#i'll delete this once i have my more detailed muse page up.

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

How I Hacked My Short Story Brain into Developing a Novel

I promised I'd make this post, so here it is, but with a proper title and everything so that it'll be more generally helpful to other writers.

Regulars of this blog have probably noticed that I've struggled a lot with long-form fiction over the years, despite having churned out a library's worth of short fiction.

This time though, things are coming together, and it's because I've got a technique down that plays to my strengths as a short story writer.

Step 1: Outline and Draft Something

After writing and abandoning several outlines for my WIP Last Night, New Body, I finally set one in stone and wrote a draft for it this January.

The rough, first, skeleton draft was 30,000 words long - far from ideal, but better than nothing. It was tough, but I got it done in two months.

Step 2: Read Through and Take Notes

Next, I read through the draft and took notes on how I thought the novel could be improved. This included notes on plot, characters, and setting. The notes were all taken in a spread sheet in the following format:

Page Number -> Note Title -> Description -> Category

The 'Note Title' could be something witty or referential, but it has to be short, like the name of an achievement in a video game. So for example, it could be:

23 -> Enemy at the Gates -> Why does Nadia shut the door when she sees that Rhea has come to visit? -> Character

I took these notes freely, writing down any point that I thought could be changed, expanded, removed, or otherwise mused.

Once I was done with these notes, the question arose: what the hell do I do with these notes?

Step 3: Treat the Notes As Writing Prompts

This step is in-progress at the moment, but I'm halfway through it already! The idea is to take each note and write 500 words for it.

This comes naturally to me because I've written hundreds upon hundreds of flash fiction pieces for my blog, each one targetted for 500 words. This means I'm now developing the novel 500 words at a time, based on the notes I took while reading through the skeleton draft.

The process has been beautifully productive so far, and I've come up with so much detail, so many new scenes, and better developed characters. My next draft will be assuredly be much longer than the 30k words I got down before.

So how long will this take? That depends on how many notes you take. I initially took 72 notes, but I've found that as the story develops and changes, I've had to "delete" many notes because they became redundant or irrelevant. I say delete in quotes because I've actually moved them to a 'recycle bin' sheet of sorts, so that I can retrieve them later if I deem them important after all.

Next Steps? Outline and Draft the Thing

I'm generating a lot of meat for the skeleton draft, and I'm dying to put that meat on the bones. To do that, I plan on first constructing a very detailed outline, including as much detail from the expanded notes (the 500-word pieces) as possible.

This done, I'll write the 'flesh draft' while referencing both this outline and the skeleton draft. As excited as I am for this, I do anticipate this process to be difficult, so I might find a way to divide it into small, short story sized chunks as well.

Then come the edits and everything else. We'll cross those bridges when we get there.

[crossoverfamily]

I love that I thought I had something I didn't feel like I can make into writing, and wanting to use that as an example to explain I might write a post about semi-written ficlets, I ended up able to write out te specific thing I thought would remain note-like rather than actual writing.

In my head, the idea was "Ireth is a magical genius" and when he accidentally nerd out in front of other magic users of Thedas, but I thought about how it might slow me down or block me to try and actively write the actual conversation or what happens, so I thought I might just write exactly what I just did, or vague notes before writing the reaction.

But when I went to write the "vague notes", I realized it worked, it was just less detailed than what I might have tried to go for usually. Something like "Ireth doesn't realize what he's doing, and nerds out in front of X. It is only when he catches the look on X's face that he trails off".

With that said, I might still make it clear sometimes a ficlet will have note-like parts rather than written parts, or less details, if only to make sure I personally recall I don't have to make it complex to have fun!

Also: my inner muses reminded me they want to have fun too, so I will also have tag(s) for stuff that will be kind of fourth wall breaking and/or "non-canon" or crack. Like my muses reacting to a gifset or a video, to a ficlet, to an ask reply, etc. Or when I don't want to figure out context and without context, it feels more like the muses of the blog in general, rather than specific versions for a ficlet.

(The fun part is: it might actually be canon of a kind, because I have a vague idea of the muses souls existing beyond individual verses, who can see/know everything of each version of their soul but these "oversouls" kind of only exist beyond individual verses, so their only possible writing is about what's happening to each version of themselves, and I could expand to "glimpse" other stuff, or if let's say they're reacting to a gif of anothr character, pretend a version of themselves is actively seeing whatever that gif depicts).

(In short: the muses who do "kinda fourth wall things" and possibly even ask replies, can be the "oversouls". Which mean they would both be canon, and kinda fourth wall breaking, and now my brain going "what if there's a reason everything else is on the blog, maybe they're collecting memories or each oversoul dreams of moments in their various versions life, meanwhile when awake, they interact together and can receive questions from those who accidentally see what they, and RP verses are also part of the oversoul").

This would all be a fun way to have everything on the blog be "canon", like the blog itself represents the "place" the oversouls "lives in", every posts being either about the oversouls themselves, or versions of themselves.

For a while I knew I was being inspired to do similar to what I'm doing for my original fictional story, but now it really starts to sound similar. Like not really oversoul and many versions of a soul, but the place beyond universes thing and the viewing of stuff that has happened or is happening and the idea of collecting something and including the audience into the context in some way, this is all inspired by what I plan to do for my original fiction.

