Snowflake Challenge Day 11
Jan. 11th, 2019 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starsprayDay 11: In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?
My process. Uh. It's kind of weird in that it changes depending on what I'm writing? For things like NaNoWriMo I've found that plantsing works really well for me. I'll roughly outline a couple of scenes or a sequence of events, like A meets B and then they fall down a hole or into a goblin's nest or whatever, and then I'll actually write it out, and rinse repeat. Doing it in bits and pieces like that feels less restrictive than sitting down and outlining the whole story at once. I don't know why.
I don't tend to outline for fanfiction, though. But I'll do a fair amount of research before hand, especially looking up dates and things (Tolkien's timelines are amazing and I love them so much), and if I need extra inspiration I'll hit up a prompt generator maybe. Quotes are my favorite. A lot of times I'll get ideas for fic from specific prompts, like challenges or exchanges. Other times I'll just get an image or scene in my head and then I need to write like eighty billion words of story to get to that scene that I wanted to write in the first place. Or there will be a piece of canon that I want to explore further. Or I'll write a drabble and want to expand on it.
Whether it's smooth sailing or not...kind of depends on the story and what I'm writing it for and whether the characters are ones I'm familiar with, or the direction of the wind or whether Mars is in retrograde or whatever (what does that even mean?)--if I can't focus on a fic I'll just let it simmer on the back burner. Which is why my 2014 NaNo project has only 8 chapters posted, and why I have at least one other story that I've been trying to write on and off for probably almost as long and have gotten exactly nowhere.
My process. Uh. It's kind of weird in that it changes depending on what I'm writing? For things like NaNoWriMo I've found that plantsing works really well for me. I'll roughly outline a couple of scenes or a sequence of events, like A meets B and then they fall down a hole or into a goblin's nest or whatever, and then I'll actually write it out, and rinse repeat. Doing it in bits and pieces like that feels less restrictive than sitting down and outlining the whole story at once. I don't know why.
I don't tend to outline for fanfiction, though. But I'll do a fair amount of research before hand, especially looking up dates and things (Tolkien's timelines are amazing and I love them so much), and if I need extra inspiration I'll hit up a prompt generator maybe. Quotes are my favorite. A lot of times I'll get ideas for fic from specific prompts, like challenges or exchanges. Other times I'll just get an image or scene in my head and then I need to write like eighty billion words of story to get to that scene that I wanted to write in the first place. Or there will be a piece of canon that I want to explore further. Or I'll write a drabble and want to expand on it.
Whether it's smooth sailing or not...kind of depends on the story and what I'm writing it for and whether the characters are ones I'm familiar with, or the direction of the wind or whether Mars is in retrograde or whatever (what does that even mean?)--if I can't focus on a fic I'll just let it simmer on the back burner. Which is why my 2014 NaNo project has only 8 chapters posted, and why I have at least one other story that I've been trying to write on and off for probably almost as long and have gotten exactly nowhere.
