2011 Rundown
1 January 2012 22:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quinaraI have mixed feelings about 2011, but by all accounts 2012 should be better, so hooray that we're here! I wrote quite a lot of fic last year and produced some vids too, so in the spirit of tradition, here is a rundown with my thoughts on everything at the end of this year...
Wot I Wrote.
Linked through the AO3, mostly because it's easy to access and has the series linked together. Ooh er!
Big Things.
The 'Turn and Face the Strain' Series (The More Things Stay the Same; As Good as a Rest)
Looking back on it, this series accounts for about half my output in 2011, which, I dunno, is interesting. I'm glad I wrote both these fics, because I wanted to write more longer things this year, and I'm certainly interested in the verse I've created, because the third fic which will probably finish it off is currently filling my head more than anything else. I suppose I'm partly worried that no one will be interested, since there seemed to be a quite a drop in interest between the first fic and the sequel - but then I suppose that's never stopped me in the past. And I do want to get it out there. I'm really learning about pacing in these fics, because long, 2-3,000 word scenes are much more what I prefer to read, but it can leave other areas feeling very scant if you don't have much to say and only want a 500-word scene: must practice with more fic!
Spikeid VII-XII (+ reworking of I)
Well, it's finally done! I think that's what we can say about that. I'm relieved, mostly, even though my attempts at a re-read have mostly left me thinking I have massive pacing/stitching-scenes-properly-together issues in this as well. I don't know; it was an experiment, even if it did seem to lose a lot of people along the way. This is possibly a habit of mine.
Medium Things.
Walking at Midday
I really wanted this fic to be really riddling and interesting, but it turns out that I can't write riddles at all, so it was a slightly throwaway character study of Spike intstead, with a bonus Sphinx. That was all that was going to come of the idea, I'm fairly sure, so I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. I do miss S7 if I leave it for too long, anyway.
The Problem with Kindly Interventions
Aww, my Dawn/Satsu and Andrew verse... I miss the urge to write in this, especially since I do have a relatively lengthy fic I would like to write in it. To be honest, I think my ongoing issues with the comics have mostly drained my inspiration for anything connected to their verse, that's the thing. Must see if I can salvage that.
Remix Things.
Darling Buds of May (Rough Winds Hardstep Dub)
My proper remix! I don't write much gen, so this was a nice break, if I remember - my head tends to fill itself up with other things, so I have to encourage gen ideas to take hold of my attention. I definitely appreciated being able to flesh out my (old but renewed) ideas for a post-Chosen council etc, since most futureverse things I write these days depend on it in one way or another.
Transcription (Demotic Tongue Remix)
A rare S5 fic from me (dunno why I so rarely write in S5, I have to say), but I couldn't resist BMB's little fic about the Rosetta Stone. And who doesn't love Buffy in Intervention? She's such a trooper...
Charming Strange Peppermint (The Polonius Shot First Remix)
This was also supposed to be a short little riff on a BMB fic, but then William wouldn't shut up and had a whole identity crisis right in front of me. But it was fun! Especially looking at William as being as countercultural as Spike would become (on the inside), but just a bit too naive and brittle and Victorian about it to really, actually be of use to anyone. Although, ack, I'm actually very fond of his terrible poem's first stanza. It's the enjambement breaking through the couplets! I've never pulled that off when I'm being serious (mostly because I don't write in couplets). Sigh.
Image Object (Angles of Refraction Mix)
I thinkrahirah hit this on the head when she commented that it sometimes seems like Buffy suffers from some sort of emotional image dysphoria. I actually find the interaction between Buffy and Spike post-Beneath You pre-Sleeper quite interesting, even if it isn't my go-to happy watching/ficcing place. (As we shall see in the vids section!) Buffy of course has no idea what or how she's supposed to think or act - and Spike's just, well, mad. Such is angst! And knotty problems. Even if not so very evidenced here.
Dug Too Deep (Too Many Mornings Mix)
I wrote Fred! I've never written Fred. But I did like this idea when I read Deird's fic. I think what I actually produced is more an idea than a story, but it had lots of fun shouting at all the boys' manpain in the closing episodes of AtS, which needs some shouting. Shout shout shout.
