Closing the Gap in Writing
Jan. 28th, 2019 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sugarplumsenpaiWhy is gap filling such a pain? I sometimes wonder about this. As much as I love writing and really diving into my own story until I'm enveloped by it, gap filling seems to be my nemesis. This isn't meant as a grumbly complaint but as a mere observation tied to the neutrally curious question: why?
Maybe it's because my scenes I tend to write early in a story for a further point ahead always are such super important key passages. They usually are the peak or the moment when the characters realise something crucial that will change the story afterwards immensely, and with that the characters as well. It was like this with Sparrow and the scene Eren is haunted by Petra's sister and his fear of facing that moment in his life in which he closed himself off out of pain, guilt, and regret. It was like this in Nuthatch when Levi forced Hanji into the shower to clean her up and finally accepts for himself how much missing Eren truly affects him so he can move on from there on instead of letting it eat him up further. It was like this in Unloveable with their fight, and it also was like this in Good Times for a Change with Levi finally reaching out to hold Eren's hand.
That being said, I have a passage waiting in my docs that has been waiting there since March 2018. For a story this long it's a short period of time, I am aware of this, but it gnaws at me. And it rattles on my (im)patience. That passage that I need to approach. The horizon ahead. The Other Side where everything is brighter and prettier and the grass is greener, no matter whether that's an illusion and a lie I tell myself, or not. That passage, at this point, is about 25,000 words long. It has temper, rage, betrayal, acceptance, fury, gloom, butterflies, and glowing sparkles, characters being active and mad and raw and turning on their friends and all this emotional stuff I love-love-love.
Initially, that passage was marked as chapters 4-6. Now I finished chapter 26 and I can already smell the sweet promise in the air that it will be soon. Soon. So soon.
Soon doesn't mean yet though. There are still a few days I need to bridge until I can get to all the emotions hitting the fan, and beautiful as it is on some days when I had a good and fulfilling writing session and the scenes are beautiful and worth the enduring, it's an annoying bitch on others when I try sitting down to find that next scene. Writing up to a plot peak 26 chapters in means 220,000 words I love that now have to come together to make sense. It means a town full of citizens, soldiers, heroes, and antagonists to come together without leaving any loose end out. It is something I love once I'm in it since it means revisiting moments I enjoyed writing. Yet finding that next moment that will gather "that one loose thread too" makes my head hurt and a certain verve shrivel into paralyzing hesitance since "I should mention Norman again and best have a scene with him too…he hasn't been in this story for too long."
Maybe this odd feeling of petrification comes from normally writing on instinct. Which I can't do any differently, but in this stage some basic planning is necessary so the story won't spin out of control. At the same time I like that solid goal I can work my way up to which I usually don't have that clearly. Maybe this is even why these scenes come to me like this. They are what the story is about in some sense or the other, but for them to make sense, all the other stuff before has to be written first. The more chapters this story gains, the more solid the scenes I wrote in March last year suddenly become. It now makes even more sense for that one character to actually flip his shit and whereas reading that scene 10 months ago gave me a tense prickling on my nape, now it feels like an emotional earthquake. I love when scenes grow as I write, plot-wise, meta-wise, and emotionally. I am amazed by how organic writing can be and what it teaches me as I go. And yet I have to bridge one or maybe only two more days and add an action scene that is important but feels so insignificant to me since I already know it will be a small pop in comparison to the big bang about to happen. It carries a "so what?!" when I know it's important to conclude that one arc so the other can erupt.
Maybe I should trick myself by cutting the 25,000 anticipated words out and paste them into another document for now. But that makes the story feel incomplete, like an anchor suddenly missing or like someone erasing the horizon, leaving me aimless. Maybe I should try writing that new scene in a blank file to make it feel more important. It worked with chapters 22-26.
In the end, the only thing that will get this missing passage written is sitting on my arse and writing it, free from anticipating what's happening next since it's only distracting. Free from fright since it's choking. Free from self-imposed plot threads that need to be woven together since it usually happens naturally anyway. And for everything else, there's editing. As it always is.
