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littleengine74 · 1 month

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20 Questions For Writers

Didn’t actually get tagged on this, but it looked like a fun one. 🤣

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

AO3 says I have 24. Huh.

2. What is your total AO3 word count?

288,626 since I started in 2021, which seemed like a lot to me until I realized 179,551 of those belong to the second thing I ever wrote, a massive 4 part series covering from Rio’s resurrection to their inevitable HEA.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Veronica Mars brought me to AO3. The Punisher (Kastle) made me think for the first time about writing prompts, but it was the Good Girls (Brio) fandom that finally got me to put the proverbial pen to paper.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. Even If It Hurts (Part 3 of Walk Through The Fire series)

2. Sanctuary (Part 2 of Walk Through The Fire series)

3. Get Your House In Order (Part 1 of Walk Through The Fire series)

4. By My Side (Part 4 of Walk Through The Fire series)

5. What Would Elizabeth Do?

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I try to, at least. Sorry if I’ve missed any, sometimes I lose track of the notification emails.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ooh, definitely Enemy of My Enemy. Hardest fic for me to finish. Not fluffy. No HEA. Rio is aaaaaangry.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hmm… there’s a lot to choose from cause I looooove a soft, fluffy Brio. If you can slog through the 4 part series, it covers the most ground, ending years after the show. It’s loosely based on canon to start, but veers off.

8. Do you get hate on your fics?

Hmm… Not really. Luckily just one I can think of. A vague accusation that all my ideas were suspiciously like a lot of other ones on AO3… except those other writers did it way better. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I blocked them and figured if anything, it meant I’d finally “made it”. 😂

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I try to. I aim for the kind I think people will enjoy reading, but I often alternate between worrying it’s either a little too cheesy, or over the top.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I don’t, but I would never say never. There are some I would *love* for other people to write, though. Karen Page (Punisher) and Steve Rogers (Captain America)… Intrepid reporter interviews national hero after the Battle of New York. Neither are looking for anything, but sparks fly. Anyone? Anyone??? 🤣

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but wouldn’t it be awesome if AO3 had a button that would do that automatically?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Again, no. I won’t say it would never happen, but I’m a bit of a lone wolf writer. Strict deadlines, etc are tough for me, so I think I’d find a co-writing situation very stressful.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

It has to be Brio. 🥰

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

This is a tough one. I don’t tend to release fics until they’re finished, so I don’t have any orphaned stories out there crying out for a happy ending. I do have a dozen or so ideas that are in various stages of completion. Some are almost done(ish), so I suspect the ones that are less likely to get finished are the ones that are literally a sentence fragment… barely a complete idea. I mean, they’re great random scattered thoughts, but… Yeah.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told my Brio characterizations are good.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Hmmm… Dialogue and smut. My descriptions aren’t bad, but my writing style isn’t as “flowy” as I’d sometimes like.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I’m not bilingual, so if I include another language in a fic I tend to keep it fairly short and straightforward to lessen the chance of getting it wrong.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Good Girls. First and only.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

I don’t mind rereading (most of) my own stuff. I have a special soft spot for ones where Brio interacts with the kids, like Smarter Than Your Average Gang Friend (Rio gets shown up by the Jane), and In Sickness (Jane’s sick and Rio shows Beth an uncharacteristic kindness).

Not tagging anyone in particular. Please, jump in!

#ask game #gg fanfic #brio #brio fanfiction

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pearlypairings · 1 year

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For the ask game:

1 for Aurelias, 4, 10, 15, and 18 🥰

1. Share a song that makes you think of Aurelias?

Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene, but the general ethereal ambience of Hozier suits my mental state of writing that fantasy/nobiltity fic so well :)

4. How many WIPs do you have right now?

Okay just a quick glance into Google Docs… 8 apparently lol. But in various stages of being well crafted or completely naked in those files. About half of those may get published, the other half are more like fun ideas to cheat on my real WIPs with that will stay in their respective folder lol.

