babbling about WIPs
Jun. 16th, 2020 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaprojects i'm working on & the difficulties thereof:
* a new Yuri/Claude fic that's haunting my brain. see, there was this Crimson Flower concept for Claude i'd been vaguely thinking about for a while, but couldn't make cohere into something tractable, and then a prompt showed up on the kinkmeme, and somehow the two atoms smacked right into each other and, bam, explosion. i'm still early enough in the outlining stage i don't know for sure if this'll hit go or not, but... i'm feeling really excited about it. will probably end up being a 2-4 parter because it has to do. a lot. before i can get to the scene i'm burning to write. it figures that i would stare at a prompt meant for porn and be like "actually i can turn this into a high concept, artsy angst fic with lots of underlying tensions and dissatisfactions," huh
* the last fic in that series of Claude backstory fics. i'm... stuck on this one, tbh, and by stuck i mean, i don't even have an outline yet. which is weird! i was so excited to get to this one!
the general idea was, i wanted to tell the story of Claude's mom via negative space—like, the stuff Claude hears in Riegan from people to knew her, the stuff he notices about the way her old room was laid out, old journals, etc. i was thinking about that bit in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, when Yeine finds her mother's old letters/journal or whatever and finds out actually her mom was kind of a bitch... and i love that idea so much, but i don't really have a clear scene in mind, or a rhythm, or a voice, and it feels like i need at least one of those to really get the storymaking process going, if that makes sense? idk. i hope it comes together. because THE ONLY REASON i even WROTE "Deer Among Cattle" was because i wanted to get to this fic!!! oh ironies
* "summer is miles and miles away," the modern AU Claude/Lorenz longfic that i am now apparently writing. i have chapter 3 already drafted, but i have this nagging feeling that not enough *happens* in that chapter... so my current plan is to just go ahead and draft chapter 4, and then read the two chapters together to see how it feels. it helps that i'm terribly excited to write chapter 4, haha, it's where some GOOD SHIT happens. (that being said, lorenz won't make it to SF until... chapter 5 if i'm lucky. sob. why do i do this to myself)
i'm also planning to crack out that Save the Cat book so i can try to make like, a beat sheet, or something??? because it occurred to me that i know so little about structuring longer works, and maybe i should like, do a little bit of planning before blindly pushing out my weird overgrown was-supposed-to-be-a-joke epic....?
* "Coyote Wall." a Claude/Hilda fic that I started writing all the way back in... goddamn September, jeez. Parts of this fic were appropriated into "Where the River Meets the Sea," but I think this fic's trying to tell a different enough story that it's worth shoring it up again. I've got like a 50% done 8k draft lying around; mostly i just need to take a long moment to reread what I've got and figure out what's missing.
(i vaguely remember, the last time i stared at this draft, the problem was: man, depression is hard to render well in fiction. there is a substantial amount of Hilda being kinda broody/antsy/sad for the first half of the narrative, and there's a lot that i think is interesting about that, but it's hard to convey in an interesting way, yaknow?)
* a very silly Golden Deer humor fic I'm doing for a zine that should be some fun sorbet
eta: actually for completeness's sake: i have a feeling my 3-5 parter Tellius bird fic is actually happening this year. just uh. probably much later in the year, since i wanna finish out my Three Houses WIPs first. also, i need to squint at my drafts again to be sure, but i think i'm gonna officially punt on "Move the Chains," that Dragon Age: Inquisition longfic i was writing. i have like 20k written for the next two chapters, and got bogged down trying to edit it because those two chapters weren't working, and... then time passed and i think i've just lost momentum/interest. alas! i was really hoping that'd be my first longfic that would Get To Done. i'll do a draft + note dump here and outline where i was going with it, so it can officially be At Rest, lol
anyway yeah share your own writing woes and/or "how to write longfic" in the comments i guess
* a new Yuri/Claude fic that's haunting my brain. see, there was this Crimson Flower concept for Claude i'd been vaguely thinking about for a while, but couldn't make cohere into something tractable, and then a prompt showed up on the kinkmeme, and somehow the two atoms smacked right into each other and, bam, explosion. i'm still early enough in the outlining stage i don't know for sure if this'll hit go or not, but... i'm feeling really excited about it. will probably end up being a 2-4 parter because it has to do. a lot. before i can get to the scene i'm burning to write. it figures that i would stare at a prompt meant for porn and be like "actually i can turn this into a high concept, artsy angst fic with lots of underlying tensions and dissatisfactions," huh
* the last fic in that series of Claude backstory fics. i'm... stuck on this one, tbh, and by stuck i mean, i don't even have an outline yet. which is weird! i was so excited to get to this one!
the general idea was, i wanted to tell the story of Claude's mom via negative space—like, the stuff Claude hears in Riegan from people to knew her, the stuff he notices about the way her old room was laid out, old journals, etc. i was thinking about that bit in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, when Yeine finds her mother's old letters/journal or whatever and finds out actually her mom was kind of a bitch... and i love that idea so much, but i don't really have a clear scene in mind, or a rhythm, or a voice, and it feels like i need at least one of those to really get the storymaking process going, if that makes sense? idk. i hope it comes together. because THE ONLY REASON i even WROTE "Deer Among Cattle" was because i wanted to get to this fic!!! oh ironies
* "summer is miles and miles away," the modern AU Claude/Lorenz longfic that i am now apparently writing. i have chapter 3 already drafted, but i have this nagging feeling that not enough *happens* in that chapter... so my current plan is to just go ahead and draft chapter 4, and then read the two chapters together to see how it feels. it helps that i'm terribly excited to write chapter 4, haha, it's where some GOOD SHIT happens. (that being said, lorenz won't make it to SF until... chapter 5 if i'm lucky. sob. why do i do this to myself)
i'm also planning to crack out that Save the Cat book so i can try to make like, a beat sheet, or something??? because it occurred to me that i know so little about structuring longer works, and maybe i should like, do a little bit of planning before blindly pushing out my weird overgrown was-supposed-to-be-a-joke epic....?
* "Coyote Wall." a Claude/Hilda fic that I started writing all the way back in... goddamn September, jeez. Parts of this fic were appropriated into "Where the River Meets the Sea," but I think this fic's trying to tell a different enough story that it's worth shoring it up again. I've got like a 50% done 8k draft lying around; mostly i just need to take a long moment to reread what I've got and figure out what's missing.
(i vaguely remember, the last time i stared at this draft, the problem was: man, depression is hard to render well in fiction. there is a substantial amount of Hilda being kinda broody/antsy/sad for the first half of the narrative, and there's a lot that i think is interesting about that, but it's hard to convey in an interesting way, yaknow?)
* a very silly Golden Deer humor fic I'm doing for a zine that should be some fun sorbet
eta: actually for completeness's sake: i have a feeling my 3-5 parter Tellius bird fic is actually happening this year. just uh. probably much later in the year, since i wanna finish out my Three Houses WIPs first. also, i need to squint at my drafts again to be sure, but i think i'm gonna officially punt on "Move the Chains," that Dragon Age: Inquisition longfic i was writing. i have like 20k written for the next two chapters, and got bogged down trying to edit it because those two chapters weren't working, and... then time passed and i think i've just lost momentum/interest. alas! i was really hoping that'd be my first longfic that would Get To Done. i'll do a draft + note dump here and outline where i was going with it, so it can officially be At Rest, lol
anyway yeah share your own writing woes and/or "how to write longfic" in the comments i guess
