Need to find some words
Jan. 16th, 2010 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2I have about 2945682 LJ entries floating around in my head. Having trouble getting them down, though.
So anyway, I've been rereading a fic I started writing when I was fourteen. It's a fantasy story. Typical save-the-world stuff, heroine whose world gets turned upside down, etc. I originally wrote it in a set of stenographer's pads, and then eventually rewrote the beginning on a computer (say, 1990, dot-matrix printer and all), and I'm reading the rewritten version (oh god, the original handwritten set would probably set me off writing for life).
It's as awful as expected. Mary Sue heroine with erratic mood swings, some Gary Stu guy showing up, some characters speaking in High Cultured Voices (that are not grammatically correct, snort). Characters step into and out of the story with little to no reasoning for why they would be there, and characters make grand entrances which really don't make sense, and the plot is unfettered by logic. And there's a talking horse who is annoying beyond belief. The characters have an average lifespan of a thousand years, which is stupid and just another example of how I couldn't let them get hurt. I can see my trademark Stick In This Extra Detail And Maybe It Will Be Useful Later device, but unfortunately, the detail is large and unwieldy and really really clichéd. I can also see my penchant for Extreme Melodrama Piled On Top Of Angst.
It was an interesting experience to reread it. Over the last twenty years I've changed the story into my head, turning it into something entirely different, little by little, and some of the old stuff is now wholly unrecognizeable. In fact, while I was rereading it, a character says that he's from a certain city, and in my head I was thinking, "You've got the name wrong," lol!
Still, I love the characters and the country, and the story I have in my head now is much more intriguing (not that it took much to be more intriguing than this half-baked mess). I've been taking notes and I hope to make it into something else. Reading the old version was quite a trip into the past, though.
On a strange side note, I remember going on a date with a guy while I was in the rewriting phase, and he read the story, and was ridiculously enthusiastic about it. Like, over-the-top with glowing praise about how lovely it was and how fantastic it was and how he wanted to read more. I think he must have just wanted to get into my pants.
So anyway, I've been rereading a fic I started writing when I was fourteen. It's a fantasy story. Typical save-the-world stuff, heroine whose world gets turned upside down, etc. I originally wrote it in a set of stenographer's pads, and then eventually rewrote the beginning on a computer (say, 1990, dot-matrix printer and all), and I'm reading the rewritten version (oh god, the original handwritten set would probably set me off writing for life).
It's as awful as expected. Mary Sue heroine with erratic mood swings, some Gary Stu guy showing up, some characters speaking in High Cultured Voices (that are not grammatically correct, snort). Characters step into and out of the story with little to no reasoning for why they would be there, and characters make grand entrances which really don't make sense, and the plot is unfettered by logic. And there's a talking horse who is annoying beyond belief. The characters have an average lifespan of a thousand years, which is stupid and just another example of how I couldn't let them get hurt. I can see my trademark Stick In This Extra Detail And Maybe It Will Be Useful Later device, but unfortunately, the detail is large and unwieldy and really really clichéd. I can also see my penchant for Extreme Melodrama Piled On Top Of Angst.
It was an interesting experience to reread it. Over the last twenty years I've changed the story into my head, turning it into something entirely different, little by little, and some of the old stuff is now wholly unrecognizeable. In fact, while I was rereading it, a character says that he's from a certain city, and in my head I was thinking, "You've got the name wrong," lol!
Still, I love the characters and the country, and the story I have in my head now is much more intriguing (not that it took much to be more intriguing than this half-baked mess). I've been taking notes and I hope to make it into something else. Reading the old version was quite a trip into the past, though.
On a strange side note, I remember going on a date with a guy while I was in the rewriting phase, and he read the story, and was ridiculously enthusiastic about it. Like, over-the-top with glowing praise about how lovely it was and how fantastic it was and how he wanted to read more. I think he must have just wanted to get into my pants.