Pen. Paper. Keyboard. Monitor. Dammit, I knew I forgot something. . . Plot.

[digitaldiscipline]

As is typical of my increasingly-infrequent self-improvement kicks, I'm cataloging the ideas in my buffer that might make decent stories, and have once again run up against the ever-present realization that, while I can pretty much knock my own socks off in a short scene, stringing anything much more than a couple thousand words into something coherent, much less remaining above an internal waterline of "None of this completely sucks," is somehow eluding me.

What do the other writers among you do in this case? Presented with an idea sans characters or even a distinguishing collection of plot elements, is there a place to start? Do you jump into writing something wholly unrelated in hopes that inspiration will strike? Do you slog in and just try to pull the right words out through brute force?

(I find this lattermost idea to be anathema to me, and it always ends up in my worst writing, because -I- know there's a good idea behind it, horribly disfigured, emaciated, and swathed in buckets of pink Bondo, which I am unable to extricate from the atrocity I first imprisoned it with.)

I either get something right or wrong on the first pass. I cut hair with a machete. I don't seem to have it in me to have any substantial second chances with my writing - it comes from the hip, the gut, the Muse, whatever, for better or worse the first time it's committed to whatever media.

I can only ever write anything once. After it leaves my fingers, it either exists or collapses, but I can't write the same story, or even the same long letter, twice.

Anything over 1000 keystrokes has to breathe on its own, because I can't reassimilate it.

I hate making dead children.

Comments

[missmorte.livejournal.com]

I start with penning romantic letters to cute bois and being penpals with them so they have to do the same. :)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

*checks inbox*

[/subtle hint]

Hehe.

I wonder if being chattier in email or wherver would carry over into my fiction. It really doesn't have much anything to do with the stuff I normally correspond regarding, for the most part (damn surreal dystopian futuristic wibblings!)

Re:

[missmorte.livejournal.com]

I said penning romantic letters, not emailing them.

emailing is fooey for romance, really I think it is.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

not when your handwriting is as bad as mine. . .

"d34r n1c3 gurl. . . . *scribble, scrawl, maybe something that looks like the letter G, or maybe an ampersand. . . *

*sigh*

Glad your new beastie is bringing nice things to your household, btw. . . *s*

Re:

[missmorte.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Hmm well you could type me a letter, but I insist you send it by the postoffice. That's an order mister!

Hmmm, does Rafe 3.0 do html and flash? Because Stasha 2.0 is old and boring, she would like to upgrade but doesn't have the knowledge to do so all by her lonesome.

If you help I won't show that picture of you to everyone... hehe you know the one I have! or wait, do you?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Rafe doesn't do code, other than HTML1.1 (no tables or frames for me), unfortunately.

No, what pic is this you speak of?