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Boring writing post day!
I keep meaning to do an audio post but can't find 2 free hours to sit and record a 4 minute post over and over until my voice doesn't sound stupid. So instead of that crappy post you get this crappy post instead!
I keep an "out" document for TEF for, you know, stuff that I slave over for hours on end then finally decide "AUGH THIS SUCKS" but because of all the time put into it I don't want to just delete it. I take that stuff and dump it all into one file, never to be looked at again until I decide to make a TFR post for TEF. Which this is, incidentally!
Most of the time when I dump something, it's because it's boring. It's usually something that I've been trying to make work, sometimes for pages and hours on end, but then eventually resolve myself to the fact that it isn't going anywhere and I've got to axe it and give it another go. That's the case with the first bit of this excerpt from my out doc.
(This was my first attempt at the opening to ch5.)
---
Maria adjusted her top as the cameraman set up. It was a good day for shooting—the sun was at just the right angle and there was no wind to screw with the sound. They had a perfect view of the monster fight taking place some blocks away.
“Maria, I need you to step to your left a bit.” The cameraman motioned with his hand.
She obliged him and indicated the fight raging just over her right shoulder. “Got a clear shot?”
“For now. They're about to cut over to us; you hear them?”
Through her headset she could hear the talking from the newsdesk. She gave her cameraman the thumbs up.
“Okay, in five, four—” He held up his fingers for the remaining three and only mouthed them, jabbing his finger at Maria once it was done.
Maria instantly launched into a summation of how the attack had transpired. She'd been doing this for nearly ten years, making her an expert on reporting in the field. It wasn't typical for a newscaster to spend so many years out in the field, but Maria had a few things working for her. One, she liked it. Two, she was damn good at it. Three, no one else dared take the job in a city like Townsville. Save for Superhero, no other job put anyone quite so close to the scene of a monster attack on an almost daily basis.
---
YAWN. I'd forgotten how dull this was. I fall into the trap of getting too descriptive and trying to set up too much stuff when I'm writing first drafts. But that's why they call them first drafts, right? For me, sometimes the easy solution with stuff like this is just to start when the action is already in progress. I do like the last line I had in here, and while the exact wording didn't make it into the final draft, it served as a good springboard for getting all this across through Maria's character while avoiding flat description.
The other stuff that gets cut is old, ooooold stuff, written way back when TEF was barely brain matter. I don't run into a lot of that these days - most of the old stuff is definitely OUT at this point. Most of it is Blues and Reds-related.
Here are several chunks of the early Blues stuff. Mostly pieces. Some of it has proper transitions and actually follows a narrative.
---
Bubbles drifted aimlessly amidst the racks of clothing, reaching a hand out to jostle the hangers as she passed. Normally she would’ve been giddy at the mere idea of extra mall time, but she’d been waiting for nearly half an hour now without so much as a phone call from Will. Not that she really felt like hanging out anyway; at this point she wished he’d just hurry up and call or show up so she could tell him she didn’t feel like it, and go home. Sure, it was petty, but just fantasizing about huffing at him and giving him lip for standing her up gave her a twisted sense of satisfaction.
She paused, absently caressing a cashmere sweater, and frowned. Buttercup was starting to be a bad influence on her.
Suddenly her phone trilled, and she tore into her purse. “Finally,” she muttered to herself, gearing up for a tell off as she flipped her phone open. A text? God, how lame was he—
She froze as she scanned the message.
hey karaoke 2nite
intrstd?
-bmr
Her heart leapt out of her chest and she was suddenly so overwhelmed with excitement she forgot she wasn’t supposed to enjoy spending time with him anyway.
Sure! she texted back, fighting the inclination to add a <3! at the end of it. She was already jogging towards the exit when her phone went off again—a real call this time.
“Hey babe, sorry about the wait,” Will’s voice crackled on the other end.
“Oh, Will! Hey look, I kinda got sick of—”
“We’re all over at my place watching all our video highlights reels we sent to those college recruiters. See you soon?”
Bubbles blew her hair out of her face as she took off. “Sorry Will! Maybe next time!” Without waiting for a response, she snapped her phone shut and added, “Jerk.”
***
“Hey!” Boomer turned away from the group to greet Bubbles as she landed.
“That was fast,” Kim said in awe. Mike and Mary waved over her shoulder.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Bubbles laughed and shrugged, making an effort at subduing her wide grin as she caught Boomer’s eye.
