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*tilts head* I've no idea if this is how it works for other people. Writing. It's just poking at me a lot lately, because I'm in the new-fandom rush at the minute, which means my head is a bubbling crucible of ideas, and quite a lot of them don't make any sense, and drawing meaningful stories out of the mess is sometimes ... difficult. *smiles sheepishly*
I'm spending a lot of time looking for the anchors, is the upshot. I don't know what other people call them. You know when you're trying to write a story, and you go through about five, six, ten drafts, and something isn't working, until suddenly you find the ... the device. The concept. The anchor. The thing the story sits in, the thing that gives it shape. The anchor.
Sometimes it's a line. Sometimes it's an image. Sometimes it's a plot device. Sometimes it's, you know, the plot itself. A symbol, a thematic anchoring point, something that swings the story into shape around it, and makes it more than (sometimes beautifully written) directionless crap.
Not that stories with anchors aren't occasionally also crap, mind you. And not that the anchors have to be particularly obvious or relevant. Just ... when I'm writing, I need that something. That one point, on which to center the purpose of the story.
Just looking at the Avengers stories I've done in the past month, for example.
For Deus Ex, the device is the movies, and JARVIS himself, the circling theme of AI, it's history and ramifications, and what that means for these characters. VAST (... that was meant to be an acronym, but Vast And Shaking Things apparently goes straight back to VAST and ... I swear, I only noticed that this second), it was Hal. HIOH, it was Terminator. Something to center, and hold.
The Tony/Loki stories ... Huh. Actually, I didn't notice this until now, either, but 'Shapers of Things' and 'Nova' are actually a thematic pair, because the anchor for 'Shapers' was, first the bridge, Bifrost, but also the Norse myth of creation (the meeting of fire and ice in Ginnungagap). While 'Nova' is, of course, Ragnarok. So they're actually a Norse beginning/end duology on a Tony/Loki theme. Huh. Wondered why they fit so well.
'The Sound of Ice Breaking' is the image of the ice over the void - Loki links to both for me - a jagged veneer of control over something vast and dark and mad, and the thing that makes the ice crack, and the consequences thereof.
'Numbered Silently', it's the device of the lists, and the darker things than rage. And that moment, coming up on Tony in the darkness. The moment, and the device, to hold the scene, and make the story make (some kind of) sense. 'Numbered' is a specific case, because it was one of those fics that repeatedly did not work, until I hit on the image of the lists and the hollow spaces under the anger. There are about three lengthy drafts of that story in my documents, some of which are probably half-decent stories, but none of them felt right until I found the anchor, and could finish them.
'Stress Testing', of course, is based on an extended metaphor where Tony's mechanical aptitude and his methods for dealing with people are coming from pretty much the same place (as, for that matter, are Bruce's).
The Tony & Bruce series is based almost entirely around the concept of touch, and the myriad of ways its lack and its forms shape people.
And those are just the recent ones. But it's kind of always been there. Layering Nikola over Koschei in 'Koschei the Deathless'. The wings=trust, grace=faith recurring imagery in 'Arrangements'. Diamonds and blood in 'Gotham Noir'. Arien's ring in 'Rings and Princes'. Writing the bigger fiction in 'Strange Aeons'. The shackle scars in 'Of Using and Being Used'. The constant balance of tempt/thwart in every Good Omens fic I ever wrote. All of 'Shadow Play', which was essentially a series of images/metaphors to hold the horror for me and make it writable.
It's usually imagery. Sometimes a concept, sometimes a plot, sometimes a scene, but nine times out of ten, my anchors are images. A picture paints a thousand words, hmm? *smiles faintly* Something, some single thing or small group of things, into which you can fold the meaning, so that later the reader can touch it, and fold it back out. Something to shape it, so you're not just meandering aimlessly around the characters. Sometimes it's all big and complicated and tangled, and I've multiple ones playing in the same story (of necessity, in longer ones), no matter what I do. But ... I need them. I need the keys, the cycle of images I can keep refering to, that will hold and center this idea in my head.
It's almost purely for my own sake, too. *grins sheepishly* Sometimes they work thematically, sometimes they help the story for the reader (I think, anyway), but that's not why they're there. They've nothing really to do with future readers, and everything to do with enabling myself to get the story out of a whole, and in a shape that makes sense/is pleasing to me.
*smiles, shakes head* I'm a very selfish writer, you know that? Heh.
I'm doing a lot of it at the minute, is what I'm saying. Cycling through drafts, searching (scrounging) for the anchoring image that will make the thing work for me. Sometimes it hits first time (usually at four in the effing morning, thanks, brain, thanks for that), sometimes I go through a ridiculous number of drafts looking for it (though, admittedly, because I have zero patience at the best of times, anything above three drafts is ridiculous to me, and most of those I end up giving up on). It's not searching for inspiration (I've a boiling sea of that, it's what the source texts are for - if not always just the appropriate ones), it's searching for translation. The thing that will make it go from the crucible in my head to the page/screen/audience. Heh.
