Writing plotless crap about characters wandering around somewhere

Comments

• Alduin

  2016-02-12 09:18:47

  *raises hand*
• MetaFour

  2016-02-12 14:57:47

  For once, or maybe twice, I was in my prime.

  I started writing one, but then it grew a plot anyway.
• Sredni Vashtar

  2016-02-12 17:35:49

  “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”

  This is actually reasonably common in mainstream "non-genre" fiction, at least in the short story form: People do a thing and the character interactions are the story.

  
  

  A large chunk of the main-ish plot of the thing I'm writing is this, arguably.
• Bee

  2016-02-12 17:43:13

  
• Princess Alice

  2016-02-12 18:32:29

  You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022

  I do this a lot too. I can't always think of a good conflict for my characters to get involved it, but I like to just put them in a situation and see how they react.
  
• Sredni Vashtar

  2016-02-12 22:43:46

  “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”

  ^^ Pretty much, yeah. Tristram Shandy even more so, albeit with less wandering around and more lecturing. And The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is like that crossed with the Canterbury Tales on crack.

  
  

  Old novels in general are frequently pretty formless. People walk into plot rather than engage in it directly.

  
  

  ^ I mean, to some extent, most plots ultimately stem from character: Somebody wants something, or something happens to them and they have to react, or wants or initial reactions to events by two characters interact in interesting ways.
• Tachyon

  2016-02-13 01:18:27

  ^{i will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch}
  

  i remember we used to purposefully set out to write these on TVT, as an exercise in writing dialogue and character interactions.  Plots tended to develop anyway, more often than not.
  
• Anonus

  2016-02-13 01:24:16

  I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat

  this came as a result of an attempt to introduce the characters from one of my things

  
  

  it won't serve as a proper introduction but I like the direction enough to continue it

  
  

  another "Episode One" will have to be planned!
• Imipolex G

  2016-02-13 02:48:46

  Touch the cow. Do it now.
  

  James Joyce perfected this genre in 1922
  
• Tre

  2016-02-13 06:34:47

  
  

  Anonus said:

  this came as a result of an attempt to introduce the characters from one of my things

  
  

  it won't serve as a proper introduction but I like the direction enough to continue it

  
  

  another "Episode One" will have to be planned!

  
  it might actually be kinda interesting to think about keeping your original start intact and then filling the gaps in later
  
  like, we aren't outright told that Mordecai is an art school dropout and Rigby never finished high school, but we still get a feel for who they are anyway through the narrative of the first few episodes and then when we learn that background it has a cool way of putting things into perspective retroactively
• MissUtilis

  2016-02-13 06:38:37

  BEWARE OF GRRL!
  

  I really don't know how to deal with certain details...