#alex and i talk about this blog a lot. well usually i accost him in the living room and show him my latest silly posts so that he will laug | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

philly-osopher · 7 years

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C, H, N, P, U! (I hope you're done working for the day cause I don't think this is what "yelling at you if I see you post" looks like tbh.)

C: Which character do you identify with most?

So here’s a thing that may come as a surprise to readers of this blog: it’s not John Laurens, although I love him very much. I am far more pragmatic and less angry than he is, and I self-flagellate much less. I am also not as stupidly reckless– in fact, I think of myself as very cautious. But I admire his idealism and his bravery a lot, even as I can see where the extremes of those traits lead him to tragedy. That sense of such great potential, along with all the details we have on him due to @john-laurens‘ fantastic and tireless research, is what draws me in.

Okay so I explained it’s not John. I definitely projected a lot of my mannerisms/ quirks, especially anxiety-related ones (memorizing data, making lists, talking to myself, getting really insistent and precise with words) onto Macaroniverse Alex. That said, musical!Alex doesn’t really have those traits. But in terms of his ambition to Be Somebody in his field and his willingness to work really hard to do it, sometimes to the detriment of… uh… everything else in life? The way he likes to plan? The enjoyment he gets from discussing ideas and constructing arguments? Those things definitely speak to me.

H: How would you describe your style?

Versatile! I try to adjust my style to what I’m writing, and I’m pretty proud of my ability to switch because it’s something I’ve worked on a lot. Even between third person Alex and third person John in Macaroniverse, the voices are different; Alex gets longer sentences and more looping/ leaping, while John is very concrete and linear and pretty bad at noticing his own emotions. For example, John:

The plastic bag inside the box slides out and he spills Cheerios all over the floor. Then he can’t work broom and dustpan at the same time, so he ends up picking up all the spilled Cheerios and throwing them in the trash one by one. Then he can’t get the milk carton open. He almost gives up, because Cheerios without milk are just not fucking worth it, but something in him refuses.

Hemingway might approve, if not of the content, then at least the sentence length and structure. (Actually I kind of like the Hemingway comparison because his is the Stoical Manpain voice and John def has a little Stoical Manpain going on in this story, the silly dear).

Versus Alex:

And even though he trusts Herc to be careful with his pins, and not to judge him for the enormous quantity of free dental dams and condoms he steals from the table outside his door, and to help him discriminate between normal-sick and dangerous-sick… he doesn’t trust him with this yet. He should—he really should.

One, Herc owes him for agreeing to serve as his mannequin after his poor sweet Thimbleina was stolen by a bunch of giggling tri-Delts on a scavenger hunt. (Not that Alex minds getting to model Herc’s edgy, sculptural creations every once in awhile. They make him feel badass. Particularly the poison-green women’s blazer currently taking shape on his shoulders.)

Two, Herc’s also first-gen, he was born in Nigeria, he knows what it’s like to stick out like a sore thumb. Alex frowns. Does that metaphor make sense? Why do sore thumbs stick out? Are they swollen or something? What happened to Herc’s poor sore thumb? In this case, was it sore from the hammer-blow of class, racial, and native-born privilege?

See how he likes to make lists? And starts running with sentences and just kinda… keeps going with them? And how he gets distracted and goes off on mental tangents and has to loop back to the topic? He’s not disorganized to himself, he just has a different system. With his stories sometimes I struggle to get in-voice and sometimes I have the opposite problem of keeping everything from exploding into the confetti shower that is Alex’s inner monologue.

For canon-era stuff I try to use a totally different voice, which isn’t authentically 18th-century but has absorbed approximately that flavor from all the Patrick O’Brian I’ve read. From the rivers/ guns sequel I’m working on:

On the mudded-out track through the endless woods and rolling hills of central Pennsylvania there walks a woman—young, clad in widow’s black, the heavy fabric falling round the gentle swell of her belly. Her black hood is cast down to shield her face from the wind; her head is bowed but her back straight. Before her the sky is clear and blue in all the glory of early fall; behind her it is ink-black and uncanny, and uncanniness clings to her skin like the smell of death clings to men off the battlefield. No band of brigands dares accost her; no friendly washerwoman inquires if she is well, if she needs a bite to eat, what business a woman in her state has on the road. The uncanniness holds them back—well, that, and the creature that scuttles along at her heels: low-slung, many-limbed, panting and coughing and drooling ink from its gibbering mouths.

I count three semicolons, one colon, two em-dashes, and 22 adjectives. Hemingway no longer approves. He’s coming for me with a big knife. If you never hear from me again, you know whose ghost to blame.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Yes, but thank god @herowndeliverance is writing it already.

P: 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?)

Here’s what happens, most of the time. I get an idea for a passage of dialogue or a premise or an ending to a fic. I’m nowhere convenient to write (usually walking somewhere or at work) so I write it down in the notes to my phone and then think on it obsessively for the rest of the day, trying to turn it into something story-shaped. I get home and try to capture what I thought of. Inevitably something isn’t working and I have to talk/ appeal to someone to get the idea loose. Mostly I do this by shouting at my friends in messages and then going back and copy-pasting the whole conversation into the document.

So, I think I end up planning quite a lot, even for shorter stories. Even if I don’t deliberately outline, I’ve at least gone through the story several times in my head before I start typing.

For longer stories, like the rivers/ guns sequel excerpted above, I outline before I get started, but inevitably things will change and evolve as I’m going. Sometimes when I garden too much my inner architect has to tear out the gardens I made because they’re in the wrong places or they don’t match the house, which is always a sad process. In fact, as I’m writing I’ll actually tell myself when something isn’t working, like Philip thinking, this is so dumb, why am I acting like this? when I was trying to take a plot shortcut that unfortunately led to Bad Characterization. That’s a sign more planning needs to happen.

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven’t tried yet.

I’m not naturally inclined to do much in the way of shipping, and my Lams obsession is actually very out of character for me. But I’d love to do more of Laurens and Lafayette interacting, because whenever you think about their characters, there’s some very clear compare-and-contrast you could do. @your3fundamentaltruths has also convinced me that there’s a lot of potential with stories featuring John and Angelica, although I can’t ship them because I headcanon John as Kinsey 6 100% Gay.

I also haven’t written any Mariliza, even though I think there could be potential there. Obviously not in the canon timeline, because Eliza would probably rather slap canon!Maria than just about anything else, but in an AU where Maria and Eliza meet before Maria and Alex do? You could see Eliza being the Concerned Mom Friend when James Reynolds is being terrible to Maria, and being moved by how hard Maria tries to protect her little girl (maybe Little Eliza and Susan are friends in preschool and Eliza and Maria start talking when they set up a playdate?), and wanting to help her. Actually, you know what, I don’t really ship this but if somebody wants that premise it’s up for grabs :D

#writing meme #fic meme

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