Write My Country New (Fearful Suppliant Mix)
I love Stulti's poem, and this was actually one of the most fluent poems I've ever written. I'm very fond of it, mostly of the rhymes that appear from odd places and the seaside palette of the second stanza. If I could write like this all the time, I'd at least keep myself happy.
Fag Ends Things.
Autocar Eurydice
I'm actually quite fond of this poem as well, even though it can definitely be said that it wasn't fluent in the least, starting life as it did as a proper villanelle from Spike's POV. Most of that went by the wayside very quickly, definitely to its advantage. But then several verses swapped places and everything like that, but still, it's nice to write Dru, even and especially lucid poet!Dru. I think she might have more poetry in her; should look at that...
Bruise Blue Ink
Punk month struck with this, which was mostly a lot of shouting at Buffy in Spike's voice. I do like the idea that he remains a poet always, and have a feeling there are some really good poems from him in S6 (also a lot of emo shit, which we shall not try and write), but I also rather like my prose in this piece. Couldn't have sustained it for anything more than a fag end, though.
A Matter of Taste
When everything's getting you down, there's always cute S7 buddy interaction to fall back on, I say. And that's essentially what this is, with bonus Bette Midler. And Buffy's spotty-at-best taste.
Deliciously Self-Centred
This needs to go in the same category as the above, only with the extra tag of jaffa cakes. It amuses the hell out of me how it gets an extra bump of hits on AO3 compared to similarly tagged fics I've written, I think simply because of the summary, which runs 'Buffy is seduced'. I do say it's G...
The 'Long Distance' Series (Breathing at Your Side; A Thousand Ships Have Sailed; Silence in the Gardens; Distractions, Segues and Metafantasy)
A few of my Fag Ends fics ran together this year, which was quite nice. I've had a few fics in the past where Buffy and Spike have referenced a sort of semi-relationship via phone post-Chosen where their getting back together could happen slowly and carefully, so it was nice to explore that more properly. Even if I did tend towards the stage where they were more comfortable with each other, but that was fun. I like the moodiness of these (except maybe the last one, which isn't so!), which I think ties them together as a series quite well.
The 'Cryptozoology' Series (Deep Sea Rescue; Tourist Trap; Dinner and a Movie and Slayage)
I'm a bit sad I didn't just come up with more of these when I was on a roll, because they were fun! I do like my mystical creatures, and there's always opportunities for more dragons. I think this Buffy lives in the exact same house as the Buffy of Long Distance, but this seems to be a fluffier option for how Spike comes to live there as well.
Getting across the River
Which brings me to another fic set in that London house, only when Spike has been living there a while, and when Dawn has been to uni and come back for a London-based Watcher's masters. (I'm thinking it might be called an MT for magister tutorius or something. In my world this is the two-year postgrad degree Watchers have to take wherein they produce their standardly-recognised Watcher's thesis, though afterwards the scholarly watchers do more research at the library in London, while field watchers get put out across the world and mostly do reporting.) Anyway! The fic was quite fun. Do like this set up. Not only because it puts both Dawn and Spike in fairly academic settings and I don't have to research them particularly.
Pawn Promotes
And where would we be without a decent AU? I very much like the idea of this one, which is that old idea where both Dawn and Buffy survive the Gift, but the world doesn't, thus splitting the Scoobies down the Buffy+Dawn+Spike and Giles+everyone else schism. Although not so much by this point. Otherwise, though, I might be keeping the detail under my hat, because I do have ideas for where I'd like to take this. If I could just do my S6 fic, it might be my next project. Or that 70s Gethan thing, which has to go somewhere.
Your Queen You Bear Me
And I almost forgot about this AU, which is why it's out of chronological sequence... Buffy as a vampire, hmm; I have a feeling it would be a massive mistake. Not least for Spike if he turned her, because she would take great pleasure in trying to destroy him! He'd have to get himself a clue to fix things, which I'm not sure is his strong suit.
Wot I vidded.
Playground Twist
This was for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sb_fag_ends, and thus only a minute long. But I still rather like it, even if there are maybe a couple of clips I would swap. The rhythm of the Siouxsie is just excellent, so it's great to have teh Spuff throwing things around in time to it.