“Lucky for us,” he smiled. “Where’s your boy?”
“Oh,” she snorted, shrugging it off. “Some football thing.”
His eyes lit up. “Lucky for me, then,” he said, his voice low and mischievous so only she could hear. She blushed and pretended not to.
***
“Okay, what do we got here,” Boomer said thoughtfully as he perused the binder stuffed full of song codes.
“You gotta open the night with some of those Freddie Mercury pipes of yours,” Mike encouraged.
Mary had a different idea. “Punch in a random set of numbers and see what comes up!”
“Watch it be something Korean,” Kim laughed as Bubbles obliged.
An unrecognizable song started trilling out of the speakers, and…
Bubbles clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.” The rest of the room exploded into laughter.
“It’s totally something Korean!” Mary cackled.
“Oh holy God, it’s a sign,” Boomer choked out through his tears. “Come on, Kim, start singing!”
Kim tried to look offended. “Look, just because I’m Korean—”
“Sing!” the rest of the room ordered, and Kim grabbed the mic without a second’s hesitation and demonstrated that she totally did know the song.
“You totally know this song!” Bubbles giggled.
“What do you call a Korean boy band? K-boys?” Mike mused.
Boomer studied the screen intently. “How many guys are in this band? Seriously, I’ve counted like, fifteen.”
“Korean boys are cute,” Mary observed.
“I concur.” Bubbles nodded her approval, making an effort to subdue her grin as Boomer turned and gave her a look. She sheepishly pointed at one of them. “I claim that one.”
Kim paused mid-verse and clamored, “I pick Kibum!”
Mike looked incredulous. “You even know their names?! I never pegged you as the bubblegum pop type.”
Boomer was stuck on the cute Korean boys comment and started flicking through the songbook again. “Let’s queue up a hot girl group next. I want to claim something.” He darted a glance at Bubbles and, so only she could hear, said in a low voice, “Since, you know, I can’t claim you.”
Bubbles whacked him and shifted so she could peer over his shoulder at the songs. Her thigh pressed against his and she pretended not to let it seem significant.
“Stop,” she laughed, feeling absurdly warm. Boomer only smiled.
***
***
“Congratulations,” Bubbles said, voice empty of emotion.
Will gave her a guarded look. “Thanks,” he said carefully.
She mustered a smile. “You said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Yeah, well… I’m graduating and all…”
A grim cloud passed over her face as he continued.
***
The slight breeze felt good in the hot June air, and Bubbles increased her flight speed just a bit to take further advantage of it. She didn’t really have a destination in mind, she only knew how… liberating it felt to wander aimlessly above the city. It felt like ages since she’d done so, and she wasn’t really sure why that was.
Maybe because it gave her too much time to reflect on things.
She expelled a heavy sigh. She’d seen it coming, way before. It was actually kind of embarrassing to think that she hadn’t spotted it earlier than that, even.
He’d never really been interested in anything she cared about. He didn’t understand her or the things she had a passion for. He’d barely made the effort.
She felt rather cheated. Will had been such a waste of her time.
What was the point, really? When someone you cared about, someone who you made an effort to be with, couldn’t bother returning the gesture? Will hadn’t even been able to find two measly hours out of their nine month relationship to spare at Karaoke Night. With her. And he’d said he loved her.
Maybe that had been just as well, she thought, and before she could stop herself she imagined the chaos that would’ve resulted if Will had been present when she’d pulled Boomer up for a duet.
“Nrgh,” she groaned, and flipped around so her back faced the city and all she could see were pockets of faded white against the blue, blue sky. She didn’t want to go there. Thinking about blushing and flirting and the unspoken danger she’d risked when she’d sat close enough to let her thigh press against Boomer’s as thoughts of Will fluttered carelessly out of her mind was horrible, horrible territory to go to.
Even if she was, technically, single now. Even if Boomer was—and had been—fairly vocal about his interest. Even if she was remarkably comfortable with the idea of—
Bubbles suddenly frowned and righted herself, gaze focused deliberately on the suburban neighborhood beneath her. Horrible territory. This was no time to for her thoughts to drift to Boomer! She’d just suffered a breakup! After a nine month long relationship! She should’ve been thinking of how miserable she felt, how sad and devastated she was that Will was moving on, how lonely she was going to be now…
Except…
She landed. She didn’t feel miserable, or sad, or devastated. Lonely, yes. But not because Will wasn’t with her.