Maybe it's because my scenes I tend to write early in a story for a further point ahead always are such super important key passages. They usually are the peak or the moment when the characters realise something crucial that will change the story afterwards immensely, and with that the characters as well. It was like this with Sparrow and the scene Eren is haunted by Petra's sister and his fear of facing that moment in his life in which he closed himself off out of pain, guilt, and regret. It was like this in Nuthatch when Levi forced Hanji into the shower to clean her up and finally accepts for himself how much missing Eren truly affects him so he can move on from there on instead of letting it eat him up further. It was like this in Unloveable with their fight, and it also was like this in Good Times for a Change with Levi finally reaching out to hold Eren's hand.
That being said, I have a passage waiting in my docs that has been waiting there since March 2018. For a story this long it's a short period of time, I am aware of this, but it gnaws at me. And it rattles on my (im)patience. That passage that I need to approach. The horizon ahead. The Other Side where everything is brighter and prettier and the grass is greener, no matter whether that's an illusion and a lie I tell myself, or not. That passage, at this point, is about 25,000 words long. It has temper, rage, betrayal, acceptance, fury, gloom, butterflies, and glowing sparkles, characters being active and mad and raw and turning on their friends and all this emotional stuff I love-love-love.
Initially, that passage was marked as chapters 4-6. Now I finished chapter 26 and I can already smell the sweet promise in the air that it will be soon. Soon. So soon.
Soon doesn't mean yet though. There are still a few days I need to bridge until I can get to all the emotions hitting the fan, and beautiful as it is on some days when I had a good and fulfilling writing session and the scenes are beautiful and worth the enduring, it's an annoying bitch on others when I try sitting down to find that next scene. Writing up to a plot peak 26 chapters in means 220,000 words I love that now have to come together to make sense. It means a town full of citizens, soldiers, heroes, and antagonists to come together without leaving any loose end out. It is something I love once I'm in it since it means revisiting moments I enjoyed writing. Yet finding that next moment that will gather "that one loose thread too" makes my head hurt and a certain verve shrivel into paralyzing hesitance since "I should mention Norman again and best have a scene with him too…he hasn't been in this story for too long."
Maybe this odd feeling of petrification comes from normally writing on instinct. Which I can't do any differently, but in this stage some basic planning is necessary so the story won't spin out of control. At the same time I like that solid goal I can work my way up to which I usually don't have that clearly. Maybe this is even why these scenes come to me like this. They are what the story is about in some sense or the other, but for them to make sense, all the other stuff before has to be written first. The more chapters this story gains, the more solid the scenes I wrote in March last year suddenly become. It now makes even more sense for that one character to actually flip his shit and whereas reading that scene 10 months ago gave me a tense prickling on my nape, now it feels like an emotional earthquake. I love when scenes grow as I write, plot-wise, meta-wise, and emotionally. I am amazed by how organic writing can be and what it teaches me as I go. And yet I have to bridge one or maybe only two more days and add an action scene that is important but feels so insignificant to me since I already know it will be a small pop in comparison to the big bang about to happen. It carries a "so what?!" when I know it's important to conclude that one arc so the other can erupt.
Maybe I should trick myself by cutting the 25,000 anticipated words out and paste them into another document for now. But that makes the story feel incomplete, like an anchor suddenly missing or like someone erasing the horizon, leaving me aimless. Maybe I should try writing that new scene in a blank file to make it feel more important. It worked with chapters 22-26.
In the end, the only thing that will get this missing passage written is sitting on my arse and writing it, free from anticipating what's happening next since it's only distracting. Free from fright since it's choking. Free from self-imposed plot threads that need to be woven together since it usually happens naturally anyway. And for everything else, there's editing. As it always is.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 06:11 pm (UTC)All your examples are almost like plot points of character development, and as a person who doesn't make hard outlines, I hazard to say I'm not surprised they cause you issues. Because in a way, they sort of do act like a peice of an outline.
"And it rattles on my (im)patience. That passage that I need to approach. The horizon ahead. The Other Side where everything is brighter and prettier and the grass is greener, no matter whether that's an illusion and a lie I tell myself, or not."
I think the impatience is part of it. At least here, if I analyze myself. You've seen my writing, you've seen it when it's been full of gaps, maybe a year or so ago. I think they almost used to motivate me and helped me keep going, but that has turned over the last twelve months. I get antsy to reach them now, but there is a daunting feel to it that I don't quite like nowadays as well. I think that feeling it will be greener and brighter and prettier feeds it too. It builds it up in our heads, and sometimes that doesn't work well, or feel good.
