[Brainstorming]

[kalloway]

Welcome to the first 2015 Brainstorming Post! Feel free to use this space for any brainstorming needs you may have.

A couple of guidelines for this post--

• Everyone has a different opinion on spoilers and how long they stay spoilers before becoming public knowledge (Rosebud was his sled!) - if you are concerned with spoilers in your comments, feel free to use white-text, bumper comments, or whatever method you prefer.

• Nobody is under any obligation to use any suggestions made in this post or to credit any commenter if their suggestions are used (though perhaps if a long, productive exchange occurs, a short author's note might be nice).

• If you have any concerns with any content in the comments, please feel free to PM me.

(Basically, be good to one another. Happy Brainstorming!)

Comments

[adraekh]

More of a general "halp me, plz, I don't know what I'm doing" post, but ... how the hell do people write slice-of-life stories with some sort of story progression? I more or less write gallons of (AU) slice-of-life fic when classes are in session -- pointless, random drabbles are apparently all my brain can produce during this time period -- but I can never polish them or pull them together enough to make an actual story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Action plot is nearly nonexistent, emotional plot arcs are ... well, they're existent, but they're kind of little dips and rises rather than the typical Freytag's Pyramid, if you get my drift; conflicts in the story come and go with very little fanfare.

And I've never been able to figure out how to make them postable. It's not dire that I make them so, but I wish I could show something for months of apparent writing inactivity. I am writing! It's just not presentable.

[alassenya]

You could always try abandoning plot entirely as a patriarchal construct (/sarcasm) and post them as "Scenes from a [adjective] life". It's done in music when composers have the same problem. And you know, sometimes it's exactly what I want to read rather than a huge sprawling angst-ridden saga.

Edit: Sort of like petits fours -- those tiny little iced cakes the French have for afternoon tea. They have no substance and you couldn't eat a lot of them but sometimes they are just what the palate craves.

[wordstitch]

I agree with the other two commenters.

If you can order them chronologically or group them by theme, you could maybe write a small thing at the beginning or the end commenting on the theme, or on the transience of life or something like that? But you can definitely post them as a series of interrelated things either way.