4'33"
I really wanted to work with this piece of music, so I'm glad I did this, and I go through watches where I think it's perfect - and then I go through watches where it just seems like nothing to me. So there you go. But I do like Spike in the basement, and I did like playing around with text in video. In my head I dream of doing a massively long vid sometime which is actually more like a silent movie, to something long and mulit-movemented, like Justice's Planisphère or Rach 3, but I have no idea how the heck the plotting would work. It's burbling on in the background. Realistically, it might well be something more disjointed but episodic, with something like this as one of the episodes, which would then blend into a new vid. I might need an external hard drive for the ripping first.
Black and White
The verdict seemed to be that this wasn't any more or less experimental than things I've done before, but I'm coming back round to thinking that it is, only because it doesn't make sense to me unless I think of the narrative as taking place inside Illyria's head. To me it's a very inward-looking vid, rather than a vid with lots of action meaning action. I think I might prefer the latter. Though I at least gave the ending of this time to breathe, which definitely would have improved several of my other vids (eg. Stress). That's something.
/
Meme.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I don't know really. It doesn't feel like much, because it's all mostly either short throwaway stories or single long things, which don't feel like much because they're only one thing. But, actually, I wrote two stories longer than 25,000 words, so, yes, I'll take that please.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2011?
I've really reverted to type this year, which is a little disappointing - all Buffyverse, very strongly Spuffy. Quite a lot of Dawn, which is good, but not particularly special. I suppose Fred and William are characters that I tend to leave for their alter-egos, so I think they would have been hard to predict.
What's your favourite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I don't know really... I think I'm falling into a trough of a learning curve again, where all I can see when I read things back are the places where I should have fixed things better. My remix of Stulti's poem and the moody Fag Ends pieces probably make me most happy, because they're all short enough to have got the flaws ironed out, and they are what they are.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Writing most of As Good as a Rest in a week was probably something of a risk... I learned quite a lot, mainly about how I can actually be happy (mostly) with something so lengthy hammered out in such a brief space of time. However, I also learned that letting something like that become your life is massively emotionally draining, especially once you post it and have to spend a week coming to terms with the fact that nothing anyone says about it (no matter how complimentary) is going to be enough to counteract the exhaustion. Creative highs have their comedown as much as any other drug, apparently.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
No particular goals as such, but I would like to do the third fic in the Angel-crossover-S6-longfic series, only because, as Bogs says, Holtz needs to come back (with a vengeance). And then I have a few ideas bubbling away - and I'd like to do more vidding. I'd like to keep going, really. If I could keep going, I'd be happy, because December has mostly been a washout and November was pretty dry. Gah, if I'm really honest, I don't think I'm over the post-Spikeid, post-As Good as a Rest drain, which is ridiculous, because everyone else has moved on. ... Carrying on now.
From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story: I don't know, to be honest. Everything's either too short or I wish I'd sorted some things out. The More Things Stay the Same probably suffers from this least, though the last chapter throws everything a bit too fast.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe: As Good as a Rest, probably - on the one hand, I'm not sure any sort of reception would have made me happy. On the other hand, I honestly don't know how I lost so many people.
Most fun: Probably Charming Strange Peppermint, because it was.
Most disappointing: I think Walking at Midday ended up having a lot less in the idea than I had hoped, and I tend to forget I've written it now.
Most sexy: Distractions, Segues and Metafantasy probably takes that one. Even if it is a bit coy.
Hardest to Write: 4'33" was hardest to vid, so let's go with that.
Most Unintentionally Telling: All the Cryptozoology fics, I imagine - but then maybe that was intentionally telling?
OK, let's go.
Wot I Wrote.
Linked through the AO3, mostly because it's easy to access and has the series linked together. Ooh er!
Big Things.
The 'Turn and Face the Strain' Series (The More Things Stay the Same; As Good as a Rest)
Looking back on it, this series accounts for about half my output in 2011, which, I dunno, is interesting. I'm glad I wrote both these fics, because I wanted to write more longer things this year, and I'm certainly interested in the verse I've created, because the third fic which will probably finish it off is currently filling my head more than anything else. I suppose I'm partly worried that no one will be interested, since there seemed to be a quite a drop in interest between the first fic and the sequel - but then I suppose that's never stopped me in the past. And I do want to get it out there. I'm really learning about pacing in these fics, because long, 2-3,000 word scenes are much more what I prefer to read, but it can leave other areas feeling very scant if you don't have much to say and only want a 500-word scene: must practice with more fic!
