Old Writing

I poked around some of my old stuff, writing-wise, and I've come to a conclusion: it's awful.

Well, it's probably not completely awful (I thought it was alright at some point, after all). However, I cannot help but notice that any decent editor would cringe at it. I think my biggest problem is that I tend to focus more on the concepts and less on the execution of them.

For example, one short story I originally wrote from the perspective of a character with a secret. Thinking it was a good idea, I rewrote the whole thing from the perspective a character who would eventually come to learn that secret. Rereading the rewrite now, the discovery of the secret feels like it comes out of thin air and the relationship between the two aforementioned characters feels rushed and superficial.

Relationships. I am not very good with romance--it's usually a "they fall in love" note in the outline that I deal poorly when actually writing the thing. In the book I'm currently working on, I give a tease here and there, but no young love thus far has come to fruition. Of course, this might be because half of the relationship tends to die.

My other big flaw is executing the story's timeline. My outline would say something like "and they went on a journey" without figuring out what is going to happen on that journey. If and when I get to that part while writing, it either comes out contrived or contradictory to what is supposed to happen next according to the outline. On my current novel, I deliberately neglected to create an outline and I don't think I should write one ever again. Oh, and remember how I said in an earlier post that one character was completely safe? I think werf is going to get killed off next. Mwahahaha.

So, hopefully, since I'm now avoiding these pitfalls, Y'lutem'lo will not be awful. Of course, when I look back on it in a couple of years, I'll probably think differently.