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endwersed · 15 days

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by the fabulous @dear-massacre 😘

How many works do you have on ao3?

21 - it would be a lot higher, but I purged all but one of my old Destiel fics back in 2017. They weren't very good, so I can't say I really regret it 🤷‍♀️

What's your total ao3 word count?

319,994

What fandoms do you write for?

Now, just Teen Wolf 🐺

Top five fics by kudos:

Find Your Fire - Reddie (IT)

Clue(less) - Reddie (IT)

Nah, He Didn't - Destiel (Supernatural)

Worst Enemy - Reddie (IT)

as dear as a brother - Sterek (TW)

Do you respond to comments?

Embarrassingly, it's very hit and miss... I want to! I love and cherish every single comment I ever get! But I find the process of replying to comments bizarrely stressful, so sometimes it takes me... a while. And that while might be, like, years. Sorry!!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I genuinely don't have anything with an angsty ending posted; I need my boys to be happy too badly for that. I guess I could say maybe striking out - just because it's not finished yet, and where it is in the story right now is angsty af!

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All of them have rom-com level happy endings lol. Maybe Clue(less) - it's a childhood friends-to-lovers soulmate AU, so it has all the sap that comes with those particular tropes wrapped up in there.

Do you get hate on fics?

I wouldn't call it hate, per se - but I guess my interpretation of Stiles is a bit harsher/more rough-edged than others I've seen, and some people don't vibe with that, so I get comments telling me they don't like Stiles in my story for XYZ reason.

To be clear - I also don't write Derek as a completely faultless, entirely perfect guy. I also have him do bad (arguably worse, in some fics) things. But for some reason, I don't ever really get the same kind of comments about him!

Do you write smut?

Like, almost exclusively at this point. It's like my brain can't come up with a story unless I'll get a chance to write them fucking nasty in it.

Craziest crossover:

None, they're not really my jam.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

omg yes! years ago! It was this Destiel HS AU I had posted on AO3 (since deleted because it was... not good) and someone posted it onto ff.net and claimed it was theirs. I can't remember if I ever was successful in getting it taken down.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think so!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not.

All time favourite ship?

All time is so hard... I do probably have to say Sterek. I shipped them intensely back in 2012, and I ship them even more intensely now. So - yeah. Probably them.

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Are we talking real WIP that I've actually made a meaningful dent in? Or just ideas I've put down to paper?

Because I have so many ideas, there isn't enough time to actually finish them all lol. But for fics I have actively started, I'm pretty confident I'll manage to muddle through to the end of all of them, even if it takes a little while.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and smut, I think.

I tend to develop a scene around the dialogue - in that, it's the dialogue that will come to me first when I'm planning the outline, and I'll note it down for when I come around to writing the scene. Then it's mostly a case of refining that dialogue and building the scene with descriptions around it.

I also love smut as character study. It's not just about being horny for them. It's about being horny for their introspection, too.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I don't have the imagination to come up with some of the flowery prose I see and love from other people. I wish I did, but that's just not how my brain works unfortunately!

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I only really feel comfortable writing in languages I'm fluent in. For anything else, I think we all know Google Translate can't be trusted, so I just... avoid it.

First fandom you wrote in?

Harry Potter! Wolfstar all the way back on ff.net <3

Favorite fic you've written?

Oh god, this is hard. Let's go with a Teen Wolf fic, because they're the nearest and dearest to my heart right now.

I think I'd say feels so good inside. It was so much fun to write, and I just love loss of virginity fics so damn much.

Open tag to anyone who wants a go!

#my fic #not sure who's already been tagged soooo open to anyone!!#this was fun <3

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bbcphile · 4 months

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For the WIP title game - I would love to hear about "FDB 5+1"

Also I am 👀 about "DFS and LLH talk (finally)" - I guess it's against the rules to ask about more than one, just wanted you to know lol

(and thank you for tagging me!)

