michelel72 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
michelel72) wrote2019-11-10 09:01 am
michelel72) wrote2019-11-10 09:01 am
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Sunday snippet 11/10 (Sound of Silver #6): Runaway train edition
Oh noooooo
First, I planned to take the story series I never got around to writing over the past ~25 years, and write a fanfic-style deaging story based on it. Main character (Jonathan) would get zapped so that, externally, he's been "rewound" to his teenage self, and internally, he feels as if he's jumped from 1985 to 2014. He would then go around learning about his older self's life, while his friends would learn a little more about what makes him tick, and after a few days he'd go back to normal.
Then I wasn't sure where to go with it. Fanfic-style writing is forgiving in a lot of ways, including in that it can just be about one element (whump, plot, smut, whatever) and then just kind of ... end when that part's over. It's not as if it really needs to resolve everything and everyone involved; that's what canon is for, and there's an implied "and then insert canon here to continue". (I mean, ish, and only certain categories, but it's a theory.)
But I wasn't sure that thousands and then tens of thousands (!) of words of Jonathan being emo really made sense to wrap up with a little bit of embarrassment and friendly reassurance. And THEN I realized, well, maybe I could invert things, turn around and zap his partner, give her the development I never really got around to in the novels I never wrote. Show the other direction of the friendship.
Except then I found that didn't quite work, because "teenage black girl finds herself lost and confused and alone with a white, middle-aged, male cop" doesn't lend itself to warm fuzzies, and it shouldn't. So then I added another twist, and I also made them Big Damn Heroes, and it was a plan, even if I've been having trouble blocking the action to make any sense.
I've been trying to write this fic in order, even though I historically don't do that because scenes occur to me out of the blue all the time and if I don't write them down I lose them. But that was starting to happen here as well, so I had a second document for snippets to work in later. That's been going pretty well.
But then some of those snippets started taking a dark turn for Jonathan's mental state. I'd planned just to have him be a little embarrassed but surprisingly okay about all of it, because ~friendship~. I was hesitant about keeping them around, and then I had to strike through some of them anyway for unnecessarily pulling in some questionable content from the never-written novels. I tried to keep my focus on the main fic, which grew and grew and grew, 60k words and still only in day two of plot. (And it doesn't chapter for shit, either; the best I've been able to do is to break at kind-of-end-of-day-one, ~30k words, with clearer break points at the ends of the remaining plot-days.)
But then yesterday a new later scene occurred to me, located in plot-day-four (Thursday) out of an originally planned five plot days (the final one being Saturday, with Friday being handled in summary/skip). It seemed a little darker again, but there were parts I liked, so I decided to start writing it anyway. At worst I could always trash it later. And then I found myself writing right through what I'd always thought was my character's central conflict and straight on into a literal existential crisis over what I belatedly realized has always been his actual central conflict.
Surprise!
And then the ending of that scene felt, tonally, like the ending of the entire story.
... except that capping what's looking like 80k-100k words with 2.5k words that go from "I'm fine" to "WAIT NO I'M NOT FINE" to "Okay, here's my path to what fine is going to look like" feels like slamming a runaway train into a brick wall. I'm seriously finding myself having a "Boy, that escalated quickly!" reaction every time I review it.
So now I have to figure out if I stay there, or if I write a new Plot Day Friday to have my character start rebuilding a whole new personality only to then carry on into Plot Day Saturday in which (plot-twist spoiler alert) he goes back to his teenage state again.
... which kinda seems like a Things Not To Do When Writing 101? Because erasure of development?
Aaaarrrggghh I don't know what to doooooo.
And I'm in a small snag trying to finish Plot Day 2/Tuesday, which makes me want to switch over to the later stuff that is actually moving, and Plot Day 3/Wednesday was always going to be a weirdly mellow interlude and I haven't even started it. (I don't think it works to shorten the period of the deaging effect, though.)
Writing, man. Always an adventure. Anyway, have a snippet! That I feel really unsure about!
He's frozen.
Everything's frozen. Nothing moves. Shocked motionless.
He can't move. Maybe ever again.
"Don't run."
The soft words start a spiderweb of cracks across the unmoving world. A subtle shift in the stillness. Ice just starting to crackle before breaking.
Mark is moving towards him slowly, the only motion in the room. One crutch, the other hand out, like he's approaching a wild animal. And that's Jonathan, panic-stricken, wide-eyed, still panting slightly from his race up Mt. What The Fuck Is Wrong With You.
"Just stay. It's all right. Just don't run."
First, I planned to take the story series I never got around to writing over the past ~25 years, and write a fanfic-style deaging story based on it. Main character (Jonathan) would get zapped so that, externally, he's been "rewound" to his teenage self, and internally, he feels as if he's jumped from 1985 to 2014. He would then go around learning about his older self's life, while his friends would learn a little more about what makes him tick, and after a few days he'd go back to normal.
