Writing Meme
Nov. 22nd, 2020 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paulamcgI copied these questions from Tumblr more than a month ago. The source is Just Whumpy Things.
1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? I can't tell you much about it because it'll be anonymous – a contribution to Winter Exchange for HP rare pairs. I've barely started it, but because it doesn't have to be and mustn't be big, I feel relaxed enough to procrastinate by finally making a DW post that's not only a fic I've recently posted on AO3.
2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project. I've signed up for a few fests with deadlines in early 2021 but I'm not really thinking about those future projects yet. I've recently even had doubts I'll continue to write for fests. But I still look forward to writing such parts of my ficverse which are set in 1980 and 1981.
3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway). I don't think I've really ever kept thinking about any such scene... unless perhaps about showing how Remus and Sirius dance at James and Lily's wedding, while I still haven't cared to write a story set at the wedding. I guess I simply start a story with any scene I'm tempted to write, or I come up with the urge to write a particular scene only when a story has taken me to where it fits and is needed.
4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like). It's too hard to choose one – and such a small part of any fic I'm proud of! Seriously, it would easier to choose a fic, and I'm usually somehow proud of my latest one. I'm critical and I tend to see flaws if I try to choose a paragraph, and few sentences and paragraphs reveal their value without the context. But perhaps... the opening paragraph of a bit exceptional, non-linear story, From the Oblivion: She wants to keep staring at the golden, lacy border. But once again she can't resist pressing her palms and her nose – her snub nose, which she is just learning to turn flatter or perkier according to her wishes, since she's still small, as she always is in this dream.... To press her bare skin under the border, on the thick layer of frost.
5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with? Amelia Bones, or Cho Chang in To Know What She's Seeking.
6. What character do you have the most fun writing? Fun... Perhaps Luna? She's full of surprises.
7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree? I write a very close perspective of a single character (sometimes two or several perspectives but in clearly separated, long segments, trying my best to make it immediately clear whose experiences I'm taking the reader to share, and where and when). I avoid long descriptions and expositions, and in order to show vivid scenes, I insert the characters’ sense perceptions and observations of their surroundings in small doses between thoughts and lines of dialogue, trying to anchor their internality to the outside reality. At least the reader who once commented like this agreed: he's preoccupied with his thoughts, but his surrounding, too, are triggers for his self-reflection. The combination of well-described space and character introspection give the story a planted feeling.
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read? No, my writing is a lot more limited. I'm willing to read any fic (particularly if I believe the writer is interested in interaction with me).
9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? Both, or neither? At times I enjoy taking the challenge to fit a tiny story in exactly one hundred words. I've written one huge fic. But I usually write short stories with word counts between 2000 and 8000 words. I never write outlines, sometimes just a few notes. But I plan my fics so that they don't contradict each other, and that each adds something essential to the wider story which I started in 2003. And I want my stories to have some kind of plots and not to be only descriptions of situations or reflections of emotions.
10. How would you describe your writing process? I write almost without exception from the opening towards the closing of the story, and I seldom add anything afterwards in between. I edit as I go. After each scene, often even after each paragraph, I stop and polish my sentences carefully. Having reached the end, I don't make any major changes, just fix the errors my beta has pointed out.
11. What do you envy in other writers? If I envy anything, it's their ability to plan and write several stories at the same time and to write a lot faster than I ever possibly could. And their ability to join in popular tropes and participate in shared fanon in ways which lead to a lot more interaction than what I ever achieve with my writing.
12. Do you want your writing to be famous? Oh, I dare I admit that my writing being famous would be a dream come true (even though I'd be in trouble, trying to reply in my preferred way to all the comments). I've still sometimes cherished hopes of becoming known in a corner of the fandom as someone who writes well enough for the fics to be worth reading even if they aren't about your favourite characters or tropes. It's more realistic to simply hope that every now and then I'll get to interact with someone who's interested in my writing for a while.
13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself? Yes, I've always shared all my fanfic online. Now it's all on AO3, here (with the exception of few old one-shots and the chaptered story, which are still only on my Livejournal).
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title? After completing the story, I look for a suitable phrase in the text.
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? Summaries are harder, because I don't use direct quotes from the text. By 2008, I think, I'd adopted the habit of using single-sentence summaries, and only last month did I try something longer again. Choosing tags is the hardest thing, because I don't know what could make readers find my fics without revealing too much about the contents of the stories.
16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?) The non-linear narrative I mentioned in 4. Less recently (this past spring and summer) I've started to use the povs of some characters of Harry's generation.
