Just noticed something. I'm editing existing prose, and one of the things I always do late in the editing process is smooth out all my pronouns. There are times to use proper names and times to fall back to pronouns, and getting it all feeling right is often the last thing I do to a story. (And in case you had any doubts, my position on epithets is "never". Well, hardly ever.)

I've just noticed a pattern. I want to use a proper name for somebody straight off in a paragraph, first sentence, then use the pronoun for the rest of the graf. Feels weird to wait on it, feels weird to repeat the name. Now that I've noticed the pattern, of course I want to break it up and vary my usage, but I'm having a hard time making myself do it.

It's like the pattern of ending sentences with prepositional phrases. Drives me nuts now that I'm aware of it, but English sort of drives me in that direction. (I mean, really, it's hard not to. Look at the sentences in this LJ post. Look at this sentence. Stop it! Stop! Variety is good!)

Anyway. Do you catch patterns in your writing like this? Do you try to break them or run with them as personal style things?

I just speed-read a huge pile of fic in a new fandom, searching for those worthwhile few that have the goods. A number of trends pop out when you do something like this, and I wanted to record one trend here: overloaded opening sentences. Yeah, the opening sentence has to awaken interest. But it doesn't have to do all the work of establishing setting as well. The presence of the word "as" is often an indicator of overloading, particularly when it's used to connect one-time short-duration actions with longer on-going ones. (People who endure my beta-reading are familiar with that complaint.)

I'm now reading over all my own opening sentences in a paranoid fit.

(Sudden weird metaphor: In your next story opener, instead of "Rocky Racoon", go for "A Hard Day's Night".)

In other news:

I'm waiting for my coworkers' verdict on Dollhouse. Last week they were all of the "it's Joss Whedon; of course we're watching the pilot" opinion. Let's see what they think this week. They're all ahoo over BSG and bored stiff by Heroes.

My list of obligations both fannish and real-life is piling up horribly. I have a story to beta-read (yes, I got it, secondalto), week-old feedback email to answer, a ficathon to write a cheerleading post for today, and the story for the ficathon to work on. Haven't written a word in a week. The subject line of the post is the clue about what I've been doing instead.

So. What should I do today? If you say "laundry", then I'll cry. If you say "open the week's mail and pay bills", I'll know you're Mr Pedia and respond by throwing a small dog at you.

You will remember, perhaps, a long time back I said I had some ideas for a story with Giles, Buffy, and Xander in Montana post-Chosen, in which the plan in "Chosen" didn't quite work out as expected? Sort of post-apocalyptic angst, except not really apocalypse for anyone but them. What, you don't remember? That's okay. I can't keep track either. Anyway. I finished one of the scenes and posted it over, you know, there.

I suck at this anonymity thing.

( Wittering about tense choices and stylistic ruts inside, cut for easy skipping... )

Sick. Sick sick sick. Cancelled my sessions at the gym I'm so sick. Instead I ran my pally around to all the candy buckets in the world of Azeroth and did nearly all the Halloween achievements. Joy. Wish I had enough brainpower to write instead. Maybe I will today?

During my plane flight on Wednesday, I read Robert McKee's Story, which goes on an ultra-short list of books about writing I've found useful. ( More behind the cut... )

Check out "How to Unleash Your Creativity", an interview with four experts in Scientific American. It has the usual bogus title promising the absurd, but the content seems on target to me. Here's a brief excerpt ( after the cut, with commentary... )

The date-sorted story listing on my fic archive site is sort of fascinating to me. Reading the early stuff-- or rather, reading as much of the early stories I can stand before the writing starts upsetting me too much to continue-- makes it clear how much I've learned in the last two years.

Good. My evil plan proceeds apace. Soon I will perhaps Not Suck So Much.

Problems still: on the nose-ness, not enough conflict, exposition that at time thuds like a heavy solid thing accelerating at 9.81 meters/sec^2, sentences that don't get enough editing love, insufficient invention.