10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

not a sound, but the wind, for sure! The first chapter was a slapped together, fever dream that I literally forgot about for weeks, but it got SO much positive feedback and attention I was shocked lol. It turned into a beloved 6 chapter fic that I actually want to go back and reread for myself (which I never do for my own fics).

15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters?

I don’t want to say random sources of inspo, buuuuuut I definitely have borrowed song titles most frequently. Otherwise, I’ve looked up obscure Tolkien quotes or my own creation based on the fic itself (like In the Shade of Aurelias comes from my made-up flowers in Hawkinnes).

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

I usually post my fave line from Do or Die that embarrasses Jason to pieces, but I think I’ll switch it up this time. Here’s one of my faves from not a sound, but the wind:

“Asshole parents love watching you cower in their presence. The moment you steal back that power, they don’t know how to react.” “Sounds like you’ve been through this.” “To an extent.” Eddie cleared his throat over the humming of the idling engine. He stared into the modest doorway before them. The pale green siding surprised her; it was so much brighter than the way he dressed. “But that’s the past. Wayne’s a good guy, nothin’ like how I lived before.”

*Anyone can check out the original post and ask me anything, I'm bored :)

Fanfic Ask Post

#pearly answers #fanfic writer ask game #hellcheer fanfic #hellcheer #hellcheer writer #thanks for the ask losty <3

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easilydistractedbyfanfic · 4 years

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10 FANFIC QUESTION TAG GAME

Tagged by the fabulous @reyslight ~ thank you!

1.) What’s your favourite genre to write? Ultimately whether it’s a smut fic or a sci-fi fic or an AU or a modern - it all comes down to ROMANCE! I write about my favorites because I love them, so ultimately I want them to be happy and that pretty much means they end up together.

2.) Do you pull inspiration from real-life, or do you pull things from other books/fanfiction you’ve read? Oh, everything! I’m inspired by anything that comes across my path! Song lyrics, a random idea, ugly cups in a thrift store (I literally wrote a story with this premise), a book I read or a comment a tv show character makes... I think we’re all just taking our experiences and outlook on the world and interpreting it in ways that make sense to us.

3.) Do you tend to write one-shots, short stories, or longer things? I write them all, but I tend to be pretty wordy. I have the most trouble with shorter stories because I like diving into character motivations so much!

4.) Do you prefer to write description or dialogue? This is tough to answer! In these choices, I think I’ll go with dialogue. I hope that readers of my stories think that I get the ‘feel’ of my characters via what they have to say and how they interact with each other! But my fave fave is writing the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the situations I throw them in. I love to dissect their reactions and how they internalize things!

5.) Favorite fic/book of all time? This one is also really tough! I read based on my mood, so it’s tough to say if I have a fave fic or fanfic “of all time”. I read so much variety, and I have go-to stories for different ships or different tropes or even different ‘emotions’. I don’t like not giving an answer though, so I can say with complete seriousness that my favorite children’s book of all time is “Miss Rumphius” by Barbara Cooney!

6.) Favorite trope? THERE’S ONLY ONE BED will suck me in happily every second of the day, LOL! Also I’m a sucker for sex pollen/aliens made them do it/do it or die... I mean, they’re all wonderful in and of themselves, but I also legit love how characters are forced to confront their feelings and awkwardness in these situations, or how it awakens something they’ve been trying to suppress. Love me some character dynamics!

7.) Are you the kind of person to work on more than one wip? Ughhhh.....yeah, even though I wish I wasn’t! I started out writing only one story, finishing it and then posting it. But then ideas just started pouring out of my head and I discovered that I write the most and feel most inspired when I focus on the story that feels the most urgent to me. I’m trying not to allow myself to have too many *published* WIPs though, because as a reader I know I don’t always trust that myself!

8.) How long have you been writing for? I started in June of 2018. So a year and nine months now! And I have 36 fics on ao3 in that time. And WAY MORE on my computer in various stages of completion!