Her eyes glazed over as she stared down the street, the cookie-cutter houses mirroring each other across it. He was going to leave too, anyway. And besides, he wasn’t right for her. No matter how much he argued against it, nor how much a part of her just wished, no. He wasn’t right for her.
Then again, though. Will hadn’t been right for her either.
She suddenly shook her head and a strangled, frustrated noise escaped from her throat. Enough! All this back and forth in her head wasn’t doing any good! Laws of relationship breakup dictated she call up a friend in a fit of tears, bawling over the irreplaceable Will! The time to feel conflicted about dating someone new—she hastily shoved away thoughts of certain blonde, blue-eyed “former” supervillains—would come weeks later. Or months. She had a feeling it might be the former in this case.
At least by that point, Boomer would be gone. Better to let life make the nasty decisions for her. Something in her gut twisted. She hadn’t eaten. She was probably hungry.
There were sounds of a garage band practicing somewhere down the street, and she looked up, curious. Didn’t the Floydjoydsen twins live here? Her superhearing picked up on a sudden burst of laughter—the voice of a tenor, a voice that wrapped around her and curled in her stomach and felt so right in harmony with hers…
Now she felt sad and miserable. Life was so unfair.
Bubbles flew home.
---
I don't have a lot to say about these chunks, besides the fact that this is part of the reason I became so enamored with and surprised by the turn the Blues took when I actually started writing TEF. What's in this early stuff here (in both narrative and plot) is very boring and run-of-the-mill - inoffensive, but uninteresting. The only thing that got written new was the karaoke scene, and what I wound up not liking about that was how boring the "natural" dialogue about K-pop turned out. It became too much of a digression in my attempt to get the side characters more involved. I want to make sure the world in TEF is fleshed out - that is, I don't want it to appear that the only people who interact with the Girls and Boys are each other, I want them to have lives outside of each other that involve other people. But I also have to try and maintain the focus on the most important part of the story, which is, ultimately, the Girls' and Boys' developing relationships. So it's a balancing act.
There's more - my out doc is 26 pgs long at 8pt Verdana font and this was only 2.5 pgs. What do you guys do with the stuff you toss out? Do you just delete it? Do you hold onto it? Inquiring minds are curious and want to know :)
I keep an "out" document for TEF for, you know, stuff that I slave over for hours on end then finally decide "AUGH THIS SUCKS" but because of all the time put into it I don't want to just delete it. I take that stuff and dump it all into one file, never to be looked at again until I decide to make a TFR post for TEF. Which this is, incidentally!
Most of the time when I dump something, it's because it's boring. It's usually something that I've been trying to make work, sometimes for pages and hours on end, but then eventually resolve myself to the fact that it isn't going anywhere and I've got to axe it and give it another go. That's the case with the first bit of this excerpt from my out doc.
(This was my first attempt at the opening to ch5.)
---
Maria adjusted her top as the cameraman set up. It was a good day for shooting—the sun was at just the right angle and there was no wind to screw with the sound. They had a perfect view of the monster fight taking place some blocks away.
“Maria, I need you to step to your left a bit.” The cameraman motioned with his hand.
She obliged him and indicated the fight raging just over her right shoulder. “Got a clear shot?”
“For now. They're about to cut over to us; you hear them?”
Through her headset she could hear the talking from the newsdesk. She gave her cameraman the thumbs up.
“Okay, in five, four—” He held up his fingers for the remaining three and only mouthed them, jabbing his finger at Maria once it was done.
Maria instantly launched into a summation of how the attack had transpired. She'd been doing this for nearly ten years, making her an expert on reporting in the field. It wasn't typical for a newscaster to spend so many years out in the field, but Maria had a few things working for her. One, she liked it. Two, she was damn good at it. Three, no one else dared take the job in a city like Townsville. Save for Superhero, no other job put anyone quite so close to the scene of a monster attack on an almost daily basis.
---
YAWN. I'd forgotten how dull this was. I fall into the trap of getting too descriptive and trying to set up too much stuff when I'm writing first drafts. But that's why they call them first drafts, right? For me, sometimes the easy solution with stuff like this is just to start when the action is already in progress. I do like the last line I had in here, and while the exact wording didn't make it into the final draft, it served as a good springboard for getting all this across through Maria's character while avoiding flat description.
