Here's some more progress on the stuff I've been posting in here. An evolving essay, by Vehk!

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Road weary and bleary-eyed I pull off of the state highway at a rest stop somewhere west of Rexburg, in the high sagebrush desert. I park in the dimmest spot I can find, force the driver’s seat into a reclining position, and pull out my sleeping bag, greasy with sweat and farts and near non-stop use. It is 1 A.M. and I have been up for 18 hours—going through some kind of hell just to make Fourth of July in Missoula.


I’ve been aching to get the hell out of Wyoming, land of the sun-baked skull, the suicidal jackrabbit, the sulfur stinking oil well, and the starvation-crazed mosquito. The land where the government-issued Chevy Suburban conks out sixty miles short of Lander on Friday the [censored] third of July, when all are desperate to be anywhere but stuck on South Pass watching cheat grass cure in the sun as traffic blasts by.

No cell phone coverage, of course, so I flag down a passing motorist. Somewhere down the road she will call in a tow truck from town.

I’m three hours late getting out of Lander. What does that mean? It means, even in the deliriously long days of summer, that I will reach Jackson well after dark. Jackson is only real population center on this night’s itinerary (in these parts a permanent population of 9000 is plenty big) and my route leaves me no choice but drive right through the heart of a tourist town in high vacation season. Complicating this trouble is the fact that I’ve never before been to Jackson—I don’t know the streets.

But all that comes later. Out of Lander—what a relief!—I can crank the stereo in my own (reliable) automobile and cruise along at a safe and sane (and blessedly legal) 65 through the western reach of the Wind River reservation, ogling the odd ranch and the more exotic of the billboards, which almost exclusively advertise for trading posts of some ilk. There is one place in Fort Washakie, “Ancient Ways” that makes me think of my friend in Tucson, the one who wants to start his own tribe—never mind that he’s already part Apache. But—like most drivers’ glimpses of these tiny reservation towns—the thought is fleeting. It is difficult to draw out a memory and focus on it, grasp it, when the ever-varying landscape and the golden light of late afternoon assault and entice the eyes with vision after vision. The hills are the color of honey—it hasn’t rained in two weeks—and the high peaks of the west all bear crowns of snow.

Somewhere past Crowheart (population: gas station) the highway descends to the level of the Wind River, winding its way through a red rock canyon reminiscent of Utah. Lovely. The river leads me on to Dubois (population: 991) and beyond, to the high country of Togwotee Pass and the Wind River range, Wyoming’s tallest mountains—more than forty named 13,000 foot peaks. The pass itself rises to nearly 10,000 feet, and when I emerge from my shell of GM metal and plastic to walk on my own two legs, feed some mosquitoes, and piss, the air is marvelously cool, an ecstasy utterly denied in my last few weeks of wading through the shadeless sagebrush desert counting cheat grass and Russian thistle.

Sunset is drawing near. Even as the highway descends the pass and grows ever more curvaceous I find it difficult to stay focused on the drive. I am presented with the precipitous eastern front of the Teton Range, the iconic Grand Teton (or, simply, The Grand) framed by the wall of subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce on either side of the road. An incurable shutterbug, I am tempted to pull over onto the scant shoulder and set up my tripod in the middle the road—the framing is that good. An insane notion surely—the road is nearly empty but not nearly that empty. After a brief period of agitation—my incurable itch to capture the moment—I pass a combination gas station and RV mega-campground and traffic starts to pick up. The sun flares out in a final explosion of salmon, fuchsia, and orange-hued light as I approach the outer limits of Grand Teton National Park. My pleasant high country jaunt is over.

Night falls. At Moran Junction I turn south onto U.S. 191, thereby avoiding a trip through Yellowstone National Park, its motorized hordes, and its entrance fees. At this point it less than 50 miles to Jackson and I am eager to get there. I’m not particularly in a hurry—whether the drive to Missoula takes nine or ten hours doesn’t really matter much in the scheme of things—but I passed on dinner in Lander. I’m hungry.

There is plenty of meat on the hoof. There are bison, elk, and moose roaming the benchlands above the Snake River and I spend much of the drive through the park in dread, cursing my feeble headlights and the blinding on-coming traffic, waiting for some equally agitated ungulate to step out in front of my car. Thankfully it only happens twice—one moose, one elk—and I am able to slow down in time to avert disaster.

This post has been edited by canis216: Nov 29 2008, 04:56 AM

Right now I'm doing something that I've never really done before - write "ahead" in the story. I did it for the epilogue of The Interim, but that isn't as large as the section I'm doing right now.

Like much of the spare-time writing I'm doing right now, it's dedicated to that big, ambitious mega-story that I keep talking about but may or may not see the light of day. And I think it's a damn good segment. The problem is, how am I going to set it up?

