Stream of Consciousness

[Dr Yang]

Now I get what Lord Iron Wolf meant about my Stream of Consciousness writing.
When he wrote it back in the "Writing Challenge I" I thought I got his point and wasn't too bothered. I thought it was a minor problem. Today I went back and looked over my "Mocking Stars" story again, and boy was I surprised.

I killed that story good! It could have been a real nice piece, but I mucked it up. It reads like a childrens tales.

Little Fred walked to the store.
The store was nice, and had lots of nice things.
Hello said Fred.
Hello said the Shopkeeper. What would you like today, Fred?
Today I want cake, Fred said.
Cake is yummy thought Fred.

*shudder*

I'm off to practice being... better...

[Concatenate]

Don't be too hard on yourself - this happens to everyone. I swear, EVERYONE, from any cheesy-thriller-hack to Faulkner himself.

No one's first draft is perfect (or even passable!). I've found that it helps to think of the purpose of your first draft as nothing but getting all your ideas from your head to the paper.

Once you've done that, THEN worry about making it all purty.

And saying, "I'm going to work to get better" rather than "I suck and quit" is commendable =)

[Dr Yang]

Thanks man. That makes me feel better.
At least I can see the flaws now. That should help me a lot.

[Lord Iron Wolf]

Greetings Good Doctor,

Congratulations, you just recognized a writing problem you'll be able to get past next time.

Just remember your first draft is nothing more than your brain taking a shit on paper/the computer screen. Also remember, in that pile of smelly fertilizer are the seeds of a good story. Cultivate those seeds and grow them i.e. REWRITE!!! Eventually you will have grown a beautiful rose. It's the rose you send to the editor. Too many beginners make the mistake of sending the fertilizer.

Lord Iron Wolf

[AdrianChapman]

I found myself nodding along to Concotenate and the venerable LIW's comments in this thread. Especially the bit about rewriting being important.
Stream of Consciousness leaves most ppl cold, I've found that I can't reall do it as my hands aren't quite as quick as my mind. It always sounds rushed in some places and contrived in others.
I STILL think you have mad skillz (tm) Doc.

"Practice, practice, practice"-Storn.

I've found myself thinking this like, every single day. That's one of those comments I wish I'd said. It still remains a good one eh?
Have faith Doc.

AC

[Dr Yang]

Cheers, people!

Means a lot to hear this.

I am busy rewriting a lot of my older stories. Hopefully something good will come as I brush off the dust to find the diamond in the rough within.

Not sure if I have mad skillz, but I'll sure as hell give it my best shot=)

[Adrian Selby]

I've personally found that what has marked my improvement as a writer, among other things, is getting down a better first draft.

For the merits or demerits of the pieces I've produced, they've been first drafts, with the one edit of some exclamation marks.
(Time forces my hand in this respect, I have a lot else on)

Before, going back a few years, my first effort would have been much worse than my current effort, and would have taken time just to get to the stage you may have seen here.

In the long run, getting down better and better first drafts is simply being able to think more efficiently before the fingers hit the keypad. It also means being able to hit shorter deadlines.

Then again, I think it was Tennessee Williams or someone like that who wrote every single line 2.5 times as a matter of course.

One has that luxury when writing fiction to loose deadlines though :)
Adrian

[David Goodner]

Just to show the YMMV principle, I don't think I've ever really done a "rough draft" the way composition teachers try to get you to do it in High School. It used to drive me crazy when that was part of the assignment, since it meant I would have to waste time writing a bad draft just to appease the teacher.

I tend to compose large blocks of text in my head, revise them a little, and then write them down. The rough draft never sees paper.

This is not to say that I am immune to rewriting. I end up scrapping large sections every so often, and I almost always end up playing around with word choice and sentence structure here and there (I have this tendency toward comma prolifieration). I just never learned the knack of putting down text that wasn't easily readable the first time through.

David G.

[chaosvoyager]

Originally posted by Lord Iron Wolf
Greetings Good Doctor,

Congratulations, you just recognized a writing problem you'll be able to get past next time.

Just remember your first draft is nothing more than your brain taking a shit on paper/the computer screen. Also remember, in that pile of smelly fertilizer are the seeds of a good story. Cultivate those seeds and grow them i.e. REWRITE!!! Eventually you will have grown a beautiful rose. It's the rose you send to the editor. Too many beginners make the mistake of sending the fertilizer.

Lord Iron Wolf

OOh, nice metaphor :) I rewrite even my posts about three times. You never know who's reading.

Sometimes it's not a question of if your writing is shit or not, it's a question of what KIND of shit it is. Let's face it, Alanis does not exactly have very consistent lyrics and Lovecraft was a painful hack, but they're both brilliant artists.

PS, I know that's an opinion.

You'll excuse me now, I have to put up some 'Please Curb your ideas' signs along the beach of my inspiration...WooF!

[CrazyIvan]

Also, you might want to consider, while you rework your little peice, not to throw Stream of Consciousness writing in the dustbin forever...sometimes stream of consciousness is a good thing...heck, if you can pull it off as well as Faulkner did in Sound and the Fury you too could be considered a classic writer :).

[Michelle Lyons]

This is a piece I did that uses stream of consciousness somewhat in the course of the story. It's not Faulkner, but it's not half bad, either. It's currently making the fiction magazine submission rounds.

[Dr Yang]

I hardly ever think of a story -before- I write it.
Most of my stories are written in the following process. I sit down with a single thought in my head: I want to write something. After that the words come to me, and I let them guide me. That is part of the reason I'm not very good at editing my own stuff. I've never done it, as I've hardly ever written anything that has taken me more than an hour or two to do.
I know this is not an ideal way of doing things, and part of the reason I am here is to be inspired to work in ways that will enable me to produce work for people, not just a story created from random thoughts. The last is satisfying for me, in some small way, but in the end it will not really let me develop the way I want to.

The most valuable lesson I have learned here so far is to actually think through a story before I start writing it. Think about the characters, think about the situation/s I want to portray and go from there, rather than start with a sentence, and write everything from there.