The writing meme
Sep. 12th, 2016 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitShamelessly stolen from cypher and recessional. Leave a number (or two!) in a comment. Then copy/paste to your own journal if you want people to ask you questions.
1. How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
2. Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
3. What character do you identify with most?
4. Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?
5. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?
6. Care to share a favorite hurt/comfort fic?
7. Care to share a favorite crack fic?
8. How would you describe your style?
9. Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?
10. Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].
11. What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?
12. What's the weirdest AU you've ever come up with?
13. Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?
14. Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
15. How do you begin a story--with the plot, or the characters?
16. Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
17. Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?
18. Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
19. Any fandom tropes you can't resist?
20. Any fandom tropes you can't stand?
21. A pairing you might like to write for, but haven't tried yet.
22. A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?
23. Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
24. A character you enjoy making suffer.
25. A character you want to protect.
26. Major character death--do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can't tolerate?
cypher and recessional. Leave a number (or two!) in a comment. Then copy/paste to your own journal if you want people to ask you questions.1. How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
2. Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
3. What character do you identify with most?
4. Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?
5. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?
6. Care to share a favorite hurt/comfort fic?
7. Care to share a favorite crack fic?
8. How would you describe your style?
9. Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?
10. Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].
11. What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?
12. What's the weirdest AU you've ever come up with?
13. Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?
14. Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
15. How do you begin a story--with the plot, or the characters?
16. Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
17. Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?
18. Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
19. Any fandom tropes you can't resist?
20. Any fandom tropes you can't stand?
21. A pairing you might like to write for, but haven't tried yet.
22. A secondary (or underrated) character you want to see more of in fic?
23. Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
24. A character you enjoy making suffer.
25. A character you want to protect.
26. Major character death--do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can't tolerate?
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 03:16 am (UTC)Hahaha, um... My style as a writer is mostly "not"?
I am One Of Those Authors who has 79K words socked away in various Word docs, but has maybe 8K words published; my style, therefore, I guess, is sporadic. From experience, I know I'm not one of those people who can lay out a complex plot; and I'm not one of those people who can plug away at something every day until it's finished. I'm awful about losing interest in things (and gaining interest back at the worst possible time). I go through periods where I scarcely write at all; and I skip from story to story and fandom to fandom as my current fancy takes me.
Endings are the worst. It seems virtually impossible for me to finish a story! And I'm never free of the urge to 'fix' it, either. (I have lost so much writing momentum by getting dragged into the snare of editing what's already written! It's embarrassing.)
In terms of the stuff I don't finish, but dream of finishing... well, I'm pretty shamelessly a smut writer and an eager embracer of my favourite tropes. Smut, I can do, but trying to develop a long and convoluted plot? No way.
One day I dream of being the kind of writer who can do that, but it'd take a lot of training and study.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 01:38 pm (UTC)And ahahaha, oh, do I understand the periods where writing scarcely happens at all. For me, they usually come when work or something similar has completely drained my creativity. I'm definitely one of those people who looks on my own personal creativity as something like a well or a pool -- if I don't draw too heavily from it, it'll keep refreshing itself, but if I'm forced to pull from it too much (e.g., I have a lot of very technical work-editing to do that demands my complete focus and concentration) it'll run dry. I'm just barely edging out of a long dry spell now.
I hope you're able to finish something to your satisfaction soon. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 03:22 am (UTC)Anything involving babies. I'm allergic to pregfic, curtainfic, kidfic, de-aging, suddenly!babies, and pretty much anything else that involves My Faves and offspring.
More broadly, I'm also intensely disinterested in mundane AUs, or anything that removes the power differentials/age differences/species differences of a pairing. (Twist them, switch them, or alter them? Fine! But remove them and I'm gone.)
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 03:42 am (UTC)Erm....... all of them?? *shoves piles of unfinished fic toward the internet* I am SO BAD at finishing fics; there have been many times in my life where, while reading over something I've written in the attempt to write more, I've wished that somebody else would come along and write it for me!
