Creative Writing Pitfalls

[kalos72]

Seeing as we have some fine writers on these forums, and I assume some much more experienced ones then I, I need some advise.

I tend to get bogged down in the details when I write stuff. I need to know exactly how things develop. For example: In my campaign I am writing a summary to explain the works of my main unit and how it developed Staten Island to become the base for expansion and area domination but I find myself stuck on trying to find out where water desalination plants would ship from in the NYC area to "explain" how we got a few of them from storage. Or exactly what steps the Engineers took to get power back to the FOB they use in Staten Island. What they did with all the derelict cars or how they scour the area for salvage.

When is it all too much detail?

I love Webstrals writing but personally, I keep asking crazy detailed questions like how the Coast Guard organizes its men or how they grow food or where they got the rifles or how do they defend the entire coast line and from who, who are the marauders in the area where are they, and the list goes on.

Do I over think things or is it just a different style I have that delves deeper in the details of how and why things happen rather then just saying they do.

PS -
And Web, please know I love your work and it inspires me every time you post some more, but my head never stops thinking about those sorts of crazy questions, hence I keep messaging you asking them. LOL!!

[Webstral]

There's nothing wrong with these questions, except when insisting on having answers to them blocks forward progress. Answering questions about the details can lead one in hitherto unforeseen directions of creativity. Just remember that questions about the details are meant to serve you, not the other way around.

Knowing where every man is on the battlefield and what kind of weapon he is carrying might be nice; but this kind of knowledge is divine, not human. The commanders of real units in many ways have very limited knowledge about what is happening in their commands. Similarly, if you can answer a question about just how an engineer has dealt with a problem, do so. If you can't, draw a mental box around it and move on. Once you have decided that the problem will be solved, the means often come to hand.

There are answers to how the food is grown, and it's perfectly appropriate to ask these kinds of questions. Worrying about how big each garden plot is and which crops are grown in each garden plot is probably taking things a bit too far, although all of that can be done for specific characters. Thinking about details like the growing season, soil types and rainfall, crop mixes, labor inputs, and the like is perfectly appropriate. If you re-read my guide to Poseidon's Rifles, you'll find references to the types of crops grown. What I haven't provided is a list of quantities of each crop because nobody knows and that kind of detail isn't necessary. Suffice to say that the people of First District generally get enough calories and enough micronutrients to keep themselves at acceptable levels of health and energy. If I want, I can always go back and draw a detailed map of one area to illustrate how things work at a nuts-and-bolts level.

Hope this helps.

Webstral

[kato13]

Personally I love an incredible level of detail, but my goal is not to tell a story, my goal is to have fun learning new things and figure out how to break things down to the smallest parts. Like how I calculated the weight and volume of every item in my Morrow project kits (down to each band-aid, nail, or piece of gum). If I was GMing or publishing materials I would have to set deadlines and change my research a bit to reach a reasonable (but less specific) conclusion.

I fully agree with Web about drawing a box around details which might elude you for a time. You can always provide the details later.

One thing I do is i use my dice to help me with a stumbling point. Maybe check to see how lucky commanders are in different areas like food production, power generation, salvageable equipment. If you roll a 00 in power generation perhaps the replacement reactor for the USS Corpus Christi happened to be sitting untouched in a nearby rail yard (protected from looters by a chemical plant fire nearby).

No community is going to be prosperous in the T2k world with out a little luck. For example Krakow had their train load of bank note paper for ration chits.

[Caradhras]

Part of my ongoing mid-life crisis involves wanting to write..a novel or screen play probably. Anyway, I havent got very far like most people but part of my research has involved 'how to write' and I asked for tips from an ex-wargaming mate who has eventually made it big writing a successful TV series in the UK.

One of his tips was Stephen King's book 'On Writing'. It does give some help and is quite interesting too even though I am not a big fan of his.

[kalos72]

Thanks for the advise guys...I was beginning to think that writing some of this stuff up was perhaps outside of my skill set.

I am re-writing the storyline I have set in NYC, to some degree. I figured that I would give a "summary" if you will first and then I can get into finer details as the game progresses or I get bored. :P

[sic1701]

Just don't "Clancy-fy" everything, where you give mind-numbing details that detract from the story.

I loved "Red October", but noticed with each succeeding book he went into more and more detail that required you to pause the action in your mind while he taught you Weaponry 101.

A perfect example is the nuclear detonation scene from "The Sum Of All Fears", where after some five or six pages chronicling the first few hundred milliseconds of the nuclear detonation he then tells us the effect it had on the Super Bowl and the fans, which is what I really wanted to know. I don't care HOW tritium boosts a nuclear yield, only that it does. For the story, I needed to know that something went wrong and the yield didn't get boosted into the thermonuclear range, for that had significant plot implications as the book went on, but I didn't need five or six pages telling me WHY and HOW it went wrong. A paragraph would have sufficed.

Now, when you're in the research phase of your writing, no detail is too small to go unnoticed for such detail may lead you into deeper thinking, plot twists, other things you didn't think of before. But when you're actually writing something you want others to read, there is a fine line between not enough information to satisfy your reader and trying to teach your reader how to wire a nuclear bomb.

[sic1701]

But, more importantly, write because YOU enjoy it.

I dabble in writing myself but I don't have anything far enough along that I think anyone would be interested in. And I'd be embarassed for anyone else to read it. I do it to get the stories out of my mind, where they play handball off the back wall of my mind, but I'm sufficiently self-conscious about the quality of my work (and have an OCD-like need to constantly edit what I've written) that I keep it to myself.

[weswood]

I've played around with writing myself. That's my secret "if I could do anything" career. I've sat down a few times and started stories, but sitting at a computer for hours at a time is difficult for me. I'm not much of a sit in one place kind of guy.

I think the amount of detail the writer provides depends on the type of story he's telling. A broad story telling of WWIII involving Divisions and Armies wouldn't have as much detail as a story of a squad of soldiers trying to survive.

One "pitfall" I have is that I tend to go back over stuff I've already written and change something. I've been writing up my homegrown game system for probably 6 or 8 months and all I've got done is character generation, skills, military careers and small arms combat. I've changed something in each sectionat least once. The point is the more time you spend perfecting or rewriting something, the less time you spend moving forward. I personally get discouraged when I'm not seeing progress, and that slows the process even more.

[sic1701]

I feel your pain. Going back and editing and re-editing takes a lot of time. And then you read something, whether for pleasure or for research, whether factual, historical, or fictional, and think, "Gee, there's elements in here that would be applicable to this story or that story I'm working on, or to a T2K campaign or backstory or rule change". Or the material you're reading puts you on the right track but you develop the story, or segment thereof, in a different manner that leads you to a different conclusion than the author did, or has you thinking and expanding on it more than the material did.

But then the writing becomes more of a journey than a destination.