Driving to the Story...
May. 31st, 2008 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI wrote 2,000 words yesterday, not one of which will end up in a story anywhere. Essentially, they're backstory; my fumbling around with explaining how Orville got to where he's going.
I've been playing recently with writing "routine" stuff. That is, stories that don't really say much but are fun to write just because they're, well, routine. Writers, especially television and comic book writers, do this a lot. 99% of what they write is just meant to fulfill an expectation in the reader, and I need to master that merely routine aspect of writing on a regular basis. So, I though, I'd go through TVTropes and pick a few that I liked and try to write them.
Hence, the two Sterlings short arcs, Polestar and Curling, two short (well, relatively; we're still talking about 40,000 words when all of them ared one) arcs in which a Pendorian woman and a Pendorian man from the Einstein's Canvas, respectively live on the oldest and most diverse of the Sterling planets, Athena, and get very different views of what the planet is like. Both were, essentially, harem stories where the protagonist is seduced by a series of characters ... just because.
The settings start out isolating: Aderyn is on a cruise ship and all that entails, Orville is at a closed-down college in the far north in the middle of winter with the members of the college's trophy-winning Curling Club, each member of which has bet the others that she can seduce Orville. Orville is going to go willingly. But everything I've written over the past two days is too much setup and not enough of the main point, which is writing about people having sex, so out it goes, and we'll dive straight in later with Tudi, the team Skip. And I have to remind myself: It's Tudi, not Trudi, Tudy, or Trudy. I've written it all four ways.
I've been playing recently with writing "routine" stuff. That is, stories that don't really say much but are fun to write just because they're, well, routine. Writers, especially television and comic book writers, do this a lot. 99% of what they write is just meant to fulfill an expectation in the reader, and I need to master that merely routine aspect of writing on a regular basis. So, I though, I'd go through TVTropes and pick a few that I liked and try to write them.
Hence, the two Sterlings short arcs, Polestar and Curling, two short (well, relatively; we're still talking about 40,000 words when all of them ared one) arcs in which a Pendorian woman and a Pendorian man from the Einstein's Canvas, respectively live on the oldest and most diverse of the Sterling planets, Athena, and get very different views of what the planet is like. Both were, essentially, harem stories where the protagonist is seduced by a series of characters ... just because.
The settings start out isolating: Aderyn is on a cruise ship and all that entails, Orville is at a closed-down college in the far north in the middle of winter with the members of the college's trophy-winning Curling Club, each member of which has bet the others that she can seduce Orville. Orville is going to go willingly. But everything I've written over the past two days is too much setup and not enough of the main point, which is writing about people having sex, so out it goes, and we'll dive straight in later with Tudi, the team Skip. And I have to remind myself: It's Tudi, not Trudi, Tudy, or Trudy. I've written it all four ways.