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

The FDB 5+1 fic is a "5 times DFS and FDB failed to share a bed and one time they did" fic that starts from the first night they're supposed to share the guest room and covers the entire show up through the end of the special episode (so I guess it will actually be more like a 5 +1 (+1 special episode HE)).

I was really interested in the ways DFS (as a-Fei) says he doesn't sleep in unfamiliar places and the fact that he'd probably feel particularly hypervigilant in his early Lotus Tower days without access to his qi because of the Asura grass, and how that would interact with him having to share a bed with someone (especially someone who is not used to having to share because of being a rich young master). And having FDB be the POV character makes it almost an outsider POV situation for the opening sections (even though he's one of the two people involved in the bedsharing), because he has no idea what's happening in a-Fei's mind and he's observing a-Fei's interactions with LLH and being very confused about their history, and I'm excited about having him stop being an outsider POV as he learns more about their history and grows closer with DFS. And the premise enables FDB to run through the full emotional gamut (especially during the section where LLH is missing), and I'm looking forward to the writing challenges it will pose. The early sections are outlined in a lot of detail (including having most of the relevant dialogue), but the later bits are just a very rough sketch of what will happen, when it takes place, and the themes/emotional beats I want to hit. I'm planning on playing with it more after I've made more progress on my MLC long fic. :D

And for "LLH and DFS talk (finally)," that's the file name for chapter 9 of my MLC long fic, where LLH is finally conscious and medically stable enough for conversations, and they have to work through some BIG misunderstandings (eg. what the reunion duel meant for each of them, what the wangchuan flower meant to each of them, why the hell LLH was planning on attending the duel if he was mostly dead and a single blow would do him in and how mad DFS is about that, etc.) It's a fun writing challenge, because neither of them has much experience communicating openly (LLH is as allergic to honesty as he used to be to peanuts and DFS doesn't like disclosing information unless he has a fully completed plan), but DFS is mad, hurt, and desperate for LLH to live, and since he's realized that at least trying to explain his side is necessary to LLH's continued survival, he's going to do it even if he hates every minute of it, since he refuses to back down from a challenge, especially if it will help LLH.

#ask meme #about my fic

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danpuff-ao3 · 1 year

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New Goals!

While writing my dear friend Bethy this morning, I sort of made the decision to scale back and rethink all of my grand plans.

Now, I am a lady who can do a lot. That ADHD + OCD combo can be good for some things, I suppose, especially when properly medicated! Accomplishing a lot makes me feel good and happy and gets me all riled up to do more! What I at times fail to remember is that this energy and focus isn't endless. And my sense of responsibility and perfectionism will mean my doom when I inevitably slow down.

My therapist and I have been working on me recognizing and celebrating what I do accomplish, even when they're not on my "list." I have a bad habit of feeling useless when I did 10 things in a day but none of them were on my "list" or in my "plans" and so I chalk the day up as a failure. It helps me to stop and look and say "Hey! I did that! That is a thing that I did and that's very cool and good of me." And that helps.

But it also helps to recognize when my Brain (also named Brian, per my friend Nina, based on a misreading of a Tweet some months ago, haha!) is getting overexcited and dancing around and adding more and more grand plans to our plate. It also helps to verbalize because, for me, and my dang Leo Moon, I need to share and to be seen and understood.

So while there is plenty I'd like to do, I've narrowed down my goals for the year to 3 pretty solid goals:

Snarry-a-Thon

Snarry Bang

Project: Three of Hearts

While the plan is to complete and submit fics for the above fests, my Project is just what I plan to work on in between times. My goal is progress there.

So regarding the above goals, this is where I'm at:

Snarry-a-Thon: Rough Draft & Edit 1 done. Off for beta reading now.

Snarry Bang: teammate chosen and as of yesterday a plan nailed down!

Project: Three of Hearts: Very loose outline. And chapter 1 done! I figured my struggle with the outline might be helped by starting it, to help give me more of a feel for characterization and dynamics. I think it helped because my "vague outline" is starting to feel a bit more solid!

