# This is how I do it -- how do you do it?



## Big Beautiful Dreamer (Apr 8, 2010)

... write stories, of course, what did you think I meant? Tsk.

My most recent fiction, "She's Beck," unfolded in such a way as to give me a prime platform for carrying on .... as if anyone cared ... about what happens when I let characters out to play. I'd love to hear from other contributors about what happens in their little worlds.

* * *

This story ("She's Beck") is actually a good example of how stories (sometimes) develop for me. 

It started with the germ of an idea: protagonist's eating habits change because the makeup of the household changes. "While the cat's away," etc.

So I got someone out of the house.

Alex then surprised me by how he found his responses to Beck being gone evolving over time.

I planned to have Beck come back for the scale -- thereby providing a chance for them to encounter each other again, and for both Beck and Alex to recognize and respond to Alex's gain.

Surprised the heck out of me when it turned out that Beck's new boyfriend Andrew was emotionally abusive.

Naturally, that changed the way I spun the tale.

Surprised me again that Andrew was a meth dealer. I did want to get him out of the picture, but it really surprised me the way it happened.

And it surprised and pleased me to see the uptight Rebecca blossoming into the luscious Beck. 

This happens a lot. Often once I create the characters and put them on the playground, what happens next is unexpected. I've learned to go with the flow. If later, upon rereading and editing, I'm not happy with a direction, it's simple to rework or discard.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 8, 2010)

sometimes i have it all mapped out what will happen to certain characters or what they will do when certain things happen, and other times i set out one way and then change it. 

an example i can show to the latter is Alexander in Getting Round At The Track, after one race i have him getting drunk with Ashley, but by chapter 10 or so, it is revealed that he is a recovering alcoholic. (something nobody here has called me on) that is one way of how i set out one way but change the direction.


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## elroycohen (Apr 9, 2010)

Big Beautiful Dreamer said:


> ... write stories, of course, what did you think I meant? Tsk.
> 
> My most recent fiction, "She's Beck," unfolded in such a way as to give me a prime platform for carrying on .... as if anyone cared ... about what happens when I let characters out to play. I'd love to hear from other contributors about what happens in their little worlds.



Well I can do it more then one way.:blush:

Usually something always changes once I start to get a feel for the characters. Once they start to gain more personality there are things that I think they should be doing or ways they should be acting that doesn’t always jive with the general layout I had for the story. Most times that means some rewriting and longer stories, but I usually go with it since I’d rather have character depth, when I can, then stay true to my outline. 

There have been a few times I’ve had an idea and even after I put names to the characters and started writing it out, I ended up staying true to the initial idea. Usually that’s when the story idea centered around an ending.


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## tankgirl (Apr 10, 2010)

All of the above. The novel I'm writing is like what BBD said up there- the characters just kinda come out and play. Sometimes I get into my stories for here and that happens.
Sometimes, like most of the stuff I have here, I have an idea and have to put a beginning, proper middle, and end to it to put it up here. But then, I have other ideas, and have to go back and rewrite; or go back and add bits so later parts make sense...
And sometimes, yeah, I get an ending, then I have to write the rest of it so it makes sense when we get there.
Or many things. It all depends on who's talking- the characters or my muses or both at the same time.


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## maltesefalcon (Apr 12, 2010)

I usually have a very rough thread started then fill it out as I go along.
As above I usaully write the end very soon in the process.
I finish the plot, then go back and add descriptions and fill out the conversations, adding secondary characters as needed.

My stories tend to be long and complicated so I use a secondary spread sheet to get the timeline and weight gain sequences to flow smoothly.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 12, 2010)

maltesefalcon said:


> I usually have a very rough thread started then fill it out as I go along.
> As above I usaully write the end very soon in the process.
> I finish the plot, then go back and add descriptions and fill out the conversations, adding secondary characters as needed.
> 
> My stories tend to be long and complicated so I use a secondary spread sheet to get the timeline and weight gain sequences to flow smoothly.



i've also tried to plan the end before i write a story, and i have like a 50% success rate when doing that. only two story's have come out the way i'd planed them two before i started writing them. 

I have planed out how i want my current story to end, however with the way i'm writing my current chapter, i see a possibly new way to end it based on what i have happening right now. Or i could have an alternative ending to my story, it all depends on a few factors though. i should though have a better outlook after the next two chapters.


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## Tad (Apr 13, 2010)

Occasionally a quite short story, usually almost more of an extended scene, comes to me, and I write it all in one fevered rush, usually to never go back and edit it properly after the fact.

More often I have an idea for characters and a setting and a complication, and start writing......and never finish. I seem to be good at writing the first part of a story, but have trouble with the second, and almost totally fail at the third. (Of the stories that I've completed, I think the endings are weak on all of them).