And by the way. You can blame emelye_miller for the Skyclad Scoobies on the Solstice Core Four Ritual Sexmagic Plot Bunny. Or choose a verb you like better there.

That wasn't much of a ficspam, I know, but hey! The attempt did help me finish two things I've had in progress for a while. And I have at least two more short things started, not Giles/Ethan. I'll see what I can do this week with a Giles/Jenny thing I started yesterday, and also a Giles/Buffy thing. The genfic ideas are not so plentiful at the moment, alas.

This approach is incredibly effective with getting me to stop over-editing and just let the words flow out. It's not the way to write more complex, polished pieces, the sort of things that depend on a deep editing process, but if I'm stuck entirely it's a huge help.

My opinion on the LJ user rep elections in progress: The position is for appearances only. If the LJ owners don't listen to the professionals on their advisory board, they are unlikely to listen to a customer on the same board. But the election sure is occupying a lot of time, attention, and energy. My recommendation is to vote for a fandom candidate, because YNK, and then stop investing in it.

Random link for today: Flight of the Conchords, "The Humans are Dead", performed live. Killed me too. (Contains a bad word sung aloud, so use headphones if necessary.)

txvoodoo asks, "Does fandom expect too much" from its TV shows?

My short answer: No.

( What? You expected me to stop there? )

Am finally revisiting the serial fiction discussion if y'all wanna hop over there and converse.

My question for you today is about serial fiction, everything from The Old Curiosity Shop to Arthur Conan Doyle to the latest 160-chapter Harry/Draco epic. It used to be more common in professional fiction than it is now. Fanfiction has a lot of it, and it's how television works routinely. What do you think about it? When does it work for you? What are its pitfalls? What are its strengths? Is it important to you that the writers know where they're going from the first moment? Can you tell if they don't?

This touches on some stuff we've talked about here earlier, when I realized that my readers knew more than I did about where I was going with one of my serials. I'm also watching a past master of the serially-told story, nwhepcat, approach the stopping point of her latest. I am thinking that there's craft to learn here.

Need to ratchet my craft up a few notches. I feel I'm not pushing myself. Could stagnate if I don't watch out. Possibly I should get serious about the original story series I've been dreaming over in my head for a while now. Write some character sketches for it? Or I could resume some fandom projects. I would very much like to finish a few serieses. Ars Draconis, for one.

Possibly I should re-read a couple of short stories I love immensely and pull them apart to see how they work. Re-read The SF Hall of Fame or the Hugo Winners and think about 'em all.

( Or some other thinking out loud... )

( Fear of finishing... )

And I return to listening to one of Brian Eno's great triumphs and working on Buffy-as-Hero. Though... hey. I find designing soundtracks to inspire the story a successful mental strategy. The soundtrack for "Dust on His Hands From the Sky" slams me right down into the mood of that story. I should stop to do this.

Summery, sunny, warm, healing, starts discordant, ends triumphant. Hmm. "I'll Come Running" is high point. I'll build to that.

All of the essays synecdochic has been posting recently about writing craft have been interesting and worthwhile. Check 'em out. Metafandom has them under the writing tag. (Metafandom: much more readable as a del.icio.us feed than as LJ comm. Though it's consistently more boring now than it was in the days when it had lots of fandom-specific stuff.)

I am watching the fan reconstruction of the first appearance of the Second Doctor. Oh BBC, you so stupid! Never throw content away!

Though I am am now going to hit pause on that and finish the draft of what I'm working on at the moment. Because I can feel how close it is...

Am now home from work with soul-destroying, painkiller-resisting headache of wanting to lose lunch. Ulch. Serious badness, and I'm going to put a pillow over my eyes in another second. Before my head exploded I wrote this:

This is what it's all about. At least for me as a writer. It's the same point as the John Gardner "describe the barn" exercise.

Describe a barn from the point of view of a man who has just learned that his son has been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, the war, or the death. (The exercise should run to about one typed page.)

