Aww, thanks! This forum is great for commiserating. I'm either going to hit a wall soon, or I'm going to roll right through it. I can't tell yet. I'm already almost through the first phase of the story, which I had a pretty clear vision for. I also have a lot planned for the third phase of the story, which I feel is really the heart of the whole story idea. It's the second phase I'm unsure about. That's the part I wish I could film as a brief montage set to some upbeat 80s music and move on from. It's really just the bridge between the first and third phase of the story, but I can't completely rush through it. I just don't have a lot of specific scenes planned out yet, so I need to get on that. I did take your suggestion and start a list, but it's a pretty short list so far LOL. I'm hoping when I get to the point of actually needing scenes, I'll come up with something. This is me plantsing LOL.
I hope you roll with it.
lmao, I'm sorry, I had to, lol! On a more serious note, I always feel frustrated when the beginning seems clear and the end seems clear and the middle is just kind of wibbly wobbly. But yay for Team Plantsing! Maybe that's the part where you test out writing things out of order and see what happens.
I almost asked you about labeling all these scenes, but I remembered you talking a while back about naming your files in Google Drive. The way you explained it here makes more sense and seems like it would help you remember what you wrote and find the right scene when you need it.
You're right, I've fully admitted to being disorganized and mislabeling things for fun, lol. I didn't do it at first when it was whole chunks of nearly upcoming chapters (when they were just called "chapter something or other"), but once it started being a big document, and especially now that it has two books worth of scenes here and there written, I made a point to be a little better about it. With the added bonus that I can turn them into headings and not have to scroll through the whole document to get to a certain one. That little "outline" navigation bar on the side of google docs is the best.
I think you're wise to save the big changes for the OF version instead of constantly editing the fanfic. Especially since the fanfic is already online. And yeah, you probably would need to focus more on character development in the OF version, since you're no longer writing about "Nick."
That seems like it would be one of the biggest differences between writing fanfic and original fic. I know in the stories where I have created original characters that play an important role, I've put a lot more time into developing them than I did the Boys, because the readers already know the Boys. It's more about orienting them to when in Backstreet time the story takes place and showing how the Boys change as a result of whatever happens in the plot.
Big changes indeed! I'm about five chapters in, I opted to skip tackling the first chapter of the fanfic for the moment to start with Nick, so we'll call it chapter 2-5 of the fanfic, and I've already written about 9,000 new words, including an entirely new chapter. It's an undertaking! He's still PBox Nick to me, but I've definitely had to fill out a few things that would be settled by "It's Nick!" in the fanfic. I've had a few "oops" moments that have been pointed out to me so far, but not in a "oops, this was blatantly a BSB fanfic way," thank goodness, lol. I'm almost to the point of needing to give Howie a new name and I'm dreading it. Then I'm dreading having to scour the story for accidental "Brain" on top of "Brian," lol. Sorry everybody else, you were the casualty for Nick to keep on keepin' on mostly as is.
The blessing and the curse of the Boys as characters. "This is Nick in 1999," great! Versus "This is Gypsydoodle in 1999," who? lol But the "why you should care about me right away even when I x" definitely needed a little love. Because "why you should care about Nick in a BSB fanfic, well he's Nick" is more implied.
Where are we in Backstreet Time? lol If it happened in the past, is it still subject to Backstreet Time? Are we all in a fanfic where the author has been writing about the Boys making a Christmas album, but they've had writer's block since 1999? lol
I was the same way with having a clear order of favorites in my teenybopper days, although it changed from time to time. Brian was always my favorite, and AJ was #2 for a long time. Nick was my least favorite very early on, which I think was based on a combination of wanting to go against the grain of him being everyone else's favorite and finding him annoying in their Millennium era appearances. But then Nick started to grow on me (helped by fanfic, no doubt), which left Howie and Kevin alternating between the #4 and #5 spot. I know Nick had risen to my second favorite by 2001 because my custom license plate on my first car began with BNAHK, and I put their initials in order of favorites LOL. Now I would rank them in two tiers: Brian and Nick on the top tier, Kevin, Howie, and AJ on the bottom tier. I don't have a least favorite anymore; I love them all.
I love that your license plate was BNAHK! Aw. Thank goodness AJ provides a vowel so their initials can actually sound like a word. You know what, go against the grain, save more Nick for the rest of us to fight over, lol. I'm kidding. I don't think I wanted to rank Howie and Kevin because I didn't want one of them to feel bad for being the least favorite. That's probably why I said they were tied, lol.
I'm with Nick on that. Sure, IYWITBGG is bad, but it's far from their worst song. It's a guilty pleasure song - catchy and fun, even if it the lyrics are cringey. Boys Will Be Boys is just as bad, and I love both songs. I would take songs like that any day over She's a Dream. Tell Me That I'm Dreaming is adorable.
I wonder if Kevin realized how cheesy it was when he got roped into doing that deep voice back then, or if it actually seemed cool and sexy at the time because Boys II Men had done it. I agree; I'm sure he's glad that trend is over LOL.
And I mean, it was all marketing. "The tiny one is less sexually threatening than the others. Make him sing an entire song about sex by himself." It's a guilty pleasure for sure. Boys Will Be Boys is just as bad, but I think they think that they can get away with not talking about it since it wasn't technically released worldwide and it wasn't mostly Nick singing, lol. Stay classy, Shorty, lol.
I wanted the Boys to carry my books home and help me with my homework so badly, lol. They just sounded so sweet and wholesome.
I would be fine adding that to the list of "questions I would not at all be embarrassed to ask them." I could see Kevin going either way, but with the emphasis that he would rather sing than speak in a song.