I once picked up the complete works of Lewis Carrol off a sale rack. We all know the two Alice stories, and you may have heard of his extended poem "The Hunting of the Snark." He also attempted another story, called Bruno and Sylvie, IIRC. Attempted I say, because it wanders on and on, through various scenes, really getting ever less coherent and cohesive, full of flashes of great writing but ultimately failing to ever become a story. 

Some of the stories that I've tried to push the farthest I've eventually given up on, realizing that they were getting what I now think of as "Bruno and Sylvie" syndrome. Others have stayed in stasis near the end of the beginning, as I've not wanted to stumble into the same morass, but I've never found a clearer structure to safely guide the story through. For whatever reason, as I've gotten older I've found this problem getting worse and worse (I can't actually remember the last time I completed a story).

Well, I guess this was more about "How I don't manage to do it" than "how I do it." Sorry about that :doh:


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## maltesefalcon (Apr 13, 2010)

Mac5689 said:


> i've also tried to plan the end before i write a story, and i have like a 50% success rate when doing that. only two story's have come out the way i'd planed them two before i started writing them.
> 
> I have planed out how i want my current story to end, however with the way i'm writing my current chapter, i see a possibly new way to end it based on what i have happening right now. Or i could have an alternative ending to my story, it all depends on a few factors though. i should though have a better outlook after the next two chapters.



I think most people do have the ending at least planned whether it is actually written or not. Those that don't...

Well...let's just say there are a lot of unfinished stories on this site!


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## Big Beautiful Dreamer (Apr 13, 2010)

Often I tend to get hooked on my characters. Once I've started them going, they'll nag at me, usually, until I get them at least to a place that I can live with. They're naggy little creatures.


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## elroycohen (Apr 13, 2010)

maltesefalcon said:


> I think most people do have the ending at least planned whether it is actually written or not. Those that don't...
> 
> Well...let's just say there are a lot of unfinished stories on this site!



To be honest I don't plan my endings a lot more then I plan them. I find that if I get too locked into a destination the overall journey ends up lacking. I have a loose target of where I want to be, but it usually shifts a couple times before I get there.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 13, 2010)

maltesefalcon said:


> I think most people do have the ending at least planned whether it is actually written or not. Those that don't...
> 
> Well...let's just say there are a lot of unfinished stories on this site!



lucky i have no unfinished stories on the site, though i do have multiple ones that are unfinished, and all but one had a planned ending. 

i have thought at one time of buying a micro cassette to record my ideas or things i'd like to put into, or things that might work in a story, but i never seam to have enough money. (always seam to blow the money on notebooks, paper, pens, or pencils)


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## IrishBard (Apr 16, 2010)

mostly, I figure out events in my sleep. I have ideas for stories in dreams, and then refine them and refine them through subsequent dreams until I have dialogue sorted. then write them, post them, done. 

yeah, my minds weird like that.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 17, 2010)

IrishBard said:


> mostly, I figure out events in my sleep. I have ideas for stories in dreams, and then refine them and refine them through subsequent dreams until I have dialogue sorted. then write them, post them, done.
> 
> yeah, my minds weird like that.



i've had events for a story happen like that for me, also had a poem come to me like that, but unfortunately when i went to write about it the next day i couldn't recall what i had thought of. (the events of a story not the poem)

i don't think anyone would want to know what i was doing when i came up with the idea of having Alexander from Getting Round At The Track, coming from a wealthy family. its also the weirdest place i've ever came up with an idea or event for a story.


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## Swordfish (Apr 20, 2010)

For me, the process of writing a story goes something like this.

I start with a character in my head, or a situation, or a setting, or more usually a blend of all three. With my last story, Eve Enters Paradise, I knew I wanted to deal with a depressed vegetarian who gains weight as she gets happier and rediscovers a wider diet. 

I then usually test-run the idea by writing a potential scene from the story, some key moment, to see how it feels. Usually it's a scene where the heroine first discovers she's gaining, or where she's told by someone else that she's gaining.

At this point there are important decisions to take, if they haven't been taken already. From what point of view will the story be told? Will it be in the third person, told by an all-seeing anonymous narrator? Will it be in the first person singular, told by the gaining character (always a woman in my stories), or her partner or friend, or even - I guess it would be possible - by a piece of food sitting in her kitchen? Each viewpoint brings its advantages and disadvantages, though the easiest to handle is the third person narrative.
At one point I thought the Eve story might juggle different viewpoints, sometimes quoting from a journal Eve kept, for instance, to bring her experience of gaining closer to the reader. But I dropped that as being too complicated.