Okay. That's not what it's all about; there are other things. But that's a big one.

There are so many ways of writing that page of description. So many correct answers to the problem. And the process of evaluating those answers is so difficult. synecdochic gives one method of approach & evaluation.

Some people say the author is dead; what is this intent you speak of? Other people eagerly seek out DVD commentaries and interviews, thus demonstrating their hunger to know the intent. Other people say, yeah, okay, I can see your intent, but I don't care, I'm appropriating this!

( tl;dr about my recent experience with this... )

How do you cope, oh serial writers?

I've started adding author tags and some other random content tags to giles_fic_recs. I'll probably do a few as a meditative exercise whenever I'm stuck. Patterns in the content tags will emerge as I go, and then I'll have established a good base tagset.

The joy all over the flist at the latest Dr Who makes me think two things. One, I note that I have watched exactly one ep of Who from start to finish in my life, and that's the one with Tony Head in it. But a Netflix disk with #9 just arrived, so I'll be fixing this sometime soon. Two, geographical boundaries and networks and broadcast rights are now meaningless to tech-savvy TV viewers. Who fans in the US watch every episode when it is first aired in the UK. This is going to change how television works eventually. Hm. That is the sound of a Silicon Valley programmer wondering how to find the next startup to join.

( Le fic wittering, and a writing craft issue... )

Anyway. The Ethan ficathon needs more pimping, so I will go drink my second cuppa coffee and find clever ways to pimp that aren't too spammy. And I might achieve a draft of "Thusia" today. Nothing like feeling Thursday's deadline breathing down the back of my neck to keep me focused...

Some of what I've been learning about doing dialog recently.

( After the nice, polite cut... )

Here's a nice post on active writing, and why "show don't tell" is usually good advice. Once you know why you're showing, and what you're showing, and what your goals are, you probably know when telling is the right approach to take instead. I liked the way the poster put it-- she wants to experience the emotions along with the characters. And the way to evoke those sensations in readers is with active writing.

Reader involvement is the goal. The reader is an active participant in the experience. I'm sure there are grad students somewhere emitting theses about strategies of reading and all that. Whatever. The thing to know is that the reader is the other half of the electrical circuit. The reader takes your prose, reads it, decodes it, and imagines it somehow. John Gardner referred to the imagination-state as the "uninterrupted fictional dream". You give the reader enough to get going, then feed more details in to sustain the experience. But not all of them; you want the reader's mind engaged.

Give them active, vivid, direct presentations of events.
Give them work to do, in the form of details to supply on their own.
Keep their attention where you want it, by mentioning details that you want them to notice.

Active writing also helps with avoiding on-the-nose writing. I want to read characters experiencing emotion and betraying it through action. I don't want to be told what so-and-so is feeling. Half the time I'm not even sure what I'm feeling; I can't mind-read other people! But I can see that that my character is shredding the piece of bread on his plate instead of eating it.

Also in service of my goal of learning to avoid the dread nose-targeting, I've been working on misunderstandings and things never understood. Mistakes, both incidental and important. Guesses, correct and incorrect.

Heh, check what happens when Rudy Rucker reads Gardner. Mr Pedia is a huge Rucker fan; I haven't read much. But I like the way he's delighted by all these insights.

katekat1010 points us to this essay by Wax Banks on "What you want, what you need: fans and endings, and narrative satisfactions". This essay discusses the end of Angel, the end of Buffy, fan demands for continuation, and the continuation in the comics. As we all know, what readers/viewers/fans demand and what they secretly need are two different things. The job of the writer is to satisfy the unconscious needs.

The essay covers, among other things, the reason that Whedon had to, er, do what he did before the final battle in Serenity: the need to create the belief that maybe things won't work out this time. Maybe it'll be different this time. Eek.

Two points that caught my attention:

Complex storytelling increases the variety of ways that the audience can be satisfied, combines audience desires in new or untraceable ways, and (often) ends the story with still-suspended desires held in tension against those that've been satisfied.

