Write Every Day, Day #3

[auroracloud]

I noticed that genprompt_bingo has a new round starting since yesterday, as does ladiesbingo. Although I have an abysmal success rate of zero with the various bingo prompt cards I've signed up for so far, I'm considering claiming one or two. Especially with all the new fandoms I've picked up with my obsessive podcast-listening (which I need to post about!) and reading, maybe it'd help me get stories written!

So as a voluntary question - do you have any favourite bingos, comment fests, and other sources of prompts that you would like to recommend? Do you like working with prompts? I rather like them - it often helps to focus my creativity and pick a direction to go. Though with random generators like bingos, there's always a risk that not enough of the prompts speak to you.

If you want another source of random prompts, I can recommend the Ersatz Genremixer, where you can enter characters and get tropey prompts from several different trope lists. The results may be anything from uncannily appropriate to ridiculous or just plain WTF, and I have far too many of them saved in a Scrivener file already.

Today's Writing

I had quite a lot on my schedule today - I've noticed I feel better about isolation if I keep myself busy with interesting things - and I also woke up too early and am therefore sleep-deprived again. I also took longer than expected with cooking and bread-roll baking. So I didn't have a lot of brain when I finally sat down to write, but hey, I still managed a little over 100 words on my novel, so it's not nothing. And the scene I'm working on is not that easy for me, because I'm trying really hard to be concrete and focused on physical senses and sensations rather than letting characters drift away in tons of introspection or just chatter about things. Because that's a thing I really want more of in my writing.

And then I started writing fic for a new fandom. Not a lot of words yet, but some! I'm still writing things for prompts from the happy distracting commentfest a few weeks back, though I haven't finished any. Maybe at some point I will!

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, elliet, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 3: auroracloud, china_shop


If I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet, let me know and I'll edit it! You can join in or drop out any time.

Comments

[auroracloud]

Oh, I didn't mean to disparage dialogue, not at all! I'm sorry if I made it sound that way. I was awfully tired when I wrote the post, so I didn't explain properly. Dialogue is my strength, too, at least that's my impression based both on feedback and the fact I don't usually need fix it as much in editing as other things. I love writing dialogue, and it usually comes to me easily.

But I've noticed I run the risk of focusing too much on dialogue because it's easier for me than some other things, and my stories/characters can easily become just talking heads. In my case, I could easily just keep them chattering on for pages, and not get things done in any other way. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with a dialogue-heavy story (heck, I've read a novel written entirely in dialogue, and I enjoy reading plays, and I love podcast dramas which are mainly dialogue with some sound effects). But I also want to work on the things I'm not usually so strong on, such as sensations and physicality, because I want to get better at writing them, too. I really love reading stories that are strong on those, so I'd love to be able to write some.

Good luck with getting a better sense of the big picture! It definitely happens to me quite often that I don't like parts of what I've written and have to do things all over again. But usually the first writing was still needed to get me to the point where I could write the thing that works better.

[nafs]

I didn't really take it as disparagement, more like gentle mocking?

And yes, that's exactly what happens to me. I sit down to write out a scene and suddenly it's five pages of dialogue and I haven't mentioned where anyone is or what anyone is doing, there's no body language, there's very little inner voice... Lately I've learned to just let it happen like that and fix it later. If I sit around trying to force it, nothing gets written.