I have a vague idea of how to proceed, but I want to put as much work and research into it as I can so I make it the best it can be, and avoid any horrible lore faux pas.

Not really much point to this post, I just felt like making it.

Well this took some finding (why is it in Treydog's section?).

Here's a quandry I've been considering for a while and which doesn't seem to have been mentioned here. What is the ideal length for posting a section of story? Of course it will vary from story to story and from part to part but as a ballpark figure i have no idea. Looking through the fanfic section here I've seen posts of well under 1000 right up to nearly 3000 words in multipart epics. Too long and readers will shy away at the thought of 'reading all that right now' and decide to come back later (and never get round to it), too short and its a bit unsatisfying.

I like to write my stories up before I post them so I can do a 1.5 draft (2nd draft is a bit too grand for just reading through and taking kinks from the story line and deleting a few unessesary scenes) before I put it up. So its not even just how much I wrote that session, and as I'm coming to the end of one and beginning to think about formatting it into a postable form I thought I'd ask. What sort of post length and frequency is best?


EDIT: I'm claiming this isn't threadromancy because this thread still deserves daylight and deals with this topic so another's not needed

This post has been edited by Olen: Sep 14 2009, 11:41 PM

As to the first- I guess because I originated it... and there kind of isn't a place for "meta-topic" threads. [shrug]

As to length, I tend to shoot for around 1000 to 1500 words per post. That isn't an especially rigid rule- just what seems "comfortable" to me. And, as I tend to think of my stories as "serial novels," that allows for the dreaded cliff-rac..., um cliff-hanger endings. In truth, like a lot of what I have done, it was rather more accidental than calculated... I tend to run out of steam after 3 or 4 pages and need to sit back and consider. I try to have a few installments prepared in advance, but that doesn't always happen.

In more general terms- "there aren't any rules in a knife fight!" My feeling is that the writer should find a "good stopping place." For some, it is a whole chapter- for others, 500-600 words. Ideally, a post should move the story forward, yet be digestable. Early on, I tried to post every day; in retrospect, probably not a good idea. Esp. as comments seem to have gotten kind of sparse, a schedule of once every 2 or 3 days or maybe even a longer interval might be better.

Regardless, I will anticipate reading your work with great pleasure.

I don't shoot for any fixed number. I just find a good stopping point, and then I stop. I like Trey's thinking about "serial novels", except I'm just about the opposite when it comes to cliff hangers. I like to think that it makes the cliff hangers I do use a little more powerful than they otherwise would be, since there are generally few of them. This was especially true, I think, when I first started writing about Always-He-Lingers-in-the-Sun, my argonian assassin. The series started as one-shots in the Temple of Lore, and many of the subsequent updates tell one story--the stalking and killing of one person or set of persons.

For the forum I tend to write my stories in one burst, with very little editing. In this sense I am coasting on talent--relying on my ability to spin an interesting yarn in interesting language on the fly, while making very few mistakes. (This is also how I went through most of college--I'm basically a slacker, I just happen to be a talented slacker.) As I get older I edit more, take more care, but often times the stuff I labor over lacks the vitality of some of my more hurried work. It's an odd balance--spontaneity v. polish.

It depends on how you feel really. I'd say around 1500-2000 words is a good number - you want something substantial enough to entertain the reader, but not so big so it scares people away. I suppose it also kinds of depends what forum you're on. On one site I had to post it in 500-a-piece chapters cos' over that ran onto two pages!

Still, it's up to you and wherever you feel comfortable, but make sure you can still pick up where you've left off at the end.

Seeing as we have so many new members I thought I might wave the staff of threadromancy and resurrect this one because it's a good thread (and was still at the top of Trey's forum anyway).

I must say I think it would be better placed in the main fanfic forum to be honest, possibly even stickied (or something in a similar vein to it created).

Anyway those who haven't posted here, any interesting bits of writing process?

Looking back over some of the comments, I find I have come to the same conclusion as the dog and Illydoor on post length and frequency.

When I write, I do it a chapter at a time, and let them become as long as they need to be. I do not care about the length then, just that I convey the things I need to. When I go to post however, it is a different story. I try to stick to that length of 1-2k words per post when I can so as to not overwhelm the reader with a wall of text. So I only post one or two scenes of a chapter at at time to keep the posts in that range. Or I break in the middle of scene if there is a good place. Sometimes they run longer if there is just no good spot to do that. I do not want to lose the power of a scene just to keep it under 2k words.

I also try to space out my posts by at least two days apart, so there is time for people to come across each post and read it before the next one. Since any given chapter might be 2, 3, or more posts (my biggest was 6) it also gives me time to start writing the next chapter while I am still posting the previous one.

