Lack.

[mrissa]

You know what one thing I would like to see more of in my own writing and suspect I never will? Explosions. Great, big, boomy explosions. Possibly fireballs, but not the, "I cast Fireball +8!" kind. The kind that come off of wreckage rather than causing wreckage. Well, they cause it, too, but are not the first thing in the causal sequence.

I don't want more explosions every day. Just today.

I mean, I could deliberately write a story to get explosions, but it'd be one out of many, and if I didn't continue putting energy into the system, it would fall back to the ground state, which for me seems to not include explosions, although for some people it probably would. Perhaps it'd emit coherent photons along the way, though. That might be worth it, if it would. But I'm skeptical.

This is probably indicative of how I'm doing today, if you need some kind of Mrissish indicator. So if you can, please give me either something you want more of in fiction (yours or other people's) or else something good today.

timprov already pointed out the joyful puppy leaping through the leaves in the backyard, so that's something good for sure.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You are reminding me of the line in Sweet Charity about the three things you have to do to make a blockbuster; be politically subversive, blow stuff up, and take people's clothes off. All of which seem to happen fairly regularly in my long fiction, which is almost all of it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Err. That's between a 33% and a 67% average for me, I guess.

I shoot people! (Well, my characters shoot people.) And do other large-scale nasty things that are not explosions!

I don't think my books would make very good movies anyway. I keep saying this when people bring up casting their stories: Hollywood doesn't have people who look like the people I write about, or even close. And things that are quite all right in a book are intolerable in a movie.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, mine totally wouldn't; the pacing would be all wrong, so much of the subtle detail would be lost, and neither the brand of political subversiveness nor the being sensible and comfortable about nudity would translate to the big screen in any climat I can envision reching easily from here.

[kendwoods.livejournal.com]

I want prettier prose in my novels. I can write all the pretty words in short stories, but for some reason the prose in my novels wants to be transparent.

[fiddledragon]

picture little sneaky toddlers crawling under your legs to grab candy corn, then crawl back under to run away with ne in his hot little hands

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I am all rubber-band ball today. No fury, but lots and lots of nerves.

I find myself immensely reassured by fiction where the world makes as little sense as it makes in reality. It's not that the world making no sense is reassuring, but the part where I'm not the only one? Oh, yes.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. Nerves, no fury. Just so.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I want more insight in my own fiction.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Protagonists that do something. Mine are always acted on, or won't do anything unless forced. And for better crazy. My favorite entertainments (books, movies, manga) tend to have characters that are just ... crazy in some way (or the world is crazy and the characters have to function in and around it somehow), and I can't ever do that. Phooey.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think my protagonists may have stolen all the doing something for the immediate area. They're always running off and trying to bring down empires and stuff like that.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

What do I want more of in my fiction ? More different sorts of people. More cool stuff. More of whatever drug it is that catches the reader's interest and makes characters strike them as real.

In other people's fiction ? Good prose. Twisty plots. Sensible human beings reacting in sensible ways. Less melodrama. More people being sensible about sex in particular.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

My fiction needs more plausible dialogue. (One reason I've never completed anything for sale.)

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

What do I want more of in my fiction? It existing. ;-P I want to write, but suck at it. (evidence to this...my journal ramblings)

Happy thought? Nice long shower with water thay stayed hot. And soon....shopping. YAY!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I have a wish list for trends in clothing but not one for trends in books. But I am developing a new appreciation for explosions in movies lately because of all the long erg pieces. I think it's fair to say that while not all movies with explosions are good erg movies, few good erg movies don't have a good explosion or three. So much easier to follow than complex dialog.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, share your trends in clothing wish list!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Most important and perennial: comfortable and usable in real life! Skirts you can stride in, dressy clothes with pockets, pants with waists that don't leave welts by assuming I nip in where I don't. (Note: Gap now has three cuts in jeans: Curvy, Average, and Straight. I don't know how much variation there actually is, but I think the realization that different women have different amounts of curvature, and the attempt to fit all of us, is a Good Thing.) I want to be able to get low rises whether or not they're in fashion, because I'm short-waisted and don't like fits that try to nip in to a tiny waist where in fact I have ribs.

