rivers_bend

I had one of those freaky-ass dreams this morning just before waking and the image will not go away.
My parents and I were going to meet some friends of theirs who lived on an estate of some kind where a wedding was taking place. As we were walking through the grounds, we came upon the reception at the cake-cutting point. It turned out the bride was a clown and the groom was an astronaut (like, professionally on both counts, that wasn't how they were dressed for the ceremony). As we watched, they went into this slapstick routine which culminated in the groom falling over behind the table. When he stood up, he had on this horrifying costume that was a 9-foot-tall, two-headed drag queen, with a torso extension so that the groom's head came out of the 'ribs' of the body. (somehow, in the way dreams do, his real arms came out of the shoulders of the extension part) That two-headed drag queen is the image I can't get out of my skull.

I've been having a really interesting time of writing lately. And by interesting I mostly mean difficult. It's made me examine my writing process more, and learn stuff about how I work though, which is probably good.

I am not a planner. Not when it comes to writing. Which is a little bit odd, given how much I need to look at five maps before I go anywhere, but it is what it is. When I write, I start with a sentence in my head and go from there. I've often said that the characters are in charge, and to some extent they are, but language is also in charge. Generally, I write wholly in language. Which is to say that I don't have any kind of picture in my head of what's going on, I don't see scenes like a movie, the whole 'picture' is built of words. It's one reason I like dialogue and interior monologue so much, I guess. I'm learning to describe rooms and vistas and people, because other readers care about those things, and I've found that the specificity of detail gives a lot of depth. But mostly I'm concerned with feelings, emotions and thoughts.

Generally speaking, I have NO IDEA where my stories are going to go. The characters interact, and then they interact some more, and things happen, and hopefully the characters come to some emotional conclusion, epiphany, or resolution. Usually they do. The characters talk to me, tell me what's going on.

As examples from some of the stuff I've done this week, when I went to write Getting By, all I started with was the sentence, It's 9:30 Sunday night and Sammy doesn't have a single shirt that doesn't have dirt or food or something blue that Dean isn't even sure what it is on it. I didn't know that the boys were staying in a Motel with a laundry room, that Dean was going to use his lockpicks to solve the problem, that Sam was sleeping, that Dean was going to have morals about stealing. Nothing. The sentence sounded right in my head, and it gave me a problem and a POV character, and we were off.

With No Place Like Home, I had Dean remembers their house, the stairs, the way the hall light always made mom's hair look silver instead of gold, but he doesn't remember it in time, and the notion that HOME for Dean is the Impala. No grand scheme of what that would look like.

Even with Powerverse, all I knew about the ending when I started was that Sam would find a way to save Dean. And it was a struggle to figure out how that was going to happen, and to make use of the clues the characters threw in my path, but it was a struggle for the characters to figure things out, too, and so it felt organic.

I often feel like nothing more than a recording secretary for my characters. Which is fine. It's great. It's how I work, and I know that really it's my brain doing the writing.

However, when I actually try to involve my brain, things start to go awry. As you may have gathered from some of my posts, I am writing a couple fic-exchange fics at the moment. The first one is from a prompt that gave me an idea. Not a first sentence, but like, a PLOT idea. OOOH! my brain said. It could go HERE! and THIS could happen, and then THIS! And I did some research, and thought of more ideas, and had plans. And I even found a first sentence. And sat down to write. And wrote 15,000 words of backstory that barely even BRUSH the plot I planned. And yes, what I planned was always going to be the end of the fic, but I'm starting to wonder if I can ever get there. It's like the characters are allergic to knowing their futures. Like they want to avoid their destiny if they know about it in advance. Which I can kind of see. If I knew I was going to end up doing ABC, I would want to get in as much living as possible before I got to the part where I lost my free will. But a part of me thinks it's a little weird to ascribe those same motivations to characters in my head.


The second fic is challenging me in another way. I said that I think and write all in words. Somehow, for this fic, I do actually have an image of what's happening. I can imagine it clearly. However, I cannot put words to it at all. It's like coming in on the middle of a movie where you can't hear the soundtrack, and trying to figure out what is going on. You could say, "oh, those two people are having sex in position XYZ," but that doesn't make for a very interesting story to retell. Tab A goes in Slot B is not so much my thing. I want my words back, but all I have is pictures! It makes me even more mystified by all of you who see scenes like a film playing out in your brains.

The first problem I'm solving by letting the story find its own breaking point and giving the plotted part time to recede so that the characters can find their own way into it in a part two of the story. The second problem I'm not totally sure how to solve. I think I need to block out the image as much as possible and try to come at it again from underneath where the POV character feels. What he wants and why. I'm hoping I don't have to scrap and start over. Either way, though, all of this has been a real learning experience.

I just got a text from Scott. Apparently we're going to see Twilight tonight. I had no plans whatsoever to do that, but I like going to the movies with them, and at least it will let me in on the buzz *g*

On that note, I should probably shower and go find some food that isn't Nilla Cakesters, because the thought makes me want to vom.

today's nano writing, apparently wanted to be meta.