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Nailing Down Snakes
Oct. 8th, 2007 11:19 pmUnlike a lot of the rest of fandom, I’ve never personally picked up much attachment to the whole ‘plot bunnies’ way of talking about ideas. However, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaseroque and I have come up with our own fun little writing analogy which we’re quite proud of, and which I wanted to share in the vague hope of getting others to try it out.
This all began at a writing panel at a Swancon a few years back, where one of the panellists (Paul Kid, a sort of minor local BNF, and generally good value at those sort of panels) commented that he felt writing a story was a bit like nailing down a snake. He suggested that a good approach was to get the head and the tail nailed down first (the start and the end, so to speak), and then you’ve just got this angry mass whiplashing back and forth in the middle to be pinned down in some shape or other as best you can (with running commentary to the effect of “wait, how did he get over there?” and “no that character isn’t gay!” to demonstrate just how much trouble that part can cause XD). As analogies for the writing process went it worked entertainingly well. We liked it, anyway.
We’ve been bringing it up now and then ever since, but it pretty much stayed in that format until late last year when, while stuck in the middle of a seething mass of WIPs, I commented tojaseroque that my own approach to writing had become something rather more like aiming a nail gun into a box of snakes while blindfolded. I never knew what I was going to hit. If I was lucky, I’d hit the same one enough times that it’d be worth getting out the hammer and going down there to get the rest of it nailed into some kind of shape. However, there was still the danger that one of the others would come along and bite me while I was doing it, so I’d have to go and nail that one down just to keep it out of the way – and you can see where this is going. Before long, I’d be lucky if I could even remember where I’d been nailing the first one down to begin with.
( From there, the metaphor has... gone a bit feral. And possibly developed teeth. )
So, how do you all go about nailing down your snakes? ^_~
jaseroque and I have come up with our own fun little writing analogy which we’re quite proud of, and which I wanted to share in the vague hope of getting others to try it out.This all began at a writing panel at a Swancon a few years back, where one of the panellists (Paul Kid, a sort of minor local BNF, and generally good value at those sort of panels) commented that he felt writing a story was a bit like nailing down a snake. He suggested that a good approach was to get the head and the tail nailed down first (the start and the end, so to speak), and then you’ve just got this angry mass whiplashing back and forth in the middle to be pinned down in some shape or other as best you can (with running commentary to the effect of “wait, how did he get over there?” and “no that character isn’t gay!” to demonstrate just how much trouble that part can cause XD). As analogies for the writing process went it worked entertainingly well. We liked it, anyway.
We’ve been bringing it up now and then ever since, but it pretty much stayed in that format until late last year when, while stuck in the middle of a seething mass of WIPs, I commented to
jaseroque that my own approach to writing had become something rather more like aiming a nail gun into a box of snakes while blindfolded. I never knew what I was going to hit. If I was lucky, I’d hit the same one enough times that it’d be worth getting out the hammer and going down there to get the rest of it nailed into some kind of shape. However, there was still the danger that one of the others would come along and bite me while I was doing it, so I’d have to go and nail that one down just to keep it out of the way – and you can see where this is going. Before long, I’d be lucky if I could even remember where I’d been nailing the first one down to begin with.( From there, the metaphor has... gone a bit feral. And possibly developed teeth. )
So, how do you all go about nailing down your snakes? ^_~