Spoilers!

(*cough* character impressions don't work well in text form.)

Most people would agree they prefer to watch movies, read books, etc. without getting spoiled beforehand. Certain people, in fact, clap their hands over their ears and run away the second they hear people discussing something they haven't seen yet. I would say I agree - the suspense is much more entertaining when you don't know what exactly is going to happen. Emotional moments have much greater impact when you haven't seen the scene out of the proper context before. Problems are more interesting to watch the characters solve when you don't know the answer going in. And of course, plot twists are nowhere near as fun when you've been awaiting the twist the entire movie. So for this blog entry, I decided to look at some reasons I've heard or thought of why spoilers might not be a bad thing - at least in some cases. Because why not.

• "It's fun to see the little clues leading up to the big revelation!" I kind of agree with this one. A lot of authors leave subtle foreshadowing hints that you might not catch (or see in the same way) if you don't know about them beforehand. And if you really like that aspect of fiction, go for it! Spoil yourself rotten. I personally prefer to leave this part to the re-read or re-watch, so I get to experience the same work twice two ways.
• "It gets you excited about the show!" Okay, I might not argue here. The plot twists can make the story more intriguing, before you start. And you need some information about the show to get anyone interested in the first place, and some of that information might have been more fun if it was completely unexpected. If you go in completely blind, you'll just be skeptical the entire time because you have no reason to believe you'd like it. But still, if I can get interested in something with minimum spoilers, I'd prefer that.
• "Oh, come on, everybody knows that!" DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER. Yeah, there's not really much to be lost if one solitary person doesn't inform you - a bunch more probably will.
• "It's fun to spoil stuff for people and then see how they react!" I'll admit it, I've been guilty of this on occasion. Doesn't change that it's still pretty dickish. What's more fun, though, is to give them fake spoilers. Same reaction, less cost for them! :D

Excuses, Excuses

Some of you might know about National Novel Writing Month, a month-long writing event (well, yeah) during which participants attempt to write every day to reach a word goal of 50,000 words.  Well, this year I decided to participate for the first time and...yeah. Not going so great. I'm hopelessly behind, and the weekends I'd planned to use to catch up I spent doing pretty much nothing.

See, me and writing have a complicated relationship. Sometimes I'll get super-inspired and just write for an hour until I get it done, when I really love the idea and I have free time. Slightly more often I'll get inspired, start writing a bit, then leave the piece alone for a week or so and then finish, revise, etc. Or I'll just randomly start writing stuff and let myself be inspired as I write and then edit for coherency later. I should probably mention these all generally only work for short stories.

What happens with anything more major (incuding novels) is that I start out with an interesting but vague idea, which then sits in my brain where I'm constantly plotting, characterizing, adding details, perfecting it before it's even written. And then when I sit down to write, it's hard to get excited about more than just a couple parts. Maybe I'm excited about the story as a whole, but getting to the interesting parts ends up feeling like slogging through scenes. And that's not fun.

The story I chose to finally (attempt) to get on paper for NaNoWriMo was one I've had rolling around in my mind for...about two years now? It's changed a lot since its initial (extremely vague) conception. And then I cannibalized interesting elements from stories that were just not working at all. I'd say the story in its current general form, with the right feel, has only been around for five or so months. But that's beside the point. In all that time, I never felt like I knew enough of the story to start writing it down, because some piece of the plot, or of a setting element, or a character, was always missing. I got stuck in a long string of "I should figure this out first"s. And the thing is, I really don't know how I would write without having any clue what to write.

So when I finally ended up with a fairly coherent outline, I felt if I was ever going to write it down, this was the moment - I knew everything I had to write, so the actual writing should be easy. Nope. In all that time figuring out everything about the story, I lost passion for it. Right now, I'm much more interested in another idea of mine - but with that one, I know hardly anything except one character. They'll be so much fun to write about if I ever figure out what happens to them in the story - but by the time I do figure that out, I won't care as much and I'll move on to something else. It's a vicious cycle, and in the end, it ends up with me getting hooked on brain crack.