#I know SOME things that happen but not HOW they happen. I'm largely unspoiled in contexts at least. And there's a lot I don't know.

[johnnyshrine]

★ 016 // “Mourning A Fate That Hasn't Happened Yet”

[stoneheart-paramour]

take a shot every time paramour tinkers with the timeline/scenes in hiveword

[you are admitted to the ER with acute alcohol poisoning]

i just remembered a few lil things i needed to add, and also realized one of the scenes was redundant due to some other tinkering i did earlier, so i did something else with it. y'know, i used to think that writing a book/story meant having the ENTIRE plot, start to end, set in stone already. like, you didn't start until it was, and then you never strayed from that outline. now it probably does work that way for plenty of writers, but i'm finding that as i go, i often realize something or other would flow better in a slightly different configuration.

when i wrote Autumn Wanderer, i actually don't entirely remember HOW i approached it, if i had a rough timeline all laid out to follow. i did have all the key events worked out and i knew the order they happened, but if i remember correctly, i didn't make a tidy bullet point list of each scene moment-to-moment, i just sorta wrote in the general direction of where the plot was supposed to go.

it's sorta interesting to me now, because i rarely write that way anymore. i can't remember when i actually started doing this - a few years ago, perhaps? - but creating a skeleton of the story/scene from start to finish helps me keep focused on what i'm trying to achieve, and it makes sure i hit all the notes i intended to. yet, i still go "off script" sometimes, following the flow of the scene where it feels most natural. maybe it's just that a bit of structure and spontaneity is the ideal approach for me; who can say.

and so on a larger scale, the chapters, it's kinda the same thing; i've got the "script" as i originally jotted it down, but then as i'm moving through each, i sometimes realize that something should probably happen sooner, or later, or even not at all, or i realize something ought to happen first, that two scenes/chapters need some kind of buffer event(s) between them; it's interesting.

on the whole, none of the broad strokes are changing, i'm still largely following the "script", but it's a lot more fluid, more malleable, than i realized it could or should be. the further along i get, the less solid the script is (well not for a long while yet, but still) but i wonder if it'll tighten up as i go along. i sorta visualize it like a braid or rope; something twisted together from lots of strands. all the plot threads coming together to form the narrative... at the start, it's tight and neat, but towards the end it becomes looser, then maybe a little messy, or tangled in places, and eventually you get to the part where all the threads are completely unincorporated, just waiting for their turn.

when i started writing Autumn Wanderer, i already knew exactly how it ended. not so with this story, at least not yet. i have ideas of course, i know the gist of the conclusion i hope to achieve, but i don't have a clear, neatly organized series events that lead to "THE END" like i do for most everything else. i am of course working towards finalizing all this stuff, but if someone asked me, "so how does it all end?" all i could really say is, "happily ever after" - which is SO corny but idc. happiness is the point. joy is the point. an end to suffering and pain, at least for the characters, has always been the intended conclusion. not that it's going to be perfect and unspoiled of course, but it doesn't need to be. coming to terms with the rough edges of life we can't ever hope to sand down is as important as anything else we gotta do to survive and thrive. but, i digress. the precise final steps to everyone getting to this point aren't known to me yet, but i'll get there when they do lol.