I haven't updated this in a while, and there's a reason for that.
I've not been writing.
Shocking, I know. I'm usually one of the people at the back of a social gathering with a notebook scribbling down the next chapter or scene of a story in the making and trying to blend into the wallpaper (trust me, this is sad but true), but I'd lost the motivation to write anything. I think there comes a time (and often many times) in any creative person's life where they become a little wobbly in their ability and feel like they're not worth anything. I had this issue for a matter of months, and it was not nice. I read somewhere that some people have a 'shoulder devil' that tells them they're not good enough and neither is their writing/artwork/music, and that's exactly what I had.
'You're never going to get published, you know.'
'That's meant to be a sentence?'
'Well no one's going to like that character, even if you adore him.'
You know the drill. However, thankfully, one not very special day, I opened up Stallion Song's file and started reading through it. And although I had the same 'I hate this story' mentality, I actually started doing something about it. I began to edit, and I'm happy to say I think I'm getting back into the hang of things! I was writing during my slump, but most of it was either drabble or short stories about my other characters I tend to draw more than write about (and some who I only write about). I might end up posting them on my DeviantART account for people to have a look at if I feel brave.
Anyway, seeing as Stallion Song seems to be back on the horizon, I'm going to start working on both that and A Horse Called/Named Ox at the same time. Although you'd expect that it makes things harder, I find it a better system of working; I use Ox as my 'break' from Stallion Song as it's a much more relaxed kind of plot with less depth to it. And I also work on some short stories and excerpts from stories I want to write in the future but don't have totally 'down' yet.
Feature: How I write
After my poll on DeviantART eons ago, people seemed to want to read about how I start writing, and how I write in general. I don't know if any of this is going to be relevant to anyone but myself, and certainly don't feel like you have to work in this way; this is just how I do it. :)
1. The first thing that gets me kickstarted is some kind of inspiration. This comes usually from films I've watched, books I've read or music I've listened to. It's all outside influence, and I think that if a writer ever says an idea just walked into their head without any background to account for it they're either lying or unaware of the influence.
Personal example: I think it's obvious that some of my inspiration for Stallion Song stemmed from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and particularly one exchange in At World's End between Barbossa and Jack, where Barbossa comments that the world, '...used to be a bigger place', and Jack responds with, 'The world is still the same. There's just... less in it.' That got me thinking about the whole 'last of the kind' sort of idea for Song, and how the world is shrinking around them thanks to progress.
2. I usually start a story with a single scene or character that comes into my head. I'm a very character-orientated person, which sometimes means my plot suffers for it. Anyway. I start off with a character that interests me, and I start developing it over time. I saved a massive character profile (a whole 7 pages worth) from a surprising source on DeviantART. I sometimes fill that out to help me, or I sometimes get a character that strolls into my head fully formed. That is a very rare occurrence though; most of the time I start with a character who waltzes in and declares their name, and then I get their features revealed to me one day at a time.
Personal example: Mercutio, the 'anti-hero' protagonist of Stallion Song, has been around in my sketchbooks since 2008-9 and he's only JUST been given a proper developing plotline. Obviously, this isn't the case for everyone, but Mercutio is a bit of a special case. Anyway, so one of the ways I start is with a character, or a scene, and I think 'What do I want to do with this character?' Usually only the most interesting of the characters that appear in my head are given a story- the ones that don't seem to give much are demoted to secondary characters.
3. Another thing I do is start with a question that wants answering. For example, it could be something like 'how would ____ overcome his anxieties?' or 'Who's really the bad guy in this scenario? Maybe it's the one you least expect?' I have a tendency of being in love with the underdogs and dark horses, so I do tend to switch the roles a little bit.
Personal example: For Ox, I started with revisiting some of my old horse books from when I was younger, and found one that was a sort of 'riding boarding school' type set up, set in Canada (or America, I forget which one...there are probably both in existence) and thought 'I wonder what would go on in English riding acadamies?' and then, 'how come there seem to be barely any males in the sport anymore? It used to be so male dominated!' I think a good inspiration was the 2012 London Olympics too- watching all those equestrian athletes got me thinking about writing something about what they were like before they reached the big time. And then the idea of an ugly horse that no one loved appeared, and the story took off.
I know a lot of people start from the beginning, and in all honesty I tend to do the same. I've heard some writers construct their stories in a sort of patchwork, starting off by writing bits of scenes and drabbles and then piecing them together slowly, but I found that if I did that (as I did with my first story, Plastic Stars) there's a lot of 'fill in' that needs to be added, and it tends to read as forced or bland. Particularly with Stars, I found that I was just skipping half the text to get to the scenes I'd written beforehand, as they were especially juicy or action packed, and you need to keep your reader's attention throughout, even if there's not an awful lot going on.
I tend to write the first chapter to test the waters and see if I like the feel of the story, and if after the end of one chapter I feel willing to go ahead and write a few more, I keep it. If not, the chapter gets stuck in a drabble folder. I then tend to plot out where I'm going for at least five chapters before I even think about writing anything else, and then go from there.
I hope this was at least informative into my strange little writer's mind, and maybe it'll help you in your writing endeavours! The next entry is going to be some sort of character interview, so I'll probably set up a poll on my DeviantART page (since most of you come from there anyway) to decide who I'll do one on. Any suggestions for questions are also welcomed!
Kes xX
No comments:
Post a Comment