![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
writing meme answers
Seriously, nobody else has questions? Sad! I could babble about my stories forever.
Answers for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
littledust:
- How does writing your lengthier fics compare with writing shorter ones?
MORE HAIR-PULLING AND HATRED. That's probably the main thing. The longer I work on something the more chances there are for me to be consumed by the belief that it's terrible, TERRIBLE, and the whole thing should be deleted for the good of mankind. Usually I work through these by shoving snippets in Ji's face until I calm down.
Um, also I have absolutely zero talent for pacing and structuring long plots; I've only been able to write two and the fact that they worked out was a miracle because there was almost no planning involved, just a sort of suicidal rush into the unknown. Having spent ages grudgingly bowing to the need to actually plan out my Merlin AU, I'm now convinced that the planning process destroys my motivation to write and is therefore evil.
The thing is, anything around the 8000-word mark was almost certainly meant to be a hell of a lot shorter, I just let the idea get the better of me. When I am determined to keep something short I do a Five Things fic, because once I've come up with the five things I stop inventing and just write; the normal state of affairs is one in which my brain just invents and invents and suddenly there's an epic in the making.
- What are some examples of your love affair with the letter a? (Mostly because I find writers' quirks fascinating!)
I love words containing the pattern a-a where - is almost any consonant: sonata (-ata is a favourite word ending of mine; amorata is even better), impala, dramatic, parallel, anachronism. I like the names Julian, Diana, Zachary and Anthony. I like A to bracket names: Antonia and Aria and Ada and Anna.
- How do you go about developing a narrative voice for characters?
I don't think I'm nearly as good at this as I ought to be. I'm lazy about it. I tend to write characters who have a good education and either a background in science or a sense of the artistic/aesthetic about them (or both), so that my normal writing voice doesn't seem out of place. Usually I know within the first few paragraphs what kind of voice I'm aiming for; whether I want a tight POV or not, whether the character's speech patterns will bleed through and to what extent, what kinds of images this person will reach for when building metaphors.
RP taught me a hell of a lot about specific narrative voice and framing language in terms of someone other than yourself. Writing Lucifer was always about noticing very very precise details, and about freedom, and about light. He's still the voice that's the biggest part of me, as a person and as a writer. He's unshakeable. I don't want to shake him.
But the others were useful too: writing Kenneth was an exercise in awareness of personal danger, and awareness of dirt, and a constant low-grade anxiety underscored by tick tick tick and the passing of time. Writing Sophie was very easy because her primary frames are also two of mine -- medical knowledge, and fierce protection of family -- but she had her own quirks and so was able to surprise me. Sophie would react to stress by whipping cream into disaster, and only Sophie would see a bare strip of ground and think of it as a fencing piste.
In terms of fanfiction where I can remember working hard to create voice: Ask Me How, definitely, and Twelve Pater Nosters, and -- a less obvious one, because it's a very Fahye kind of story -- so great & beautiful. Caspian was difficult.
The best fun I've had with a character's voice was Bastian Tate's. I'm not an architect, I do not walk through the world comparing everything to building materials -- neither am I hyperaware of gendered language -- but Bastian does, and Bastian is. Piecing his narrative together required some deliberate examination of my own privelege and a careful tweaking of my instinctual metaphors to suit Bastian's programming. It was awesome.
(I have a vague, semi-formed idea for a story with three main characters, written in three separate extremely tight third-person points of view, and I already know that one character's frame is music and physics, one's is cookery and clinical depression, and the third -- I'm not entirely sure yet, but it'll stem from the fact that they have a very short attention span and were brought up using sign language at home.)
- How about incorporating thematic elements? (Hooray for meta!)
Hahahaha. Ha. I am trying to think of a time I have started a story with the thought 'this will have a theme of X' and completely failing (unless you count Eleusis, which to be honest is far more meta than it is story). I mean, I begin with an intention to make a point or examine an idea through narrative, but I don't examine the urge closely; my usual method is to notice what's coming through as important during the writing process, and then carefully construct a thread of it throughout the story; repeat some metaphors, come at a reference from another angle, emphasise everything again at the end.
- Why is your History Boys fic so good??? I just opened your fic LJ to ask you questions about specific stories but got distracted by reading instead.
:D Well, everything I said above about careful construction of thematic threads really, really applies to that story, as the commentary explains if you have the patience to get through all my gushing about Irwin.
I am extremely proud of that story, it's one of my personal favourites, and I think it turned out so well because I got to pour so many of my favourite things into it: ambiguous and complicated romance with sharp edges, over-educated people whose worldview is framed by academia and poetry, a smart and arrogant brat (Dakin!), a snarky writer (Scripps!), and of course IRWIN IRWIN OH IRWIN ILU <3
Answers for
littledust:- How does writing your lengthier fics compare with writing shorter ones?