17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations? I wonder if readers of a single fic at a fest would guess what a fandom old I am – let alone how very old.
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. No alternative versions! I keep writing the single reality of the characters' lives.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?) I keep showing situations in which someone (Remus) is cold and/or hungry due to poverty. Themes of social injustice, bias against “the other”, including sexual minorities. Touch aversion and (recently, separately, other characters') asexuality.
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Perhaps another time? I'd prefer sharing such things only as response to a reader's interpretations.
21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?) Podfics? I'd love to hear my stories read aloud by someone else.
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them? I do (aloud, too:)). When I read all the old ones through a few months before I surprised myself by writing again, I felt happy that I still loved them. Before posting them on AO3 (more than a year later), I found something I wanted to revise in some of them. I decided that three short stories and one drabble were not good enough at all to be posted, but I started a long, slow and enjoyable process of rewriting one of them. Nowadays when I reread a fic written a couple of months ago, I'm sometimes surprised how challenging it is to me as the reader.
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest? The story of Remus moving out for several months about a year after he had moved in to share Sirius's flat.
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time? I certainly hope it has, as I've written (fanfic) for such a long time. I know it could have changed more if I hadn't been writing the same story and also wanted to keep some things – like the general tone, the genre (rather something like general, even literary fiction with fantasy elements) and wider themes – consistent enough. But I've developed the form by first shifting from my third-person-limeted novel narrative to first-person-and-present-tense voices in short stories, and (gradually, and particularly in this past year) to third-person-and-present-tense narration. To the contents I have (after my return last year) added sex scenes but still only brief ones and without making them the focus of the fics.
25. What part of writing is the most fun? The part where I realise how the conclusion of the story will tie together several elements introduced earlier, perhaps giving them deeper meanings.
1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it? I can't tell you much about it because it'll be anonymous – a contribution to Winter Exchange for HP rare pairs. I've barely started it, but because it doesn't have to be and mustn't be big, I feel relaxed enough to procrastinate by finally making a DW post that's not only a fic I've recently posted on AO3.
2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project. I've signed up for a few fests with deadlines in early 2021 but I'm not really thinking about those future projects yet. I've recently even had doubts I'll continue to write for fests. But I still look forward to writing such parts of my ficverse which are set in 1980 and 1981.
3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway). I don't think I've really ever kept thinking about any such scene... unless perhaps about showing how Remus and Sirius dance at James and Lily's wedding, while I still haven't cared to write a story set at the wedding. I guess I simply start a story with any scene I'm tempted to write, or I come up with the urge to write a particular scene only when a story has taken me to where it fits and is needed.
4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like). It's too hard to choose one – and such a small part of any fic I'm proud of! Seriously, it would easier to choose a fic, and I'm usually somehow proud of my latest one. I'm critical and I tend to see flaws if I try to choose a paragraph, and few sentences and paragraphs reveal their value without the context. But perhaps... the opening paragraph of a bit exceptional, non-linear story, From the Oblivion: She wants to keep staring at the golden, lacy border. But once again she can't resist pressing her palms and her nose – her snub nose, which she is just learning to turn flatter or perkier according to her wishes, since she's still small, as she always is in this dream.... To press her bare skin under the border, on the thick layer of frost.
5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with? Amelia Bones, or Cho Chang in To Know What She's Seeking.
6. What character do you have the most fun writing? Fun... Perhaps Luna? She's full of surprises.
7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree? I write a very close perspective of a single character (sometimes two or several perspectives but in clearly separated, long segments, trying my best to make it immediately clear whose experiences I'm taking the reader to share, and where and when). I avoid long descriptions and expositions, and in order to show vivid scenes, I insert the characters’ sense perceptions and observations of their surroundings in small doses between thoughts and lines of dialogue, trying to anchor their internality to the outside reality. At least the reader who once commented like this agreed: he's preoccupied with his thoughts, but his surrounding, too, are triggers for his self-reflection. The combination of well-described space and character introspection give the story a planted feeling.
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read? No, my writing is a lot more limited. I'm willing to read any fic (particularly if I believe the writer is interested in interaction with me).
9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? Both, or neither? At times I enjoy taking the challenge to fit a tiny story in exactly one hundred words. I've written one huge fic. But I usually write short stories with word counts between 2000 and 8000 words. I never write outlines, sometimes just a few notes. But I plan my fics so that they don't contradict each other, and that each adds something essential to the wider story which I started in 2003. And I want my stories to have some kind of plots and not to be only descriptions of situations or reflections of emotions.
