I don't write like that

[resonant]

I always envy people who write more or less in order. Who can participate in those "post six sentences of your WIP" memes. Who can come into chat and say, "Who wants to see the next 2000 words of the beginning I showed you on Tuesday?"

I've never been able to do that. Either I have a fairly complete draft that just needs some "clarify this, don't belabor that, wasn't the Riv already destroyed at that point?" [waves at mific] or else I have half a sex scene, half a conversation, and a vague handwavy sense of what fits them together. terminally_underwhelmed pictures it like a conspiracy board with the yarn and the arrows.

Today in the shower as one does, I figured out the metaphor I like:

A lot of great fan writers write like knitters. You do some prep work (choose the stitch and the size and the yarn and so on) and then you start from one end of the scarf and keep going until you get to the other end of the scarf, and when you finish you have blocking and fringe and whatall.

The moment it's longer than it is wide, anyone can look at it and tell it's a scarf. At any point in the process, a beta reader could offer useful input: "Your stripes aren't the same width; is that on purpose?" "Did it get narrower here or is that my imagination?" "I didn't think I liked the brown, but it looks great next to the magenta."

Me, I write like a painter. A sketch, and then a different sketch, trying to get a sense of the composition. Studies, studies, months of studies, and sometimes the sketch has to be revised in light of the studies. A more detailed sketch. Color and shape blocking. A face, an arm, a bit of background - no, wait, in light of that background I want the arm and head in different positions. A big gorgeous satin skirt that I'm very proud of - no, dammit, when I get the rest of the room in place, the skirt messes up the eye flow.

And a beta's role goes directly from "let's brainstorm - is there any post-canon life that would actually make Fraser happy?" to "Anybody up for 11K of established relationship? I think it's fairly solid but the pacing may be uneven."

(Editing to add: it's probably obvious that I can actually neither knit nor paint.)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Lucky for us, you sure can write, however you approach the task.

[trobadora]

And a beta's role goes directly from "let's brainstorm - is there any post-canon life that would actually make Fraser happy?" to "Anybody up for 11K of established relationship? I think it's fairly solid but the pacing may be uneven."

Ha, I feel you so much on that! And on the "can't do the WIP meme" and so on.

It's really fascinating reading about your process, thank you for sharing! Mine is a bit different, but I also don't write linearly at all. It's a bit like quilting, I guess, or puzzle pieces, except I'm taking a file to the pieces when I put them together, and where I end up putting them will often change them in fundamental ways, so my first draft of any bit can look very different from how it ends up stitched into the whole ... /shamelessly mixed metaphors

[resonant]

<3

[resonant]

Yeah, that sounds different but kind of familiar. Maybe like a mosaic maker? You make the shaped pieces and reshape them based on where they are.

[trobadora]

Yes, that sounds right! Because you can't tell from the individual pieces what the finished thing is going to look like.

[azurelunatic]

That does sound like the process for acrylic or possibly oil painting! (Watercolor and anything that depends on the canvas/paper underneath for whites, if you get something too dark in the wrong spot you may have to re-start or if you're lucky scrape it up, but acrylic you can just paint over once it's dried. I have no experience in oil, but it's also a fairly opaque medium.)

[flownwrong]

i hesitate to barge in because some days i'm not sure i should count myself as a writer, but i must say going back through your older stuff was very helpful because i found your post-fic notes both very illuminating and very liberating because somewhere in there were fundamental thoughts-about-thinking i recognised (i'd go back and look for examples if i had a tiny bit more energy). this post goes on that list too.

i am still at the stage of figuring out what works for me (at a fun stage, i'd say, when *something* finally works), and it's very, very reassuring to stumble upon your self-description because i'm very much surrounded by knit-ty, skilled writer friends (whom i respect and adore) and i feel like i have to strive for that kind of process because of how good their stuff is. but striving for a process of any kind should probably come as a byproduct of striving to finish things at a level where i can say i made them as good as current me could make it. what i figure out in the end might not look like anything you—or others—do, but it's nice to see a different angle in the first place, you know?

though ha, i can see what you mean about beta anyway; i feel most capable and willing to discuss my stuff at those two points as well (even though my finished draft can still need serious revisions—skill issue).

[marinarusalka]

Heh. Speaking as a knitter, I do think it's a pretty good analogy for how I write, though you have to allow for scenarios like "Ugh, I screwed up a cable repeat twenty rows back and now I have to rip back that whole section and do it over" and "Shit, I'm attempting a tricky bit of color work and now all my yarn strands are tangled up in a giant snarl and I don't know how to untangle it."

[out_there]

That's interesting. I'm definitely the knitter type -- start with an idea and characters, and then keep adding until you get to something you can call an end. Very occasionally I've written in bits and pieces, but I always find there's a lot of work at the end to stitch it together into one piece -- in a way that doesn't happen when i just start and keep going.

[resonant]

If I'm doing something super short and simple, I can do it knitter-style - though it took me so many years of practice to get there.

Smutlets work OK like that - <1000 words, pretty much all sex, punchline worked out beforehand. I guess that's kind of like crocheting a granny square. Or a short missing scene where the canon dictates the start point and end point - closest craft metaphor I can come up with for that is using a darner to weave a patch for an existing hole.

But anything more complex, or anything where I can't see clearly at the start both where I want to be and how I want to get there - if I tried to start at the beginning and work through, BEST case is that my 4000-word story would require me to write 60,000 words and throw most of them away. Worst case is that I ruin a good idea by writing so many bad words about it.

