Premature Echapteration

[FromDarkwater]

Is there such a thing? I feel I may have it... for too many years, I've done nothing but read, write, and interperet technical documents which the general rule of thumb is:
Make it as short as possible so long as it has all of the required information and can be clearly interpreted in industry terminology.
Now that I've been dabbling in the creative writing side of life, I'll write something and get all excited and move on... only to go back in proofreads to ask myself, "wait, is that it? Shouldn't I expound a little bit more?" Next thing you know I am completely rewriting the initial narrative which throws off the rest of the work.
I believe it all has to do with the dry methodical system of writing that I've been trained to do.
Is there any form of  Verbagra or something to help me prolong my excitement before jumping headlong into the next stage of the writing process with a flaccid foundation?

 

[Rob_Royale]

Most of the erotica here would be considered short stories or novellas at best. So ask yourself as you are expounding, if what you are adding is moving the story onward or helping flesh out the character or setting. Most everything else is excess baggage.

A creative writing teacher of mine once said, that when you're describing a car, it doesn't matter what's in the glove box, unless it does. It took me a long while to figure out that little nugget.

 

[FromDarkwater]

what's in the glove box

Why do I now see Brad Pitt standing in a desert holding a gun to Kevin Spacey's head while screaming "What's in the glove box?"

 

[MillieDynamite]

The forty-caliber Beretta set snuggly in the glovebox along with my tissue. Since I had to blow my nose, was quite careful about which one I retrieved. Lest I blow my nose, clean off.

Most of the erotica here would be considered short stories or novellas at best. So ask yourself as you are expounding ask yourself if what you are adding is moving the story onward or helping flesh out the character or setting. Most everything else is excess baggage.

A creative writing teacher of mine once said, that when you're describing a car, it doesn't matter what's in the glove box, unless it does. It took me a long while to figure out that little nugget.

 

[FromDarkwater]

The forty-caliber Beretta set snuggly in the glovebox along with my tissue. Since I had to blow my nose, was quite careful about which one I retrieved. Lest I blow my nose, clean off.

Thank you! Thank you!

I wasn't going to be able sleep tonight without the answer.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't understand the question.

 

[FromDarkwater]

Like, say I have a story in mind and I'll end up writing:
Ch1
There is a guy who bumps into a woman at a bar.
Ch2
They look at each other and one says, "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" While the other says, "you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"

Then, after proofreading, I'll realize how I should have mentioned that one actually had a jar of PB and the other eating a candy bar and, also, the entirety of chapter 2 could really fit into chapter 1 (it's not until chapter 3 that we learn the woman ends up with a Reese's in her glove box).
Then, after rewriting the first chapter, the rest if the story either needs to be restructured or the whole thing falls apart.

 

[FromDarkwater]

Just going back to re-read my last comment, I see where the woman should've already had the Reese's in her glove box when the incident happened but didn't know it! And the Reese's actually belonged to her husband!

Fuck! Now my story is gonna end up in the LW category where trolls are just going to wipe their ass with it and drop the used toilet paper on the floor which is my stories' comment section...

FML

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Most of the erotica here would be considered short stories or novellas at best. So ask yourself as you are expounding ask yourself if what you are adding is moving the story onward or helping flesh out the character or setting. Most everything else is excess baggage.

A creative writing teacher of mine once said, that when you're describing a car, it doesn't matter what's in the glove box, unless it does. It took me a long while to figure out that little nugget.

The old Chekhov's Gun premise ... and stop talking about my box.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

I have a similar background, and most of my earliest works read like, "He put Tab A into Slot B and she quivered beneath him." I've had that early work pulled because it was so awful. I'm still trying to overcome a career full of writing, reading, and reviewing technical documents. I work on creative writing by reading a lot of stories here, writing and rewriting, deleting, and starting over on entire scenes. Some people outline a story before they start, but I tend to let the characters take it wherever they want at the moment. It takes me weeks, sometimes months, to finalize a story. I may start it, put it away, and work on something else, then come back. I suppose what I'm saying is practice and perseverance. Good luck!