9.) Do you tend to write more during the morning, afternoon, or evening? At night, definitely! I have two kiddos and a husband so giving up tv or sleep and being able to focus when the house is quiet is always my best bet.

10) Do you prefer to post and update your wip chapter by chapter, or do you prefer to wait until your wip is 100% finished before sharing it? I would love to be that writer who completes the darn thing before I post it... but alas...I enjoy the feedback and interaction with readers too much! Getting comments helps to fuel my muse and also builds my guilt which I sometimes use as motivation to finish! Ha!

I Tag: @star-sky-earth, @ghostmontygreen, @keiraknighted, @agreytracksuit, @osleyakomwonkru, @hopskipaway, @kinetic-elaboration, @jarleene, @wanderleave and anyone else who would like to fill this out!

#tag games #fic asks #fanfic writers #fanfic writing #fanfic questions

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septembersung · 6 years

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Tagged by @scarvenartist. Thank you!!

1. How many works in progress do you have?

I have four open novels that are in various stages of beginning. The farthest along is the epic fantasy I began in 2016 and NaNo’d this year that I’ve been blogging about. I’m fairly determined to get a complete draft, even if it’s just a sketch in places, down before I move on to another project/take a break. Then there’s a YA high fantasy playing off the powers-of-the-four-elements idea, which has the least done on it; my multi-generational Catholics in Space sci fi which always seems well thought out to me until I go to write a scene; and the whimsical fantasy that was plotted with the help of a friend and Story Cubes, also probably YA, which is pretty thoroughly conceived but I scrapped the drafts I’d started and am going to begin again with a more developed tone. I’m also still poking away at my current poetry manuscript, editing and reordering, wondering if it’s actually complete. I’ve also finally started writing new poems again after a months long hiatus, this time tackling sonnets. My plan for months now has been to do an in-depth practice and study of traditional meter and form in the new year, beginning with reading translations of ancient epics and throwing in some Shakespeare, so that will go nicely with sonnets. My nonfiction project is current in a research, note making, and mulling lull.

2. Do you/would you write fanfiction

I wrote some pretty bad fanfic in high school. It began with Harry Potter, but not until I needed a way to process my grief after HBP. I was always more interested in reading fanfic, and writing my own stuff. I don’t read much of it any more, though I have happily read some of the Batfam stuff that’s come across my dash (and I don’t even go there!). I’m glad that fanfiction is A Thing that exists in the world, although there is a large swath of it I would burn down and salt the earth after without a second’s hesitation.

3. Do you prefer paper books or ebooks?

I see the practicality and situational uses of ebooks in theory, but in practice have only used them a handful of times, and then only when there wasn’t another option. I compose on a screen a lot, but physical paper is crucial to my process, and I read and absorb better on paper. I believe it is a universal absolute that the more digital and abstract our world gets, the more it is vitally important - literally, necessary to living - that we are grounded in the physical world, especially in those things which are a big part of our brains and hearts and lives. Personally, since books and words are a major part of my existence, it’s important that they be solid as much as possible, in part as a counterweight to the internet and reading/doing blogging, which is necessarily digital, and makes up a big portion of my daily word consumption.

4. When did you start writing?

Somewhere between ages three and five. (I was a very early reader.) My first “novel” was several sheets of construction paper stapled together and it was about a giant sentient carrot. I have a distinct memory of writing the letter E, but I couldn’t remember how many horizontal lines it had, so I gave it lots, just to be safe.

5. Do you have someone you trust that you share your work with?

I’ve shared two of my novel WIPs with various friends and internet-friends online. The only people who regularly see my poetry in progress are my husband and @byjoveimbeinghumble. I can always count on Husband for support and an honest non-poet’s reaction, and Sharon has a wonderfully critical eye for form and clarity. @moochiethinks has been seeing lots of Eleyus as we do near-daily word wars, which has been wonderfully useful as a discipline and as a daily dose of positive feedback. I’m trying to be more open about sharing my fiction; it helps me to ‘get over myself.’ But now that I’ve made some progress there I need to find a balance and draw a line. I’m way too easily tempted into throwing words on paper and then asking the world for adulation.