Spikeid VII-XII (+ reworking of I)
Well, it's finally done! I think that's what we can say about that. I'm relieved, mostly, even though my attempts at a re-read have mostly left me thinking I have massive pacing/stitching-scenes-properly-together issues in this as well. I don't know; it was an experiment, even if it did seem to lose a lot of people along the way. This is possibly a habit of mine.
Medium Things.
Walking at Midday
I really wanted this fic to be really riddling and interesting, but it turns out that I can't write riddles at all, so it was a slightly throwaway character study of Spike intstead, with a bonus Sphinx. That was all that was going to come of the idea, I'm fairly sure, so I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. I do miss S7 if I leave it for too long, anyway.
The Problem with Kindly Interventions
Aww, my Dawn/Satsu and Andrew verse... I miss the urge to write in this, especially since I do have a relatively lengthy fic I would like to write in it. To be honest, I think my ongoing issues with the comics have mostly drained my inspiration for anything connected to their verse, that's the thing. Must see if I can salvage that.
Remix Things.
Darling Buds of May (Rough Winds Hardstep Dub)
My proper remix! I don't write much gen, so this was a nice break, if I remember - my head tends to fill itself up with other things, so I have to encourage gen ideas to take hold of my attention. I definitely appreciated being able to flesh out my (old but renewed) ideas for a post-Chosen council etc, since most futureverse things I write these days depend on it in one way or another.
Transcription (Demotic Tongue Remix)
A rare S5 fic from me (dunno why I so rarely write in S5, I have to say), but I couldn't resist BMB's little fic about the Rosetta Stone. And who doesn't love Buffy in Intervention? She's such a trooper...
Charming Strange Peppermint (The Polonius Shot First Remix)
This was also supposed to be a short little riff on a BMB fic, but then William wouldn't shut up and had a whole identity crisis right in front of me. But it was fun! Especially looking at William as being as countercultural as Spike would become (on the inside), but just a bit too naive and brittle and Victorian about it to really, actually be of use to anyone. Although, ack, I'm actually very fond of his terrible poem's first stanza. It's the enjambement breaking through the couplets! I've never pulled that off when I'm being serious (mostly because I don't write in couplets). Sigh.
Image Object (Angles of Refraction Mix)
I think
rahirah hit this on the head when she commented that it sometimes seems like Buffy suffers from some sort of emotional image dysphoria. I actually find the interaction between Buffy and Spike post-Beneath You pre-Sleeper quite interesting, even if it isn't my go-to happy watching/ficcing place. (As we shall see in the vids section!) Buffy of course has no idea what or how she's supposed to think or act - and Spike's just, well, mad. Such is angst! And knotty problems. Even if not so very evidenced here.Dug Too Deep (Too Many Mornings Mix)
I wrote Fred! I've never written Fred. But I did like this idea when I read Deird's fic. I think what I actually produced is more an idea than a story, but it had lots of fun shouting at all the boys' manpain in the closing episodes of AtS, which needs some shouting. Shout shout shout.
Write My Country New (Fearful Suppliant Mix)
I love Stulti's poem, and this was actually one of the most fluent poems I've ever written. I'm very fond of it, mostly of the rhymes that appear from odd places and the seaside palette of the second stanza. If I could write like this all the time, I'd at least keep myself happy.
Fag Ends Things.
Autocar Eurydice
I'm actually quite fond of this poem as well, even though it can definitely be said that it wasn't fluent in the least, starting life as it did as a proper villanelle from Spike's POV. Most of that went by the wayside very quickly, definitely to its advantage. But then several verses swapped places and everything like that, but still, it's nice to write Dru, even and especially lucid poet!Dru. I think she might have more poetry in her; should look at that...
Bruise Blue Ink
Punk month struck with this, which was mostly a lot of shouting at Buffy in Spike's voice. I do like the idea that he remains a poet always, and have a feeling there are some really good poems from him in S6 (also a lot of emo shit, which we shall not try and write), but I also rather like my prose in this piece. Couldn't have sustained it for anything more than a fag end, though.
A Matter of Taste
When everything's getting you down, there's always cute S7 buddy interaction to fall back on, I say. And that's essentially what this is, with bonus Bette Midler. And Buffy's spotty-at-best taste.
