Thoughts.

[snitchnipped]

• You can learn a lot about a character just by writing them being drunk.  Stuff came out that I wasn't expecting.  I learned:  "Wow, yeah, that's where we're going now with this.  I guess it was meant to be."  Unexpected turns are unexpected.  And valuable.

• Note to self:  try writing drunk.
  

• There has been a sad history of elephant captivity.
  
  
• Probably the most challenging thing is character naming.  They've got to mean something, fit the characters/world/time-period, and not sound stupid.  My Elephant is not a Mary Sue, so I need to be careful her name doesn't sound like one.
  
  
• It's amazing how much I've written already that I won't even use in this story.  Is that common?  Some of it was intentional, some unintentional.  I discovered one of the first scenes I wrote actually takes place in two years, so it can't be used. 
  
  
• One of the main things I've learned is the concept of restraint—not to lay everything out on the table, and if you do, don't do it all at once.  Be it character descriptions, plot, setting, whatever.  I can get all Tolkienish and describe everything down to a T if I wanted, but I'm purposefully forcing myself to hold back, especially more this time than with Dichotomy.  I have to let the plot speak for itself and back out of Edmund and Susan's minds a bit more.  Even though being in Ed's head is awesome.
  
  
• Wow, I had no idea you could track traffic stats on ff.net.  The ratio of story hits to reviews is alarming! 

Comments

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Oh boy. Yes those traffic stats can be very, very depressing. I don't tend to look at them, unless my review count is way off and even then, not always. I love not man less has done (relatively speaking) very, very poorly. I never know why.

Drunk? Drunk character? Do tell us more. I've not found writing drunk is especially helpful. Or on pain meds.

Some people put a lot of attention into names. I don't. I know Anastigmat tends to look at the IKEA catalog. I think about some character trait and then find a foreign name that goes with it. Or, I pull a Star Wars, and use a name that means something here as a spoof, like the Banking House names.

As for the laying it all out, yes, restraint is HARD. You don't need to put it all out there -- save it and think about it and you might use it later. And some of this comes out in the revising process, too. Not that intend to follow this advice myself, given she of the 10,000 word chapters. GET THAT WOMAN AN EDITOR

Good luck!

[snitchnipped.livejournal.com]

In short, 20 year old men (boys) are idiots. The cider houses are in season in Archenland, but unfortunately for Edmund, cider does not mix well blue lasaia:

Baris: “You didn’t dilute it?”

Edmund: “Were we supposed to?”

Ferrin: “I didn’t, and I was fine.”

Baris: “Yes, well, you’re a madman.”

Baris and Ferrin are just two of my OCs. I'm rather fond of their names (and them), but when you throw them together with Peridan, the names seemed too similar at first. But I can't change them now -- it's who they are, and I like their meanings. So, I decided to make a joke about how they sound similar, which only made sense if Edmund was drunk (and smokin' the lasaia), and, well, something wonderful unraveled from there.

Edmund is so much fun to write...highs, lows and everything in between. And I'm getting all the scenes of debauchery done first, it seems.

I'm definitely doing the foreign name thing, but it seems easier for men than women. A lot of the women names that have great meaning in a language that would make sense for them... well, they sound a lot like the names of young heroines dumped in a Narnian field unexpectedly only to be saved by Peter/Edmund/Caspian and romance ensues. I just want to named a damned Elephant, why is it so hard? I think I settled on Durah, which means "pearl" in Swahili. It'll do for now.

And I've learned to save EVERYTHING. It's all organized quite nicely, and filed away into "rejects" or "future" as needed, but I don't dare delete anything.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

FUN FUN FUN. And Durah is a great name for an elephant!

[h-dash-h.livejournal.com]

I really dislike coming up with character names myself, and tend to obsess over it. One of the best things about fanfic- the characters usually come with names.

In my admittedly limited experience, I, too, write *far* more than actually ends up in the story. The one time I didn't (the Invisibles crossover), it was soon very clear that I should have. And yes, a lot of it gets filed away and will show up in some form or another later (assuming I get some inspiration again- it's been in short supply so I've been reading more than writing recently).

And again I agree- restraint is difficult. So much of the best fiction writing works in part because the world is larger than what you are shown. The real world is like that, and when you can tell that the fictional world exists beyond the page at hand, it feels more real. This is why Tolkien had and continues to have such an impact within Fantasy. The amount of world building and writing that he *didn't* publish is tremendous, but it all hovers around the edges of what he did.

Narnia, as much as I love it, was clearly built a bit more piecemeal. Although to be fair, the first version of The Hobbit didn't fit the backstory as smoothly- Tolkien revised it at some point.

Getting back to your point, I always want to *explain* everything. But it really does seem to work so much better if I don't.

[snitchnipped.livejournal.com]

You've got to keep them wanting more! I wrote a scene that described a character's backstory pretty much full out... but then I realized that there's no reason for the reader to have to know any of it for the plot of this story. I pulled one or two details from it, slipped it in nonchalantly here and there in other scenes, and I really hope it sets off nothing but intrigue.

The scene works, but not for another two years in my canon. It can wait!