"Yet finding that next moment that will gather "that one loose thread too" makes my head hurt and a certain verve shrivel into paralyzing hesitance since "I should mention Norman again and best have a scene with him too…he hasn't been in this story for too long.""
I know this feeling. I don't know if this angle helps, but I've been thinking about this lately writing WCQ (which as you know, had lots of little bits written ahead), and I'm glad almost all of them are threaded in or kicked out now. The reason is that none of them lined up how I expected. As I wrote the path from one point to that written stuff on the horizon after the gap I never ended up where I expected and then what was at the end of the gap didn't fit anymore. It's because the characters lead me and I can't often predict successfully which path they take.
It's like standing in a spot and there are ten different roads that can take you to the destination. If you let the character lead you and take your hand and pull you along, that path might not connect up perfectly with what's on the other side. Then it's revising what was written so long before, or sometimes *shudders* throwing it all into the old snippets file.
There's always the choice too, to take the character's hand and tug them down a road that will make it all fall into place, but then you have to push and prod and even mold them into what you want. I hate doing that, I can't do it well anyway (and it throws me out and disconnects me). I'm not sure how writers who work this way do it to begin with.
So, going back to the first example, with the character pulling along...I personally scowl while smiling about it. It often means I end up with a section that doesn't quite make sense anymore and it's a bunch of revising and adjusting and what they told me months ago would happen not being the case anymore. And for me, that is frightening. It means throwing away beautiful words and imagery that I've been hugging for so long. It's why making gaps is something I even fear now. And then, of course, I scowl at "wasted time" and "wasted words."
Because of this, I've recently been trying to look at stuff written ahead more like meta than hard words or scenes that will necessarily make it into the story. It's like my couch scene and my before bath scene being completely off and I had to just take the few relevant bits and pieces I could use and build around them and toss everything else out. *cries* Because ofc, these two idiots chose to take a different road than I thought they would. But in the end, I truly like it even better this way.
It's like, sure Levi has a shiny new scene that he's sure happens in the future on this day, but maybe after he gets to it, he realizes he didn't tell it to me quite right.
I think having to find the threads to get there is seriously the part that makes it the most difficult too. Whether it's conscious or subconscious it's there. So much changes in tens of thousands of words. Even in a few hundred sometimes and I think as a writer who is lead by the characters like you are, it's hard to know if they even get to a certain point or how a scene will truly be when it's so far away. When we write ahead, it's almost like skipping all the days between and all the development. We miss things influencing them that we didn't even know would happen then. This may work for people who "control" their characters and plan, but I don't think it necessarily works for "pantsers" or for empathetic writers. And when you're an empathetic pantser, I think it's probably the hardest to deal with.
I don't know if this is true in your case, I can't say what is in your mind, but for me, it's this feeling of having to almost force them to that point or find a road that works to get to it if I want it to be mainly the same. If I'm hugging it and have been looking forward to that point for so long it makes it even harder.
And it's true, the only thing that will get you there is filling the gap. I wouldn't let it loom though. Write what they tell you and see where they take you. Maybe it even missies exactly where you think they're going or how they go, but as you said, that can be taken care of in revisions. And sometimes we get lucky and they take us somewhere even better than to that big piece already written that we've been looking to for forever. <3
no subject
Date: 2019-01-29 02:39 pm (UTC)Yes, like this, really. From a rational point I know this is a bit silly, really, but then I sit down to write and all logic goes to shit a little bit. :) It's what I love about writing, although in his case it doesn't help too much to proceed.
I like your approach of seeing it as meta. It definitely is, for various reasons. Should I actually manage to include what I wrote all these months ago 1:1, I would honestly hate it. My writing has developed so much during the past year. I can see it as I read and feel it too, and looking at the polished chapter 1 alone makes me frown here and there. These sections ahead are rough, partly wrong because, well, stuff has happened, and partly just not good since it was written in a very "oh, let's try how this feels like" moment.
