long fic strategies?

[lobelia321]

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?

Comments

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Ach, plot and structure; constant thorns in my side. My problem is I don't intend to write long fics, they just happen. A Lonely Impulse is perfect example of something that was just supposed to be the standard boy falls in love with boy, boys angst, boys get together. The only thing planned was an ending, and upon re-reading the last chapter, I realized I've actually written right through it, and have written another eight chapters, none of which bring me any closer to wrapping it up. Can a case be made for a WIP of indeterminate length just in he case of fanfiction? Can we be granted a special dispensation?

I've been thinking about the scene/summary approach for a new fic, which hopefully, won't be very long at all. It's just that in the 24 hours I've been thinking about it, it's morphed into something much more substantial than the angsty PWP I had in mind. So maybe shall have to experiment.

As you already know, I'm crap with plot and structure; I write with no plan at all, so I'm sorry I'm no help to you. Just like to chime in when you muse about these things. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am crap, too. I also just write and keep on writing and all of a sudden, there's a pithy last line in front of me so I stop.

Now and again I have imposed a structure on myself. This was mostly an alternating viewpoint structure - Billy pov in section 1, Dom pov in section 2, or diary by Viggo followed by letter from Kiran followed by diary by Viggo and so on. Even that little bit of structure already helps.

I do think that yes, we do get a special dispensation for endless fanfic wippage. But I 've been there, done that now and just wanted to do something new. And when Calico mentioned the structure thing, I thought, yes, that will have to be something new.

I am now reading the UEA Creative Writing Coursebook which is actually very, very good. There are some helpful pointers re plot in there. Shall I extract some of them into LJ?

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I am now reading the UEA Creative Writing Coursebook which is actually very, very good. There are some helpful pointers re plot in there. Shall I extract some of them into LJ?

Oh, yes please! That would be great!

[blythely.livejournal.com]

i don't know about unwhelming.

i do know that the only time i have felt like i *could* write something long was when the plot of my h/d came to me inna dream. yes, a dream. thank you, REM sleep.

and the plot was therefore something i could write down in a paragraph and say, this happens and that happens and fnah fnah hotsex the end.

i think, also, as academics, it's kinda weird. you're used to writing a certain way that doesn't involve resolving everything before you start.

blah. just blathering, more coherency later

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of my Desert Prince which goes back to a dream I had when I was sixteen. Then I filled up the dream with the cast from Lotr, and then it sort of ballooned out from there into uncharted waters. The thing with my dream is that it gave me the tone and atmosphere but only a nugget of a plot because, alas, I woke up before it ended. So I had to come up with an ending myself.

But the DP is so episodic, it hardly counts as 'plot'. The excuse there is a generic one: it's 'exotic' and 'far, far away and long, long ago'. Now I want to try something with actual structure.

To me, it actually seems that writing long!fic with structure is *more* like academic writing than short!fic bursts of inspiration. Because in academic writing you always have to plot and plan and write out chapter plans and argumentative steps and so forth. In fic, I tend just to forge ahead blindly.

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

God knows I have no idea. *gets ready to take notes*

A creative writing teacher who was a published novelist once said that the way you write a novel is you write the first scene, the last scene, then the second scene, then the second-last scene, and you work inwards. I have not yet found the discipline to even try, of course.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is interesting advice, sort of spiralling inwards a la snail shell. Not sure it would work for me. Perhaps though, that is because my structure is flawed. I was remembering Aristotle with his basic 'a plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end', and I thought, 'fuck, I'm not sure my story has even that'.

Let alone a pithy snail-like middle.

[msilverstar]

Your mention of scene / summary is very enlightening and I'm about to go off and do some of those. Thank you love!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, if only I could enlighten myself, also!

I've been reading the University of East Anglia Creative Writing Coursebook and it actually has some really helpful stuff about plotting. Shall I excerpt some into LJ?