🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 1 Oct 92 20:07:25 GMT, sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred Welden) said:

FW> Watch out for this word by word stuff.  Taken the wrong way it can
FW> lead to galloping deconstructionism, which leads nowhere fast.
FW> What you want to do, in my arrogant opinion, is to splat down what
FW> you think you want to say on the page as close to all-at-once as
FW> you can manage.  Then go back and read it carefully to see if
FW> anything seems to contradict the sense of what you were trying to
FW> say, or to lead off to undesireable tangents, and fix those things
FW> by splatting down something on top of them and then repeating the
FW> review process.  This is easiest with an electronic word
FW> processor, which I have a tendency to use pretty much like an
FW> electronic food processor.  (This probably explains why my
FW> daughter tried to eat the menu, come to think of it.)

I have to agree with this.  When I write a story, I try and get the whole
thing down as quickly as possible, and as briefly as possible.  Usually it
takes the format of Tim does this and this and this, while Lisa is doing this
and this.  Then Tim and Lisa get together and do thus and such, and so on,
end of story.  Then I revise the hell out of it.  I take individual scenes
that I had in my head before I started writing and get them down.  Then I
place them in the general plot that I've outlined in paragraph form, and
essentially expand and contract until I have the final story.  

Of course, this is kind of off topic, but as well as being a good way to 
watch out for ambiguous word choices, it also helps prevent writer's block
(which used to be a lot more of a problem for me.)

-lightnin

Derek G Bacon        | "But his bosses didn't like him, so they shot him into 
lightnin@wpi.wpi.edu |  space."     - MST3K Love Theme
Gadaiyio Takeimienei |=========================================================
Writer of USFP       | "Oh Fluffy, I never knew." -Earth Girls Are Easy