The other stuff that gets cut is old, ooooold stuff, written way back when TEF was barely brain matter. I don't run into a lot of that these days - most of the old stuff is definitely OUT at this point. Most of it is Blues and Reds-related.
Here are several chunks of the early Blues stuff. Mostly pieces. Some of it has proper transitions and actually follows a narrative.
---
Bubbles drifted aimlessly amidst the racks of clothing, reaching a hand out to jostle the hangers as she passed. Normally she would’ve been giddy at the mere idea of extra mall time, but she’d been waiting for nearly half an hour now without so much as a phone call from Will. Not that she really felt like hanging out anyway; at this point she wished he’d just hurry up and call or show up so she could tell him she didn’t feel like it, and go home. Sure, it was petty, but just fantasizing about huffing at him and giving him lip for standing her up gave her a twisted sense of satisfaction.
She paused, absently caressing a cashmere sweater, and frowned. Buttercup was starting to be a bad influence on her.
Suddenly her phone trilled, and she tore into her purse. “Finally,” she muttered to herself, gearing up for a tell off as she flipped her phone open. A text? God, how lame was he—
She froze as she scanned the message.
hey karaoke 2nite
intrstd?
-bmr
Her heart leapt out of her chest and she was suddenly so overwhelmed with excitement she forgot she wasn’t supposed to enjoy spending time with him anyway.
Sure! she texted back, fighting the inclination to add a <3! at the end of it. She was already jogging towards the exit when her phone went off again—a real call this time.
“Hey babe, sorry about the wait,” Will’s voice crackled on the other end.
“Oh, Will! Hey look, I kinda got sick of—”
“We’re all over at my place watching all our video highlights reels we sent to those college recruiters. See you soon?”
Bubbles blew her hair out of her face as she took off. “Sorry Will! Maybe next time!” Without waiting for a response, she snapped her phone shut and added, “Jerk.”
***
“Hey!” Boomer turned away from the group to greet Bubbles as she landed.
“That was fast,” Kim said in awe. Mike and Mary waved over her shoulder.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Bubbles laughed and shrugged, making an effort at subduing her wide grin as she caught Boomer’s eye.
“Lucky for us,” he smiled. “Where’s your boy?”
“Oh,” she snorted, shrugging it off. “Some football thing.”
His eyes lit up. “Lucky for me, then,” he said, his voice low and mischievous so only she could hear. She blushed and pretended not to.
***
“Okay, what do we got here,” Boomer said thoughtfully as he perused the binder stuffed full of song codes.
“You gotta open the night with some of those Freddie Mercury pipes of yours,” Mike encouraged.
Mary had a different idea. “Punch in a random set of numbers and see what comes up!”
“Watch it be something Korean,” Kim laughed as Bubbles obliged.
An unrecognizable song started trilling out of the speakers, and…
Bubbles clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.” The rest of the room exploded into laughter.
“It’s totally something Korean!” Mary cackled.
“Oh holy God, it’s a sign,” Boomer choked out through his tears. “Come on, Kim, start singing!”
Kim tried to look offended. “Look, just because I’m Korean—”
“Sing!” the rest of the room ordered, and Kim grabbed the mic without a second’s hesitation and demonstrated that she totally did know the song.
“You totally know this song!” Bubbles giggled.
“What do you call a Korean boy band? K-boys?” Mike mused.
Boomer studied the screen intently. “How many guys are in this band? Seriously, I’ve counted like, fifteen.”
“Korean boys are cute,” Mary observed.
“I concur.” Bubbles nodded her approval, making an effort to subdue her grin as Boomer turned and gave her a look. She sheepishly pointed at one of them. “I claim that one.”
Kim paused mid-verse and clamored, “I pick Kibum!”
Mike looked incredulous. “You even know their names?! I never pegged you as the bubblegum pop type.”
Boomer was stuck on the cute Korean boys comment and started flicking through the songbook again. “Let’s queue up a hot girl group next. I want to claim something.” He darted a glance at Bubbles and, so only she could hear, said in a low voice, “Since, you know, I can’t claim you.”
Bubbles whacked him and shifted so she could peer over his shoulder at the songs. Her thigh pressed against his and she pretended not to let it seem significant.
“Stop,” she laughed, feeling absurdly warm. Boomer only smiled.
***
***
“Congratulations,” Bubbles said, voice empty of emotion.
Will gave her a guarded look. “Thanks,” he said carefully.
