two prequels, the core beginning story, and its three simultaneous sequels. There's one short section that crosses over two of these and was duplicated for now, so it doesn't quite add up.
Breakdown (with narrators):
Prequel 1 (K) - 1,056 * this story might be too depressing to write, but at least it's optional
Prequel 2 (R) - 3,234 * this story is cute, but optional
Core (E/A) - 10,684 * everybody meets and sets up the plots of the following three stories
Sequel 1 (R) - 33,108 * cute, but optional again
Sequel 2 (A/K) - 94,404 * i.e. 66% of the current draft. Though this section also contains several thousand words that have been thoroughly retconned and need to be pitched.
Sequel 3 (E/M) - 909 * I have no idea what happens in one-half of this story.
Most of the written material is in Sequels 1 and 2. Anyone attempting to read them would immediately run into "Who The Hell Are These People" Town. The core story is the nucleus, where the characters all meet and set up the plotlines that they're going to carry out in the sequels. But I have this ongoing problem with actually wanting to write that part.
I've split up the documents so as to focus more. It would behoove me to try to write more of the core story, or at least do more detailed outlining of what happens.
In other words, my habit of writing out of sequence has led to a lot of free-form ideas, and that's useful sometimes. But it's also led to constant rounds of edits, every time that I make changes early in the story that impact everything else that has already been written. And it's made it impossible to get any outside opinions even if I did want to get any. So it might be worthwhile to give order a try for a while, and write sequentially.
