WRITING: hypergraphia or scribblies--whatever it's called

[shalanna]

From a panel at one of the writing conferences I attended last year, some things to ask yourself when you're stuck writing a scene:

WHAT does it LOOK like? WHAT does it SMELL like? WHAT does he/she really WANT here? WHERE are they? WHEN (what season, which century) is it? WHAT are they doing? What TIME of day? HOW do they FEEL? HOW do they REACT? HOW does this lead directly into the next scene and goal?

That last one is a toughie, as I often am setting up something that won't be fulfilled until several scenes later. I always have felt that if you keep a story question going and YOU know what this is leading into, that should be enough. But the New Thinkin' says that every scene should lead into the next with cause/effect apparent. That's where I get marked down sometimes (whereas many authors in the past DIDN'T.)

Comic strips aren't so different from stories told all in text. It's just a different medium.

It turns out that this comic strip/cartoon thing is easier to lick if you just SIMPLIFY THE CHARACTERS. That way, those of us who can't draw can still do them. I'm working on a comic that turned out more like a Sunday strip because the story got larger. That seems to be the way with me--stories turn into novels, novels turn out to be 130K or so. There's also a lot of text in the cartoon. I can't get away from "writing stories" at heart.

I suppose I'm just hypergraphic.

Also, I think I'm just a lot better at expressing things and setting scenes in words than I am in visuals only, although I turned out not to be as terrible at doing the visuals as I thought I was. A webcomic would be fun and very low-pressure, as thousands of people are doing them, so I may post it when I get finished and possibly continue . . . posting a cartoon intermittently.

My Artist Trading Cards aren't going as well, and I'm probably not going to do any more swaps. It's just not my bailiwick, although I do admire a number of cards that I've seen people make. I think I am more inclined towards "soul cards," which is a whole other pursuit in which you develop a deck that reflects aspects of yourself and your life. It's almost a kind of personal Tarot. But I'm not necessarily ever going to do any of those, either. *grin*

The closest I'll probably ever come is an illustrated journal. This is an illustrated journal of sorts. Portable, too--I can access it from any Web-connected computer. Don't have to worry about locking the pages away from the fam, either, as they couldn't be less interested. One of my cousins may still be out there reading, but no one else is really into it. They won't journal about their lives, either, which is a shame, as I think SOME of my kinfolks would be doing their children a favor by leaving behind some record of their days and the family traditions and so forth. My cousin Pat used to scrapbook and last year made a family tree page, and *her* mother supposedly kept journals for herself, but they're the only ones. . . .

On arcaedia's journal, she recently posted about two writers who put their novel up on the Web, and it's now been picked up by Baen. I was hopeful that possibly I could give that a shot--after all, two agents have told me to try it because my books are "offbeat"--but I was disappointed to hear from all involved that it still isn't a good path for unpublished authors. They apparently had published several books in this series before and had been dropped by the previous house.

That seems to be happening more and more. There was a thread yesterday on one of the YA novel groups where people talked about books that they'd turned in, revised, and had contracts and pub dates IN HAND for . . . but the books were canceled. Everything's got to get past a committee now, and you know that a camel is a horse designed by committee. There's such a herd mentality out there. Is it because people are now brought up by daycare workers and experience life in regimented groups where everyone has to agree and do the same thing at the same time? Does that color their way of thinking to where they can't believe in an individual vision? Or is it just the bean counters?

All our beans are about to go to a bailout, so I imagine this will only get worse as time goes on. So it would be really NICE if I didn't want to write novels.

Unfortunately for me, that still seems to be my default outlet. Even though I get shocked every time I plug something in.

Comments

[pameladean]

I will confess right here that I actually have no real idea what a scene is, AND I DON'T WANT TO. So there.

Allegedly, entertainment flourishes during hard times. Whether the bean counters will block this effect remains to be seen.

The kids I know in daycare are not notably sheeplike, and the daycare workers I know are extremely focussed on individuality. I doubt one can generalize about daycare, other than a few statements in the area of how it improves kids' immune systems.

P.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Okay, I won't proselytize to you about scenes or scene-and-sequel. *grin*

I find the idea of a scene useful to me when I'm writing, though. Maybe I like to think in those terms because I used to do so much theater, and in theater we definitely have scene divisions and ways to convey to the audience when we're changing location, jumping to a later/earlier time, and so forth. My scenes tend to be pretty long, but when it feels right, I'll do a scene break and/or have an episode of sequel (where the character ruminates over the events that have just taken place and speculates about what might be the right thing to do next.) It works for me--and I also try, in revision, to check whether I have a smell/taste/touch reference about every three pages, because if I don't, I may have gone into talking heads mode, and I don't want to do that too often. But everyone's mileage will differ.

What I mean about the daycare thing is--and this is of course only my observation and conclusion (as is everything else here)--it is such a regimented world, much like school, and it starts so EARLY in life. Children used to have a lot more free-play time and were left alone to their own devices so much more in ages past, I believe. We roamed our neighborhood and no one worried about where we might be until we were late for lunch. Now, though, even babies go to daycare and are with many other kids all day and not one-on-one with the mother/worker . . . they HAVE to learn to function as part of a group so early that I wonder what effect it is having. It seems to me that it must be having SOME effect. People identifying as part of a group . . . that's always been around. But am I seeing more and more mindless following? People who can't tell me WHY they are (for example) a Cowboys fan or a Democrat, other than "I dunno" or "everyone here is one."

People from large families always had to live a more regimented life than the only child of beatniks (like me), sure, but I believe that there has been a change in the way children's minds are shaped. I mean, we've always gotten regimented when we started school, but this is happening so much earlier now. School was never about individuality, but was always about "creating workers for factories" (according to many education historians) and having people follow rules and identify as part of a crowd (IMO). It's great that you know of daycare workers who are trying to nurture individuality, but I suspect at least SOME of them (underpaid and overworked at chain locations) have all they can do just to keep things running. *Something* is encouraging this herd mentality that I'm seeing. Television? Or maybe it has always been there, and only had a brief vacation over the 1960s/1970s hippie period (in which I was brought up, and therefore it seems like the "normal" way to me)? I really AM seeing a lot more herd mentality and "we'd better do it this way because everyone else is doing it" reasoning. Especially in government and business.

[pameladean]

I meant my total indifference to scenes to be more comforting, in that if I can write publishable books without even considering the concept, you can probably not worry about whether your own scenes are so rigidly lined up like paper dolls or something.

Even if the idea of a scene is useful to you the way it isn't to me, that doesn't mean you have to take other people's notions of how scenes work seriously. I don't know what's keeping you from getting published, but I doubt it's anything anybody has actually told you. I don't think they know what they mean.

There was definitely herd mentaility in the sixties. I don't remember where I read it, but somebody recently pointed out that for every long-haired kid with a guitar hitchiking to Caliifornia, there was a jalopy full of kids his own age willing to beat him up. And there was a fair amount of herd mentality within hippie groups, too, especially the younger ones. I went to high school with the trailing edge of the hippies. I found hippies a million times nicer to be with than the conformists, but they were not in the majority and they had their own little routines anyway.

[scottedelman.livejournal.com]

I am also considering putting a novel of mine online. I wrote it about 15 years ago, and it then spent two years with an editor before it was rejected, then two years with another, then a couple of years with a third, and then I said, enough, because I felt as if the book was by then a thing of the past, written by someone else, and I could not in good conscience submit it. But since I do still have warm feelings about it, I might release it into the wild, posting it on my blog a chapter a month.

Haven't made a final decision yet, but I'm leaning toward it.