Today I want to talk about blundering around. Not "pantsing" - there are some very competent, knowledgeable people who "pants" their stories - but blundering as in not being aware of what you're doing. I mean, in one sense I've been writing since I was five, but in another sense I'm still very new at it - and I'm not always conscious of why things work and don't work.

(And if you're here for the Random Writing Rants Blog Hop, hi! I'm Ada and I write things. You can find a full list in my userinfo.)

When we started planning this blog tour, mercwriter wanted me to talk about how I'd done the setting for "Moon Laws, Dream Laws" - my upcoming story in Ride the Moon. Merc wanted me to talk about implying huge things about the setting through small details, and how I'd done that in "Moon Laws". Several other people in the writing group agreed.

My response was, "Huh? Did I do that?"

(I explained that the setting in "Moon Laws" wasn't that good - I hadn't put any detail into anything except the religion. Amy Laurens replied, "Look! Here is my story world, and it is shiny and awesome!! Only, when you take out all the shiny and awesome, there's nothing interesting about it.")

So apparently I made a setting people liked completely by accident.

This sort of thing has happened before. Earlier I wrote a story about a world of crustacean people and giant squid, which, in all fairness, was awesome. But it flopped on the page - there was no conflict. Which confused me. The story had mind control, magical squid battles, evil plots, Lovecraftian monsters, and death by shiny lights. How could there not be conflict? How could it bore my alpha-readers?

I had this long, long conversation with mercwriter and spartezda about it. They said, "I know you can do conflict - you've done it well good ones before!"

I said, "Sure, I understand conflict! Because um... *regurgitated list of things about conflict I had heard from other people*... And... Okay, I don't actually understand what I need to do here."

So we talked about the story that flopped, and we talked about the stories I had done right. And FINALLY the light bulb went on. (In the case of this particular story - the protag had a goal, and she was in clear danger, but the danger wasn't related to the goal in any way. Whoops.)

Before we had that talk, I really didn't understand conflict. I had read about it, but I wasn't applying it properly. When I wrote stories with proper conflict, it was completely by accident.

Now I understand it a little better.

A similar thing happened with another story recently. The protagonist was generic - he had feelings, but no personality or voice. My reaction was, "Well, shit - I don't understand how to do personality and voice."

"Sure you do," said mercwriter. "You've done it before."

Again, we talked about the times I'd done it before - completely by accident - until we could identify common factors. And finally I figured out what was going on and fixed it.

This is more than just regurgitating theory bits, like "characters should have character traits". And it would never have happened if I had waited for this kind of understanding before starting. I had to blunder around, get some things right by accident, and compare them - with the help of patient writing friends - to the things I did wrong by accident.

So here's to blundering around in the narrative darkness. To doing things by accident, making mistakes, and not understanding what you're doing at first.

It's a hell of a lot better than never doing anything at all.

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For more Random Writing Rants, make sure to check out the rest of the blog hop!

Feb 8: Chrystalla Thoma - A Rant About Hopping

Feb 9: A. Merc Rustad - On Voice

Feb 10: Marie Dees - Building a Novel from Nothing

Feb 11: Krista D. Ball - Avoiding the Heroine Stupid Juice

Feb 12: Marion Sipe - Rant on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Tropes

Feb 14: Amy Laurens - When Less is More