Haven't posted in a while. I've been writing - I've just been recording my progress offline, so I haven't seen much reason to post.
I think instead of the daily this-is-how-much-I-did post (I've more or less been tracking by week anyway) I'm just going to post a teaser every Friday. When I actually have words, that is.
Anyway, I had two things to note that entertained me but probably aren't interesting enough to entertain anyone else.
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First, I've taken to mindsplatting on Notepad in an attempt to straighten out my nonexistent plot. It's sort of like talking to myself on electric paper. Here are some gems:
- "bahahahaha maybe Order is getting tired of how Orderly things are in the real world because Chaos is off babysitting. THIS IDEA MAKES ME TOO HAPPY."
- "SFDKLGHSDOF;IHEWO;FN THIS IS SUCH A NONSENSICAL CONCEPT
screw it. i'm just going to write and let these two do whatever the eff they want.
BUT THEN I HAVE NO PLOT SDOLFHSOHFSKBFSKDJFBS."
- "BAHAHA I JUST CONTRADICTED MYSELF"
- "he's doing it because I DECLARE A BOUNDARY SUCH AS THIS ONE TO BE TOO BLACK-AND-WHITE FOR MY UNIVERSE."
- "WHAT IF WE ARE ALL DISTRACTED BITS AND PIECES OF ONE GIANT MIND WAAAAAAAAHHHHH"
I like to pretend I'm sane and rational when I talk to other people, but really I get a kick out of yelling at myself incoherently.
In all seriousness, though, this method is super helpful in that it helps my freewriting technique - so I can spit out words without thinking too hard/getting distracted from the content by the words I use (writer/editor's rule-of-thumb: big concept issues take precedence over word-level/prose issues in early drafts). This is something I've been struggling with for the last couple of months. I've been trying so hard to make my writing coherent to people NOT inside my head (always a worthwhile goal, of course) that I kept getting blocked and wasn't able to just WRITE anymore. Which is a huge issue when I'm only on the first draft.
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The second thing is that I was wandering around Tv Tropes and made some entertaining discoveries. In general, I'm not a fan of black-and-white dualities: Good vs. Evil, Light vs. Dark, Order vs. Chaos, etc. I think it's silly for something to be utterly In The Right and something else to be utterly In The Wrong, partly because it removes the opportunity for narrative tension (what if the good guy does something Wrong?), partly because it ignores characterization, partly because it simply isn't true to life. My story in particular is a subversion of the Order Versus Chaos trope. (Not going into detail, partly because that's what the story's for, partly because I haven't hashed out the details yet. I'm not yet 100% sure whether it's a subverson, inversion, or aversion.)
That said, I love love love complimentary/foil characters. My main duo is pretty much Red Oni, Blue Oni played straight. I started laughing at myself when I realized this, because my notes-to-self contain a lot of yelling about how NO DUALITY SHOULD GO UNCHALLENGED. I don't really know why I love character dualities so much when World Order dualities drive me nuts, but I'm hoping it doesn't result in a weakness in characterization once the story's actually written.
Speaking of. I should probably get back to that. The writing thing. /random babble