10. How would you describe your writing process? I write almost without exception from the opening towards the closing of the story, and I seldom add anything afterwards in between. I edit as I go. After each scene, often even after each paragraph, I stop and polish my sentences carefully. Having reached the end, I don't make any major changes, just fix the errors my beta has pointed out.
11. What do you envy in other writers? If I envy anything, it's their ability to plan and write several stories at the same time and to write a lot faster than I ever possibly could. And their ability to join in popular tropes and participate in shared fanon in ways which lead to a lot more interaction than what I ever achieve with my writing.
12. Do you want your writing to be famous? Oh, I dare I admit that my writing being famous would be a dream come true (even though I'd be in trouble, trying to reply in my preferred way to all the comments). I've still sometimes cherished hopes of becoming known in a corner of the fandom as someone who writes well enough for the fics to be worth reading even if they aren't about your favourite characters or tropes. It's more realistic to simply hope that every now and then I'll get to interact with someone who's interested in my writing for a while.
13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself? Yes, I've always shared all my fanfic online. Now it's all on AO3, here (with the exception of few old one-shots and the chaptered story, which are still only on my Livejournal).
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title? After completing the story, I look for a suitable phrase in the text.
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? Summaries are harder, because I don't use direct quotes from the text. By 2008, I think, I'd adopted the habit of using single-sentence summaries, and only last month did I try something longer again. Choosing tags is the hardest thing, because I don't know what could make readers find my fics without revealing too much about the contents of the stories.
16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?) The non-linear narrative I mentioned in 4. Less recently (this past spring and summer) I've started to use the povs of some characters of Harry's generation.
17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations? I wonder if readers of a single fic at a fest would guess what a fandom old I am – let alone how very old.
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. No alternative versions! I keep writing the single reality of the characters' lives.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?) I keep showing situations in which someone (Remus) is cold and/or hungry due to poverty. Themes of social injustice, bias against “the other”, including sexual minorities. Touch aversion and (recently, separately, other characters') asexuality.
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Perhaps another time? I'd prefer sharing such things only as response to a reader's interpretations.
21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?) Podfics? I'd love to hear my stories read aloud by someone else.
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them? I do (aloud, too:)). When I read all the old ones through a few months before I surprised myself by writing again, I felt happy that I still loved them. Before posting them on AO3 (more than a year later), I found something I wanted to revise in some of them. I decided that three short stories and one drabble were not good enough at all to be posted, but I started a long, slow and enjoyable process of rewriting one of them. Nowadays when I reread a fic written a couple of months ago, I'm sometimes surprised how challenging it is to me as the reader.
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest? The story of Remus moving out for several months about a year after he had moved in to share Sirius's flat.
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time? I certainly hope it has, as I've written (fanfic) for such a long time. I know it could have changed more if I hadn't been writing the same story and also wanted to keep some things – like the general tone, the genre (rather something like general, even literary fiction with fantasy elements) and wider themes – consistent enough. But I've developed the form by first shifting from my third-person-limeted novel narrative to first-person-and-present-tense voices in short stories, and (gradually, and particularly in this past year) to third-person-and-present-tense narration. To the contents I have (after my return last year) added sex scenes but still only brief ones and without making them the focus of the fics.
25. What part of writing is the most fun? The part where I realise how the conclusion of the story will tie together several elements introduced earlier, perhaps giving them deeper meanings.
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Date: 2020-11-22 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-22 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-25 12:21 am (UTC)Tags really are crucial on AO3, especially when it comes to popular pairings where it's impossible to keep up with all the new offerings every day. With very few exceptions, like when I've accidentally been on the ground floor of a pairing that later got popular, almost all of my fic with the most feedback are ones where people obviously decided to browse by tags for something they were particularly in the mood for.
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Date: 2020-11-25 05:06 pm (UTC)I've sometimes tried to use as many tags as possible for my Remus/Sirius fics. But it doesn't help much when I just list everything that's featured in the story – like London and Flying Carpet and Wimpy Bar and 1978... :) I should learn more about tropes and whatever it is that people search for. One fic has got a surprising number of kudos compaired with others, and I've wondered if the reason isn't “Sirius runs away from home” so much as “Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse” –because a lot of the kudos is from people who have not posted or bookmarked anything in the HP fandom – and if I should keep abusing my Sirius. :D
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Date: 2020-12-02 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-24 07:40 pm (UTC)Very much that. It feels rewarding when you get to the end, and everything naturally falls into place, whether it's intentional on the writer's part or otherwise.
Thank you for sharing your thought on writing. It's enlightening to read about what fellow writers are up to. Also, may I borrow this meme?
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Date: 2020-11-24 08:07 pm (UTC)