23/31 Thought-balls

[darkemeralds]

One day a couple of months ago a coworker of mine decided that she'd like to write a middle-grade novel (that is, a novel of interest to a "tween" readership--the coveted Harry Potter audience.) Ten vacation days later she had a first draft, and invited me to look it over.

I'm all "What? Ten days? What?" I'm lucky to write a chapter in ten days. I'm doing well to write anything at all in three years. Once I got over my speed-envy, I asked her about her moment of inspiration. She said she'd been reading a middle-grade novel to her kid and thought, "I should really write one of these." Then she read a bunch of other novels in the category, dissected them for their components (number and type of characters, types of conflict, number of scenes, acts or beats, etc.). Then she started constructing her own.

I just...gah! Does not compute. I work so differently. She has a box of Legos that she wants to put together. I start with a whole thought-ball, a story-sphere that have to find an opening in. I'm dependent on the damn thing falling on my head from the sky and have never figured out how to make more of them hit me.

How do you get your ideas? And how do you turn them into actual writing?

Comments

[branchandroot]

I've written lego-stories before, but I never liked them as well as the ones that wind themselves out of another story. For me it's like altering the angle of light on something and seeing how the shadow changes and writing the new one. It's why I like writing fic most. Of course, once I do notice the new shadow, I often have to run to keep up as it gathers weight from all the story-shapes I've internalized over the years.

[darkemeralds]

What a beautiful image! And a useful metaphor.

How do you keep writing when the weight of a lifetime of story-shapes presses down? Do you have a selection process, a filter that helps you choose some over others?

[branchandroot]

I never quite stop telling myself stories, so it never really gets overwhelming? Though sometimes very disconcerting when I'm dreaming just before waking, because my storytelling brain is /extremely insistent/ that there are ways even dream-stories are supposed to go, and we're going there even if I /don't/ like horror as a genre. And TV Tropes is funny because it's right; there are shapes that any given culture expects to find stories in, so most of the time the way forward (or a selection of them) is jumping up and down waving flags. And there's a safety valve; if I can't run to keep up right then, my brain kind of hits 'pause' on that particular story. Of course, then sometimes I lose it completely which is very frustrating!

[darkemeralds]

I'd never spent any time on TV Tropes and now I see an endless rabbit-hole of story ideas opening under my feet.

It doesn't take me long to start pondering the genetic heritability of story tropes. Like, do we have them for some reason of survival? Deep, man. I could get lost in here!