(no subject)

[nny]

I've been thinking about the way I write.

I have reasonable success with drabbles, and ficlets... it would appear that around 1000 words is my limit, and I find this endlessly frustrating. There are a ridiculous number of ideas, snippets and random lines scattered on disks and pieces of paper around my flat.

I think the problem is my lack of attenetion span. I come up with an idea, and I want written, down on paper, done. When you add in my procrastination... I write short pieces that can reasonably intense and affecting on occasion; though I'm unsure of the success of some because I become imaptient even with *them*. I use images or phrases that are too tied to one particularly (for me) affecting image within the film or book, and do little to anchor that in some kind of plot. I become too elliptical.

Anything longer always seems to become stagnant. I think, sometimes, that this is a fault of perspective rather than quality- coming back to them later, they often seem reasonable pieces and I wonder why it was I left them in the first place.

Strangely, the only vaguely recent story that *hasn't* suffered this problem is a piece of piratefic. (No, not *Pirates* fic, piratefic. It's probably best you don't know the fandom...) That one is well into the seventh chapter, and though I haven't been working on it with any regularity it can be picked up and added to whenever I feel in the mood.

Perhaps it's the narrative "voice" I used. Unusually for me, it's in the first person, and as it's a historical piece of fiction the narrator is far more formal and mannered than characters in HP would generally be, for instance. (Unless fanon Snape was *very* pissed off.) For one reason or another, this 'politic, cautious and meticulous' voice moves the story on far better than anything that sounds remotely like my voice. Yet it's not a suitable voice to carry any of my other fics, and it would be ridiculous to attempt to adapt it so.

Perhaps it is because it is so different to my usual voice. I wasn't particularly prolific in the X-Files fandom, but more prolific than in this. Maybe it's because I was more able to get inside the character's head, because they spoke in an American accent, an American cadence (or, at least, that was my intention). The voice they spoke with in my head was easy to distinguish from the voice I think with, and therefore I could lose myself in it with more ease.

Perhaps this is the wrong fandom for me.

I sincerely hope not.

Does anyone else find this problem? Do you have any advice on how to overcome it? Is the choice of narrative voice always a clear cut one, or do you need to approach from a few angles before it clicks?

Comments

[r-becca.livejournal.com]

I do have that problem a lot, actually.

My one longer fic that I'm particularly proud of is sort of a strng of small scenes, conversations, flashbacks, etc. It's not just the normal, straightforward narrative that you have in the HP books, for example. So that was a good way to use my handicap to my own advantage, and people seem to like that style...

I've been trying to write a series of small ficlets/drabbles but that's not working out too well. I think posting them as I go along was not the right decision because I definitely lost focus if I ever had it in the first place.