She mustered a smile. “You said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Yeah, well… I’m graduating and all…”
A grim cloud passed over her face as he continued.
***
The slight breeze felt good in the hot June air, and Bubbles increased her flight speed just a bit to take further advantage of it. She didn’t really have a destination in mind, she only knew how… liberating it felt to wander aimlessly above the city. It felt like ages since she’d done so, and she wasn’t really sure why that was.
Maybe because it gave her too much time to reflect on things.
She expelled a heavy sigh. She’d seen it coming, way before. It was actually kind of embarrassing to think that she hadn’t spotted it earlier than that, even.
He’d never really been interested in anything she cared about. He didn’t understand her or the things she had a passion for. He’d barely made the effort.
She felt rather cheated. Will had been such a waste of her time.
What was the point, really? When someone you cared about, someone who you made an effort to be with, couldn’t bother returning the gesture? Will hadn’t even been able to find two measly hours out of their nine month relationship to spare at Karaoke Night. With her. And he’d said he loved her.
Maybe that had been just as well, she thought, and before she could stop herself she imagined the chaos that would’ve resulted if Will had been present when she’d pulled Boomer up for a duet.
“Nrgh,” she groaned, and flipped around so her back faced the city and all she could see were pockets of faded white against the blue, blue sky. She didn’t want to go there. Thinking about blushing and flirting and the unspoken danger she’d risked when she’d sat close enough to let her thigh press against Boomer’s as thoughts of Will fluttered carelessly out of her mind was horrible, horrible territory to go to.
Even if she was, technically, single now. Even if Boomer was—and had been—fairly vocal about his interest. Even if she was remarkably comfortable with the idea of—
Bubbles suddenly frowned and righted herself, gaze focused deliberately on the suburban neighborhood beneath her. Horrible territory. This was no time to for her thoughts to drift to Boomer! She’d just suffered a breakup! After a nine month long relationship! She should’ve been thinking of how miserable she felt, how sad and devastated she was that Will was moving on, how lonely she was going to be now…
Except…
She landed. She didn’t feel miserable, or sad, or devastated. Lonely, yes. But not because Will wasn’t with her.
Her eyes glazed over as she stared down the street, the cookie-cutter houses mirroring each other across it. He was going to leave too, anyway. And besides, he wasn’t right for her. No matter how much he argued against it, nor how much a part of her just wished, no. He wasn’t right for her.
Then again, though. Will hadn’t been right for her either.
She suddenly shook her head and a strangled, frustrated noise escaped from her throat. Enough! All this back and forth in her head wasn’t doing any good! Laws of relationship breakup dictated she call up a friend in a fit of tears, bawling over the irreplaceable Will! The time to feel conflicted about dating someone new—she hastily shoved away thoughts of certain blonde, blue-eyed “former” supervillains—would come weeks later. Or months. She had a feeling it might be the former in this case.
At least by that point, Boomer would be gone. Better to let life make the nasty decisions for her. Something in her gut twisted. She hadn’t eaten. She was probably hungry.
There were sounds of a garage band practicing somewhere down the street, and she looked up, curious. Didn’t the Floydjoydsen twins live here? Her superhearing picked up on a sudden burst of laughter—the voice of a tenor, a voice that wrapped around her and curled in her stomach and felt so right in harmony with hers…
Now she felt sad and miserable. Life was so unfair.
Bubbles flew home.
---
I don't have a lot to say about these chunks, besides the fact that this is part of the reason I became so enamored with and surprised by the turn the Blues took when I actually started writing TEF. What's in this early stuff here (in both narrative and plot) is very boring and run-of-the-mill - inoffensive, but uninteresting. The only thing that got written new was the karaoke scene, and what I wound up not liking about that was how boring the "natural" dialogue about K-pop turned out. It became too much of a digression in my attempt to get the side characters more involved. I want to make sure the world in TEF is fleshed out - that is, I don't want it to appear that the only people who interact with the Girls and Boys are each other, I want them to have lives outside of each other that involve other people. But I also have to try and maintain the focus on the most important part of the story, which is, ultimately, the Girls' and Boys' developing relationships. So it's a balancing act.
There's more - my out doc is 26 pgs long at 8pt Verdana font and this was only 2.5 pgs. What do you guys do with the stuff you toss out? Do you just delete it? Do you hold onto it? Inquiring minds are curious and want to know :)