WIPs I would like to make progress on this year, but am refusing to to stress about:

Dralbus fic

Scarry fic

Lavmione fic

Contempt-verse fic (Kinktober?)

Contempt-verse fic (Christmas?)

The Christmas Prince 2

Goals I've cut: mostly Year of the OTP. I wrote Again (and Again) and Lovestruck to fill YOTP prompts, but while it seems fun, it's just too much. I have been panicking in the back of my mind about what to do for a March prompt and it's just not worth it. I don't want to feel obligations to finish things out. So I'm going to remove the Year of the OTP tags from those fics and try to forget I ever heard about it. The part of me that must finish everything it starts is deeply unhappy, but I need to scrub away all sense of needing to finish it, so I don't beat myself up when I fail.

The downside is that, with the idea of doing Year of the OTP and posting a new fic every month, I would definitely have reached 100 HP fics this year! I'm ever closer to that goal, but...if not this year, then certainly next year. There's no rush, really. Also: even though the OCD part of my brain rails at this a bit, I should at least celebrate that I do have 100 works on AO3! If we could my astro meta and my old Marvel fics, I'm actually at 103!!!! (Still trying to talk Brian into accepting that win.)

The thing is, I still do a lot, even if I don't get everything I hoped or planned to do done. Other plans for the year include:

More rec lists! (And I've already done rec lists for this year so everything here on out is gravy!)

More general meta (have I done this yet? Who knows. I'm sure I'll feel inspired sometime.)

More HP Astro posts (already done! All else will be bonus!)

2 fests to run! HP Chan will wrap up next Monday, and that same day HP Fruit Fest starts!

Reading and commenting! I've already done that! And I hope to do more!

Learn bookbinding! I still have supplies to gather, but I started doing test prints of short fics to play with programs and typesetting and printing and such. That's a start!

Mostly I just want to be involved in fandom. I want to interact with my community and chat with my friends and meet new friends. I want to give as much to the fandom as I can, in whatever form I can, be it recs or meta or fics or what have you. Or even just fangirling hard on Discord servers! It would be fun to do more podcasts this year (hint hint @careofmagicalshippers and @fanficmaverickpodcast LOL.) Or...idk, what else can I do? Idk, but no stress to me! I'm here to have fun and spread love.

And I need to keep that in mind. And give myself the love of self-care. And focus more on what's fun and what inspires me over how productive I am, or being self-critical.

Do I take fandom too seriously? Mayhaps. But only because I love it so much!

Anyway, 10 points to your House if you made it this far. Leo Moon = need to share. So thank you for letting me share with you!

#danpuff stuff #personal #mental health #writing #goals

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brighteststar707 · 2 years

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Hey Fay! Happy blogiversary again!

1, 5, 8, 12 & 34 For the ask game if you don't mind!!

Hi Lucy! Thank you again <3

1. Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?

When I'm writing from a prompt, it usually depends. Some combinations are interesting enough that I'm ready to just write them and see where they go.

For other fics/oneshots, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about where I want it to go. Then, sometimes an idea hits and I just have to write it. So that's a roundabout way of saying it's a mix!

5. How many wips do you have? What fandoms/pairings are they for?

Just did a quick count, and I have 17 documents sitting in my WIPs folder. Most are just a few paragraphs laying out what I want to write for when I have the time/am in the mood to work on them.

They're mostly all Saeyoung x reader, a couple that I want to write for him and a future OC (hehe), one for GE Saeran and one for Suit. I'm not sure how many will make it out of WIPs but we will see!

8. Post an out-of-context spoiler from a wip.

I was hoping someone would ask this!

She just needed a minute away from the beeping, the clipped tones of nurses, from the smell. It was doing nothing to soothe her nerves. Luckily, on her way in a few days ago, she spotted a door marked [VISITORS’ BALCONY]. She had been meaning to use it

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

I usually start with some sort of a rough outline. I write the scene that I want to be the main point of the fic in some detail, then write a really rough draft of the scenes leading up to and following it.

