*~* July 16th Writers' Check-in *~*

LuckyDad

With the lovely Ms. Lexi Lupin hopefully enjoying a serene plane flight with her LO (or perhaps safely landed?) it has fallen on me to facilitate this thread. These questions are all meant as jumping off points; feel free to answer any or none of them or bring up something entirely different!

 

Weekly progress:

If you're working on something (writing/outlining/brainstorming/etc),how is it going? If you're new here, care to share any details of your project(s)?

If you set a goal for the past week, how are you doing? Did you meet it?

What's your goal for the next week? 

 

Discussion:

-We talked a lot about protagonists last week:

https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/75253952.aspx

I thought it might be fun to ask about antagonists, especially since eddy touched on how she tends to write her characters as too goody-goody.

Do you like writing antagonists? Does your writing tend to have characters who serve as antagonists, or do you often rely on Person vs. Society or Person vs. Self struggles? (Aside: I adore John Hodgman's additional conflict categorizations like "All Animals vs. All Humans... his books are total rec from me for anyone who enjoys weird smart humor). If you write antagonists, are they more shades of gray, or are they typically quite villainous?

 -Getting Started and research

Some of us have existing projects, some of us like to write short stories. What's your process when you start writing something new or address a new chapter? Do you outline? Plan out ahead in your mind what kind of story you want to tell? Shoot from the hip and just let the characters tell their own story?

Do you like to write your story in order? Begin at the beginning and work your way to the end? Do you write scenes and then string them together? Write the key scenes and paragraphs first?

 

-Anything else anyone wants to discuss?

I was thinking down the line it would be fun to try to share snippets we've written and perhaps discuss with the hope of refining and improving it. The idea would be to keep everything positive but still try to be helpful. I feel like feedback can often be useful, and the ideal snippet would be 2 or 3 paragraphs of something the writer considers "good, but not yet great". Is this something people would be interested in? I'm willing to put myself up on the block and I'm guessing Lexi could be convinced once she's back in action (which I would probably want to wait for).

Luckie519

I have been MIA the last couple of days, but I guess you just couldn't stay away from us, eh?  Welcome back!  Glad it wasn't too long!

missyishere

I haven't worked on anything. I was away all weekend and kind if having a bad week thus far. Missyisinafunk.

missyishere

LexiLupin:

missyishere:

I haven't worked on anything. I was away all weekend and kind if having a bad week thus far. Missyisinafunk.

  Don't be inafunk!

Also if you didn't see my incredibly late-night page, I sent you another PM last night.

I am on mobile at the moment but will check once I have my monster down for bed.

LuckyDad

 Progress:

I hit my goal of 2,000 words, and actually had something like 2,600 for the week. Almost half of that came on Monday in times I might have otherwise been bumping. Most of it was on the sections that are supposed to be highest priority (near the beginning, so I can actually work towards finishing a draft). However about 1,000 of those words were fleshing out a scene that I had intended to be a single paragraph. I like how it turned out (as much as I like anything I do), but it didn't serve to bring me that much closer to "finishing". Still, it was a good writing week.

Antagonists:

I don't do a lot of antagonist characters. Most of my conflict comes from struggles with self or society. My characters do come into conflict with each other when their goals and desires aren't fully compatible, so I suppose I can have secondary characters act as antagonists at least in certain areas, but always in shades of gray manners.

 When I've dabbled in fantasy I often end up with a cartoonish sort of "big bad", or follow the trope where one of the party members turns evil. 

Getting started: 

I'm an outliner. It is hugely helpful for me to plot out chapters and what I want to happen in each chapter, then plot out the scenes of each chapter. When I write without an outline things seem to meander. Sometimes this works for short stories; I can sometimes end up with a story that wasn't what I originally thought I was going to write but I still rather like. But for my "novel(s)" I find outlining so key.

 I tend to write in a beads on a string fashion, focusing on the scenes and chapters I find most interesting and then connecting them. This is especially true when cannibalizing old stuff to add to a bigger work. Within chapters I do tend to write chronologically and I almost always write short stories from beginning -> middle -> end for flow purposes.

My novel is written chronologically, which I find easiest, although there are/will be a few flashbacks where a new character fills in their back story by telling the protagonist tales from their past, a technique I find helpful (and relatively true to life). 

 Sharing: 

Lexi is probably correct that sharing slightly longer sections than a couple paragraphs might be more ideal.

LuckyDad

missyishere:

I haven't worked on anything. I was away all weekend and kind if having a bad week thus far. Missyisinafunk.

*pat pat*. Sorry you're in a funk. I've been lightly funking too, although it ebbs and flows.