these words are too solid, they don't move fast enough to catch the blur in the brain that flies by

[luciazephyr]

I'm doing this solely because I hope other people on my FList do it as well. I really like reading about how other people write. And I'm having trouble making Snake kill Otacon in my fic, so I need to take a break.

Do ideas come in little tiny pinpricks and then get expanded, or do they start great big and scopy and then get refined?

Pinpricks. I always get tiny ideas of something I want to see and write out, and then it's a matter of building around that. Usually the building then becomes the focus, but the initial idea is always something tiny. For Facets, it was happening to listen to Snow Patrol's "Golden Floor". For Five Times Hal Emmerich Had a Chat with the Endless, it was a single line Desire said in one of the comics. For 90% of my punditfic, it was the idea for a single scene, then adding more to justify the one. For Varying Degrees of Conartistry, it was a really petty urge to throw a darkfic into the Psych fandom.

Why do you choose to write in the tenses you do (present tense, or first person POV, or third person) and how do you choose particular styles for particular stories?

Third person past or present only for me, usually past. I write it naturally, without thinking really. I have a hard time shaking up my supposed 'style'- I either write overwrought prose or I'm very barebones. I have no middle ground. The barebones thing drives me mad- I'm often racing to get whatever concept or idea down before I forget how I want it done, so trying to flesh things out as I'm going along makes it feel forced. It's the one thing I'm really self-conscious about in my writing.

Do you have music that inspires your writing? (That you listen to while writing, or certain songs that remind you of certain characters.)

I am obsessed with fanmixes and I consider vidding a higher fannish artform than fic. So yes. Probably 80% of my writing is pulled from music, which is my first and greatest love. I listen to music almost constantly. It's rarer to find me without my headphones on than with them.

Furthermore, any longish, halfway ambitious fic will have a playlist for me to listen to. This is why I am so enamored with Project Playlist- it's so simple to throw a bunch of songs together and then start writing. Like currently, my Repeat to Fade story for the mgs_slash challenge has a 22 track playlist already with everything from Placebo to Bjork to Franz Ferdinand to Suzanne Vega. Some songs will be bumped off, some will be added. Music is everything to my writing.

How do you brainstorm what comes next in a story?

Most of the time, I'll have a story outline written out in longhand. I do my best fic thinking when I'm nowhere near a computer, so I always always always have writing utensils and paper with me, just in case. I cannot retain information over long periods. I have to get it down on the screen or on paper. Otherwise, I'll forget it and then sulk about how awesome the fic would've been if I remembered my idea.

What do you do when you hit a road block?

I whinge at people in chat if I'm near a computer. I shove the Google Documents under their nose and say "Halp" a lot. Usually this doesn't actually work, so I just listen to more music and wait for the block to leave. Often, the block doesn't, and the fic will remain unfinished (y halo dare, It's Always Raining in Babylon). I cannot tell you how many fics I've started, built up momentum for, only to face unbeatable writer's block and then dropped.

How often do you end up deleting a whole bunch of already-written stuff, and how hard is it to let that stuff go?

Not often, and very, very hard. Part of my style is writing deeply in the POV's mind, so thoughts occur to me as they would to them, and the order their thoughts go in is the order you see in the fic.

This is part of why, for instance, in the MGS fandom, writing Hal is a pain in the ass and I stick very closely to Snake's POV unless the story structure makes it impossible. For Measure Taken would've been in Snake's POV if it had been even remotely possible to do so. But as it wasn't, it had to be through Otacon's eyes, and subsequently reads awkwardly to me now in hindsight.

And in a fic that will never, ever be finished, It's Always Raining in Babylon (that sleeper agent!Snake AU), the first handful of scenes have to be through Otacon's eyes. This, more than anything, probably killed the fic.

What if you really, really want to include something but part of you is saying it's not right for that particular story?

This doesn't usually happen to me, actually. When I set out to write a story, I'm writing for a specific idea or theme or line of dialogue I want to see. Outside that, the fic is fairly fluid.

Do you take notes longhand, and if so, when?

Yes, I do. Oddly, I'll write about a scene or two of the fic in question, then write out the plot outline as I think it should go on paper. Then I'll use that as the basic structure for the story.

Do you use challenges by other people to inspire you?

I think my "Repeat to Fade" challenge response is the only one that has. I've made a rule in the last year or so not to take prompts or challenges because I never complete them and I just let down whoever offered up the prompt. I cannot make myself write something. I have to come across the idea naturally and go from there. No requests.

Do you do anything in particular to get you into the right mindset to write a certain character or characters?

Find whichever Andrew Bird song fits them best. There is one or five for everyone. If that fails, try Damien Rice.

Which characters are easiest for you to write, and WHY?

Snake, Snake, Snake. He has a quiet, contemplative nature that I seriously can crawl inside of and tinker with. He's very much an introvert who will spout off for days about his personal philosophy, but if you ask him something simple like "who do you care about" or "how are you feeling", his answers will be terse and unhelpful.

I seem to have an easier time writing the characters that you don't know what's happening in their head all the time. I find it easy to extrapolate their thoughts and emulate them.