When it comes to drafts, I typically do four to five drafts. The first draft is the first write through of the chapter from end to end, and takes me several days, sometimes as much as a week, depending on how large the chapter is. I typically write only about 2-3k words a day. It all depends on how inspired I am and how much time I have to waste invest in it. At 15k words, Through A Nightmare Darkly took me a full week to do the first draft. I suspect that compared to some people I am a slow writer. But I also spend a lot of time and effort trying to get the first draft as best as I can. So I will spend five minutes looking for synonyms for a single word rather than leaving that for a later draft.

After that the following drafts are easier. I go through the chapter from end to end again and look for things like continuity and grammar errors. I only do one draft a day, otherwise I miss things. I need fresh eyes to catch little things. I also compare it to my outline to make sure I did not miss any points I wanted to touch on. The 2nd and 3rd drafts typically need the most fixing. After that the 4th draft is usually just nitpicking over word choice and sentence structure. If I can still stand to look at it, the 5th draft is the same.

Speaking of outlines, I do keep an outline, which is often well over six months in advance of my writing. I put down each chapter I have planned, and all of its key events. Typically an outline entry for a chapter is only two or three paragraphs, although some can be much longer. I am not an absolute slave to the outline though. Often when I am writing things come out spontaneously that I add in, or take out. Or I might find a different direction I want to take things. In these cases I just go with the flow, as I have learned to trust my intuition (it always knows better than my conscious mind). Here is an example of an outline entry for an 8,000 word chapter:



Something to note is that the finished version did not contain the part about Pappy recommending the inns, as the natural flow of conversation never got there (Teresa was too busy storming out in tears instead). There is also an very large scene I added to the chapter that is not really in the outline, starting it out.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Mar 20 2010, 01:08 AM

Yep, agreed.

Eh, outlines, notes, drafts; I have no need for such things. Granted, my writes would probably be better if I used them, but I can't get into them. I am a very chaotic writer. Heck, I'll change a chapter's entire events half-way through to fit with my newest vision of where the stories going.

I rarely write anything down (except the story of course!), and prefere to keep it all in my mind where it can warp and change to suit whatever need I have.

Here's a question: how much research do you do when you're writing TES fiction? I must confess to being something of a lore buff (though not a lore-khan), and like to try to maintain a fair continuity with the known history, geography, and anthropology of Tamriel. I also like to drop the odd Easter egg from the canonical literature.

For example, I am currently using this as a reference. And Julianos knows I like to peruse the TES cartography section.

The best piece of advice that I have ever been given on the mystery of the writing process is to first ignore all of the people who equate the act of writing fiction to the building of a house. Notes, outlines, and character sheets are not blueprints; they are studies, they are rehearsal.

Writing fiction is an act of artistic expression; One that is, hopefully, done for the benefit of an audience. And like singing, or acting, or dancing, or playing an instrument, good fiction should be looked upon as a performance. Read any page of the collected works of Charles Dickens, or Jane Austen, or Mark Twain and you can sense that these great writers consider themselves on stage for the amount of time that they are able to hold your attention. All writers possess a bit of the ham, it is why we do what we do. Embrace that aspect of your personality. Write with abandon!

Check this out:



Tell me that Dickens isn’t showing off! He could have just said it was a foggy night; he could have left the fog on the Essex Marshes and the Kentish Heights. But then we wouldn’t still be talking about him.

So whether you use an outline or not, whether you research heavily or let things fall where they may. There will always be a place for writing that engages the audience the way any good performance piece should. Remember, someone else transcribed Homer into prose. Early audiences heard the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Sorry, got a little off the point of the thread. But, as I said when I introduced myself, I am obsessed with writing and I could talk about it all day.

@Canis216- I try to be "consistent" with the Lore, although I do not research it, and rarely reference it in my work. I do follow the Construction Set closely, and try not to "break" the game too much. That is easier for me, with a narrowly-focused, first person narrative. When I attempt to add "historical touches" they are usually personal rather than global- see for example the story of the hunting party told around the fire.

@Destri- Could not agree more. The only way to be a writer is to write. The only way to find your own style as a writer is to write a lot. And a lot of it will be- ah, not good- in the beginning. But fiction (and even a fair amount of non-fiction) is very much a performance. The "fun" part is finding that balance between completely immersing the reader versus seeming to be obviously saying, "Gee Mom, look how good I'm writing!"

Yes, I love talking about writing or reading or reading about writing or writing about reading....

Since my fc isn't exactly based on the most lore-heavy game, I find myself having to go the IL quite often. Whether it's researcing an et'ada, finding out as much as I can about the Balac-Thurm, ect ect.

I love the Easter Eggs too, and I noticed them in your story in the asides (hilarious way you present them!)

