Fanfiction: There is no end to the making of revisions

[nebroadwe]

Everybody else has NaNo; I've got "In My End Is My Beginning":

2,132 / 10,000 (21.3%)

I'm upping the potential final word count to ten thousand, partly because it's a nice, round number; partly because I'd love to have something that long up at FF.net to draw in more readers; and partly because the rewritten bit is already 355 words longer than it was in the original and I've got my eye on three other sections that will require beefing up on a similar scale. Argh. But Winry's internal monologue is flowing more smoothly now that I've figured out what's bothering her in relation to what's bothering Ed, so the opening isn't just all about plot exposition. ("It has to go somewhere!") I still want a better title, but maybe one will pop up later.

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Both Halloween Fic and Sinking In did that to me. I ended up cutting an entire section with Ling out of Halloween Fic AND a whole section with more medical/automail physiology, because I was afraid people were going to revolt, and Everything STILL came out a like, 7000 some words.

I'd have read the medical/automail physiology bit, but I'm like that. :-)

I keep staring at "In My End" and thinking, "Is there anything in here I should cut?" But there doesn't seem to be. Dual narrators and the fact that it's set seven years after the end of the manga seem to be responsible for most of the bloatlength. Things that I summarized the first time around are demanding that I give them their due this time, and it does seem to be working better that way. I'll see what my beta has to tell me.

Well - not that I necessarily think you're that picky - but I wanted to write you something other than basic Ed/Winry foof, and really, how often do I accomplish anything else? So I did come up with something else, and I'm actually kinda pleased with the hook. Here's hoping I don't screw it up OR chicken out on it before May...

I'll try not to peer eagerly over your shoulder and ruin your concentration. :-)

I seem to be running out of inspiration for Ed/Win foof at the moment, myself. I've done my take on the obvious moments (angsty pre-relationship; first kiss; "hey, we are in love!"; etc.), and I don't like to repeat myself (though I really should write "Ed and Winry have a snowball fight" even though it overlaps thematically with "Light the Traveler Home" because I've got it all laid out and it's amusing). "In My End Is My Beginning" only got written because seven-years-on Ed/Win brought up a whole different set of issues to play with. (And if I ever get the courage and can handle the research issues, I'm going to try twenty-years-on Ed/Win from the POV of an OC getting the first automail heart transplant. Heh.)

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I seem to be running out of inspiration for Ed/Win foof at the moment, myself. I've done my take on the obvious moments (angsty pre-relationship; first kiss; "hey, we are in love!"; etc.),

I know EXACTLY what you mean - I covered pretty much everything when I went through 52_flavours, so sometimes ideas run thin. On the other hand, I have a perfect scene in my head - that's actually been in my head for a while now - involving a Ed and Winry and Garfield and a lightning storm, but I have no plot to go with the scene. Sometimes you can't win.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I have a perfect scene in my head - that's actually been in my head for a while now - involving a Ed and Winry and Garfield and a lightning storm, but I have no plot to go with the scene. Sometimes you can't win.

Sometimes I write that sort of thing up as "Sketch: [Whatever]" (like the afterstory for Lieutenant Ji that jumped me this morning on the way to work, insisting that he survived the battle at the North Pole but got transferred into a Somme-like standoff down in the Earth Kingdom thereafter, and just manages to hang on long enough to see the change of regime, which exists solely because I liked Ji and think he deserves closure, not because I actually have anything to say about him. Yet. Gotta finish my Ozai-in-prison drabbles first).

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I write that sort of thing up as "Sketch: [Whatever]"

...DUH.

Now we just need to see if the punchline works a a punchline and not just as a moment in a longer fic.

(...Hey, you're not trying to get me to talk you out of writing Avatar fic, are you?)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Now we just need to see if the punchline works a a punchline and not just as a moment in a longer fic.

[crosses fingers, because there needs to be more good stories featuring Garfiel]

(...Hey, you're not trying to get me to talk you out of writing Avatar fic, are you?)

I don't think you could. Crazy Ozai drabble sequence, coming right up ...