The struggle and the glide...

[elfs]

Yesterday, on the way into work, having been deprived of my bicycle by an errant nail or shard of glass or something, I had an opportunity to write. And I struggled with it. I couldn't get it to go. This was in my 19th Century European Fantasy series. The setting was simple: Kasserine and Gerard are being set up to... what? In the 40 minute I had, I got maybe 500 words, not any of them terribly useful.

On the way home that afternoon, however, it was completely a different matter. I sat down to write a Journal Entry. I had one line as a seed, and no ideas at all. I picked it at random from my list of silly ideas that i keep in my Wiki. The line read:

"Do you like my shoggoth?" she asked.

In forty minutes I had two characters, a setting, a complication, a plot, some wonderful description, some pretty nifty dialogue, and a thousands words of advancing characterization. Both characters were new, the setting is a whole new world with an interesting past. One of the characters had a whole slew of alien characteristics that made her interesting. It all came so naturally and easily to me, like speaking my native tongue.

I need to get out of this comfort zone. The Journal Entries universe is now officially too easy to write in. I virtually live there.

---

1. What was your favorite breakfast cereal when you were a kid?

Frosted Flakes! They're Grrrrrrrreat!

2. What is the best toy/prize you ever got in a box of cereal or because of sending in UPC's?

I don't ever remember anything that really took me away like that.

3. How do you take your eggs (scrambled, over easy, egg beaters)?

Scrambled, with cheese, and enhanced with either Sriracha sauce or Worcestershire sauce.

4. What is your favorite breakfast meat (bacon, ham, sausage)?

Iiiiiiit's BACON! Bacon baconbaconbaconbacon.

5. What is your favorite spot (local or chain restaurant) for breakfast and where is it located?

The New York Bagel Shop on 1st Avenue, downtown. That or the Crumpet Shop right next door.

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

"Conventions" are what makes as story, in your case, Lovecraftian. The narrator is often first person for Lovecraft short stories and many of his novels, and "words must fail" to describe the horror he is encountering. That's what a convention is: somethnig that the reader recognizes as part of the genre. Lovecraft is a unique genre with some unique conventions. It takes someone like Charlie Stross to take the conventions and do something fascinatingly unique (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm) with them.

A plot is just that: a problem the main character has that must be resolved by the end of the story. It's entirely possible to have a story without a plot, and some Lovecraft stories are like that: the reader gets a sense of the immensity of the struggle that the narrator can never overcome. "Arcs" are collection of scenes in a story that tell a mini-story while furthering the overall tale. If you have multiple viewpoints in a story, the scenes that make up an arc don't have to be congruent, and so forth.

[(Anonymous)]

Well thanks for the responce, and as useful as the information was I think I'm more confused then ever :) Not your fault though, it just shows that I really need to sit down and do some studying on how all this is supposed to work...