Then I wasn't sure where to go with it. Fanfic-style writing is forgiving in a lot of ways, including in that it can just be about one element (whump, plot, smut, whatever) and then just kind of ... end when that part's over. It's not as if it really needs to resolve everything and everyone involved; that's what canon is for, and there's an implied "and then insert canon here to continue". (I mean, ish, and only certain categories, but it's a theory.)
But I wasn't sure that thousands and then tens of thousands (!) of words of Jonathan being emo really made sense to wrap up with a little bit of embarrassment and friendly reassurance. And THEN I realized, well, maybe I could invert things, turn around and zap his partner, give her the development I never really got around to in the novels I never wrote. Show the other direction of the friendship.
Except then I found that didn't quite work, because "teenage black girl finds herself lost and confused and alone with a white, middle-aged, male cop" doesn't lend itself to warm fuzzies, and it shouldn't. So then I added another twist, and I also made them Big Damn Heroes, and it was a plan, even if I've been having trouble blocking the action to make any sense.
I've been trying to write this fic in order, even though I historically don't do that because scenes occur to me out of the blue all the time and if I don't write them down I lose them. But that was starting to happen here as well, so I had a second document for snippets to work in later. That's been going pretty well.
But then some of those snippets started taking a dark turn for Jonathan's mental state. I'd planned just to have him be a little embarrassed but surprisingly okay about all of it, because ~friendship~. I was hesitant about keeping them around, and then I had to strike through some of them anyway for unnecessarily pulling in some questionable content from the never-written novels. I tried to keep my focus on the main fic, which grew and grew and grew, 60k words and still only in day two of plot. (And it doesn't chapter for shit, either; the best I've been able to do is to break at kind-of-end-of-day-one, ~30k words, with clearer break points at the ends of the remaining plot-days.)
But then yesterday a new later scene occurred to me, located in plot-day-four (Thursday) out of an originally planned five plot days (the final one being Saturday, with Friday being handled in summary/skip). It seemed a little darker again, but there were parts I liked, so I decided to start writing it anyway. At worst I could always trash it later. And then I found myself writing right through what I'd always thought was my character's central conflict and straight on into a literal existential crisis over what I belatedly realized has always been his actual central conflict.
Surprise!
And then the ending of that scene felt, tonally, like the ending of the entire story.
... except that capping what's looking like 80k-100k words with 2.5k words that go from "I'm fine" to "WAIT NO I'M NOT FINE" to "Okay, here's my path to what fine is going to look like" feels like slamming a runaway train into a brick wall. I'm seriously finding myself having a "Boy, that escalated quickly!" reaction every time I review it.
So now I have to figure out if I stay there, or if I write a new Plot Day Friday to have my character start rebuilding a whole new personality only to then carry on into Plot Day Saturday in which (plot-twist spoiler alert) he goes back to his teenage state again.
... which kinda seems like a Things Not To Do When Writing 101? Because erasure of development?
Aaaarrrggghh I don't know what to doooooo.
And I'm in a small snag trying to finish Plot Day 2/Tuesday, which makes me want to switch over to the later stuff that is actually moving, and Plot Day 3/Wednesday was always going to be a weirdly mellow interlude and I haven't even started it. (I don't think it works to shorten the period of the deaging effect, though.)
Writing, man. Always an adventure. Anyway, have a snippet! That I feel really unsure about!
He's frozen.
Everything's frozen. Nothing moves. Shocked motionless.
He can't move. Maybe ever again.
"Don't run."
The soft words start a spiderweb of cracks across the unmoving world. A subtle shift in the stillness. Ice just starting to crackle before breaking.
Mark is moving towards him slowly, the only motion in the room. One crutch, the other hand out, like he's approaching a wild animal. And that's Jonathan, panic-stricken, wide-eyed, still panting slightly from his race up Mt. What The Fuck Is Wrong With You.
"Just stay. It's all right. Just don't run."
no subject
Maybe instead of a longer epilogue you could add more foreshadowing for the breakdown?
I agree that major character development being simply erased by the narrative would be unsatisfying though.
no subject
One option I didn't mention was that I could kick the original last-plot-day bit to a potential sequel, and then either leave the fic ending really abruptly or continue the new character development into the start of the next day, depending on whether I can find a viable New Ending Point.
But ... just ... argh!
(But thanks for the feedback! It definitely helps to hear the outside perspective.)
no subject
no subject
I really *am* fascinated by how many little things I worked in that keep tying together, most of them unintentionally. But I feel like the Eleventh Doctor in "The Lodger". "I was not expecting this!"
(Side note: I should have taken this approach so much earlier, though, because even though it's not a proper story at all -- it's a bunch of characters telling each other summaries of the stories I originally meant to write, lol, until it suddenly TWISTS like this -- but I've written so much! It's a rush.)