6. Where is your favourite place to write?

In my library, on the couch or at my desk (which is finally cleaned off and nearly organized!) I sometimes retreat to my bed and lock the door if I’m in the middle of something important and can’t get any peace, when Husband is home to watch the kids. I also love going to a certain coffee shop, or occasionally the local library.

7. Favourite book as a child?

I read Anne of Green Gables and Little House (and its spin offs) and Narnia a great deal, and later Harry Potter. There was a few months after OOTP came out where I read nothing but OOTP, over and over.

8. Writing for fun or publication?

The two aren’t separate for me. Poetry is more nuanced, as individual poems have different geneses and purposes, but publication is part of the fun of storytelling; sharing a complete story, telling it ‘out loud’ as it were, has always been part of the appeal, ever since I was a child. I’ve already scoped out publishers and agents for Eleyus.

9. Have you taken writing classes?

Often the best writing classes are literature classes. We learn an art by immersing ourselves in it; much of the foundation is simply education, absorbed into how we think and see the world. (Although, many lit classes today are rubbish because they aren’t lit classes at all, but leftist ideology training grounds.) Writing classes are great for people who need help jumping the hurdle from processing to creating - and at some point or several, whatever form the ‘class’ takes, most of us need that help - but there is good and deserved criticism about the way writing is taught, at every level. That said, long ago I earned a certificate in YA/children’s lit, I was an English lit minor, and I have an MFA in creative writing.

10. What inspired you to write?

Reading. I’ve loved books from the earliest moments of my childhood. I read, and then I wrote something for others to read. It was natural as breathing. I can’t imagine one without the other.

I’m not sure who all has done this already, so I’m tagging @praise-the-lord-im-dead, @moochiethinks, and anyone who wants to do it.

#my writing life

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dsudis · 7 years

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writing meme

I was tagged by @silentwalrus1 approximately one internet lifetime ago.

+Where do you publish your work?

AO3 and also my own website (dira.ficlaundering.com) though I am beginning to think that... you know. Personal fic author archive-websites are a thing of the past and it’s not like I don’t keep local copies of everything in case the AO3 should up and disappear somehow, and also it looks... reasonably likely that the AO3 will not up and disappear anytime soon, so... maybe I will let the website go? idk.

+What medium/application/etc. you use?

Good old Microsoft Word, since I was dragged kicking and screaming to it from WordPerfect ten years ago. I trust The Cloud even less than I trust the AO3 to go on existing and also I do not actually want to share my actual working files in real time with absolutely anyone ever.

+Do you collaborate with others?

Nnnno. I am not good at relinquishing control over the story to anyone else--I mean, I will take someone else’s story and write fanfiction of it all day long, obviously, but sharing the actual story-making with someone else, no.

OTOH I love betas, and I more or less have to workshop an idea in chat--telling out the whole arc and sometimes individual scenes--before I can write it. Like, if you want to know what I’m going to write next the trick is to be in a chat room with me and ask a leading question and then make encouraging noises occasionally because BOY HOWDY DO I WANT TO TELL YOU AND HEAR WHETHER YOU THINK THAT WORKS.

+How much editing do you do before you publish?

It varies, depending on the story, how long it is, how many fucks I give about it by the time I’m done with it, etc. But I definitely like to have it betaed and go over the final story for proofreading type stuff. There have been stories I wrote that in the beta process wound up getting fairly massive rewrites--the middle story in the “Just Stay Alive” trilogy, “Seek Out the Hidden Places” is the one that springs to mind right now; I wrote that story, sent it to beta, and then realized that I had basically left out a huge amount of what the story should really be about, and rewrote a lot to make that work.

+Do you listen to music while you write?