(I can NOT outline. Any abstraction at all beyond "this first and then that" makes the whole thing go dead for me.)

[resonant]

This would be one reason I never managed to learn to knit!

[resonant]

I was picturing an article I once read about art historians examining a famous painting with - maybe x-ray? Anyway, they found another arm and a head at a different angle where the painter had painted over the first ones.

[resonant]

Oh, I recognize that feeling! And in one way its an incredible gift to be in fandom where we're surrounded by all these amazingly talented people and we can just go up to them? and ask them questions? and sometimes we can give them prompts and they'll write stuff for us?? but on the other hand it's like I hang out in a place where everybody is a demigod except me.

I think ultimately the only two things that matter are time and love.

[adafrog]

I like the examples, it really makes sense.

[celli]

I can definitely vibe with the knitting style - although I'm trying something with one of my WIPs where I write the scenes (or bits of scenes) that occur to me when they occur to me, and after a while I built something that might look like an outline if you were very very forgiving. It's an adventure! Does it feel good to have finished it and gone through all that? You certainly get great fics out of it!

I also very much relate to looking at other people's process wistfully. I have so many friends who write hundreds or thousands of words a day, long epic stories with lots of plotting and description, and here I am with my 100 words a day and my much shorter story lengths. I feel like a fraud, or like I'm not very good, but that's just how I feel, not reality. Probably. :)

[mergatrude]

Sometimes they find a completely different painting underneath! :)

[mergatrude]

There's a reason I only write snippets and drabbles. I get an idea, a conversation or a scene, and who knows if I can find - or even want to find - the rest of the story. Likewise, I usually knit small things like scarves and mittens and hats, because who wants to sew sleeves onto that sweater. It works fine as a vest. /o\

(I can't paint, but it's not surprising my favourite artist is Paul Klee - blocks of colour, suggestions of objects, etc.)

[flownwrong]

yeah, a double-edged sword for sure! but a certain amount of conscious effort does go a long way in learning to see the former, not the latter.

time and love. what a kind way to put it :')

[flownwrong]

sorry to butt in, but i love your approach (the short, intense works often leave very bright traces in my memory, speaking as a reader) and your favourite artist analogy!

i just thought about how mine is Rothko and i can definitely see how I operate primarily on textures and moods level and work from there to get to the details (materials to use, the size of the canvas, the composition... then again, i don't know from art so I might be completely misinterpreting Rothko ;)

[nnozomi]

This is fascinating to read, thank you. (I'm just glad I don't write like I knit--I am only capable of knitting garter stitch, back and forth, with occasional dropped stitches. I don't think it would make for interesting writing.) I'm awed by people, you included, who can write in the painterly way you describe--so many things to keep in balance all at once, over a span of time.

[grey853]

I love reading how others create their stories. The process is so magical that it's interesting to see how others manage to get their ideas out into the world.

The knitting analogy is a good one. I'm definitely a knitter type writer. I start with the basics of who, what, when and where before I get to the how. I have a definite starting point and work until I'm at the end. I rarely do flashbacks and change a timeline. For me, it's day-to-day, one scene reveals another until there's an end in sight. I've tried doing things in different ways, but it just doesn't work for me. I'm pretty much a linear writer.

[resonant]

Metaphor making! A fun substitute for actually writing!

[resonant]

I've been prolific, but I was trying to work from an outline in those days, so in the end it needed work at a level so deep that I ended up scrapping it all. And writing energy ebbs and flows mysteriously.

It feels good to finish anything, but to me it doesn't feel like going through all that - it comes naturally. Feels good to have all the parts in their proper place, ideally adding up to something.

One problem I have that maybe knitter types done have is that I write things that don't fit in the final story - the characterization evolves in a different direction or they drag the pacing down or whatever. Mostly I put them in replies to AO3 comments ;)

[resonant]

(I thought I didn't like Klee but someone on tumblr is posting art by him and I love it. I think I was too young to properly appreciate him.)

The main reason I can't usually bear to stop with a snippet is that I'm smut-motivated.

[resonant]

Funny how we all covet each other's abilities!

[resonant]

Linear! That's a good word. My sense of direction is VERY linear (don't ask me which way north is) so it's funny that my writing isn't.

[celli]

I like bonus stuff like that! And you're right, I don't end up with much, but maybe this new WIP will be different.

[adafrog]

lol

[mergatrude]

Excellent motivation!

[rydra_wong]

Pondering this, as I start to find out if my brain might be capable of writing things again:

I'm pretty sure my process is paleontology. Endless digging around in the dirt looking for the bones of something, then trying to find the other bones that go with those bones, work out how they connect together into a shape, then layer on the flesh that needs to go on top to make it into a creature.

[mekare]

>> Smutlets work OK like that - <1000 words, pretty much all sex, punchline worked out beforehand. I guess that's kind of like crocheting a granny square.

Thank you, this made me laugh!

[mekare]

Oh I like that analogy!

[mekare]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on your process. First, I greatly enjoy your fics, no matter how you wrote them.

The painter analogy works quite well I think.
For me I haven‘t been writing long enough to figure out which process works best for me, but I can say that I‘ve written short (<1000 words) pieces where the knitting analogy fits, but my current WIP (~4700 words) is definitely a mix of both processes. I wrote one chapter in a fairly linear fashion, but for the rest I keep jumping around, writing bits and pieces, reshuffling and trying to stitch them together somehow. I still don't know how this will end.