New toys for my BRAIN

[ladyjanelly]

I feel like I"m on the verge of a sudden jump in fic writing quality and quantity.

The thing is, I've always had ideas.  Just 90% of those ideas had no legs--like--yeah, AU J2 are interesting together but I'm sort of lacking anything besides character development.  I end up with two boys loving each other in a vacuum. 

So the hubby has been teaching me some tools that he's learned over the years (seriously, the man works 40 hrs a week and can still turn out 100,000 words of original fic in 5 months). 

I started with making mind-maps to sort of brainstorm the story. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MindMapGuidlines.JPG

But I kept having this little line that didn't go anywhere labeled "Plot" and yeah. That's no good.  So next came wish-list-conflicts, where I write down all the characters' top ten things they need in life and see where those conflict.  Which means I need to have more than just the main pairing as characters, which expands the fic already.  I'm still sort of short on endings--the part where I envision the characters after the conflict is ended, or what exactly the characters' best case scenario is.  But still, it feels like I've got more story before these ideas poop out on me.

So I've been doing those two games on my old dead-ended fics and now I'm having new ideas and mapping and wish-listing those, and yeah.  I need to actually start the writing part of writing now.

Comments

[epeeblade]

I'm kinda the opposite. I'll get the plot straight off, and then I'll have to sit and think about the emotions and if they're valid and make sense.

*hugs* I'm glad you're finding something that works for you. I found the J's to be extremely amazing muses for my writing. (Didn't write for about 2 years before I discovered the show/fandom)

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

When I have non-fandom people read my work (like the homeless!verse for example) they're like--"Awesome characters but um, where's the story?" for the first 6 chapters or so.

The Js are great to write AUs of. They're a great template to play around with. If that makes sense.