What I've been wanting for a few years now is athletic cuts for women: keep the bust and hip sizes the same, but make shoulders, armholes, and sleeves roomier. (The shirt I'm wearing now is too tight in the *forearms*. That's just silly.) Size waists big enough to allow for abs. Make the thighs roomier in pants without requiring wearers to get something too big in hip and waist. And offer it as an option, so those of us who want it can get that fit and others who don't, don't have to.

Oh, and my other wish list for trends is fewer of them, with more perennial variety, so when I find something that works for me I can keep getting it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Recognition that people vary and so should their clothes. Yes.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

In my own fiction, I want more swordfights. And people wearing fabulous clothes. Actually, I'd like more of that in other people's fiction as well.

A good thing: I realized yesterday that the annoying leg cramps that had been increasingly plaguing me for the better part of the past few years have more or less completely vanished in the past couple of months. I can point my toes without fear of setting off a spasm that will have me limping for the rest of the day! Wheee!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I may be able to get you more swordfights a couple books down the line. Stranger things have happened. Around here, even.

Leg cramps are awful, I agree. I know the kind you mean, and they stink.

[pameladean]

Good dialogue. Lots of it. Also landscape and generally good nature values. And food.

And space. Space in sentences, including allegedly extra words, just for breathing time. Space in narrative. I do enjoy a very tightly-wound fast-paced story from time to time, but I don't need so damn many of them, thank you. Space.

Dirigibles are nice too.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Dirigibles are trendy these days, you know, with the Zeppelin Stories anthology and all that. So if you meant that for other people's fiction, you're in luck. If you meant it for your own, well, can't really help you there.

Sometimes I dream of passenger dirigibles wandering around downtown.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

It may be time to write the alternate-universe story in which Ansa gets to do whatever she pleases with the Sampo.

I trust that will get it out of your system.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Boom!" said Mrs. Hoo Ansa.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

In my fiction, I want more hunky men in really good shape with no shirt. Or with torn shirts. Either one would work. And more humor. I've gotten away from humor, but, honestly, I crack me up. I kill me. I've got to stop taking me so seriously.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So, like, the ideal would be a funny half-nekkid dude? I can see that, I suppose, although I'm pretty content with the amount of shirtage in my stories just now.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Sort of a Chippendales meets rubber chickens motif...I can totally see it in Analog.

(Did I keep a straight face for that one? The straight face is crucial.)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

What I want in my fiction is for it to make some sort of a determination about its existence. I'm fine with either direction, but this limbo nonsense tends to drive me nuts.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I guess I would like more fiction that is openly religious but not crappy. And I would like more Southern fiction that isn't either about "how gothic them parts is" or "oh how *cute*!"

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I think I sent you my good thing, or one.

The kind that come off of wreckage rather than causing wreckage. Well, they cause it, too, but are not the first thing in the causal sequence.

I want mind explosions at time, at others soemthing pertinent to my life with a female central character.. and at times I like the diferences.

I fell asleep around _How to Travel with a Salmon_ last night and then The _Artist as Critic_, so there is a place when elegance and absurdity are wanted also. Power's books are so very busy, and now I had just last night finished _Sandman Companion_ and so, there is that other desire to for space, and less said, a little quiet space.

But I thing most of my wants in reading flow, I tend to choose books that way if I can. I don't always want a heroine like Ista, or something rich or spare, or explosions. I was thinking of McKillip again last night because the Powers, and to an extent Wilde have me thinking again about women's stories (this really started with one of Gaiman's interviews, so that is his term then.) And then also about will.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

My apologies for the ramble, with typos. Allergy head, and rushing to get ready for work again while fending off the Cole. I do miss the hotel a little at times.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Rambling Welcome Here.

[cadithial.livejournal.com]

Booooom shockalocka :P I love to blow stuff up :)

[greykev.livejournal.com]

What I enjoy in the fiction I read is oddities. Bizzare, unexplained things the characters encounter whose only purpose is to exist and be neat. Sort of a 'stop and smell the flowers' approach to plotting.

In my own fiction I'd like to see more active conflict. It need not even be sensible or righteous, just conflicty. Too often I imply the conflict is happening off-stage somewhere while focusing on the POV character cooking dinner or something.