The Drive: Form and Focus

When writing a story many things need to be taken into account. Trying to take on all of them at once however causes chaos and confusion.

This can be alleviated by two things. Form of writing and focus of writing.

Form is important because it provides a shell for an author to build their story within, and helps them to define their current limits and boundaries. The direction and crafting of a certain story whether short of long follows from the application of form. Sometimes you want to try something like a longer story after writing a lot of shorter ones for a long time. There are ways to go about this, including making detailed outlines and plans or more commonly the serial route, which involves creating a story in pieces and adjusting from chapter to chapter depending on their needs. There are other methods to consider as well.

It also extends to the smaller details such as sentence and thematic structure. In simpler terms, if you’re the type of person that has a writing style meant for poetry it’s not prudent to jump into long sessions of prose on a whim; it isn’t very accommodating at first. It’s not to say that a poet can’t ever write a novel, but their story has to be paced in a way that fits their style. Some of us can adjust quickly while others take much longer – it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not the time that will be needed to adjust is worth it in the end.

Focus as a concept is as it says on the label. There are habits that go from focusing too much on certain parts of storybuilding to being too loose with the same kind of thing. Neither benefits the overall story. Even hyper-detailed stories that take a path towards character study do not actually ignore the other details; they are small but essential to the overall picture. When it comes to fanfiction it’s usually a lack of focus that takes its toll on how a story pans out, as many don’t have the mental endurance to continue on their path and bring things to a successful end. This goes beyond not just finishing a story, it also includes being swayed by author opinion, being too stubborn to accept criticism, keeping up with trends and also letting laziness take over. Some of the hugbox mentality of communities doesn’t help either nor do the low effort praises heaped at anything that looks like a marginally good read, or worse. The idea that writing is for ourselves continues to be an outstanding ideology and one that aspiring authors usually latch onto in order to boost their self-esteem. The result is writing of a story without actually being focused on the story; it becomes a means to an end, an outlet alone instead of something that is provided to the public as reading material. Anyone can put text onto a screen. A story is a bit more than that.