Seasons

Oh wait, I found it.

Wow... that ice thing is... ::cough:: ..strange...

Got in late on the whole writing conversation (been out of town), so a couple of things.

I'm pretty sure Tolkien based most of the elvish language (or at the least the phonemes) on the sounds of Finnish, which as I understand it is a dying language because most modern Finns speak Swedish. Also, jbryanc (I think it was you) mentioned that thing about Tolkien meeting with a bunch of other academics amongst which LoTR took shape. One of those guys was C.S. Lewis (of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe fame).

As to writing itself, I share the common curse of not finishing things that I start. At last count I have one play, four screenplays, one radio serial, a novel and a trilogy that are all at various stages of incompletion. Compare that to one full length play and a handful of short stories I have completed.

As to the process I use, for longer stuff I have to know two things before I begin. Where I'm starting and where I'm ending. There are usually about a half dozen key scenes I want to hit at some point along the way. The trouble is I keep getting detoured. It usually makes for some of the more interesting aspects of a story, but it has a tendency to blow out the word budget on the original plan.

I usually find that to work out who your characters and setting are you've just got to write about them until you start to build up the picture as you go along. Once I get to that point I usually start again so I can make things consistent from the get go and use the knowledge I've built up to better set up what comes later in the early stages (ie foreshadowing and establishing certain character traits earlier).

I've never been able to get both a start and an end to a decent story, so there's my main problem there...

I never worry about the ending until I get there. I like trying to get there better than actually getting there, I think. Because once you get to the end, regardless of what method you use, you gotta do all that revising crap, and by that time it's not creative anymore. Just some mechanical crap you gotta do to improve your story. This is probably a large part of the reason I never GET to the ending.

You could always try one of those unique writing styles, like two authors writing back and forth to each other.

Or come up with the beginning and keep writing whatever you're writing until it takes on a life of its own. It does NOT get any easier at that point, but it does seem like it's been writing itself all along. Like 100 pages down the road, you may think to yourself, "Oh, so THAT's why I put that particular picture in the stained glass window". Things like that.

Depending on the mental stability of the author, the story can get quite demented when writing that way. I should now.

Well, I'm currently stuck on chapter 2 of my sci-fi story, because I need a baby sitter for my main character who is currently seven years old, and I haven't felt like inventing another character for the job. Anybody want to babysit Spencer?

My going rate is ten bucks an hour and whatever I find in the fridge is fair game.

But as far as writing goes, if I don't have at least some idea of what the result is going to be, where I'm shooting for, I just can't find any direction. That's the trouble with a lot of the incomplete stuff I have. I just lose the direction of it. I mean it's great if you can just write until an ending emerges naturally, it's more organic that way, but that sort of story is only likely to satisfy you. A reader might not relate.

I do have a question, do people find that when they write prose that they focus seem to focus on certain aspects of the story at the expense of others? For example, I find personally that I concentrate on dialogue, action, and internal thoughts of characters and sometimes forget to do much in the way of description of setting and characters physically. I guess what I'm asking is what you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your writing to be?

I've been carrying on here as if my bots were characters in a novel. Like characters in a novel they have developed personalities of their own and have completely taken over, at the expense of moving the story along. How about a novel without characters? Or have the French already done that?

I tend not to do much description either, because once I get started it has a tendency to turn into a little mini-novel of its own. Sometimes the plot just takes over and all the cosmetics play second fiddle, which doesn't make it a very good read but it's sure interesting to create. I'm beginning to suspect after all this time that maybe I don't enjoy the writing so much as the coming up with the plot to begin with. Except I can't just come up with a plot and then have someone else write it cuz I'm too damn picky.