Deliciously Self-Centred
This needs to go in the same category as the above, only with the extra tag of jaffa cakes. It amuses the hell out of me how it gets an extra bump of hits on AO3 compared to similarly tagged fics I've written, I think simply because of the summary, which runs 'Buffy is seduced'. I do say it's G...
The 'Long Distance' Series (Breathing at Your Side; A Thousand Ships Have Sailed; Silence in the Gardens; Distractions, Segues and Metafantasy)
A few of my Fag Ends fics ran together this year, which was quite nice. I've had a few fics in the past where Buffy and Spike have referenced a sort of semi-relationship via phone post-Chosen where their getting back together could happen slowly and carefully, so it was nice to explore that more properly. Even if I did tend towards the stage where they were more comfortable with each other, but that was fun. I like the moodiness of these (except maybe the last one, which isn't so!), which I think ties them together as a series quite well.
The 'Cryptozoology' Series (Deep Sea Rescue; Tourist Trap; Dinner and a Movie and Slayage)
I'm a bit sad I didn't just come up with more of these when I was on a roll, because they were fun! I do like my mystical creatures, and there's always opportunities for more dragons. I think this Buffy lives in the exact same house as the Buffy of Long Distance, but this seems to be a fluffier option for how Spike comes to live there as well.
Getting across the River
Which brings me to another fic set in that London house, only when Spike has been living there a while, and when Dawn has been to uni and come back for a London-based Watcher's masters. (I'm thinking it might be called an MT for magister tutorius or something. In my world this is the two-year postgrad degree Watchers have to take wherein they produce their standardly-recognised Watcher's thesis, though afterwards the scholarly watchers do more research at the library in London, while field watchers get put out across the world and mostly do reporting.) Anyway! The fic was quite fun. Do like this set up. Not only because it puts both Dawn and Spike in fairly academic settings and I don't have to research them particularly.
Pawn Promotes
And where would we be without a decent AU? I very much like the idea of this one, which is that old idea where both Dawn and Buffy survive the Gift, but the world doesn't, thus splitting the Scoobies down the Buffy+Dawn+Spike and Giles+everyone else schism. Although not so much by this point. Otherwise, though, I might be keeping the detail under my hat, because I do have ideas for where I'd like to take this. If I could just do my S6 fic, it might be my next project. Or that 70s Gethan thing, which has to go somewhere.
Your Queen You Bear Me
And I almost forgot about this AU, which is why it's out of chronological sequence... Buffy as a vampire, hmm; I have a feeling it would be a massive mistake. Not least for Spike if he turned her, because she would take great pleasure in trying to destroy him! He'd have to get himself a clue to fix things, which I'm not sure is his strong suit.
Wot I vidded.
Playground Twist
This was for
sb_fag_ends, and thus only a minute long. But I still rather like it, even if there are maybe a couple of clips I would swap. The rhythm of the Siouxsie is just excellent, so it's great to have teh Spuff throwing things around in time to it.4'33"
I really wanted to work with this piece of music, so I'm glad I did this, and I go through watches where I think it's perfect - and then I go through watches where it just seems like nothing to me. So there you go. But I do like Spike in the basement, and I did like playing around with text in video. In my head I dream of doing a massively long vid sometime which is actually more like a silent movie, to something long and mulit-movemented, like Justice's Planisphère or Rach 3, but I have no idea how the heck the plotting would work. It's burbling on in the background. Realistically, it might well be something more disjointed but episodic, with something like this as one of the episodes, which would then blend into a new vid. I might need an external hard drive for the ripping first.
Black and White
The verdict seemed to be that this wasn't any more or less experimental than things I've done before, but I'm coming back round to thinking that it is, only because it doesn't make sense to me unless I think of the narrative as taking place inside Illyria's head. To me it's a very inward-looking vid, rather than a vid with lots of action meaning action. I think I might prefer the latter. Though I at least gave the ending of this time to breathe, which definitely would have improved several of my other vids (eg. Stress). That's something.
/
Meme.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I don't know really. It doesn't feel like much, because it's all mostly either short throwaway stories or single long things, which don't feel like much because they're only one thing. But, actually, I wrote two stories longer than 25,000 words, so, yes, I'll take that please.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2011?
I've really reverted to type this year, which is a little disappointing - all Buffyverse, very strongly Spuffy. Quite a lot of Dawn, which is good, but not particularly special. I suppose Fred and William are characters that I tend to leave for their alter-egos, so I think they would have been hard to predict.
