Entry points
Sep. 25th, 2025 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deemoyza1,619 words yesterday, most of which I think I will scrap. Not because they're bad, but because they don't get to the heart of the story.
I am not a long-form writer. I have written a few stories that broke 20k words, and even a couple that broke 50k, but that is not the norm for me. Most stories I write tend to be somewhere between 1500 and 5k words, and these shorter fics come with their own set of issues, the primary one being, where to begin.
There are a lot of rules/suggestions for original fic that don't necessarily apply to fanfic. In fanfic, for example, a writer doesn't need to spend time introducing or developing characters that the audience is already familiar with, which does provide some leeway in deciding where to begin the story. For me, personally, I like to dive right into the mess in the planning process, but once it comes to writing, I feel the need to build some narrative scaffolding for that moment. The problem arises when I can't figure out just how much scaffolding to build. Too little, and the moment feels disconnected; too much, and the moment gets diluted, or obscured by the scenes that come before. At some point, if there is too much scaffolding, the short fic I had planned would have to become significantly longer to allow for the narrative structure and emotional punch to play out as I had hoped.
So, back to my 1600 words. The fic I'm trying to write is one about a character's descent into madness (I'm trying to work on my spookier WIPs in honor of the Halloween season being upon us). In canon, this happens in a matter of hours, and I wanted my fic to be creepy and condensed. Unfortunately, I also felt the need to build upon headcanons and ended up not only not reaching the beginning of the meltdown within 1600 words, but also diffusing the mood to a dull dread, rather than the fear and disgust I was going for. It simply was not working, and I feel better having scrapped it rather than trying to push through.
And when I say scrap, mind you, it's exactly what I mean. Nothing I write is thrown out without a good, hard look at it; most of the scenes/elements I remove from my stories remain in a separate folder, to inspire or be used in other stories later.
I have been writing for most of my life, but even now, I'm still learning how to best do things. And admitting when a project is not working and deciding to start over from scratch is something I've found to be quite liberating. I may never completely understand where to start my stories, but I'm getting better at discovering the right point somewhere along the way.
I am not a long-form writer. I have written a few stories that broke 20k words, and even a couple that broke 50k, but that is not the norm for me. Most stories I write tend to be somewhere between 1500 and 5k words, and these shorter fics come with their own set of issues, the primary one being, where to begin.
There are a lot of rules/suggestions for original fic that don't necessarily apply to fanfic. In fanfic, for example, a writer doesn't need to spend time introducing or developing characters that the audience is already familiar with, which does provide some leeway in deciding where to begin the story. For me, personally, I like to dive right into the mess in the planning process, but once it comes to writing, I feel the need to build some narrative scaffolding for that moment. The problem arises when I can't figure out just how much scaffolding to build. Too little, and the moment feels disconnected; too much, and the moment gets diluted, or obscured by the scenes that come before. At some point, if there is too much scaffolding, the short fic I had planned would have to become significantly longer to allow for the narrative structure and emotional punch to play out as I had hoped.
So, back to my 1600 words. The fic I'm trying to write is one about a character's descent into madness (I'm trying to work on my spookier WIPs in honor of the Halloween season being upon us). In canon, this happens in a matter of hours, and I wanted my fic to be creepy and condensed. Unfortunately, I also felt the need to build upon headcanons and ended up not only not reaching the beginning of the meltdown within 1600 words, but also diffusing the mood to a dull dread, rather than the fear and disgust I was going for. It simply was not working, and I feel better having scrapped it rather than trying to push through.
And when I say scrap, mind you, it's exactly what I mean. Nothing I write is thrown out without a good, hard look at it; most of the scenes/elements I remove from my stories remain in a separate folder, to inspire or be used in other stories later.
I have been writing for most of my life, but even now, I'm still learning how to best do things. And admitting when a project is not working and deciding to start over from scratch is something I've found to be quite liberating. I may never completely understand where to start my stories, but I'm getting better at discovering the right point somewhere along the way.
