(no subject)

[katallison]

So I posted something earlier today about getting back into writing, and in a comment, cesperanza pointed out that I'm really a "Method" writer, one who (like a Method actor) spends a lot of time upfront thinking through characters' emotions and motivations, and then has to struggle to figure out what the characters should do to express those; whereas she writes in what she calls the "British" method, analogous to the great British actors who stand *here* and say the line and then walk over *there* and do that piece of business, and work back from there to discern and build in the emotional underpinnings.

And now I'm fascinated by this, because I just assumed that everyone goes about writing in the same way I do, more or less, and I'm having fun trying to get my head around what it would be like to simply have some scenes in mind, and write them out, without having already done a lot of sort of preparatory emotional outlining to guide the process. And because I have a ton of other stuff I should be doing, I thought that instead I'd -- that's right, do a poll!

[Poll #511623]

Comments

[hestia8.livejournal.com]

Stranger here, came over from metafandom. Hope you don't mind me butting in. I’m a little bit of everything, because I have a brain that likes to be occupied with three or more things at once, which is a bugger for trying to finish fics. Though I do get a lot of reading done.

Most of the time I’ll get a voice in my head, a character, and they’ll say something, and the story will start from there. Sometimes it’s fanfic, sometimes it’s an original character. Sometimes I’ll get a situation first, a ‘what if…?’. Actually, I like those, because if they don’t fit into one area, they might fit into another (original or fanfic).

And when I actually start writing, I just keep going until it stops. Sometimes that’s a paragraph, sometimes it’s a page, sometimes it’s a whole fic in one go. And then I’ll go back over it, and I might rewrite, or try and carry on, or I might just save it and close it if I don’t like it (I am virtually incapable of throwing anything away). My other problem is that my brain doesn’t move in a linear fashion – at university I tended to start my essays in the middle, then write an earlier bit, then the conclusion, then the intro, and then fill in the gaps. It’s still working that way, which can be annoying if I want to get something finished.

I’d love to be able to post some of my unfinished stuff (but tidied up) as ficlets, but I’m writing in fandoms where that doesn’t *feel* right (to me) - Spooks/MI-5, Ultraviolet, Hustle – tiny UK fandoms all, and all where a significant amount of explanation is needed for longer fics. Which is probably why I just write character ficlets or het/slash fics, and why my original fics aren’t about spies or conmen .