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Is there such a thing? I feel I may have it... for too many years, I've done nothing but read, write, and interperet technical documents which the general rule of thumb is:
Make it as short as possible so long as it has all of the required information and can be clearly interpreted in industry terminology.
Now that I've been dabbling in the creative writing side of life, I'll write something and get all excited and move on... only to go back in proofreads to ask myself, "wait, is that it? Shouldn't I expound a little bit more?" Next thing you know I am completely rewriting the initial narrative which throws off the rest of the work.
I believe it all has to do with the dry methodical system of writing that I've been trained to do.
Is there any form of  Verbagra or something to help me prolong my excitement before jumping headlong into the next stage of the writing process with a flaccid foundation?

Ah, the value of completing a story before posting parts of it.

 

[Gamblnluck]

A creative writing teacher of mine once said, that when you're describing a car, it doesn't matter what's in the glove box, unless it does. It took me a long while to figure out that little nugget.

Padding a story is never good. But as you write and see plot holes, it is best to cover them to make the actions plausible.
I wrote a rewrite of a friend's story and as I did, I found more plot holes as I went along. I covered them and that made the story longer than the original. But I could not get away with letting the dumbass perpetrators think the MC could not out-think them. (How'd this dumbass Marine out maneuver us.) And it chapped their asses in the story. It was fun to write it.

 

[Djmac1031]

Why do I now see Brad Pitt standing in a desert holding a gun to Kevin Spacey's head while screaming "What's in the glove box?"

Probably this:

 

[intim8]

Is there such a thing? I feel I may have it... for too many years, I've done nothing but read, write, and interperet technical documents which the general rule of thumb is:
Make it as short as possible so long as it has all of the required information and can be clearly interpreted in industry terminology.
Now that I've been dabbling in the creative writing side of life, I'll write something and get all excited and move on... only to go back in proofreads to ask myself, "wait, is that it? Shouldn't I expound a little bit more?" Next thing you know I am completely rewriting the initial narrative which throws off the rest of the work.
I believe it all has to do with the dry methodical system of writing that I've been trained to do.
Is there any form of  Verbagra or something to help me prolong my excitement before jumping headlong into the next stage of the writing process with a flaccid foundation?

The answer, and not just in erotica, is to go deeper. If you find your writing too sparse, you're maybe not telling the story at the depth it needs.

"He fucked her."

That's a complete story, but pretty sparse.

"He fucked her because he was in love with her."

A little deeper, but still...

"He fucked her because he was in love with her. He was in love with her because...."

Now we're talking.

Going deeper usually means also having to go broader. The deeper you go, the wider the surface has to be to support the depth. (Think of a pyramid, but upside down). You need more details of the back story, the setting, the circumstances, etc.

Instead of "how much should I write", think "how deep does this story need to go to tell it how it needs to be told?" You may be thinking that all the required information is there if it describes what happened. But good stories also need to describe why it happened.

 

[Gamblnluck]

Like, say I have a story in mind and I'll end up writing:
Ch1
There is a guy who bumps into a woman at a bar.
Ch2
They look at each other and one says, "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" While the other says, "you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"

Then, after proofreading, I'll realize how I should have mentioned that one actually had a jar of PB and the other eating a candy bar and, also, the entirety of chapter 2 could really fit into chapter 1 (it's not until chapter 3 that we learn the woman ends up with a Reese's in her glove box).
Then, after rewriting the first chapter, the rest if the story either needs to be restructured or the whole thing falls apart.

That is one reason I always recommend 2 things: 1st make your chapters more than a page or so. 8 to 12k words is a good length. Second: write at least one chapter and preferably two ahead of posting. All too often you will go back and change something (or wish you had) in a previous chapter to make it fit. I like to drop nuggets or bed crumbs that will be addressed in subsequent chapters in my longer stories.

 

[Gamblnluck]

Now we're talking.

Going deeper usually means also having to go broader. The deeper you go, the wider the surface has to be to support the depth. (Think of a pyramid, but upside down). You need more details of the back story, the setting, the circumstances, etc.

Instead of "how much should I write", think "how deep does this story need to go to tell it how it needs to be told?" You may be thinking that all the required information is there if it describes what happened. But good stories also need to describe why it happened.

In other words, if you are going to go to the effort of writing story, make it worth your time and effort. Make it good.

 

[intim8]

write at least one chapter and preferably two ahead of posting. All too often you will go back and change something (or wish you had)

Yeah, I posted the first six chapters of my series without doing that. Once it was done and proofed (poorly), it went up and I started writing the next. Not the best choice, but it actually worked out. The story has a definite progression and build.

