I was going to ask Dee this, but thought it would be a fun topic for everyone to discuss. We were talking about breakout stories, the first story you wrote that was actually decent and wouldn't make you cringe to go back and read it now.
I sort of answered the first two, but not the second two! Although, I do think there's some level of cringe with any old work, especially if there's growth in craft (or life experience for certain elements) between the beginning and the end or then and now.
What was your breakout story?Probably Gobosei or PBox, but we can all call it PBox since it was complete for several years with minimal cringe and Gobosei is not complete while still possessing some minimal cringe. None of this cringe stops the readability for me though.
When did you write it, and/or how old were you when you wrote it?Gobosei: 2005-2006, 2013, 2015 (17/18, 25, 27)
PBox: 2005-2008 with an update from September 2020-January 2021 (17-20, 32-barely 33)
How did that story change you as a writer?/Why do you think the quality of your writing improved with that story?I realized that I was answering both of these questions as the same time, so I'm just going to put them together.
Gobosei was my second foray in characters driving the plot, so I worked very hard developing character arcs and focusing on how the characters would react to the plot and drive it forward. The strength of character and character planning in addition to general enjoyment of the plot is probably why I feel like the pull to go back and finish it at some point has merit. Prior to this, I tended to focus on plot ideas and only vaguely on character development, even though in my own reading I chose books for character development. As I learned about character development (and I read many books about it since coming up with that 2003 OF), I started basing characters on people I knew, pretty much to a T, but they weren't doing anything good for the plot or being shaped by the plot, they just kind of... were? Which is why there's other stories I wrote as a high schooler that make me cringe, even ones I would have started around the same time. It got fixed earlier in that 2003 OF because I had a friend reading along that knew I based a character off of them, wholly supported it, and had zero qualms telling me "this sucks" when it did suck. I took this perspective to heart and started looking at my fanfics with the same lens. (The delay in finishing that one was my art ability being worse than my writing ability. That and episodic writing is hard. It also got pushed to the side for our favorite pushy novel.)
All of that makes me see why self-insert stories would have been popular outside of "My life would be awesome if I dated a Backstreet Boy." It's easier to write a character when you know how they would react to things! But this has the same problem as "my friends are characters" if there's no character development over the course of the story. This is all very vague for Gobosei since there's not much there for anyone else to say "oh yes, all these things are there in it," but they're there in it with the whole picture in my head.
But along came pushy PBox that leapt to life, especially after I realized that Nick wasn't a character who was going to go along with the plot, even when the plot happened. More than just being a character, he was protagonist who was going to make the plot happen, grow, and change as he continued on his journey, grew, and changed. And more than being just a reactor (which he's great at), he's a real doer. He's probably the reason it leapt to life more than anything else, so all that hard work on character development really paid off. And over the years, he's ultimately continued to breathe life into it as an entity, something akin to "You're writing it, but this is
my story. I drive this bus." (It's cool, Nick, keep driving the bus. I trust you.)
Even with strong characters, I came to the realization that PBox was dark. Even with "our demons are different" at play (which is a type of dark in and of itself if your main characters are this "typically always malevolently chaotic evil" type thing; not that PBox demons are that, or at least not our Boys, they're downright heroic saving innocent bystanders and taking cats out of trees in their free time), it was incredibly dark in a way that Gobosei was not and that I had shied away from in the past. But I wanted to write it and Nick wanted control of that bus... immensely. But how to write a very dark thing? Well? The writing to needed to mature; the fun-fest jokey and at times ridiculous way of writing a Gobosei wouldn't fly for a PBox, not with its inherent setting of "the world is crummy." I learned to embrace the dark (Team Dark!) and how to draw lines for too dark, which I kept crossing as time went on. I guess I learned that you have to write dark things a certain way and saved my fun-fest jokey writing for stories that would support it.
Gobosei is also largely based in our world as is, so it wasn't a whole new adventure world building. At minimum, Gobosei required a "how does this magic system work?" PBox required that and a whole slew of things from geography to climate to political systems to cultural norms and so on. Creating these things meant I had to learn how to research (in a different way than for writing a paper or doing a project in school) and research hard! Even things that wouldn't seem like they needed research, like "how does this magic system work," but that has been a constant fun romp in researching and has gotten me down so many rabbit holes I never knew I would end up in just based on the nature of the answer. I wish I'd kept track of my hours of research because it would be something else, as I'm sure you all know in your own adventures in researching.
And it wasn't only world building or plot elements. I wanted to have fight scenes which I'd never written before, so I watched hours of kung fu movies and sword fighting movies. I've watched fencing competitions. I know a ridiculous amount of vocabulary for parts of weapons that is not useful in any other aspect of my life; at least kung fu movies are just fun. When that Bruce Lee 30 for 30 aired last year, I actually jotted down some notes (though that isn't directly applicable to PBox, it fits this overall point). If an exhibit came to one of our museums that felt relevant, I went (outside of my love for museums). I'd include my mythology related research in this too, but that's just fun and a regular hobby that happens to tie into my love of writing. I have run the gambit of things I've researched for PBox from "plants that typically grow in x climate" to "how the body reacts to toxins and poisons" to "furniture of the Muromachi era" to "how do big things fly." And those are just four examples, in addition to specific ones I listed.
In the name of character development, I also had to learn how to portray real things in believable, nuanced, and non-hand waving ways. Nick is, essentially, an amnesiac with PTSD, so what does that actually look like in real life and not in fiction land? This includes research, but then how to turn research into believable narrative? It's all super subtle and it's only improved with time, since writing is an ongoing process. I don't know if anyone noticed this, for instance, but Nick (especially in the beginning of PBox) usually stands with his back to walls so he can see everything happening in the room and react as needed; he does it less as time goes on because he has other people to "watch his back."
While Gobosei helped me start improving on my meaningful dialogue/character interactions, PBox helped me improve on description because I did all this research and creating that couldn't just be explained with a "they were at a mall" type thing because none of it actually exists in a "this is in the real world" way. And the only way to make it exist outside of my head for anyone reading it is to write it down in a way that makes it exist. I'll admit, I am still fairly lazy with my landscapes more than my buildings, probably because the buildings don't exist outside of PBox's world, but a tree or a mountain does. I guess if anyone wants better descriptions of trees or mountains, I'll do better. I also nerd out about clothing more than I probably should, and possibly more than is necessary. I realize I've never taken much time to describe what a character looks like (especially in later chapters when the "villains of the chapter" are basically faceless even though I know exactly which one is which, though y'all don't then); I think this is a symptom of it being fanfic, I assume y'all know what everyone looks like if they're not an original character (obviously the Boys, but even NSYNC). But, I will always talk to you about Nick's eyes and smile, even more than the other Boys.
I think that's about it? Or at least, those are the major things I associate with PBox and my craft as a writer. And now, this has been your weekly diatribe on PBox and another novel about my novel. At some point, I can publish a book called "And here is everything you wanted to know about the background of PBox and my growth as a writer."
I have now done nothing productive today except post really long winded things on this forum. Supreme time waster indeed!
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Topic: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3) (Read 446944 times)