MORE HAIR-PULLING AND HATRED. That's probably the main thing. The longer I work on something the more chances there are for me to be consumed by the belief that it's terrible, TERRIBLE, and the whole thing should be deleted for the good of mankind. Usually I work through these by shoving snippets in Ji's face until I calm down.
Um, also I have absolutely zero talent for pacing and structuring long plots; I've only been able to write two and the fact that they worked out was a miracle because there was almost no planning involved, just a sort of suicidal rush into the unknown. Having spent ages grudgingly bowing to the need to actually plan out my Merlin AU, I'm now convinced that the planning process destroys my motivation to write and is therefore evil.
The thing is, anything around the 8000-word mark was almost certainly meant to be a hell of a lot shorter, I just let the idea get the better of me. When I am determined to keep something short I do a Five Things fic, because once I've come up with the five things I stop inventing and just write; the normal state of affairs is one in which my brain just invents and invents and suddenly there's an epic in the making.
- What are some examples of your love affair with the letter a? (Mostly because I find writers' quirks fascinating!)
I love words containing the pattern a-a where - is almost any consonant: sonata (-ata is a favourite word ending of mine; amorata is even better), impala, dramatic, parallel, anachronism. I like the names Julian, Diana, Zachary and Anthony. I like A to bracket names: Antonia and Aria and Ada and Anna.
- How do you go about developing a narrative voice for characters?
I don't think I'm nearly as good at this as I ought to be. I'm lazy about it. I tend to write characters who have a good education and either a background in science or a sense of the artistic/aesthetic about them (or both), so that my normal writing voice doesn't seem out of place. Usually I know within the first few paragraphs what kind of voice I'm aiming for; whether I want a tight POV or not, whether the character's speech patterns will bleed through and to what extent, what kinds of images this person will reach for when building metaphors.
RP taught me a hell of a lot about specific narrative voice and framing language in terms of someone other than yourself. Writing Lucifer was always about noticing very very precise details, and about freedom, and about light. He's still the voice that's the biggest part of me, as a person and as a writer. He's unshakeable. I don't want to shake him.
But the others were useful too: writing Kenneth was an exercise in awareness of personal danger, and awareness of dirt, and a constant low-grade anxiety underscored by tick tick tick and the passing of time. Writing Sophie was very easy because her primary frames are also two of mine -- medical knowledge, and fierce protection of family -- but she had her own quirks and so was able to surprise me. Sophie would react to stress by whipping cream into disaster, and only Sophie would see a bare strip of ground and think of it as a fencing piste.
In terms of fanfiction where I can remember working hard to create voice: Ask Me How, definitely, and Twelve Pater Nosters, and -- a less obvious one, because it's a very Fahye kind of story -- so great & beautiful. Caspian was difficult.
The best fun I've had with a character's voice was Bastian Tate's. I'm not an architect, I do not walk through the world comparing everything to building materials -- neither am I hyperaware of gendered language -- but Bastian does, and Bastian is. Piecing his narrative together required some deliberate examination of my own privelege and a careful tweaking of my instinctual metaphors to suit Bastian's programming. It was awesome.
(I have a vague, semi-formed idea for a story with three main characters, written in three separate extremely tight third-person points of view, and I already know that one character's frame is music and physics, one's is cookery and clinical depression, and the third -- I'm not entirely sure yet, but it'll stem from the fact that they have a very short attention span and were brought up using sign language at home.)
- How about incorporating thematic elements? (Hooray for meta!)
Hahahaha. Ha. I am trying to think of a time I have started a story with the thought 'this will have a theme of X' and completely failing (unless you count Eleusis, which to be honest is far more meta than it is story). I mean, I begin with an intention to make a point or examine an idea through narrative, but I don't examine the urge closely; my usual method is to notice what's coming through as important during the writing process, and then carefully construct a thread of it throughout the story; repeat some metaphors, come at a reference from another angle, emphasise everything again at the end.
- Why is your History Boys fic so good??? I just opened your fic LJ to ask you questions about specific stories but got distracted by reading instead.
:D Well, everything I said above about careful construction of thematic threads really, really applies to that story, as the commentary explains if you have the patience to get through all my gushing about Irwin.
I am extremely proud of that story, it's one of my personal favourites, and I think it turned out so well because I got to pour so many of my favourite things into it: ambiguous and complicated romance with sharp edges, over-educated people whose worldview is framed by academia and poetry, a smart and arrogant brat (Dakin!), a snarky writer (Scripps!), and of course IRWIN IRWIN OH IRWIN ILU <3
no subject