Show me your notes (or notes out for t'lads)

[gauchecritic]

I don't use notes when I write, it all goes on inside my head and I figure if I can't remember that really great idea then it probably wasn't that good.

I don't mean I just sit and start typing, those occasions are few and far between and usually reserved for another incarnation. I generally have an idea kicking about my head which I embroider at various times of day and then at some point I feel the need to start writing it. So I put the story down, edit as I go and then (hopefully) edit again after I'm done.

But I never actually write notes, mainly because the few times that I have made notes, when I eventually took them to look at I had no idea what they're about.

Girl hides the fact of it.
Heidi? Helga?
He discovers an old text message.
Walking amongst the misbegotten

What the fuck is all that about?

So, show us your notes. I'm interested.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I don't use notes either... rarely... but sometimes they get tagged on at the end of a story in progress... like these (which make little sense to me and will make less to you, most likely!)

Should live with own kind. Who was she turned by?

Fighting against death. “End of life” instead of “Death and Dying.”

What is she doing with the ones she turns?

Angie gets sick… rare, fast terminal cancer, and Mercy decides to turn her.

 

[FallingToFly]

OUTLINE

Basis:

Life stealing thing (what the hell was it anyway?)
Chooses people with a long life span in front of them, steals part of it by killing them.
Makes it look like accidents.
Young woman, wife, mother. Witch, with some Fey blood in ancestry.
Runs her car off road… Part of her dies, the human part, the Fey survives, caught betwixt and between. She wakes in the ditch, the day after her funeral, with no awareness of what happened, or why. returning home, no one knows who she is or why she’s there… altercation with the police: quick thinking keeps her out of jail. Not truly alive or truly dead, the world no longer recognizes her for who she is.
Trial and error learns that to regain her life, she has to destroy this thing.
Directed to a five and dime run by a crazy old man, three clerks, and a mute midget.

Crazy old man: Archmage with obsession with watches.
Slender clerk: Half- elven (not exactly, but close) mercenary
Brawler clerk: Half-ogre (not exactly, but again, close) mercenary
(Brothers: Same mother, different fathers)
Goth clerk: The very unusual vampire
Mute midget- dwarven woman.

Store set-up: Like a mini-Walmart, only less organized and more variety. Three sides, deep culvert for rainwater. Fourth is street entrance, parking lot. To left, walkway over culvert to next plaza: until someone with Other blood sets foot on it: Foggy stone path into nothing. No side rails. Unless guided by someone from over the Veil, partbloods wander forever on the path, or fall to their death. To pass into the realm the Thing lives in, they must find Maridians to guide them to the other side.

They find them, and nearly come to blows when they mention Thing’s name. To prove their quest to kill it is true, young woman turns and strips to the waist, revealing her back: and the Thing’s mark, to the Maridians. The female faints, the male pales and sways. They agree to guide them on to the other side.

Keep in mind: The vampire does NOT like this girl. Sarcastic, cynical, jaded and viciously cutting remarks are passed between them continuously. He things they should just kill her entirely and get it over with.

As the quest goes on (almost medieval setting for the Other Side) they become, if not friends, or lovers, something to each other; partners, able to anticipate each other’s moves and moods.

They do, eventually, manage to kill the creature. Elated, the woman returns home, to take back her life, only to discover that, while only a few months passed in the Other worlds, in this world seven years have passed. Her children are nearly grown, her husband remarried to a sweet, loving woman who is a wonderful wife and mother. There is no longer a place for her in this world. She must find a new place, and a new life. Where and with who is the only thing missing.

Vampire; Too predictable, although remaining partners is the easiest solution. They never truly do become friends, or even lovers, although there is physical interaction between them, as he is the only one who doesn’t find her state of limbo truly disturbing and disgusting, no matter what he says during their flame wars. The scars, the mark of the Thing upon her, don’t disturb him either, as he carries scars and disfigurements of his own, albeit where no one can see.