It's looking for the anchors. *smiles tiredly* And I end up doing a lot of it.
Does it work like that for anyone else?
Sometimes it's a line. Sometimes it's an image. Sometimes it's a plot device. Sometimes it's, you know, the plot itself. A symbol, a thematic anchoring point, something that swings the story into shape around it, and makes it more than (sometimes beautifully written) directionless crap.
Not that stories with anchors aren't occasionally also crap, mind you. And not that the anchors have to be particularly obvious or relevant. Just ... when I'm writing, I need that something. That one point, on which to center the purpose of the story.
Just looking at the Avengers stories I've done in the past month, for example.
For Deus Ex, the device is the movies, and JARVIS himself, the circling theme of AI, it's history and ramifications, and what that means for these characters. VAST (... that was meant to be an acronym, but Vast And Shaking Things apparently goes straight back to VAST and ... I swear, I only noticed that this second), it was Hal. HIOH, it was Terminator. Something to center, and hold.
The Tony/Loki stories ... Huh. Actually, I didn't notice this until now, either, but 'Shapers of Things' and 'Nova' are actually a thematic pair, because the anchor for 'Shapers' was, first the bridge, Bifrost, but also the Norse myth of creation (the meeting of fire and ice in Ginnungagap). While 'Nova' is, of course, Ragnarok. So they're actually a Norse beginning/end duology on a Tony/Loki theme. Huh. Wondered why they fit so well.
'The Sound of Ice Breaking' is the image of the ice over the void - Loki links to both for me - a jagged veneer of control over something vast and dark and mad, and the thing that makes the ice crack, and the consequences thereof.
'Numbered Silently', it's the device of the lists, and the darker things than rage. And that moment, coming up on Tony in the darkness. The moment, and the device, to hold the scene, and make the story make (some kind of) sense. 'Numbered' is a specific case, because it was one of those fics that repeatedly did not work, until I hit on the image of the lists and the hollow spaces under the anger. There are about three lengthy drafts of that story in my documents, some of which are probably half-decent stories, but none of them felt right until I found the anchor, and could finish them.
'Stress Testing', of course, is based on an extended metaphor where Tony's mechanical aptitude and his methods for dealing with people are coming from pretty much the same place (as, for that matter, are Bruce's).
The Tony & Bruce series is based almost entirely around the concept of touch, and the myriad of ways its lack and its forms shape people.
And those are just the recent ones. But it's kind of always been there. Layering Nikola over Koschei in 'Koschei the Deathless'. The wings=trust, grace=faith recurring imagery in 'Arrangements'. Diamonds and blood in 'Gotham Noir'. Arien's ring in 'Rings and Princes'. Writing the bigger fiction in 'Strange Aeons'. The shackle scars in 'Of Using and Being Used'. The constant balance of tempt/thwart in every Good Omens fic I ever wrote. All of 'Shadow Play', which was essentially a series of images/metaphors to hold the horror for me and make it writable.
It's usually imagery. Sometimes a concept, sometimes a plot, sometimes a scene, but nine times out of ten, my anchors are images. A picture paints a thousand words, hmm? *smiles faintly* Something, some single thing or small group of things, into which you can fold the meaning, so that later the reader can touch it, and fold it back out. Something to shape it, so you're not just meandering aimlessly around the characters. Sometimes it's all big and complicated and tangled, and I've multiple ones playing in the same story (of necessity, in longer ones), no matter what I do. But ... I need them. I need the keys, the cycle of images I can keep refering to, that will hold and center this idea in my head.
It's almost purely for my own sake, too. *grins sheepishly* Sometimes they work thematically, sometimes they help the story for the reader (I think, anyway), but that's not why they're there. They've nothing really to do with future readers, and everything to do with enabling myself to get the story out of a whole, and in a shape that makes sense/is pleasing to me.
*smiles, shakes head* I'm a very selfish writer, you know that? Heh.
I'm doing a lot of it at the minute, is what I'm saying. Cycling through drafts, searching (scrounging) for the anchoring image that will make the thing work for me. Sometimes it hits first time (usually at four in the effing morning, thanks, brain, thanks for that), sometimes I go through a ridiculous number of drafts looking for it (though, admittedly, because I have zero patience at the best of times, anything above three drafts is ridiculous to me, and most of those I end up giving up on). It's not searching for inspiration (I've a boiling sea of that, it's what the source texts are for - if not always just the appropriate ones), it's searching for translation. The thing that will make it go from the crucible in my head to the page/screen/audience. Heh.
It's looking for the anchors. *smiles tiredly* And I end up doing a lot of it.
Does it work like that for anyone else?
