sab hatches a thingy

[sab]

I just devised, or maybe didn't devise, a method of either procrastinating or jump-starting the next day's writing. All of this is subject to much scrutiny, as I am on painkillers AND sleep meds right now and will be sleeping imminently. BUT.

SO, this writing exercise I may or may not have invented, is as follows.

The night before you want to write, sit down and write what DOESN'T happen in the scene you're going to write the next day. It's EASY. Watch.

Let's say today you JUST finished the scene where John and Rodney are in the root garden, and your next scene is the one in the tent when Rodney has to pretend to be John's slave. SO. The night before, you might block out something like so:

They leave the garden and go into the tent which is where Rodney performs for the alien guy. Rodney will have his thigh holster with him, and John will have a knife or a ppg or something. They can just wear their BDUs and probably someone should have a life signs scanner for when Rodney scans the guy.

It's a spacious tent because they use sunlight to light it and the top is a massive parachuted dome. It's bright. Rodney sits John down and they do the thing where the guy requests sex acts. After that, John will need a new robe and probably a shower, Rodney never breaks a sweat. We can cut right before John goes grumbling off to the showers.

THEN, tomorrow. You sit down and you look at the above blocks, and just write what happens IN BETWEEN, where you summed up or faded out. And what you write THEN will be how you want it in the story, without unnecessary exposition, and in whatever order you want.

It strikes me as rather brilliant, that's all. Then again, the meds, they're the X-factor. Let me know, will you?

In the meantime, I assembled all my L&R fic at fromthesabrary, iffen you're interested.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I don't quite get it. So you kind of write the background descriptions first and then fill in the actions later? Potentially that's a lot of extra work though, no?

I mean, it's like when you draw detailed backgrounds first and then the people, which probably looks good, but you may draw this whole city and crowd scene that takes forever to draw and then there's this huge alien spaceship blob about to obliterate it in the foreground and that blocks most of your work and you would just have had to draw a its big blob instead of a gazillion buildings and people.

[mandysbitch.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'll give it a try - it might work. And i'm little blocked (uh - figuratively) so I'll try anything.

[stickykeys633.livejournal.com]

Lovely idea. I also do a thing called Diversions where I take the current characters and put them in completely different locations and situations. It's mostly to test that I really know my character's voices and sometimes I end up learning something new about them to use in the existing story.

[globalwarmer.livejournal.com]

are you writing an erotic novel? ;)