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shinneth · 4 years

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Do you listen to music when writing?

Well, that’s a bit of an interesting story.

Prior to writing Steven Universe stories, I absolutely could not listen to music of any kind while writing. Even if was just lowkey instrumental/ambiance, for some reason it ALWAYS triggered my mind to imagine other stuff, which made writing all but impossible for me as long as there was noise around.

So for 85-90% of my writing career, that answer would be a hard no.

When I started working on Gem Ascension, suddenly that changed. I still can’t listen to music where there’s actual singing involved (unless it’s just really subdued or aesthetic choir noises), but I found myself better able to write whenever I had some scene-appropriate BGM playing. Usually from video games.

There’s a few wonderful souls on Youtube whose entire channels involve posting BGM tracks of all sorts of different series (seen it with games, anime, and wrestling tunes at least) - in 30-minute loops.

This is immensely helpful for me, as I write huge amounts of content and thus tend to be stuck in a scene for a good while. And my momentum would be broken up big time if the track ran out at its original time and shifted to something that completely throws the mood off. Having the tracks extended to 30 minutes makes that much of a difference to me.

I’m really not sure why now I’m able to listen to at least some form of music while writing when I spent nearly 2 decades not being able to do it at all. But there you go.

I’ve gone through MANY tracks from many different games, anime, and wrestling themes throughout my tenure of writing my Gem Ascension continuity, but I’ll say my go-tos are largely due in part to the tracks of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross (by Yasunori Mitsuda).

Best of that pack for writing: Corridors of Time, Mystery of the Forest, Undersea Palace, Silent Light, Chronopolis (my default Homeworld scene music), Star-Stealing Girl, Death Volcano, and Edge of Death.

David Wise’s music was also just as much-used and essential to my progress. Choice tracks include:

Fear Factory, Aquatic Ambiance, Life in the Mines, Northern Hemispheres, Treetop Rock, Crocodile Cacophony, Forest Interlude, Flight of the Zinger, Mining Melancholy, Hot-Head Bop, Hot-Top Volcano, Jungle Falls, Darkmoon Caverns,

Koji Kondo gets an honorable mention, because Dire, Dire Docks was a VERY often-used one for me. As did Koopa’s Road, Mario Kart 64′s version of Rainbow Road, Inside the Deku Tree, Forest Temple, Spirit Temple, Water Temple, Last End, Ikana Valley, and Stone Tower Temple (+ Inverted Version).

Super Mario Galaxy has an OST made for epic Steven Universe fics where off-world stuff is the focus. Buoy Base Galaxy, Space Junk Galaxy, Pipe Interior, and Ghostly Galaxy just to name a few.

And of course, I often used some choice Nobuo Uematsu classics from Final Fantasy. And also the Final Fantasy games after he stopped composing for them. Anxious Heart, FF7′s Main Theme, On That Day 5 Years Ago, Life Stream, Chasing the Black-Caped Man, Who Am I, Shinra Army Wages a Full-Scale Attack, If You Open Your Heart, The Birth of God…

Stevidot scenes often had me using Tifa’s Theme and Serah’s Theme - Memory (the latter very shamefully).

I remember spamming New Bodhum for the scenes at the Crystal Temple/Steven’s house. Surprisingly the singing didn’t throw me off here.

Same can be said for Historia Crux and Plains of Eternity.

And yes, I have used tracks from Final Fantasies IV, V, VI, VIII, IX, X, and so on. But I’d be here all day listing those.

Hilariously, I recall special songs I had playing in 30-minute chunks as I neared the end of GA Act III: Super Mario World’s Ending Theme, Super Mario 64′s Staff Roll, Chrono Trigger’s To Far Away Times, Sonic the Hedgehog 3′s Credits, Sonic CD’s Sonic Boom (Ending Version) (one of the few exceptions where songs with singing didn’t throw me off)…

But the very last track that played as I finished the original Gem Ascension trilogy?

To the Moon - from Ducktales Remastered. Though honestly, I was cycling between that, the original version, and this amazing orchestral fan remix.

…. I didn’t expect that answer to be nearly as complex as it became. Uh, enjoy the music selection that inspired GA, I guess? :P

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shinneth · 4 years

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What's the best part about writing fanfiction? Is it the scenarios you come up with? or perhaps creating dialog?

I really enjoy both aspects! Dialogue can be trickier, though, since I’ve had some off-days where it’s been nearly impossible to figure out the right thing to have a certain character say... but I will say dialogue’s a hell of a lot easier to make than the narrative.

The character also is rather dependent on how easy/difficult it is for me to generate spoken lines. Since I relate so heavily to Peridot, I can basically write for her in my sleep. The same can’t be said for some other choice characters...

The scenarios are probably where I’m most at home, though. Gem Ascension itself started because I had a dream a couple of weeks before CYM aired and I imagined a certain scene in said dream where the Crystal Gems were running for their lives in a tunnel on Homeworld, rushing to their nearby ship to flee back to Earth, and just as nearly all of them safely make it to the ship, Peridot comes so close and would have made it if only she hadn’t tripped at the worst possible time. Thus she’s forced to be left behind. The only one who doesn’t make it.

That single part of my dream is what spurred me on to write GA as a whole. Considering it took over 70k words of set-up just to get to that part in the actual story, you can imagine why I take so much pride in knowing that part of the fic emotionally tore apart many of my readers.

Not sure how common it is to embark on a major novel-length story just based on a single scene you dreamed up, though.

Since then, my sadistic-ass self loves to think of all the various ways I can put the characters through all manners of hell. At the same time, I tend to subconsciously challenge myself - the worse I make it for the cast, the more I’m compelled to somehow give them a relatively happy ending.

It’s kind of a twisted puzzle, both for myself and the in-story characters. Sometimes I’ll even get to Rick Sanchez levels of trolling myself, since I’ve made it no secret that I’m not at all a fan of most of the SU townies, and yet I recently forced myself to write a few chapters that featured some townie characters. But a few months ago, I probably would’ve told you I’d go out of my way to never ever write those losers.

I’ve already entertained the idea of AU offshoots from my own AU, but I wouldn’t get to those until I’ve accomplished the story arcs I’ve already set up in advance. Still, it’s not the first time I’ve made a habit of AUing my own AU concepts...

So, yeah. I think it’s spot-on to say scenario-brainstorming is the best part of the process for me. I just wish the visuals and sounds I’m imagining could be projected as easily as the text.

#answered asks #potionmaster37 #fanfiction #writing #writing scenarios #writing dialogue #gem ascension #gem re:ascension #su fanfic #su fanfiction

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