[Bunny #4] Post your stucks-

[kalloway]

It happens to all of us. The wall of stuck. The wall of stuck can manifest in a lot of ways. It can come in the form of realizing a plotbunny was really a premise!bunny and there's nowhere for the story to go because there isn't actually much of a story. It can be canon giving a firm backhand. It can be wholly external. It can be a scathing review or even an unintentional comment from a well-meaning friend. It can be an epic decision or a non-epic decision or everything or nothing.

What has gotten you stuck? What has gotten you unstuck?


My stucks are usually... premise bunnies, prompts that seemed interesting at the time, over-excitement and not planning. And character names. I have an entire shelf of baby name books and that makes things worse...

My unstuck methods are all over the place - working on a different section of the story, putting in placeholders for the bits that stuck, making lists of what might be in a character's fridge to get me thinking about them in general, reviewing canon, long walks by the water, imaginary conversation while at the grocery store...

Post your stucks and your unstucks!

If you would like. Perhaps another community member can offer you suggestions to unstick yourself. You do not have to.


This is also a weekly check-in! You do not have to check in, of course, but if you would like to comment on the last week, feel free!

If you have a deadline coming up, you can do it!

Comments

[ldybastet]

Since the start of December my stucks are sex scenes, which is awfully inconvenient for a porn writer. ;) I have 8 or 9 fics that I have started and they are all stuck where the sex scenes begin. I can blame a few of them for being more premise!bunnies than actual *real* bunnies, but the others... Set-up and start of story is fine, including banter and dialogue, and then the heat cranks up and my brain goes cold. ;)

Other times it can be that I'm not actually as clear on a story or scene or plot as I think I am. Maybe I can sum it up nicely in a few sentences, but when I turn my inner eye to it, it's more like a few snapshots than a movie, if that makes sense.

To unstuck the latter, it usually works if I can manage to find out what actually happens in detail in the scene, get the film rolling in my head. Otherwise I have nothing to describe and put into words. But the trick to *do* this varies. What works on one story may not work on another. :(

I've found that traditional Japanese music in the background makes my muses happy and cooperating, also to fill my bed with pillows and lean against them while writing instead of sitting in the living room... If I could find a trick that I could trust to work more often, I'd be happy. As it is, I have to test a hundred different things every time.

Check-in: one story is in beta! It ended up longer than a lot of things I've written in ages, so I'm happy with that. other than that, just a few hundred words on a new chapter for my WiP.

(Just wanted to add that I, too, get discouraged when for some reason I get very few comments on something, and I start dissecting everything I wrote and judging it hard. Not very good for creativity.)

[kalloway]

Ahaha, I have one last chapter to edit and post for a fic... except there isn't actually and ending on it yet. It stops midway through a sex scene (well, the story is done, the epilogue of happy rolling around naked is what's left) and has been like that for a year and a half. A couple orgasms and the whole thing would be done, but my brain goes tilt when I look at it.

I think part of my problem is that I've read things like fanficrants and fail-fandomanon too many times where people complain about repetition or word choice in sex scene and because there are no words that make everyone happy, I just sort of stop when I get to that point because I think I'm trying to re-invent the wheel or something.

(Me too. I think it's a universal problem.)

[ldybastet]

LOL I understand exactly what you mean about the brain tilt! I write happily and then the sex scenes comes (no pun intended), and brain grinds into a halt. That's not the kind of grinding I want, though. ;)

Yeah, having read a million of people's personal preferences for sex scenes and their pet peeves and so on is not good. Second-guessing word choices and trying to avoid every other person's peeves is only going to result in insecurity and/or a very boring sex scene. *grin* But yeah, I do that too. I feel like I write the same thing over and over, and then I stop and think about it and I realize that, hey my own sex life is pretty repetitive too! LOL I don't do vastly different things each time, and hanging in the chandelier seems a bit over the top. ;) Are we trying to re-invent sex? LOL

One thing I have found that sometimes works to unstuck these scenes or at least to get more inspiration is to watch porn. :) Best excuse in the world. "It's research!" Hahaha!

Good luck with your fic! May there be happy orgasms!

[kalloway]

I pretty much had to stop reading people's general complaints to feel good about writing again, at one point. Okay, not gonna be everyone's cuppa... I'm okay with that now. But sex scenes are definitely still a bit of a thing.

Now, of course, I want to think up a reason for someone to be hanging in the chandelier. ^^;; And you're very right that sex... really isn't new stuff all the time and that's okay.

Thankee! Good luck with your stuff too!