There are also, of course, a number of unfinished fics out there that I desperately wish would be finished by their authors in some kind of magical fandom completion event! Rainjoy's Closer (FMA fandom) is probably top of the list right now, but I still harbour secret yearnings for Midnight_Blue's The Mirror of Maybe and Caecilia's Elective Affinities (HP fandom) too! Not to mention Askerian's Back to the Garden and Jumpingjacktrash's General Vantas Gets Hitched (Homestuck fandom) and plenty of others!
My policy is not to read WIP fics, but as you can see, sometimes it's a policy more honoured in the breach. :D
I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-14 03:51 am (UTC)This is almost too broad a question! Pick a fandom I've been in, and there's probably one or two, or a dozen, secondary or underrated characters I love!
I seem to be very hit or miss when it comes to favourites - either I'm on board with everyone else and the fandom's darling is also mine, or I'm sitting off to the side totally baffled as to why everyone is going nuts about that character when my favourite is clearly far more interesting! HP fandom was one of the latter; I was a Snapefan (and more specifically a Snape/Harry fan), and couldn't must up anything beyond a superficial interest in Weasleys or Malfoys.
Thankfully, HP fandom was so very vast that even as a part of a 1/100th minority I had plenty of company. :D
My first thought was that the difference was connected to the canon's cast size: if the cast is smallish and the focus tight, I tend to prefer the main character along with everyone else, while in sprawling megacast fandoms I'm more likely to get hung up on some minor nobody... but the facts don't really bear that out. If there's a pattern, I haven't sussed it out yet!
Re: I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-14 12:32 pm (UTC)Re: I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-15 12:58 am (UTC)Vorkosigan saga: MOAR ELENA, PLEASE?? I need the Adventures of Space Merc Elena like I need oxygen, yet there's nothing. :/
Valor series: For one thing, I really kept hoping that Huff would take a page from Weber's book of tricks and do a "main character's students have adventures of their own" spinoff series; I really want to see the Academy kids that Torin taught going off and applying their lessons. I also need like 200x more of Craig♦Presit (the only way I can stand Craig, really) and Torin&Kyster being mentor and mentee and adorable!
Honor Harrington: I hadn't really thought about it before, but it'd be kinda neat to have something featuring her dad, back at the start of his career and all! I'm a sucker for a good medical drama, especially ~~in SPACE~~, so I'd be there for a fic (or novel) that was all about that! Especially because there's some other fun stuff that the time period would involve - the increasing popularity (and generational effects) of Prolong, for instance, was much less known/less studied back then, so that could make for some interesting side-plot, or just bonus worldbuilding.
Re: I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-15 06:14 pm (UTC)Okay, I guess I could reply in detail to the rest of your comment, but it's all summarizable to "oh hello thing I never knew I wanted". Whoops. The danger of asking questions...
I want moar Torin & any of the Krai – my personal favorite is Werst. This probably says something profound about my character, idk.
And oooh Prolong! Worldbuilding! !!1!
(And I agree with you on the only way Craig is standable. What is it with MilSF woman protagonist/designated dude LI always being a NOTP, sigh.)
Re: I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-15 11:33 pm (UTC)HAHA, YES, COME TO THE DARK SIDE!
I mean, uh. Welcome aboard the We Want It And It Doesn't Exist train, with your conductor, Krait's Brain? :D
I don't know that I could put together a coherent prompt, but I'll think about it. I just need ELENA THE SPACE MERC. PLEASE. What did she learn from Miles, and from Baz, and from Quinn? Give me all of her zany adventures with the Dendarii, working her way up the ranks and watching Miles from the outside as he dives in and out again, no longer a shadow over her and increasingly a stranger. Give me her gradual growth into the power and position she holds, and her shifting opinions on Barrayar/her father/the Vor/the military, and the developing bonds she builds with the people she works with every day. (One imagines that Barrayarans don't have much respect for mercenaries; give me Elena's feelings about being one of them, and how they change!)
I like Werst a lot, too! He should definitely get more moments in the spotlight. (Plus, quite aside from his own merits, more Werst = less Craig?)
What is it with MilSF woman protagonist/designated dude LI always being a NOTP, sigh.