Very often I end up doing something completely different to my initial, or completely changing the set up of the scene, but the outline is always helpful to steer me in the right direction.

34. How much of your personal life/experience do you include in your fics?

That being said, the reader in my fics often shares some traits with me. It's easier (and more interesting in my opinion) to have the reader still be a person with a loosely-defined personality of their own. I definitely use some of my experience to shape the way they react to different situations.

I also write Saeyoung to reflect some of my life experiences and thoughts. He is a character I heavily relate to and especially in regards to his identity and attachment to people I like to add some of my own experience in.

Also, I've definitely drawn inspiration for some of the interactions I write from real experience from previous relationships.

#ask game #blogiversary #lusree

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musette22 · 1 year

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Helloooo and happy Saturday!! 10, 12, and 23 for the writing ask game! 🥰

Hiiii Mandy, darling!! Happy Sunday! 😅😘 Thanks for sending me some questions!!

10. Do you work on multiple wips or stick to one fic at a time?

Ha. Well, usually, I stick to one fic at a time because I know that otherwise there's too much of a chance of nothing every getting finished. But lately, I've been all over the place, and I've been working on several fics at a time, which is going about as well as I expected it would 🙃 I have a long 'To write' list, but in terms of active WIPs, I think I've got about four now? No idea which one is going to see the light of day first (or at all), it all depends on motivation and mood at this point 😅

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

I do, especially for longer fics! My outlines aren't very organised (more like a very rough draft of the whole fic than a schedule, unless it's for a multi chapter bang fic or something) and they're usually pretty detailed. I don't tend to stray from them too far, unless I realise halfway through that whatever I had come up with doesn't actually work in practice. I really love outlining, because I can just write down the story in its entirety while I'm still totally obsessed with the idea, without having to worry about it being 'well written' or 'good' :p

23. Is writing the beginning, middle, or end of the story easiest? Hardest?

I think they all present their own challenges, tbh. If I have to choose, I'd probably say I find the beginning easiest, because I usually have the start of a story in my head already, and I just need to think of a compelling way to write it down so that it will immediately engage readers. But the middle and the end are both tough for their own reasons. The middle because it's the longest part of the story and it's just a lot of work and you need to keep track of the storyline and keep it interesting etc. And the ending is tough because it's soooo easy to turn to clichés (and I usually do, tbh). I never quite know how to end a story, unless I can end it on a punchline. Gentler endings are tricky for me, definitely.

Thanks for stopping by Mandy, hope you're doing well today! 💕💕

#ask games #my writing #minnie answers

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bluejayblueskies · 2 years

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Hi, I hope I'm not too late to ask some Weird Writer Questions cause they sound fun! Number 24, 19, 13, and 17 (that last one for whisky would be cool but all your WIPS are lovely so pick whichever you want!) hope you have a nice day Jay!!

weird questions for writers!

(you're absolutely not too late--thank you for messaging! i hope you have a nice day as well 🥰)

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

for prep work, i used to (pre-tma and a little bit into the beginning of writing for tma) jump right into multichapter stories with a vague premise and no clue of the actual plot or ending, but i found it's easier to actually complete multichapter stuff if i have an outline and an idea of where i want the story to go, lol who knew? so my prep work now consists of, at minimum, a rough outline of the entire story arc from beginning to end, but usually a chapter-by-chapter outline of major story beats, approximate scenes, etc.. for whisky, i jumped in with a rough story arc and then made the chapter-by-chapter outline around chapter three when i started to get bogged down in 'what scene should i do next?' details. i usually don't do any prep at all for one-shots, since they're typically 1-2 scenes, but for longer ones i may throw together a quick bullet list of where i want the story to go

and i do not like outlining alkdsgjsag. it's probably my least favorite part of the writing process. (i'm currently for example avoiding fixing my whisky outline, which i need to change the last chapter for slightly due to a piece of lore i added contradicting my current ending.) i think it's because outlining requires the most decision-making about my story and the most critical thinking about, 'okay, what do i actually want to say and when do i want to say it.' i'm always much happier when i have the outline because it's so much better to write with one, but the process of making it? detestable lol.

