Progress, such as it is
May. 7th, 2006 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriI am struggling rather a lot with the Cockney. I just don't know how to do it so I may stop trying: I'd rather have Dru's relatives sounding like characters from a Jane Austen novel than ones from Mary Poppins.
Also, I can't make pre-death Dru sufficiently religious. I can do some kinds of religious -- Calvinism, no problem -- but not High Church/Catholic. I could possibly learn to fake it rather better, but it won't be in this story. Too many balls in the air already.
And I'm starting to doubt that the piece will be finished by the ficathon deadline. The bulk of it's there, but I'm still missing the Key Scene and much of the linking work. I have lots of these little icebergs floating away from each other that need to be tacked together securely. I'm already a bit disturbed by how much material I've had to discard, even though I've been able to re-use some phrases and ideas elsewhere.
For example, last year I read up on doll manufacture. I learnt who made the best dolls in London and by what techniques. All useless in the end, no need for a doll workshop this time -- too twee. Should have realised that earlier.
If I weren't so close to seeing the end of this, I'd be tempted just to extract a bunch of scenes and call them "Random moments of Spike and Dru". Those bits are easy to write. I'm finding that if I start my working day writing a "random moment" then I can progress to working on the more difficult bits of the main plotlines. Not all of the random bits may work inside the main story, so I may publish those separately, as they're pretty self-contained.
At least I'm not in the pit of thinking that it's all awful; instead I'm in the rather more sane position of thinking that, while I'm giving it a good go, a better writer than I would be doing a rather better job. Oh well, it's all in the process of learning to become that better writer.
Also, I can't make pre-death Dru sufficiently religious. I can do some kinds of religious -- Calvinism, no problem -- but not High Church/Catholic. I could possibly learn to fake it rather better, but it won't be in this story. Too many balls in the air already.
And I'm starting to doubt that the piece will be finished by the ficathon deadline. The bulk of it's there, but I'm still missing the Key Scene and much of the linking work. I have lots of these little icebergs floating away from each other that need to be tacked together securely. I'm already a bit disturbed by how much material I've had to discard, even though I've been able to re-use some phrases and ideas elsewhere.
For example, last year I read up on doll manufacture. I learnt who made the best dolls in London and by what techniques. All useless in the end, no need for a doll workshop this time -- too twee. Should have realised that earlier.
If I weren't so close to seeing the end of this, I'd be tempted just to extract a bunch of scenes and call them "Random moments of Spike and Dru". Those bits are easy to write. I'm finding that if I start my working day writing a "random moment" then I can progress to working on the more difficult bits of the main plotlines. Not all of the random bits may work inside the main story, so I may publish those separately, as they're pretty self-contained.
At least I'm not in the pit of thinking that it's all awful; instead I'm in the rather more sane position of thinking that, while I'm giving it a good go, a better writer than I would be doing a rather better job. Oh well, it's all in the process of learning to become that better writer.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 09:55 am (UTC)I just wanted to thank you for giving up on the cockney speak... now if only you could persuade all the other writers who do it to stop, too!
I find it really distracting to read all the phonetic stuff. Especially since they invariably use the wrong words too. Even the writers from the show! (Get bent? WTF was that all about???)
And my last whinge on the matter. Spike was not Cockney. Nuh uh. None of his speech patterns matched cockney. He was more like a North London wideboy at a pinch. With lots of transatlantic crossover. (Ass???)