Huh. Hadn't really thought about it, but - yep. Except Paul Tankersley; I quite liked him and Honor together!
Re: I'm answering your second question separately.
Date: 2016-09-16 06:48 pm (UTC)Less Craig!
Paul Tankersley is in the rarer category of MilSF woman protagonist/designated dude LI: "What?" (Heris Serrano and Petrus also go here.) It's where suddenly there's a het relationship that I did not foresee at all, and I'm confused. I do not passionately loathe the dude with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, but I ... don't see the ship? So, mehTP in the new lingo.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-13 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-14 04:26 am (UTC)Gardener! Definitely. In fic as in life, I suppose. :D Sometimes I start with as little inspiration as a single vivid scene or snappy line that I can't get out of my mind, and let the plot/characters surprise me from there. I'm pants at trying to lay out a whole story ahead of time - either the characters grab it and run away with it, or my 'outline' gets fuzzier and more prose-y by the paragraph and I've half-written the thing by the time I stop to try to remember where I was going with it!
18. Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
Tonnes! I could never list them all. I've been in fandom since, oh, the late 90s? In both the anime-manga and Western media sides of fandom. And I've been reading novels and poetry and falling in love with them since I was able to read, pretty much!
Just a very, very few of the influences I could cite:
Tenshi & Llamajoy were fanwriters whose gorgeous, poetic prose gave me such emotions and gave fanfiction new depths in younger!Krait's eyes; I'd never read anything quite like that before. (Years later, I would read Patricia McKillip's fantasy novels, and have the same general reaction! Thaat kind of beautiful prose-poetry is something I am inspired by and aspire to, though I'm not there yet.)
Telanu astounded me with her emotional whammy and ability to keep a plot going through multiple fics over several years!
C.J. Cherryh's Chanur and Foreigner novels opened my eyes in whole new ways and taught me so much about writing and perceiving alienness, culture clash, and translation conventions. Since foreign cultures and xenocultures are dear to my heart and my id, I'll probably never stop being awed by her skills!
Rainjoy, whose intense and often heartrending fics were rivalled only by her own critical eye and love of structure, taught me a lot about pacing and story shape. On the profic side of things, I could say the same about Lois Bujold, who also taught me never to be afraid of having a better idea, or of conflict between beloved characters.
Freece (C.S. Pacat) completed the alchemical circle of my writing interest: from original fantasy fiction to fanfiction to original (slash) fantasy fiction to published work with its own fandom. An excellent writer on a technical level, and one who beautifully upheld the idea of "write what you love"/"write the stories that your community wishes somebody was writing" that fandom embodies.
These are in addition, of course, to all the ficwriters who showed me kinks (sexy or narrative) I didn't know I had, and who made previously-unconsidered pairings make sense; and to all the prowriters whose well-crafted writing carried me along through stories so effortlessly that it was ten rereads before I thought to look at how they created that effect. Their inspirations may never see the light of the Internet, but they live in many an unfinished work on my hard drive!
And then, too there's all of the ones who taught me by negative example: what NOT to do, what DOESN'T work. Those lessons were just as important as the positives; learning what I don't like in a story, and what breaks me out of a reading experience or loses my sympathy with a given character, is an important part of any writer's growth! Profic, fanfic, my own fic - what one ought to strive for in any failure is a step forward. If my writing has improved, it's done so on the fallen pieces as well as the successes; stories I bounced off of, characters I couldn't love, and drafts with author's notes reading, what is this nonsense? and seriously?! are inspiration in their own way.
Most of all, though, more than any one author, fan or pro, has been the community. I wrote before I was involved in online fandom, but it was an exercise for myself; no one read it but me, and I had no feedback and no inspiration outside myself. Having other people who loved (or hated) along with me, and who argued about everything from eye colours to prepositions to OTPs, has surely been one of the greatest influences on my writing, in gestalt! As a fan of various pro writers, I've had a thousand extra eyes to examine their work and pull meaning, example, error, and emotion from it. As a fan among fanfic writers, I've had a thousand extra brains to think thoughts about any given fic - and a thousand fics to love and study and learn from!