Squeaking in under the Sunday Six deadline, 10/13

[stunt_muppet]

I tried to write something new this week. Didn't pan out. Only other thing I wrote this week was overheated romance novel prose but thankfully there was enough in there that I could post six-ish sentences with most of the really embarrassing bits edited out.

Did some planning writing, though, so maybe I can clean that up tomorrow while I'm off.



- because it's tonight, Shiro promised her tomorrow and that means they're together, maybe right now, and how is he supposed to sleep knowing that?

And Allura has to know that he knows it, too, or what was that wink about? She knows that he's lying alone in bed too feverish to rest and imagining her -

- no, imagining them, both of them, together -

She knows. And she must want him squirming.
 

Comments

[enemyofperfect]

Aww, I love this! He's so hyperaware even when he isn't with them.

So much sympathy on the writing trouble! Congratulations on the planning, and honestly, on the prose you weren't a fan of too. Trying something that doesn't work is still learning, right?

[stunt_muppet]

Aw, thank you - especially for the last part. I'm grateful for the reminder that it's still good to write even if it doesn't all go in the final product. Otherwise how will I know what works?

I really enjoy *writing* the florid dramatic prose - one thing that I've started doing is keeping a file where I can write random sentences that are too overwrought to go in an actual story - but if I want to strike any other tone in a fic then that kind of prose has to get dialed back, especially if it's supposed to be from the same POV character. Plus, the fact that I find it so fun means I get really worried that even when I tgink it sounds good it actually doesn't and will sound maudlin and weird to everyone else.

[enemyofperfect]

Oh wow, so much sympathy on worrying that the more dramatic stuff might actually be too much. These days when I'm writing, sometimes I really struggle with putting any emotion or color on the page, and a big part of that is the fear of going overboard I seem to have internalized somewhere along the way.

But it's so great that you have a file for any sentences that don't seem to fit! I tend to do that with snippets I end up cutting, too -- it helps to know they have a home somewhere, even if they don't fit in what I'm working on. And it's good to have fun with things sometimes!

[amovingtarget]

overheated romance novel prose

I'm...intensely interested...

[stunt_muppet]

Haha, it's a consistent problem I have when I'm writing anything even a bit racy. All of a sudden everything's three-syllable words and more adjectives then a decent person needs and everything gets super melodramatic.

Which I'm not saying is a bad way to write! I quite like some big florid showy prose sometimes! But it's hard to have that going and then strike literally any other tone during any part of the fic. So especially for the things I'm writing now, there's a couple of scenes where I want to strike a lighter/more casual tone and I want to make sure that the prose doesn't get so overwrought that it doesn't sound like it's coming from the same person anymore.

Also, I kind of feel like elaborate or dramatic prose is a bit more dependent on the reader's taste then simple prose is? A word that's perfectly descriptive and evocative for me or another reader will be a word that someone else finds silly and mood-breaking. But that's not based on anything besides my own observations, and I mean things being taste-dependent is true of everything so there's not really any getting around that.