And now I wibble more about writing ;)

[ratherastory]

So after the last inspirational post, in which I'm all "Positive Energy YAY!" I'm going to complain bitterly that, while I am upholding my end of the bargain, I am having trouble with my castielfest fic.

Did I mention that I shouldn't write crossovers? They stress me out. :P

Anyway, I have the basic premise in my head. The problem is that I'm not nearly as familiar with the other show, although I do love it. I've never really written fic except for SPN, and I'm having a bit of trouble getting into the heads of the characters.

I've also got this quasi-OCD thing when I write, that I like my chapters and sections to be of equal length. I don't know where I got this little compulsion, and I don't even know if it's a valid concern. I mean, who cares apart from me if one chapter is 900 words and another is 2000? Do people notice this kind of thing? Is it just me?

So I have to work out my structure. I have, again, vague ideas for how it should work, but I haven't really figured out all the nuts and bolts. Also, people have already started posting to castielfest and it's seriously stressing me out that I haven't even remotely come close to finishing the story yet. I've barely scratched the surface of the set-up. I know that in theory I have until August 9th, but all these people are already posting and it's pushing my internal "you suck" button.

Meow.

Life is hard. ;)

Comments

[bellatemple]

I've got a difference of almost 5000 words between two chapters of my big bang, so it'd BETTER not matter (and honestly, most people seem to figure that as long as THEMATICALLY they're about even, you're okay. Word count doesn't matter).

What's the crossover show? If it's one I'm familiar with, I could be a character voice beta for you (character voices tend to be my strong point).

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I'm going to edit this comment right after posting, because my recipient is on my flist. So I hope you have email notifications. ;)

Crossover show is [redacted to preserve the anonymity of the exchange].

[bellatemple]

Ooo, yeah, that's unfortunately not one I can help you with. Sorry, hon!

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

I am all over the place with section lengths, and I kind of like it that way. In my rarepairs fic, some sections are just a paragraph, some are a page and a half, and some are, uh, just a couple of sentences.

D: Awww, Casfest is not meant to be stress-inducing! That makes me sad. There are 83 participants, so 3 posting this week is barely scratching at the surface. You are not behind or sucky at all. <33

[spookysquall.livejournal.com]

You know, relatively few of the (sometimes wacky) old classics have chapters of equal length. Lit gets even nuttier in the 20s with streams of consciousness and trust me, none of that follows any sort of pattern. :) And contemporary writers like Stephen King switch up chapter length all the time. So in my honest opinion, chapter length doesn't really matter--as long as it works for the story. A chapter could be 1 sentence or 100 pages. As long as the story flows, it shouldn't be an issue. :)

[peppervl.livejournal.com]

I try to keep mine about the same, though they'll usually vary within about 1,000 words. But that gives me a length to shoot for.

However, that's only actual chapters. I break my chapters up into sections that vary with no consistency at all. And if it's stories in a 'verse, anything goes.

So, for example, in To Dream, the shortest chapter was 2,709 words, the longest was 3,954 and most of them were between 3,000 and 3,500. But they all had sections of varying length, and some of them didn't have sections at all.

Of... on the other hand has ranged from 2,424 to 9,034.