long fic strategies?

I need a long!fic strategy.

The thing about Lotrips is that most fics are short. So I've got used to writing (and reading) short stories. And in a relatively short fic you can get away with an evocative setting, some emotionally intense dialogue and a pithy punchline and presto, you've got yourself a nice little fic.

You can't do that with a long fic. And it's a long fic I'm now writing. A long fic is not simply a lot of scenes strung together. It's got to have structure and plot. ukcalico put her finger on it for me. And it's structure and plot, the skeleton of the story, that I'm stuck on at the moment. I'm just not very good at structure. This is where I fell down with my Karl/Dom epic: it was basically a series of short ficlets. Scene after scene after juicy scene.

So once again I've been analysing the narratological forest without seeing the wood through which I am stumbling. I knew all along that classical 19th C. novels alternate scene with summary but I have not implemented this in my own long!fic. I can do scene. It is summary that I find hard. And scene after scene is just too much because it overwhelms me, I will never finish the fic as it will be 50,000 pages long and it will be unreadably dense for the reader.

How do I unwhelm myself?

Does anyone have good tips for dealing with structure in long!fic? Things you have tried? Strategies that have worked for you? Or pitfalls to avoid?

your character's table (wippercise)

This is an exercise to help with characterisation in a Work in Progress. I made it up today in boring moments of my assessment meeting. I doodled my main characters' tables and discovered what they kept on them.

I won't reveal who these people are for now but this is what they had on their tables.

Character A:
A jumble of stuff: ashtray overflowing with ash, empty unwashed coffee mug, a rubber band, a curled-up cigarette paper, a small pile of narcotic substances, a little ceramic bowl for heating them in, some matches, a wand repaired with band-aids.

Character B:
A small kitschy vase given to him by his mother with two purple flowers in, some coins, grooming magazines, a plate with segments of a citrus fruit and pips, a glass of fruit juice (half-drunk), a crumpled-up cloth napkin, a wooden bird (a sheldrake?), a jar of hair gel.

Character C:
A slick wand, some drops of water, an apple core, a piece of string, a metal dart.
But on the sideboard: alembics, calcinators, mortar and pestle, retorts.


So what do your current characters have on their tables?