(more below the cut because i got predictably long-winded with this)

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

this answer got very long, so buckle in and bear with me lol:

i started writing very young (perhaps second or first grade?) partly because my father is a copywriter and thus encouraged it and partly because i read so many books as a child. my elementary school had this anthology that you could submit to starting in third grade, and i remember writing short stories for it (that always ended up being too long--turns out i had chronic 'can't shut up' disease even at the tender age of 8).

getting into middle school, i started to write longer things. it's hard for me to remember exact dates, but i know i finished my first novel-length story around ... 7th grade? it is Extremely Bad by virtue of being written by somebody who had only experienced the world for ~12 years, but it's also probably one of the most out-there things i've ever written in terms of plot so i still give it a solid 5/10. (i can elaborate on it if people are interested! an in-depth discussion of it is just a bit beyond the scope of this particular question lol).

(i also wrote several stories that could best be described as uh. RPF between me & my best friends and their middle school crushes. including a whole entire trilogy with novella-length stories. but we're not going to talk about those XD)

i started and did not finish uhhh probably 20-30 other original stories between the years of 2011 - 2017, most of which are also not very good but that taught me a lot about creating characters, worldbuilding, writing styles and SPAG, and other things that helped me develop as a writer. there are a few that i do genuinely want to pick back up someday, but it's hard to get motivated to write original stuff and is much easier to simply write an AU and stick my blorbos in as characters. i think 2017 is the last time i can really truly say i actively worked on original stuff, since i fell into writing mostly fic after i graduated high school.

i wrote fic in high school too--mostly supernatural, sherlock, and doctor who stuff, because i was very much into superwholock--and most of it is still on my ao3. occasionally, people will jumpscare me by commenting on one of my old spn fics because i genuinely forget that people still might read them lol. i started my fic publishing journey on quotev though, and a little bit on wattpad and ff.net, before moving to ao3 in 2015 and never looking back. my stance on my old writing is that even though i've generally moved on with my life and cringe a bit when i look at it, i did write it once upon a time and liked it then, so i won't take it down and/or disown it. i'm sure in 10 years i'll look back on the stuff i wrote now and cringe too. so it goes.

i took a break from writing for ~ 3 years when i went to college, with the exception of the one (1) voltron fic i wrote that i am still quite proud of. (a multichapter fic i finished without making anything remotely close to an outline! wow!). tma will always be so incredibly dear to me because it reignited my desire to write (like. with a blowtorch. i have written over 610k words since summer 2020 when i started listening to tma, which 12-year-old me would have gone nuts over), and so far, i'm still going strong!

i think i have much better writing habits than i had when i was younger. i try to make an effort to do it every day, even when i'm tired or not really feeling it, even if the words are absolute garbage, even if it's nothing related to my current projects, rather than just riding the tide of motivation. i'm hoping that that means i won't be giving it up anytime soon (i certainly have many more plans for malevolent fics in the future including at least one more involved multichapter fic riffing off episode 20 👀) and i'm also hoping that i can jump back into original stuff with a fresh perspective and new ideas. who knows!