And:

So what makes an enjoyable story? That's the thing: tons of stuff. We dig allusion, momentum, rhetorical cleverness, sonority, relatability, simplicity, comfort, thrills, critical insight. The best stories, I think, combine a number of these pleasures and play them off one another.

Well. Let's see if I can make some tiny fraction of this happen in my spring_with_xan story. I wrote a story plan for it last night. I think I need to crank up the stakes considerably somehow. Hmm! ( Cynical aside... )

The unfortunate people I've beta-read for know all too well that I mostly agree with this post by fairestcat wailing that stories are often too short.

We've all read the hundred-chapter epics that go on and on and progress at a rate of about half a plot inch per chapter. (HP fandom seems to have more of these than the corner of Buffy fandom I love best.) But more often I read stories that are much shorter than I think they need to be to achieve their goals as story.

A good drabble is a wonderful thing. It sets out to send you to the mat with a right cross to your jaw, and it does so.

A good short story has a different ambition. It has a plot to work out. Some characters to show in action. Some moment of change to visit. And so often I read stories that give me the basic idea of a story, without satisfying me. The writer pointed in the direction of the story, but didn't lead me all the way there. They gave me the pencils for a comic page, without the inking and the coloring.

Okay, that's enough with the metaphors. You've had an idea! Okay, great. Now the work starts. And please, do the work. ( Write more, dammit, and here's where... )

I want to spend more time in these story worlds. I love the characters and the settings. I long to be with them and soak them in. Please let me! Please slow down and give me more. You know secrets about these characters and what happened. You do! That's why you're writing. Tell me all the secrets. Everything. I want all the juicy details, please!

When I'm in line-edit mode prepping to publish/post/inflict a story on an unwitting world, I work extra-hard to catch a few writing problems I know I'm prone to.

• Word use-pairs. That is, a slightly unusual or otherwise attention-catching word used twice in succession. Separated by several sentences in a paragraph, usually.
• Overused basic building-block words: moment, realize, suddenly.
• Weasel adverbs not in dialog (and sometimes even there): very, rather, quite, and their milquetoast friends.
• Unusual words used more than one in the entire story, even widely separated. (For instance, in "Initiation" I stomped out one use of "forestall", because I thought the story could handle at most one instance of it.)
• A repeated dialog pattern: "Short phrase," he said. "Longer stretches of dialog follow that initial break."

There are other things that I don't consider errors on my part that I try to smooth over as I go. I mentioned a few of them in my earlier post about line editing.

Not that my Rupertus Domesticus story is in this stage yet. Sigh. Still struggling.

My regular Sunday morning bath featured some Lush chocolatey bubble bath and a reading of "A scandal in Bohemia". I read sections of it aloud to Mr Pedia. This is a wonderful thing to do with prose, by the way. I mean, not taking valuable books and reading them in the bath, which always makes the spousal unit blanch, but reading the words contained therein out loud.

( Worrying over ACDoyle... )

Mr Pedia has me reading Dwight V. Swain's Techniques of the selling writer. Swain first published it in 1965; it contains advice about typewriter ribbons. It also contains advice about fiction-writing in simple declarative sentences. I've hopped through the book a little bit.

Swain breaks down stories into five elements:

character / situation / objective / opponent / disaster

He wants a two-sentence summary of your story that works in these five elements. First sentence is a statement, the setup. Second sentence is a yes/no question, the conflict.

( For example... )

Yeah, it's the Hollywood logline, or the TV guide capsule summary! Feels cold-blooded to me. Not to mention relentlessly middlebrow. Like, where's the art, dude? Can we apply this to "The dead"? Or "The music school"? And just try fitting P&P into this mold. Aha! Great if you're writing for Hollywood, I guess. And perhaps best thought of as a writing tool, an aid to your own internal process, not as a tool for analyzing finished fiction.

And that's enough procrastination for the day.