forum Preparations!!!

Started October 18, 2022 by @larcenistarsonist group

tune

Ha, I do the same thing, honestly.

… Which is bad because there aren't even that many characters in my story to begin with

and next thing you know… the side character becomes the main character-

I'm just loosely mapping out plot right now alskdf this rough draft is going to be extremely rough but that's okay bc at least I'm getting something down aklsdj

Yes yes, I agree. Getting something down is as important as everything else. Good luck! Oh and do you have any particular methods for drafting? Or is it just like, you know, whatever happens happens?

So what I do is I just have a google doc and I just bullet point big events and do smaller bullets under that for smaller events inside that big event and that also fill in snippets of dialogue or description that I think fit in with the event! kind of like this:

• Big Event: blah blah description some random slang I'll forget some !!!! coolness and epicness
  - cool fight inside this event
  - "Some super neat description I think will look amazing in the book. Ohoho, it foreshadows a little bit"
  - what it foreshadows
  -"Some character dialogue" "Cool rebuttal"
• Another Big Event
  -big discovery by character A while B is somewhere else with C and D

So yeah that's what my plotting looks like, but my drafting is going to be very spotty! I'm going to have lots of "[insert fight scene here]" and "[get to the destination]" in between what I actually do write akdl;f My goal is to just get my story done, to hit the plot points, to develop some characters, and then deal with the stuff I skipped over in my second draft.

SAMEEEE the vague descriptions are such a mood-

Trueee haha. I just keep super doodle-y storyboards with quick notes.

Frankly, I'm afraid if I dive back into the worldbuilding aspect, il never get anything written. I kinda hyperfixate on the lore, to the exclusion of actual plot, so my goal really, is to advance the actual story

Understandable, good luck with that!

Thanks much. This kind of 'event' is exactly the kind of arbitrary motivation I need 😅

I hope you all don't mind me constantly asking random questions about your writing. But the time is almost upon us and I am excited!

As for the question: What are you most nervous about going into November? And to follow up, if you have anything, what are you least worried about?

hmm, most worried about it moving too fast, actually. i hate pacing.
least worried about plot and dialogue, for sure.

Honestly, I'm just nervous about hitting a block and not finding away around it aldjks I'm gonna try to absolutely power through to the best of my ability qkjdks I'm not really nervous about the plot bc I think I have a firm grasp on it

(I am also changing so many character names last minute and this could be bad but I do not care ajhdjak)

I'm a bit worried I'll get hung up on details and not make as much progress as I need to.
I'm least worried about the action scenes. Those tend to flow easily. It's connecting the epic scenes in my head to each other wih the more normal and mundane stuff.

All very valid! I'm also on the same boat as lemonwitch. I've already run into the issue of pacing a lot, so I definitely get that haha. And also there on the struggling with blocks notion too.

I'm a bit worried I'll get hung up on details and not make as much progress as I need to.
I'm least worried about the action scenes. Those tend to flow easily. It's connecting the epic scenes in my head to each other wih the more normal and mundane stuff.

I've never written an action scene before. I feel like I'd make them clunky haha. Massive respect for you. Good luck, getting caught on details is certainly an issue lots run into.

All very valid! I'm also on the same boat as lemonwitch. I've already run into the issue of pacing a lot, so I definitely get that haha. And also there on the struggling with blocks notion too.

its either three things happened in 1 paragraph or im 4800 words in and the story still hasnt started (it happened once)

HAHA okay same I get that for sure. Pacing is such a difficult skill.

I have all my details set, like main characters, setting and plots of separate chapters.
But I'm not 18 yet so I'm doing the YWP and my goal is only 11k because I don't believe in myself that much.

Sounds like you've done a lot of the really hard work already, Ethereal! I'm sure you can get to 11K easily.

I agree with Davadio! You can do it for sure!

Back with another random question. Since I feel like recognizing weakness and strengths is an important skill.

What do you feel like your strength is in writing? What do you find constantly falling short in your writing, and do you plan to use this November to improve it? How do you overcome challenges?

my strength, human behavior and dialogue. settings are alright.
weakness, pacing (again) and i often get distracted or realize i dont know where i was going with a character

I envy you haha, I struggle with human behavior and dialogue. I really just tend to have a hard time making things feel natural.

its mostly cause i overanalyze people-

I think for me, my biggest struggle is sentence variation. And maybe vocabulary.

But I think I'm pretty decent at pushing past blocks in all of my creative mediums, so it's a trade-off I'll take! I hope to improve my sentence starts/variation this November, and I've already made some progress with fixing it (according to a very lovely beta reader). That being said I think asking for the critique is the best way to overcome any challenges. Though it's a bit nerve-wracking.

its mostly cause i overanalyze people-

HAHA. Wait- I do that too, so where does the magic happen? wwww

yeah, those are definitely difficult. a lot of my older work starts every sentence with "[pronoun]" "it" or "the" and it drives me crazy

Yeah, that's a problem I ran into. Most of my sentences before I revised them were [pronoun] then {verb}. But it's gotten better. I've only got a draft, but I've been correcting it a lot. I wonder if I'm correcting my draft too much.

You might be overcorrecting the draft, particularly if your goal is to get all of a thing written, then edit.
I do the same thing. My drafts take foreve but I do way fewer cuz they come out squeaky clean. Ultimately, it's not good because it gives me less overall time to revise.

Understood. I guess that's another weakness of mine, I have a hard time leaving my works alone if I see even a slight issue. Even in drafts where issues are usually guaranteed.