So yeah, here's more details on what I will do on this blog, I'll work on my futures pages and stuff offline, once I've prepared everything, I'll revamp the blog (delete all posts so I can redo them later in the proper style, make pages) and probably have a welcome/intro first post(s)!

Wish me luck~!

[merge-conflict]

Asking you a bunch for the fic writer asks (since I'm on lunch and I'm not sure when I'll be back)

3, 14, 17, 22, 23, 25 plz :>

ty for the ask!! I love answering so many questions >:3 questions here

3. how you feel about your current WIP

good! I always have several WIP but I'm thinking of the most recent one I'm working on where goro is going to do a little impromptu strip tease for valentine while she's internally making the dialup noise. extremely satisfying, even when they're disgustingly sweet and horny to each other.

14. where do you get your inspiration?

mostly just idle thoughts, which is to say I don't always know what my inspiration is until after I've done it and re-watched/re-read some piece of media and go oh.

most frequently it's from books that I've read. the ancillary justice series, the elemental logic books, the locked tomb, a memory called empire. sometimes from a drama tv series like ozark, killing eve, or mad men. not usually one for one, but the intense emotional beats will be there! if it's a book it's generally scifi/fantasy, if it's tv it's usually some kind of insane work drama.

17. talk about your writing and editing process

heh. I supposed I do some outlining, but that outline usually only exists in my head. if I do write down an outline it's generally for a chapter, and usually it's the first iteration which means I don't follow it at all for the final product. I think I've been asked this question twice so for this one I'll talk about oneshots (or serial oneshots like ffor). usually it's something like:

get a flash of action or dialog for a scene that want to expand

write 5-6 paragraphs of waaaaay too much exposition to figure out the location, time, and characters present. all of that musing on background motivations, setting of a boring scene, pondering what everyone is up to before the interesting bit starts happening. I write it all down or I'm liable to forget it.

cut those paragraphs entirely once the initial work is done (to another file so I can reference as needed), efficiently covering all the relevant bits of story or scene making in 1/5 of the original space

write some awkward waaaaaay too "character lifted their hand. they rubbed at their chin. they moved their hand to character b's shoulder. they said words."

take several stabs at the initial premise, deleting none, but scrolling down the page and working from a different pov or slightly different setting

ad-hoc workhorse sentences while drafting, and then deliberately change those sentences to something that flows a little more and elides unnecessary explanation

whenever I get stuck leave myself a little note in place of a phrase or sentence like

[aimed those big gray pleading eyes at him]

[mocking her with the tone.]

fill in all those gaps later at later review, when my brain is less stuck in a hole about how to word these kinds of things which is less important than just capturing their energy

once the structure of the story is there, figure out what the main takeaway and recurring motif is and read through to figure out how to emphasize it and cut out extraneous details

review review review for grammar and punchiness and readability. cut my darlings which do not add to the central theme.

post it and instantly see 3-4 obvious issues that I need to fix

22. do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

yes. all the time. usually about trans and related queer identity stuff– I've never gotten any push back but I often hold myself to some harsh internal review worrying about whether something could be seen as "too much" or "bad rep" regardless of how I personally consider respectability politics. so far I think my stuff has been too niche for anyone to be offended but I'm sure if I wandered outside of my beautiful curated tumblr ecosystem I could find the hostile commentary I hear in my head.

so far I've done okay just probing at the edges of what I want to do and slowly creeping out past that. I'd like to be more blasé about it but i'm still working my way there. pretty sure i'm given a pass by being less obvious with an enby character who still goes by her agab pronouns so it's easy for folks to ignore. whatever. can't think about it too much.

23. pick three keywords that describe your writing

playful, sharp, indulgent

25. besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

answered this one already I think, but currently my other hobbies are wip pending better circumstances. knitting, bird and bug watching, baguette baking I think are some of the ones I've mentioned before (too lazy to check). I extremely need to pick up at least *some* sort of tactile handicraft soon. :3

[simonsvys]

XION’S COME BACK HOME VERSE. long ago a group of monarchs ruled, the monarchs overtime becoming jealous of the god helios. what the monarchs were unaware of was the fact helios was jealous of them as well, he hated the way that the humans worshiped the monarchs and had forgotten about him. so in a fit of jealous rage, helios threatened to make the sun disappear forever. the humans were terrified by this grim prospect and decided to sacrifice the monarchs to appease helios. in death, helios sent the monarchs into exile and created a world of eternal night. on top of this, helios cursed them with a thirst for blood from the humans that they cherished so much. despite this fact, the monarchs only drank blood from humans who carried out evil deeds and continued to protect the humans that they loved. though there was part of the monarchs that was disgusted by the betrayal that had been carried out on the behalf of humans. so every night, they slaughtered humans without mercy. they worshiped the moon and waited for a child to be born on the eclipse. a child that would be used to help them bring eternal night to earth. on the day of the eclipse, that’s when xion was brought into this world to fulfill the prophecy. the humans turned against the monarchs once more and sought out to kill the child. a long war between humans and the monarchs raged on as they protected the boy that was their only hope. they thought the battle had been won and things were peaceful for a while as they lived in their world of eternal night. but one night, the moon turned red and suddenly all the humans who had been slain were coming back to life. the undead were rising to finish what they couldn’t. if xion is killed, the day will return to earth and the monarchs will fade away.