What's your favourite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I don't know really... I think I'm falling into a trough of a learning curve again, where all I can see when I read things back are the places where I should have fixed things better. My remix of Stulti's poem and the moody Fag Ends pieces probably make me most happy, because they're all short enough to have got the flaws ironed out, and they are what they are.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Writing most of As Good as a Rest in a week was probably something of a risk... I learned quite a lot, mainly about how I can actually be happy (mostly) with something so lengthy hammered out in such a brief space of time. However, I also learned that letting something like that become your life is massively emotionally draining, especially once you post it and have to spend a week coming to terms with the fact that nothing anyone says about it (no matter how complimentary) is going to be enough to counteract the exhaustion. Creative highs have their comedown as much as any other drug, apparently.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
No particular goals as such, but I would like to do the third fic in the Angel-crossover-S6-longfic series, only because, as Bogs says, Holtz needs to come back (with a vengeance). And then I have a few ideas bubbling away - and I'd like to do more vidding. I'd like to keep going, really. If I could keep going, I'd be happy, because December has mostly been a washout and November was pretty dry. Gah, if I'm really honest, I don't think I'm over the post-Spikeid, post-As Good as a Rest drain, which is ridiculous, because everyone else has moved on. ... Carrying on now.
From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story: I don't know, to be honest. Everything's either too short or I wish I'd sorted some things out. The More Things Stay the Same probably suffers from this least, though the last chapter throws everything a bit too fast.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe: As Good as a Rest, probably - on the one hand, I'm not sure any sort of reception would have made me happy. On the other hand, I honestly don't know how I lost so many people.
Most fun: Probably Charming Strange Peppermint, because it was.
Most disappointing: I think Walking at Midday ended up having a lot less in the idea than I had hoped, and I tend to forget I've written it now.
Most sexy: Distractions, Segues and Metafantasy probably takes that one. Even if it is a bit coy.
Hardest to Write: 4'33" was hardest to vid, so let's go with that.
Most Unintentionally Telling: All the Cryptozoology fics, I imagine - but then maybe that was intentionally telling?
OK, let's go.
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 01:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 17:55 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 17:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 18:05 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 02:02 (UTC)And yes, I do still owe you cruncy As Good As a Rest feedback! It's coming! I'm sorry to hear you lost people between it and the previous fic; I thought it was plenty deserving of readers.
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 17:53 (UTC)Don't worry about it too much!! (Though I would looooove the feedback.)
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 09:19 (UTC)>>2-3,000 word scenes are much more what I prefer to read, but it can leave other areas feeling very scant if you don't have much to say and only want a 500-word scene: must practice with more fic!
This something I definitely learnt from Working, which resulted in having to pad things out with far more events happening than I'd planned just so time passed more logically. The problem is that all this extra stuff needs to feed into the end and that's half of my struggle.
I would certainly like to see the fic with Holtz. And I think you are far too critical of yourself, your writing is wonderful.
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 17:50 (UTC)And yes, that's exactly it. I've never really learnt the art of making up conversations about nothing that still manage to bulk up the themes of the fic - it's coming from the world of short stories. Everything has to mean something!
Holtz should be forthcoming; I just keep getting stuck in a rut of emo, for some reason. I think it was like that with AGAAR, though - clearly I need another week of bashing things out or something. Hopefully if it's long I can publish it in chapters, because then it might feel like it's slightly more real. Or something.
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 22:18 (UTC)long, 2-3,000 word scenes are much more what I prefer to read, but it can leave other areas feeling very scant if you don't have much to say and only want a 500-word scene
Do you think so? (TBH, I'm not sure I've ever written a 3000 word scene myself, but I've written lots of one-line-of-dialogue scenes ;-) But, as a reader, I like the writer to concentrate on the meaty bits, and deal with the other bits as quickly and efficiently as possible.
(no subject)
Date: 02/01/2012 22:28 (UTC)The problem tends to come out when the 500-word scenes would be part of the plot. The way it tends to come with me is that most of the story will have long scenes, and then there'll be a run of about three 500-word scenes, which to me ruins the pacing - when I read it over I feel like I'm going at a comfortable pace, and then skipping over three plot points in a rush. The odd short scene has its place, definitely, but I always seem to face more than one.