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

the subject matter i have the most difficulty with is, funnily enough, romance arcs. i understand point A (characters meet and become friends) and i understand point B (characters are dating) but the stuff that comes in between??? it's a black box for me alskdjga. something happens there, but i (aro) could not tell you what it is. as such, i always feel like any romance arc i attempt in a multichapter fic has terrible pacing, where the characters are falling in love too quickly, deciding to declare their feelings too abruptly, etc.. i'm struggling with this a lot right now in ten thousand flowers in spring, and i'm glad people are leaving positive comments on the most recent chapter because i feel like the romantic pacing is all over the place but i genuinely do not know how to fix it. whisky doesn't suffer from the same issues for some reason. i think because both arthur and john are arospec, so i'm not technically writing a romance? john is very much in romantic love with arthur, but arthur is not--though as in canon, john is Arthur's Person Who He Cares About So Much. idk, i think their canon relationship is so intricate and complicated that i'm just going *shrug* about the whole thing and not worrying about it.

in terms of what's easy, i have a really easy time with fantasy--and, if that's too broad to be considered subject matter, then specifically the worldbuilding involved with fantasy. so i guess that would be fantastical environments? basically, i like a lot that there's no rules other than the ones that i create for myself, so i can do whatever the hell i want and it's correct because that's just how it is in this world! (see, again, ten thousand flowers in spring). of course, i still do research and think about what i want my world to look like, because going 'that's just how it is!' isn't a replacement for that and i don't want to be a lazy writer, but the flexibility is soooo nice. (i, for example, am not looking forward to researching how gangs actually work for whisky and will thus likely just. make some stuff up and hand-wave it away as being 'yeah that's just how the memphis gangs work, don't worry about it,' though i will also make an effort to learn the general structure of stuff.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

hghhh the forbidden whisky lore 👀 there's a lot i can't say for fear of spoilers, but there is some stuff that probably won't make it into the story that isn't spoilery!

John was born on December 26, 1981 and is as of the most current whisky chapter 41 years old

Arthur was born on April 2, 1986 and is of the most current whisky chapter 37 years old

Arthur began touring around 2004 when he was 18 years old (he was recruited straight out of college/sixth form). However, he didn't begin composing professionally until 2005 and likely didn't get major movie gigs until closer to 2008. He was classically trained on the piano from a young age, though never on a university level, and his compositional and performance style has both popular and classical influences.

Arthur was born in the UK, recruited from the UK, and moved to LA as part of his contract. He met Bella in LA (so in this AU, Bella is American), and Faroe was born on November 13, 2006.

John started his pre-club career in 2002 at age 20, and quit that job and purchased the club around September 2016 at age 34.

Arthur wasn't lying in chapter one when he said that he comes to the club because he likes the wallpaper :) and John was not lying in chapter two when he said the club doesn't have wallpaper :) [this bit will make it into the fic, but i wanted to include it here anyway]

i also have a diagram of john's club that i keep forgetting to include in the end notes:

[ID: A sketched diagram of John's club. It is a square building with a front door on the bottom right side and a door to the basement on the upper right side. Along the left from bottom to top are John's office, the kitchen/food storage area, and the bathrooms. The backstage area lines the entire back wall, and in front of it is the stage, with doors on either side to access the backstage, a grand piano on the stage, and curtains separating the stage from the backstage. There are tables scattered across the main floor, and a wall with archway cutouts separates the main floor from the kitchen and John's office. Along the front wall is the bar, with seating in an L shape that leaves hallway space for John to access his office. The seat closest to John's office is labeled 'Arthur's seat.' A coat closet is in the bottom right corner. /End ID]

is this acoustically sound? don't ask me, i haven't finished that class yet alsdkjgsag. john has acoustic panels in the back to adjust the absorption of the room, i've made it canon XD

in terms of history, i genuinely don't remember where i got the idea for whisky from--i think i was just rotating piano player arthur in my mind one day, went 'hey what about famous arthur?', then went 'well what is john doing?', remembered how much i love small music clubs, and the rest is history. the entire second half of this fic (approx. ch. 8 onward) as well as john's backstory was not part of the initial concept at all, and i very much fleshed it out as i went while writing the first ~3 chapters. i think it's all fully fleshed out now though (excepting the little bit from the last chapter that i have to fix) and i am very excited for chapter 9 in particular :3

there is a scene that i really want to write that won't make it into the main story because it a) will only work from arthur's pov, and i want to keep whisky strictly john's pov, and b) because arthur is a smart dude and even though the scene would be very cool, it would 100% clue arthur in on some crucial things too early on. so alas, it will probably remain as an unrelated oneshot should i choose to write it in the future. (though it's also a scene that works better if the audience doesn't know what's going on either,,,,, but that could spoil them for things too soon as well because you all are also smart cookies, so,,,, much to consider)

aaaand for fun, here's an excerpt from the next chapter:

Buy him flowers, Lilly had said. Right, okay—which fucking ones? Does it matter? John feels like it matters, but he doesn’t have the first clue as to why or what the right choice would be. Is it weird to buy somebody flowers when they’re standing right next to you? That feels like something you get beforehand and then bring as a gift. Should he have planned ahead? Why is his heart beating so fucking loud in his ears?

#ask #puzzleglum #this is. so many words 😅#thank you for asking!! 💜

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the-meat-machine · 1 year

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4. How do you choose which fics to write?

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

12. Do you outline your fics? If yes, how detailed are your outlines? How far do you stray from them?

17. Do you have a writing routine?

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

21. Do you prefer writing chaptered fics or one-shots?

80. I have some story ideas but I don't know how to write them. How do I write those stories?

4 and 12 were already answered here!

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

Bruh, I can't even write a sentence in order. That said, lately I've been trying not to get TOO into the details of later scenes or later parts of scenes. I find that when I do, I end up having to scrap most of it because details I add in earlier make the later details not work.

So I guess my process is… I just write down any and all ideas I have as I think of them, no matter when in the scene or story they're supposed to go. But when I sit down to really hash out a full scene, I start from the beginning and use my random later ideas as a rough outline, knowing that I'll probably have to tweak or outright remove most of them once I get there.

It's also really, really common for me to leave placeholders in my scenes to come back to later. Extremely common. You have no idea. My early drafts are more placeholder than fic. The placeholders can range from standing in for "X action(s) need to happen here" to "I need another line or two of dialog here for this to flow right but I can't think of what" to "literally just cannot think of the word I'm looking for and don't want to break my flow right now to scour a thesaurus". Then later I gradually go back and fill in the placeholders, usually in several passes. Honestly, writing for me is more like putting together a puzzle than anything.

17. Do you have a writing routine?

The biggest "routine" thing for me is just that I try to make sure to write SOMETHING every day. On bad days, maybe that's as little as half a sentence, but at least that's half a sentence more than I had the day before. Most days, once I get started, I can keep going for at least an hour.

More specifically, I usually write in the mid-afternoon and/or late evening, laying on my living room floor for some goddamn reason. (Ok, I know the reason: it helps me to sit somewhere other than my usual chair so my brain has a cue that I'm in writing mode and not fucking-around-online mode.)

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

I love research and probably do way more of it than is really necessary. I tend to get real deep into ridiculous topics like snake reproduction or the chemical composition of semen, learning all sorts of details that don't end up reflected in the final fic at all.

I've done the most research for the lil buddy series, since it's set in the real world and I want to try to make sure my depiction of, for example, the Texas foster care system circa the mid-1980s is at the very least not so inaccurate as to be offensive. I still feel like it's probably not all that realistic, but I'm trying. (I also now know a hell of a lot about the timeline of VHS releases of The Muppet Show, which is obviously a very important detail that would have thrown people right out of the fic if I'd gotten it wrong.)

21. Do you prefer writing chaptered fics or one-shots?

I prefer one-shots. Pretty much all of my chaptered fics started out as one-shots that got out of hand. tear at me was supposed to be a one-shot. Playing House was supposed to be a one-shot. Hell, the entire lil buddy series (including several WIPs that I haven't posted yet) was supposed to be a single one-shot.

As mentioned before, I'm not good at, like… outlining. So working out how to structure and organize chaptered fics can be a challenge for me. This has been a major problem for my longest WIP, which I just have not been able to get to come together at all.