Which ones are hardest, and again, WHY?

You know what's actually the hardest? Third person omniscient. I am absolutely incapable of doing it. I need to only see the story through one character's eyes. If I try to reach out and look through another's in the same scene, it feels horrendously awkward and I always end up deleting it and folding back into the one character's POV even tighter.

Which characters are most like you emotionally?

:thinks for a long time: John Sheppard. And soldier-type characters in general.

How often do you feel like what you're writing is fulfilling some emotional need - ie, when you're writing comfort, is it because you often feel that you don't get it IRL?

The only time I remember explicitly doing so was with Facets.

What about writing smut - do you find it easy, difficult?

I tend to not try to write smut.

Okay, that's a lie.

I tend to write smut, but I rarely ever post it or share it with anyone outside of chat. I have no confidence in my smut writing and the only time a fic will have any is when it's important to the characters' arcs. Like, my current fic, it will probably have a minor sex scene just because it's exploring the sex/violence dynamic.

What kinds of smut are easiest for you to write, and WHY?

Fade to black. :dodges question, la: No, really, every time I have written smut, I have sorta regretted it, because it never reads well to me.

Which of your stories is your favorite and WHY? Least favorite?

Facets, because it came easily and was essentially my view of the Snake/Otacon pairing.

From my older works, probably Love-ology. No, I'll never write the other half, but what I did write, it was the most polished thing I ever did, and I'm proud of it.

Going even farther back, I still like Law of Conservation, a deathfic from a teeny-tiny fandom. It was poignant, I think, and had an emotional depth I don't think I'll ever manage to pull off again. I have no idea how the fuck I wrote it, it reads like a totally different person did it.

As for least favorites... uh. I don't like most of my own fic. About a week after I post anything, I tend to not really be able to look at it again out of shame. I constantly have "I shoulda done this bit differently" thoughts.

Which of your titles do you like the most/least, and why?

Favorites: To Those Who Say the Past is Not Dead and It's Always Raining in Babylon, which is a title that I WILL USE SOMEDAY. I've been sitting on it forever. 8|

Least favorites: Hell of a Cargo, any Five Ways, which just have formulaic titles.

How do you choose titles for your stories?

Either I will go into it knowing exactly what to call it, or I will hold the fic back from posting for days as I find something suitable. Titles are serious business.

90% of the time, they're just lyrics.

Do you write differently with a cowriter than you do alone? Is it easier or harder?

HARDER. Having a co-writer spoils you senseless. It's constant feedback and idea bouncing and knowing you have someone to fall back on if you should get stuck. Solo writing is much more intensive and nervewracking.

Then again, writing with Fly has made me more nervous and unsure about my writing style than ever before.

For series and long works, do you decide a goal in advance to stop at or are they open ended? If you do choose a goal, how often do you stick to it?

As I said before, I usually have a specific idea/theme/plot I build my story around. That singular thing usually ends up being the climax to my fic, so it's all about wrapping things up afterwards.

How do you deal with characters going a different direction than you want them to?

Let them. If I try to force my characters back on track, I lose the fic's rhythm and flow, and that murders the fic more effectively than anything else.

When a scene feels forced, what are the first few tricks you try to fix it?

I ask someone. When I'm working on a fic, I'm usually sharing the document with one or two people I know can help out, so I just poke them and revise what they say needs help.

Are most of your fixes deletions or additions?

They're most often just changes. Not adding or subtracting, but rephrasing and rewriting for clarity.

How long does it usually take you to write a story? How many revisions do you go through?

It really, really varies. The bulk of my posted fics are fast and only take a day or two to write, edit, and post. But sometimes I get a more ambitious idea and will take a week or two to get something churned out.

Do you use beta readers?

Yes yes yes yes. I need betas as much as I need lyrics in my LJ-cuts' texts. I have a hard time reading anything that has the word "un-betaed" on it.

In other news, writing action scenes is hard. I default to Resonant's sex writing guide when I need help there. Is there a similar fic-aimed guide to action scenes or fighting anywhere?

-Lucy

Comments

[thene]

I don't know of any guide, but for action scenes I tend to cheat by using lots of sentence fragments, substituting m-dashes for full stops here and there, and just keeping sentences short in general (especially if they're 'thinky' sentences).

This was an interesting meme! fwiw I <3ed the smutfic you did on Fly's last drabble night, so there. And I completely get what you mean about 'quiet, contemplative' narrators - I love them too, and conversely I find a lot of characters I completely love hard to handle. Odd that you RP Otacon so fluidly but don't like to write his POV.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

Odd that you RP Otacon so fluidly but don't like to write his POV.

Yeah, I've noticed this, and I think it's weird too. I mean, I'd never attempt to play Snake, ever. I think... I'm confident in Hal's voice, but not in how I write his thought process. With Snake, I'm comfortable in how he thinks, but not in his spoken voice. So maybe that's it? I dunno.

Also, there's the fact that I am willing to change the way I play Hal, but not how I write Snake, and in RP, you have to be willing to take critique. My Snake will always be a warrior poet type of guy and I'm not open to changing much about how I handle him.