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Writing original ficlet now.
Selkies.
Yes.
That is all.
Wait, no it's not.
Ever get a little way into a first person narrative and then you realize that the narrator is not the gender you thought they were? (Or age, culture, whatever) and it's a jolt.
I'm writing from the POV of a selkie (because the myths are always from human POV, aren't they) and I got most of a page of single-spaced, fairly dense type written before I realized that I wasn't sure what gender my narrator was.
And that I'd better figure it out before I got too much further, because although it might be cool to try and keep it ambiguous for the whole story (and I very likely could do that) I also have enough experience as a reader to know that if I were reading it, it would annoy the hell out of me.
Selkies, for those not into semi-obscure mythological beings, are seal-people who can become human and if you steal one's sealskin and hide it then they are trapped on land and there are multiple legends of them staying for years, often marrying and having children, but they can't forget the sea and keep searching for their skin and when they find it they always disappear back into the ocean. There are slightly more legends about females than males, but both exist.
Also, more in general: plot vs. character issues. Plot and character are pretty universally the two biggest components of fiction writing, and different people put different degrees of emphasis on them. I consider myself a plot-oriented person. I can automatically tell if a story hangs together logically, or if the plot is thin contrivances for the romantic (or character angst, etc) development, and the latter annoys me immensely and will generally throw me out of a story. On the other hand, JKR kind of sucks at writing romance but you know what? I sighed impatiently when I read the romance bits but HBP was such a great book, plot-wise, that I loved it anyway. Fandom in general -- perhaps everyone in general -- tends to be more interested in romance (on average) than me, and ok, to each his own. There's plenty of good stuff out there anyways, and I can learn to appreciate the romance too. But it is not something I naturally tend towards, and I (especially before fandom corrupted me) tended to miss even the anvil-sized hints that it is about to occur in a text.
So given all this about my reading preferences, why do I keep writing all this psychological character study stuff? It is not at all what I would have predicted I would be writing.
Maybe it's so fascinating to me precisely because I don't have a very intuitive understanding of it. So I spend time trying to puzzle it out, and then when I do come to any conclusions they are so novel and shiny to me that I am inspired to write them down.
Or perhaps my perspective is screwed in the first place and all writing is primarily about the characters and secondarily about the plot and maybe thirdly about the setting and so on, and my circuitous attempts to thwart this kind of thinking are hopeless and doomed from the start.
I'm in a writing mood lately, it appears. Have been posting a spate of comments when normally I hardly post any, and posting in my journal and writing fic type stuff and why aren't I writing any of the things I need to write for school in that case? *headdesk* I think it's related.
Selkies.
Yes.
That is all.
Wait, no it's not.
Ever get a little way into a first person narrative and then you realize that the narrator is not the gender you thought they were? (Or age, culture, whatever) and it's a jolt.
I'm writing from the POV of a selkie (because the myths are always from human POV, aren't they) and I got most of a page of single-spaced, fairly dense type written before I realized that I wasn't sure what gender my narrator was.
And that I'd better figure it out before I got too much further, because although it might be cool to try and keep it ambiguous for the whole story (and I very likely could do that) I also have enough experience as a reader to know that if I were reading it, it would annoy the hell out of me.
Selkies, for those not into semi-obscure mythological beings, are seal-people who can become human and if you steal one's sealskin and hide it then they are trapped on land and there are multiple legends of them staying for years, often marrying and having children, but they can't forget the sea and keep searching for their skin and when they find it they always disappear back into the ocean. There are slightly more legends about females than males, but both exist.
Also, more in general: plot vs. character issues. Plot and character are pretty universally the two biggest components of fiction writing, and different people put different degrees of emphasis on them. I consider myself a plot-oriented person. I can automatically tell if a story hangs together logically, or if the plot is thin contrivances for the romantic (or character angst, etc) development, and the latter annoys me immensely and will generally throw me out of a story. On the other hand, JKR kind of sucks at writing romance but you know what? I sighed impatiently when I read the romance bits but HBP was such a great book, plot-wise, that I loved it anyway. Fandom in general -- perhaps everyone in general -- tends to be more interested in romance (on average) than me, and ok, to each his own. There's plenty of good stuff out there anyways, and I can learn to appreciate the romance too. But it is not something I naturally tend towards, and I (especially before fandom corrupted me) tended to miss even the anvil-sized hints that it is about to occur in a text.
So given all this about my reading preferences, why do I keep writing all this psychological character study stuff? It is not at all what I would have predicted I would be writing.
Maybe it's so fascinating to me precisely because I don't have a very intuitive understanding of it. So I spend time trying to puzzle it out, and then when I do come to any conclusions they are so novel and shiny to me that I am inspired to write them down.
Or perhaps my perspective is screwed in the first place and all writing is primarily about the characters and secondarily about the plot and maybe thirdly about the setting and so on, and my circuitous attempts to thwart this kind of thinking are hopeless and doomed from the start.
I'm in a writing mood lately, it appears. Have been posting a spate of comments when normally I hardly post any, and posting in my journal and writing fic type stuff and why aren't I writing any of the things I need to write for school in that case? *headdesk* I think it's related.
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And I'd love to see this when it's done.
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It might be flocked (I haven't decided yet) but I'll definitely post it!
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