Poll!

[icepixie]

ETA: Let's see if this works right this time...

This is just something I've been thinking about lately. Also, I've never done a poll before. Fanfic applies to both questions if you want it to.

[Poll #525641]

Please elaborate in comments if you want. I'm interested in anything you have to say relating to these questions.

For me, about four out of five times, my first inking of a piece of writing will come in the form of a location to set it. I usually tend to draw these locations from real life. Whether they're from RL or purely imaginative, I know everything about how it feels to be in that place, from the exact location on a map to the air temperature to the background sounds and smells. Not all of this information makes it into the description of the place, but it helps me form the action that happens and the characters that would be found there. The other times are divided between a character--including fanfic explorations of characters seen on TV--and a "hey, wouldn't it be cool if" kind of plot. But mostly it's location: I'll think, I want to write a scene that takes place at a fireworks store, in a cornfield, on the front porch of a 1920s bungalow near a speedway on a summer night, on a snowy day in Atlantis, whatever. Everything else just falls into place after that. Of course, this tends to lead to fragmentary writing; once that scene is over, what do I do? Ideas where the character or plot come first aren't as rich in detail, but they seem to carry me through longer stretches of writing and larger goals.

Similarly, I enjoy pieces that make good use of descriptive language to really pull the reader into a scene. Thomas Hardy, my perennial favorite Victorian soap opera novelist, is a great example of this. In fact, when we were reading some Hardy stories in the Kenyon Seminar this semester, we had a brief discussion about descriptive language in novels. Matz suggested that some people "do the work" of imagining everything that is described as far as location, objects, etc., while others just skim to get to the action. I was somewhat astonished that anyone could not see everything as it was described. It's not a conscious decision for me; when I read, my mind pretty much translates it into a movie in my head. I take the description of the setting, realize it it full color, add any details that are lacking to make it cohesive, and then the action just takes place there like it would on a TV screen. After a while, I can't tell you the words I just read; I can tell you what the scene looks like in my mind, with my own words, but I probably couldn't repeat any of the sentences used by the original author. Maybe this comes from watching too much television as a small child, but I think even if I had no idea what movies or TV were, I'd still do this. Maybe not as well, but I think that's still how I would read.

Comments

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

Hmm, had a comment all typed out, and then you edited the entry and LJ blew up. Let's try again.

Hey, this isn't what you asked at all, and extremely tangential, but can you see moving pictures in your mind when you imagine a scene? Like, really moving pictures, like 24 frames per second videos. Because I just realized this past year that I can't, and I was wondering what other people see.

Sorry about the randomness. To answer the question you asked, I usually get inspired by plot first, or at least a snippet of action, despite my severe anti-plot writing tendencies. Of course, I'm horrible at coming up with initial ideas, and it doesn't happen by itself very often, so I'm not drawing on a huge pool of writing experience here. Setting can also work for me occasionally, but not to the crazy extremes you seem to take it to. : )

When I'm reading, the writing style outweighs every other aspect. I don't care what's happening to whom, if it's written in a way that's annoying, or hard to follow, or just distracting from the story, I tend to want to throw the book across the room. Yes, I'm talking to *you*, Woolfe, please go die now.

Did any of that help? Sorry.

Elf's 2 pence

[elflore.livejournal.com]

As a writer, I usually get some bit of plot first. If there's a character in the initial idea, then it's "wouldn't it be cool if someone like THIS did something like THIS?" This might be partly because I tend to write stories with some kind of science-fiction or fantasy or comic book element...I like there to be something in there larger than life, at least by a little.

(Joss Whedon said it about right on one of the Angel DVDs, saying he was interested in writing musicals and science fiction and vampires and superheroes and everything that doesn't happen in real life, so he can use it to talk about PEOPLE and everything that actually does happen. Of course he worded it much better than that, only I'm too lazy to surf the internet for the exact quite right now.)

As a reader, I certainly need stories to work on multiple levels. I need characters I care about and interesting things happening to them, a good thematic level helps, and the prose needs to be at least at a certain level to hold my interest. There are authors out there who write prose so clunky I just can't stand to read them...I have a physical reaction, like hearing nails on a chalkboard. (Apologies to the many fans of R.A. Salvatore.)

And I also, both writing and reading, see very clear movies in my head, with sound. It's why I find writing dialogue (and scripts) so much quicker than writing prose. I love prose, but it takes me some time to work out just the right words to achieve the effect I need. Dialogue...I tend to just hear the characters talking in my head (yes, I hear the voices!) and transcribe. Sometimes I have to go back and edit and polish them a bit later, but even that comes a bit more smoothly than shiny prose.

John (Elf), somewhere in the universe...

[rensong.livejournal.com]

I usually get snipits of conversation between two characters when fic ideas thwap me over the head, and then I try and build the story from there. Wasn't sure if that fit into 'plot' or 'characters', so I went with 'other'.