I love to take the Lore and incorporate it, and sometimes (cough, cough) use it to twist a story through, or twist through a story. I spend a lot of time digging in Lore when I write to make sure I am touching on it correctly, but try and put my own spin on it. The facts are there, but the content is always open for interpretation, lol.

Lore is an interesting one. For the basic concept and arc of a story I ignore it (well I don't research so just rely on what I know) becasue my mind is on other things. When it comes to fleshing out on the other hand I read everything I can find. I'm not sure I'd write a story in a very lore heavy setting though just because of the constraints. Like I considered writing something around the time of the battle of Red Mountain but decided against it on the grounds that I'd be forever tiptoeing rounds and stumbing over the lore around it.

With setting like the story I'm currently posting this is less of an issue. A look at the imperial library's map section told me about terrain but beyond that the local culture is about the only defined thing, and that's only so set anyway. Another thing I do is spend time looking at the concept art and screenshots of both cannon and tamriel-rebuilt in an attempt to make my descritpions of places feel like they should.

So I'd say I try to be lore compatable without particularly paying it more attention than that and deliberately avoiding lore heavy areas. As far as writing around a game goes (I have a few thousand words of that somewhere on the harddrive but it's no where near ready to be made yet) I largly ignore the game. I've played them enough to know the places and, though I look at maps and keep names, if it suits that a character is a little different than in game (especially if they're too wishy-washy) then they find themselves changed to suit. I like to deal in what might have been and so take things off in a different direction than the game quests go.

Be like a method actor. Take a while, and actually think how one of your characters would. Throw some of your own experiences in there, too. Don't logically make hypothetical situations, ie: 'what would [insert character's name] do?' Make it so that you can barely tell the difference between your own thoughts and your character's.

Don't think about how your characters think, think as your characters.

It's hard to explain, but when I write anything, whether it's lyrics to a song or a TES fanfic, I take on a new frame of mind on purpose. If I'm writing a sad song, for example, I'll take some time to look at all the bad things going on around me, really focus on them for a while, amplify them a billion-fold, and eventually I'll have the perfect depressing mindset for some sad lyrics. It sounds weird, but you can really play with your own head, just make sure you can re-balance yourself later.

Put yourself in similar situations as your characters. Writing about Suzie who's starving in the desert? Don't eat all day and see how you feel. Describe it. Stomach making noises? Muscles feeling weak? Describe it.

Another thing is to 'steal' techniques from writers you like. For example I really like Cormac McCarthy, so there are a few things I do to recreate what I like about his style: I use few words, but try to pick very strong ones. I use short, choppy sentences that move quickly, but leave impact. I learned to leave out a lot of narrative sections and simply use the characters' own dialogue to tell the reader what I want them to know. I write nothing like Cormac McCarthy, I simply took something that I saw and liked in his books and tried to learn from it.

Awesome ideas!

@ Verlox - I don't know if it would improve your writing or not, how do you improve on perfection? I think sometimes a framework takes the life out of something, the spontaneous feel.

Example: Destri's writing in Interregnum: the reader is drawn, pulled in - it comes to life and grabs you and holds you - I don't know if someone could come across with that kind of inspired writing in a rigid framework, but I could be wrong.

I think it was Picasso who said something to the effect of, "Good artists imitate, great artists steal." I personally like to crib from the writing of Edward Abbey and Tony Hillerman, and also from film (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon--especially the desert scenes and the music--is an influence). If you like it, use it. Do it long enough and well enough and it becomes yours.

And yes, one of my favorite things about lore is being able to riff off of it for humor. I once stole a line from Henry David Thoreau (via Abbey's own riff on his work) and then mixed in a lore reference to what I thought was great effect.



So yeah, I can't say that I rely on lore as a plot device or anything, but it adds depth to the world, and well-placed references to it act to place my characters within that world. With Al I think this is useful because his mindset is fundamentally skeptical and modern. I don't want him to seem too disconnected from Tamrielic culture.

hmm looks like I'm a little late to the party

I usually keep a notebook with me all day, record things I see, funny things I've heard and it works pretty well.

I often work on two word documents at a time, I write the first part and then the one after that, then I review the first and edit it, do the same with the second before going over the first again a third time.
It probably sounds a little to complicated but I find that it works pretty well.

Paying attention to the surrondings is pretty important to me, I often spend a while just creating the scenery/ setting before the actual story. (which many a english teacher has tried to correct me on in the past )

I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to the lore, whenever I'm writing I always have the imperial library and uesp wiki up as seperate windows. Just so I won't accidently piss off user ELDERSCROLLZFAN4LIFE6188!! who will hunt me down for saying that vivec had children xP

so yeah.... that's my 2 cents