The second important decision is over the attitude of the character who's gaining. How much is she aware of it? How much does she fight against it? Is she at any time gaining deliberately? There's more dramatic tension in the story if she's fighting against the gain - and dramatic tension in a weight gain story is one of the most difficult things to ensure. 

Tone is another thing I think about. Is there going to be much sexplay, for instance. Will there be lyrical descriptions? How quick-witted are the characters? The situation and characters I've imagined usually determine this themselves, but it still requires some active thought to prevent a story wandering off course.

The next important thing to worry about is the ending - the most difficult thing of all to think about. I always start off with some ending in mind, something more interesting I hope that the heroine just finding herself fat. But the story and characters often take their own course. They've never taken me that far off course, but sometimes the story has stretched further in time than I'd first thought, and sometimes it's climaxed earlier. 

Once all these things are thought about, then I start writing, from the beginning through to the end, but revising as I go, lots of revisions and cutting. If your story follows someone gaining from scratch, as mine mostly do, things can easily get repetitive, even down to the use of a simple phrase like "putting on weight". But usually in time everything seems to slip into place, just about, and the story, phew, is finished.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 20, 2010)

Swordfish said:


> For me, the process of writing a story goes something like this.
> 
> I start with a character in my head, or a situation, or a setting, or more usually a blend of all three.



About 50% of the stories i write start normally with a Character and or a Setting.

i've started writing other story's while i have writers block from writing Getting Round At The Track, one of which needs to be totally re written cause it doesn't work with the time line i'm setting up with Getting Round and the other stories i've written.


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## Lou Grant (Apr 21, 2010)

As an editor I've noticed that good character development really makes a story stand out. mostly because a majority of stories seem to think of plot as an afterthought. which is fine for a WG tale but if you don't add any depth to the characters all you really have is a list of descriptive terms about people you don't care about gaining weight IMHO.


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## maltesefalcon (Apr 21, 2010)

Lou Grant said:


> As an editor I've noticed that good character development really makes a story stand out. mostly because a majority of stories seem to think of plot as an afterthought. which is fine for a WG tale but if you don't add any depth to the characters all you really have is a list of descriptive terms about people you don't care about gaining weight IMHO.



Well said. That's it in a nutshell.
Just because it's a special interest story, it still must be above all-a _story_!

It should have a beginning, a middle, an end, proper plotline flow and reasonable character development. The best will have all these to some extent.

Oh, and grammar, spelling and punctuation do count.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 21, 2010)

maltesefalcon said:


> Oh, and grammar, spelling and punctuation do count.



What i suck at the most


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## Lou Grant (Apr 22, 2010)

Mac5689 said:


> What i suck at the most



That stuff is not too hard to improve upon. I know writers just around here who got better simply by taking note of other submissions. And of course nowadays everything can be looked up on the internet.


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## maltesefalcon (Apr 23, 2010)

Swordfish said:


> At this point there are important decisions to take, if they haven't been taken already. From what point of view will the story be told? Will it be in the third person, told by an all-seeing anonymous narrator? Will it be in the first person singular, told by the gaining character (always a woman in my stories), or her partner or friend, or even - I guess it would be possible - by a piece of food sitting in her kitchen? Each viewpoint brings its advantages and disadvantages, though the easiest to handle is the third person narrative.



I find first person narrative to be difficult. Any scene or event that the protagonist is not in will be difficult to fold into the tale.

A good example of how this can go wrong is Saving Private Ryan. The whole film revolves around his flashback to events in June 1944. Everything up to the group meeting him was done out of his sight, so he is actually "remembering" things he never witnessed for half the movie. 

They cannot even use the excuse of similar circumstances because he was a paratrooper and never actually landed on the beach.


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## Mac5689 (Apr 23, 2010)

maltesefalcon said:


> I find first person narrative to be difficult. Any scene or event that the protagonist is not in will be difficult to fold into the tale.
> 
> A good example of how this can go wrong is Saving Private Ryan. The whole film revolves around his flashback to events in June 1944. Everything up to the group meeting him was done out of his sight, so he is actually "remembering" things he never witnessed for half the movie.
> 
> They cannot even use the excuse of similar circumstances because he was a paratrooper and never actually landed on the beach.



The two guys that survived from the Ranger Squad that was sent for him told him what had happen before the squad met up with him?, yeah i know it has nothing to do with the point ur making but just thought i'd say it. 

I've written a first person narrative and it was ok, but that was because it was a very poor story to begin with and that was prob why it was so easy for me to write it in the first person. But i agree that first person narratives are hard since i have tried to write others and they never seamed to work out.


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## Boom22 (Apr 24, 2010)

I start by planning the beginning and the end. Then I fill in the middle as I go. Feeding GaGa is a good example.


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