I’ve been writing fic all morning. I have tons of other stuff to do, but I’m feeling self indulgent; got a massive coffee and a choc-chip cookie; I’m waiting for the kitchen floor to dry and not at all inclined to do real work.
So, I’m writing this TS fic; just finished a bit of exposition between Jim and one of the OCs and realising I haven’t really much of a clue where the story is going – I mean, I have the basics sketched out; I know who Jim and Blair are in this universe, I know what’s happened to them, their traumas; how they got to where they are; I even have a vague idea about the complex case-history that’s bringing them back together, but details have I none, where it’s going to end – not a clue; what’s going to happen along the way? Beats me.
And – thinking about that (and my total lack of a problem with this state of affairs), my most popular stories to date (Wind Whispering, Chasing Rainbows and other stories in other fandoms) were all written like this. Like Mike Leigh and Larry David; I have only the vaguest ideas about where it’s all going and who’s going to be involved, but I know all my characters intimately. I have all the details of their back-story – what made them the way they are - so, I’m OK with letting them dictate their own story; happy to be surprised when they take the tale off in whole new, totally unanticipated directions (as Eli Stoddard did in Chasing Rainbows – I didn’t even know he was going to be in the story till Blair spotted that poster advertising his lecture) without any apparent input from me.
And the more I mused on this (as I brewed my second cup of coffee), the more I realised that, this is the joy of writing, for me. This is what keeps me at it – it’s that voyage of discovery; never knowing what’s coming up over the horizon. Whole new characters might appear and do - who knows what? Someone might suddenly blurt something you had no idea they were going to say and send the tale spiralling off in a direction you’d never even dreamt of, and that’s what makes it all so damn strange and wonderful and magical and fun.
IMO.
What do you think?
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It's more like digging out something buried and discovering what it is than creating it, in a way; as if you're an archeologist, not a sculptor and the story exists already.
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Oh that's very interesting; so, you get the feeling that a story is already written and you're discovering, rather than creating it?
I like the sound of that! That's not what I get at all; my creative process is a barely controlled anarchy, in which I have the idea, the situation, usually a well-visualised environment and the characters, who I always know intimately before I begin; either because they're old friends, like Jim and Blair (and if I've changed their situation/background - whatever - as I usually have, I do know exactly what those changes are and how they're affecting them) or OCs that I seem to know well already (though they sometimes surprise me) so I'm quite happy to let everyone roam in their new world and see what they make of it.
I don't go in totally blind, I do know, more or less, what's supposed to happen (though rarely have an end) but much more often than not, the characters get away from my plans and take things in all sorts of unanticipated directions.As Jim just did this morning, bless him.
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Sometimes, yes :;nods::
I mean; I've gone into scenes wanting them to do X and thye've done Y; that has to mean there's a conspiracy ::g::
It's a fascinating process, writing...