Fic Talk > General Discussion
2 Writing 2 Thread
RokofAges75:
Do you ever find yourself wishing you were writing a screenplay instead of a novel? I've never seriously considered writing a screenplay, but sometimes when I want to skip time in a story, I wish there was a way of showing a montage with words. I guess we would call that a summary, but it comes across so much better on the screen, where you can show a bunch of clips of the characters doing things set to music to show what happened between actual scenes. I can picture the perfect movie montage for my story. But in a novel, it's just like, "Okay, before we skip ahead to the next interesting event, let me quickly summarize in a paragraph or two what not-so-interesting things happen in the meantime."
Or I could always use Stephenie Meyer's tactic from New Moon and just write "October... November... December... January..." across four otherwise blank pages to dramatically show the passing of time.
nicksgal:
Stumbled on some fun questions to answer (and whittled it down from 50 to less than twenty!). I took out a few repetitive ones (and ones that didn't make sense), but if there's something you feel like we've already talked about, skip it.
1. Without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic? Why do you think that is and is it the same one you would say is your best one?
2. Have you ever written a fanfic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?
3. Have you ever written a fanfic and decided never to publish it? Why?
4. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today? Could you stand to reread your first fanfic?
5. What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today?
6. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?
7. If you had to pick one scene to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick? Would you be willing to share it with us?
8. Have/would you ever rewrite a fanfic? If yes, would you take the original down?
9. What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised?
10. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?
11. Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying?
12. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?
13. Was there any fanfic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way?
14. If you cross-post your fanfics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?
15. If someone you know who isn’t involved in BSB fanfic fandom asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?
16. Does anyone you know from outside of BSB fanfic know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same BSB fandom too?
17. Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it?
18. What kind of impact has writing fanfic had on your life?
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 09, 2021, 09:19:40 PM ---Do you ever find yourself wishing you were writing a screenplay instead of a novel? I've never seriously considered writing a screenplay, but sometimes when I want to skip time in a story, I wish there was a way of showing a montage with words. I guess we would call that a summary, but it comes across so much better on the screen, where you can show a bunch of clips of the characters doing things set to music to show what happened between actual scenes. I can picture the perfect movie montage for my story. But in a novel, it's just like, "Okay, before we skip ahead to the next interesting event, let me quickly summarize in a paragraph or two what not-so-interesting things happen in the meantime."
Or I could always use Stephenie Meyer's tactic from New Moon and just write "October... November... December... January..." across four otherwise blank pages to dramatically show the passing of time.
--- End quote ---
"Dramatically." lol
Having written in "script format," I think I prefer writing novels, but I feel you on the passage of time thing. I had one of those in a recent chapter where I just didn't want to go into in a preference to get a move on. I honestly just wrote the tiniest snippets of scenes to "peek" into it. Which felt kind of like a montage. I think there's probably a way to do a lot of "cinematography things" in a novel, it just all comes down to scene framing and word choice.
Maybe there's a way you can make it seem "montagey" without going too far into it, but something more than a couple paragraph summary?
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: nicksgal on March 09, 2021, 09:40:59 PM ---"Dramatically." lol
Having written in "script format," I think I prefer writing novels, but I feel you on the passage of time thing. I had one of those in a recent chapter where I just didn't want to go into in a preference to get a move on. I honestly just wrote the tiniest snippets of scenes to "peek" into it. Which felt kind of like a montage. I think there's probably a way to do a lot of "cinematography things" in a novel, it just all comes down to scene framing and word choice.
Maybe there's a way you can make it seem "montagey" without going too far into it, but something more than a couple paragraph summary?
--- End quote ---
I definitely prefer writing prose to script format, but it would be different if I were actually going to make a movie out of the script.
I think that's probably what I will end up doing. My story takes place while Kevin was out of the group, so there's going to be a part where the Boys are on tour, and Kevin is somewhere else doing stuff that I don't necessarily want to write about in great detail, nor do I want to write a bunch of tour stuff... I just want to skip ahead to when Kevin and the Boys can be back together again, which is where the heart of the story will be. I'm alternating first person POV between Kevin and Nick, so I'll probably give them each at least a chapter or two to cover that time period and then move on. Or maybe I'll think of more ideas for specific scenes that are interesting when I actually get to that point in the story. But right now it's just kind of a vague montage in my mind, and the ideas for specific scenes I have all come later.
nicksgal:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on March 09, 2021, 10:08:16 PM ---I definitely prefer writing prose to script format, but it would be different if I were actually going to make a movie out of the script.
I think that's probably what I will end up doing. My story takes place while Kevin was out of the group, so there's going to be a part where the Boys are on tour, and Kevin is somewhere else doing stuff that I don't necessarily want to write about in great detail, nor do I want to write a bunch of tour stuff... I just want to skip ahead to when Kevin and the Boys can be back together again, which is where the heart of the story will be. I'm alternating first person POV between Kevin and Nick, so I'll probably give them each at least a chapter or two to cover that time period and then move on. Or maybe I'll think of more ideas for specific scenes that are interesting when I actually get to that point in the story. But right now it's just kind of a vague montage in my mind, and the ideas for specific scenes I have all come later.
--- End quote ---
I feel you on wanting to skip along to the heart of the story. That was a lot of my reason too, I didn't want to drag out what I felt like wasn't as important and Nick was getting impatient to move on as well, haha.
Maybe make a list of the montagey stuff you'd want to cover (even if you feel like there's not a whole scene you would want to write on any of the items), then see if there's a lyrical way you could describe or present it succinctly.
I'll ponder on this and see if the internet has suggestions. Tumblr might be a good place to check? I perused some things I'd saved because this sounded like something I read once and found a discussion about "slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir," so I can't imagine there's not ideas for "upbeat pop montage" too. Repetition of similar words is likely the musicality piece? Anaphora (repeating the same words at the beginning of several phrases) or epizeuxis (repeating one word for emphasis) might help with that, but I don't know if they would slow the scene down too much.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version