Which is all okay. I had to revise that scene Eren finds out about Anna in Sparrow too. Nuthatch was a bit different since the shower scene is relatively "secluded" and independent from the rest around, but it's how it usually happens. I write something very early on and then have to approach it, revise it, and then root it sometimes even by adding small details here and there to connect everything a bit more thoroughly. It's the only way I know how to write, and as frustrating as it is in moments like this, writing these scenes at a very early stage of a story always is the moment when I know "this truly is a story, I've found it, and it isn't just some random scene fantasy that might be part of something or not." It's the moment when I suddenly know "this is it!" It is something beautiful and amazing. Until I have to wrap it up ;)
Sparrow oddly was easy, true pantser as I am or not. I had my calendar overview for every 25 days in the story, decided that passage at Levi's would happen on a Friday and Saturday, and then made a suuuper rough emotional outline for the story: Eren worries. More Introduction. Eren tells us what happened. Armin returns. Eren learns something, etc. Up to this day, I do not know how I fucking wrote that story. It must have been magic or what do I know.
I won't even say I'm despairing over it. It still is frustrating me. I need new input and ideas to write since I feel like treading on the same spot. Which I know I'm not but it's the odd writing experience of feeling no advance over months since you've been working on a passage that story-wise happens within only a few hours. ;) And I look at the past chapters and think, "wow, I wrote this?" so I am honestly proud and motivated to write on. But I know some sort of end is coming, which it would happen either with this Part 1 & Part 2 separation or without it since some big plot arcs have to be concluded—which is also always such a hard thing for me to do since it means goodbye. Even if it is a small one. I thought with Part 2 waiting it wouldn't be this hard, but turns out that was a bit delusional. As much as I want to continue I love what I created and would love to roll around in it forever. Odd how contradictory art is sometimes.
I definitely will not force the characters into the mini-end I planned for them last spring. It would bend them in a horrible way, plus the story wouldn't make sense with all the details I tried out back then. So there will be some big revising to do anyway once I get there. But the frame still is what I strive for since I know it to be true for this tale. And I'm looking forward to "throwing the garbage out" of that section. It will be wonderful when it clicks together. I will not let it loom either. But remember when I yelled "fucking yes!" when I finally was able to write Friday evening? It feels a bit right before that, only stronger since of course, it's a bigger "turning" point.
I think my biggest hurdle at this moment is that the characters are a bit too happy again. Which will not very much change until the big bang starts and which is okay too since they had enough worries. So I was thinking this morning it might be good to switch heads to either an OC or the manga cast. The other option would be to let them have a little bit of new trouble, but thinking of what comes and what happened during the past days, this isn't the best option to choose. It's like inviting chaos in the middle of the calm before the storm. But switching to someone else to talk a bit about what happened while the story dealt with rather private things for a while would do the trick. I have a Hanji chapter coming up with the approaching end, but maybe this would be a good moment to insert her PoV again before. It's her story too after all. Alternatively, I was thinking Tom perhaps (though he might reveal too much too early ;) ) or one from the 104th.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 01:35 pm (UTC)Exactly like this. It is a bit silly and it goes to shit here too. It doesn't make it any less real of a thing though. Even trying to rationalize it doesn't help here.
I know what you mean too about all of this. These scenes telling you it's truly a story and not just some fleeting thing and you know this is it, and then looking at it and frowning and the parts of it not even being "good" because "oh, let's try this." And then it has to be revised and rooted and all the stitches have to be made. To me, if the scene was "real" and makes it in, it's almost like I had a piece of a sculpture roughly sculpted sitting on the workbench and now I have to stick this foot on this leg with no foot. In my case lately, only the big toe was meant to go on this clay person so I had to make the rest of the foot again and just cut the toe off the original foot and stick it on there. Lol, my sculpture/writing analogies are getting even weirder. ;p
Coming toward the end seems to have this effect too. I know it's not even uncommon. The goodbye is never easy. I did think since this was just a part one that it maybe wouldn't be like this for you this time, but it's not truly surprising. It's still a little end. And yes that rolling around forever. Probably why I should stop nitpicking 100 pages up from where I need to be filling out a scene. *rolls eyes at myself*
Once you can get there this big revising and making it come together is going to be amazing and it will be worth these days of feeling like this.
As we were talking about yesterday, I think the POV change is a good idea. Especially with all the happy. Hanji, I still think is the best choice. She's crazy and loud and talks and talks, but it might shift the mood a bit wihtout derailing. She can remind without causing chaos in the story that you don't need in there at this point.
And yes, about art; it is so contradictory sometimes, and it's odd, and artists are odd, and that's fine and wonderful. There's always a hurdle. It's like waves. They gentle and you float between them then you have to ride one out and do it all over again. And I should really think about my own words once in a while since I've been angsting around all week over writing.