But there were also problems that I hand-waved away in later chapters. Oh, that character that was in the first chapter then conspicously missing after? No, he, ummm, well, he never actually existed. That one girl that had a whole chapter devoted to her? Well, I do mean to come back to her, probably, eventually, maybe.

Somehow, I think it still reads really good. But for the remaining half, I'm going to write ahead before posting. OTOH, I tend to get really bogged down when I do that. Like, stuff never gets finished.

 

[FromDarkwater]

But there were also problems that I hand-waved away in later chapters. Oh, that character that was in the first chapter then conspicously missing after?

Kind of like the family dog in the first season of American Horror Stories... there for the first couple episodes, then he just mysteriously vanished for the remainder of the series with absolutely no explanation. I guess it just didn't make sense to have a natural "paranormal activity alarm" hanging around when you actually want to integrate paranormal activity into the storyline.

 

[Gamblnluck]

But for the remaining half, I'm going to write ahead before posting. OTOH, I tend to get really bogged down when I do that. Like, stuff never gets finished.

Yeah, getting lost in the weeds with too many story lines is a problem. I've been guilty of that. I try to reign it in. Keep the story along the plot. It's called editing.

 

[intim8]

Keep the story along the plot. It's called editing

The problem is, I don't write with a predetermined outline, or even plot. I wing it, and I'm generally pretty good at doing it that way (google "discovery writer"). It does mean going back and tweaking some things to support later developments, but there's no full plot and ending going into it.

I'm trying to zero in on a balance, a hybrid approach that does the discovery, but then takes what came out of that and whittles it down to a coherent plot.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Yeah, I posted the first six chapters of my series without doing that. Once it was done and proofed (poorly), it went up and I started writing the next. Not the best choice, but it actually worked out. The story has a definite progression and build.

But there were also problems that I hand-waved away in later chapters. Oh, that character that was in the first chapter then conspicously missing after? No, he, ummm, well, he never actually existed. That one girl that had a whole chapter devoted to her? Well, I do mean to come back to her, probably, eventually, maybe.

Somehow, I think it still reads really good. But for the remaining half, I'm going to write ahead before posting. OTOH, I tend to get really bogged down when I do that. Like, stuff never gets finished.

I was actually relying on Lits forever publishing to take advantage of the stay a few chapters ahead idea. She flipped the script on me and they went up about a day or less. Then the nemesis of that plan reared it's ugly, petulant head; writers block.

 

[alohadave]

Kind of like the family dog in the first season of American Horror Stories... there for the first couple episodes, then he just mysteriously vanished for the remainder of the series with absolutely no explanation. I guess it just didn't make sense to have a natural "paranormal activity alarm" hanging around when you actually want to integrate paranormal activity into the storyline.

It's always interesting when characters just disappear with no mention. In King of Queens, Carrie had a sister for the first 4-5 episodes and then she disappeared. After that, she had never had a sister.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I don't do a lot of serialized stories. The ones I have done have started as short stories that I have been encouraged to write follow ups for. It seems to work that each chapter I write is sort of defacto intended to be the end of the story, until I write the next chapter. You might get better advice from others who specialize in this format. This is just what has worked for me on the very limited experience I have with these types of stories.

As for general advice I believe might help...

Don't be in a rush to publish. Take your time and let your stories marinate in your imagination. It's an iterative process. Write, read, edit, re-read, rewrite, read, edit some more, re-read. Move on to something else for a while. Come back and read again. Rewrite some more. Edit again. Re-read, Rinse repeat as many times as necessary.
The path to success, or to a completed story is not a straight line, and thank the muses for that.

I have dozens of stories in process with a handful pending publishing. I work on whatever catches my fancy. Sometimes it's an older story I haven't touched in a while. Other times it's the story closest to being 'done." Yeah, that word doesn't really mean done, and we all know that. When I get a story to 'done' I move it to my pending folder.

I try to publish about monthly. When it's close to time, I'll visit my pending stories and give one of them a read. I almost always tweak something or find yet one more spelling or grammar error, things like 'cut' instead of 'cute'. The stories never get published in the order they go into my pending folder.

I watched Dan Brown's Master Class on Writing. According to him, the key is to just keep writing. The Da Vinci code has sold 80 million copies, so I think I'll keep following his advice.