80. I have some story ideas but I don't know how to write them. How do I write those stories?

It's hard for me to answer this since I'm not sure what exactly you're struggling with. But I will say that sometimes I have an idea that feels Too Big or Too Important and I can't get a handle on how to write it in a way that I feel satisfied with.

In those cases, it helps me to just… set aside the big idea for the moment and focus in on one small aspect of it. One scene or one conversation that I feel like I can write. Or maybe a moment from the backstory to help explore the characters' motivations or the setting. Or even shift my focus for a while to some other small idea entirely, if I'm getting too frustrated metaphorically banging my head against this one.

(A few of my fics are actually a result of exactly the above process. Sugar-High Shenanigans is actually a scene from the aforementioned long fic that I've never finished. the perfect prayer was me exploring Bro's character when I felt stuck on tear at me. The lil buddy series is just the result of me breaking a longer fic idea into smaller, more manageable chunks.)

Basically, start out with something smaller in scope. Give yourself space to just try things out and not be perfect.

Along those lines, writing drabbles can be a fun exercise. Like, if you only have 100 words to convey an idea or a dynamic, what do you focus in on? It really forces you to distill the idea down to its essence. And they're pretty low-pressure, too, because even if you don't feel like you get it quite right, oh well, it's only 100 words; you can always try some other approach to the same idea another time.

I don't know if any of that helps, but yeah!

#ask meme #wow this got long haha. whoops

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thewayshedreamed · 3 years

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Dani ❤️

1, 2 an 21? For the writer asks??

Hope you have the best Sunday 🥰

Thank you so much! I hope your Sunday is wonderful, too! 💕💕

1. What’s your favorite character(s) to write for?

I find that I connect the most with Nesta and love writing her. But I think in terms of Nessian, I actually like writing Cassian's POV the most. If I had to guess why, there are times where I resonate with Nesta a little too much, so some of the escapism gets lost in the process lol. Cassian is a really dynamic character with a lot of potential, so I like the creativity he sparks.

In terms of ToG, I have a soft spot for Lysandra and Aedion since OGL. Lorcan, too. I've written very little Manorian, but I have plans for them. I could see them creeping onto this list quickly! I like Rowaelin, too, but they intimidate me a bit. They're wonderfully thought out characters, and this fandom LIVES for them. I don't want to fuck them up, if I'm being honest 😂

2. What character(s) do you find the most difficult to write for? Why?

Keeping with the same order, I'll start with acotar. I find it hard to write much of Morrigan. Mostly because I feel like there's still so much we don't know about her. She's also sunshine personified, essentially, and that's a stretch for me to wrap my head around sometimes lol.

I've written a baby bit of Elucien and found Lucien hard to write. Not because I don't like or resonate with him, but he's another character that's pretty nuanced. I want to do him justice, and I get in my head about him.

For ToG: I mentioned Rowaelin already, but other than them, I would say the Tower of Dawn crew. Sartaq, Nesryn, Chaol, Yrene.

21. Is there an idea you’ve always wanted to write, but haven’t yet?

A couple! I alluded to Manorian a bit before. I have a very rough outline for a modern au for them and have done some loose planning for chapter build outs. It's not necessarily around the corner, but it's a WIP I think of often.

I had an outline for a ToG and ACoTar crossover at one point, and I really liked it. It involved a proposed arranged marriage between Aelin and Rhys for political purposes and their plot to get out of it. Each of them know that Rowan and Feyre are their mates, but the latter don't know yet and are conflicted about the whole thing. That being said, I don't know if I'll ever get around to writing it.

A university au for acotar that I outlined, everyone's POV represented. I can almost guarantee that it won't see the light of day now! haha — I just have so many other things I'd like to work on before this one, so the likelihood I get there is low.

This is probably much more than you bargained for, but I appreciate you!! Thanks again for sending in asks!

#answered #twsd answers #over300books #writer asks #fanfic writer asks

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