Well, DUH.

[agilebrit]

Head, meet keyboard.

Okay, class. What's the first rule of genre writing?

Read the genre you want to write in.

It's been literally years since I've dipped my toe into written horror. I've seen a couple of movies ("Slither" and "Shaun of the Dead" are the two most recent, and are possibly not the best examples), but reading it isn't really my thing.

So, when I set out to write the CatFeet fic, I really had no idea what I was doing. And I knew it was missing something, but I couldn't really put my finger on it.

And then Dark Recesses put out a call for flashfic subs, and I decided to toddle over and check out their magazine. You can read the current issue for free, and this is research for me, right?

So I read a couple of the stories and was blown away by one, especially. Not so much the story itself, but the atmosphere it evoked. And that, my friends, is what the CatFeet fic is missing.

Part of this gets back to "I suck at description." And part of it gets back to "I write a story like I'm watching it through a camera lens." And yet another part of it is "I picked up some bad habits when I was writing fanfiction," which brings us back full circle to "I suck at description."

So it's a matter of going back and adding atmosphere to those scenes that need them. Shadows, trees, scents, that crawly feeling on the back of your neck -- I need them all, especially in a story like this. Hell, we don't even know what the protagonist looks like. All I really need are two features, and I couldn't be arsed to find them. The cat is described better than he is. Which means, yes, it's one of mine. *rolls eyes at self*

This is why, I think, kenrand's "Ten Percent Solution" doesn't work for me. I already write tight. Sometimes, I think I write too tight. So, my own Ten Percent Solution would be going back in and adding ten percent rather than whacking it out.

*cracks knuckles and dives back into the fray*

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The only reason I went into that ego-boo was to give an example of the tossed-off descriptive phrase, which can be useful. (Describing Buffy as a "drippy, annoying California blonde," for example...snerk)