The quirks:
Her craving for water – the pure soul trying to use a pure substance to cleanse itself of the unclean mark upon the physical body.
The Archmage’s watches: his awareness of time fleeing too fast for him to follow, a subconscious acknowledgment that the time for his kind has passed, and his refusal to let go.
The Brothers: loyal only too each other, they do what they’re paid to do, no more. One fair, one horrid, one gentle, one cruel, dark and light of the same coin.
The Mute: left behind, outcast by her fellows for her unnatural attachment to the open air, can speak: chooses not to.
The Vampire: Selfish, brooding, his pain is more important than anyone else. Failure to accept what he is, only to be reminded of it at every turn. Unable to release his lost humanity, he has become twisted and enslaved by its chains.

The Thing: Ancient, evil, greedy. Steals the life of others to prolong its own existence, but can only steal a certain amount of the lifespan it takes away. Two to five years at most. Unable to leave its own realm, it sends a part of itself to other Realms to do its work for it. Think Astral Projection, on crack and PCP.

Notes while writing:

Don’t get caught up in poetry, or familiar traps. Write all new scenes for this piece, all new descriptions. You HAVE to paint these characters with a realistic brush, get inside their heads, their hearts, their souls (dirty as they may be). Sympathize, but don’t be gentle on them. Paint a graphic picture of what and who, why and where and when. And especially, how. Finish by June. !!!THIS IS FOR SUBMISSION TO PUBLISHERS, WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT!!!!

 

[TriggerHippie]

My notes aren't typically outlines so much as words that catch my attention. I am definitely guilty of using a notebook to record snatches of conversation or interesting bits of poetry or lyrics ... even passages from books.

Some of notes include (random page flipping):

"A thousand miles of wind"

"Dancing with no shoes"

"Restless ways and your solitude"

"See what it feels like without you"

"It was waiting for me,
Hoping for something more,
Me, seeing me this time,
Hoping for something else"

"A whisper slowly turns into a scream"

"Promise is only a word
And when softly spoken,
is never heard"

"Searching for an answer when the question is unseen"

"... making me feel as if I held the future in the two palms that framed his face ..."

"Mostly cheerless men in suits"

And so on into infinity. Nothing so formal as notes; more just love of words.

Peace.

P.S. What about the old text message?

 

[CharleyH]

I don't use notes when I write, it all goes on inside my head and I figure if I can't remember that really great idea then it probably wasn't that good.

I don't mean I just sit and start typing, those occasions are few and far between and usually reserved for another incarnation. I generally have an idea kicking about my head which I embroider at various times of day and then at some point I feel the need to start writing it. So I put the story down, edit as I go and then (hopefully) edit again after I'm done.

But I never actually write notes, mainly because the few times that I have made notes, when I eventually took them to look at I had no idea what they're about.

Girl hides the fact of it.
Heidi? Helga?
He discovers an old text message.
Walking amongst the misbegotten

What the fuck is all that about?

So, show us your notes. I'm interested.

I never write notes - I gotta brain that is my nemesis.

NOTES:
Guys hide it (too small always)

Hedi and Helga are trannies.

He who discovers an old text message is too old to get IM.

And WTF? Is always a great question. D

 

[gauchecritic]

He who discovers an old text message is too old to get IM.

No, no. He discovers a message written in old text.

This was an idea about old paintings which held the secret of the bible and the whereabouts of Jesus' descendent. (And did those feet?)

 

[CharleyH]

No, no. He discovers a message written in old text.

This was an idea about old paintings which held the secret of the bible and the whereabouts of Jesus' descendent. (And did those feet?)

LOL - God, I love you, you bastard!

 

[BlackShanglan]

I can't find anything short enough to post. There's yards of them, or they're handwritten. I think that's partly due to my circumstances at the moment; I haven't got the time to write properly, so I jot down everything I can in hopes of coming back to it later. The notes get more extensive than I think they would if I could just sit down and write. That said, sometimes I write an opening draft until I'm in a corner, then sit down and write notes and outlines that take me somewhere completely different. I've gone through thirty pages of handwritten notes on a story that's already sixty pages in.