I listen to music almost constantly--silence is slightly unnerving and makes every little other sound much more distracting, plus I have a bit of tinnitus so once I start noticing that I have to drown it out. (Thanks, ADHD, on probably both counts.) So, yes, I listen to music while I write, but it’s very very rare that I have any special playlist or anything relevant to the story itself--sometimes I’ll have some kind of RAR GET THE WORK DONE playlist for generally motivating myself to stay awake and on task, but that’s about it.

+How do you decide what to write about?

See above, re: workshopping ideas. I am a pretty much perpetual-motion idea generator, but I also have been doing this long enough to have some sense of how much of a hassle a story is going to be to write (in terms of how long it will be, how much thinking and planning and research it might require, how much shame I will feel about posting it, etc.) and how much I will love creating and posting it (how much of a target audience it has, how personally enchanting I find the idea) and kind of keep those things in proportion. One of the ways I gauge that is by, as I said above, basically workshopping the idea with friends and in chat--there are lots of ideas that I’ve talked out to the point where I can recognize that if I write it I’m committing to 200k, and back-burnered it until I forgot about it completely.

(I rarely actually utterly fail to sell an idea to anyone, but there are definitely times when other people’s reactions make me reconsider how a story would need to work to survive outside my head. So that is also a factor.)

...Also once it gets past the idea stage and into the stable of WIPs, random number generators help a lot.

+When do you write?

Well, not damn much for the last week or so, and before that writing was my dayjob so I scheduled periods of fic-writing in between periods of original-romance-writing to break things up and avoid feeling too all-work-and-no-play about writing. Before that, I tended to sneak in writing at work and also write in the evenings, especially while chatting with my alpha/beta readers. So... could be pretty much anytime I’m in front of a computer, which is... most of my waking hours, most of the time.

+How often do you write?

Once again: not damn much lately because things have been a bit. wild. But prior to The Upheaval, pretty much five or six days a week (I would do five-ish days a week Going To Work to write, plus a semi-regular evening meetup one night on the weekend to sit in a coffeeshop and write with other writers).

I always always wanted to be a professional writer, so I was reading writing-advice books of the variety written by working SF/Fantasy writers when I was 10 or 11 and internalized all their advice, which certainly included the “if you want to write, write every day” chestnut, and so I knew that and could have repeated it with great assurance of its validity anytime since I was in middle school, but it was only maybe five or six years ago that I actually seriously connected that to my own writing practice, particularly in the sense of--whether you feel inspired or not, whether you want to or not, get some words out as regularly as you can.

+Do you take requests?

Only after we reach friendship level 7. Or if I have specifically opened myself up for requests for some very specific reason like a charity auction or something, and even then I will reserve the right to be really wary of your requests.

+Is there a genre or type of story you want to write but are hesitant to?

I avoid writing historically-set stuff because I know Just Enough to know how much research I would want to do to Get Things Right and that is a rabbit hole I don’t need to send myself down when I have so many modern-set ideas where I can just roll with it and put down any goofs to “well it’s like that in the Marvel universe” or “well it’s like that in the universe where werewolves became widely known about fifteen years ago in a lengthy revelation that was traumatic in various ways for basically all werewolves alive at the time, especially the children and teens who had to deal with this happening but had no control over how it affected them.”

For instance.

+Any inspirational quotes, videos, tricks, articles, etc that help you stay motivated?

...Prescription amphetamines mostly? I have the ADHD, so “staying motivated” to do literally anything is a deeply questionable proposition. What works a lot better is to have a pretty reliable schedule where there is a time, or multiple times, in the day when it is Time To Work On The Thing. And if I’m particularly stuck, such that I arrive at Time To Work On The Thing and just go blank, that is usually time to show the most recent bit of the story to someone and talk with them about what I’m doing next, because actually talking about it with another person tends to jump-start my brain into focusing on the thing and working out what’s next and sometimes does in fact stir up enough enthusiasm to get me going without it having to be Time To Make The Donuts.

+Go to page 7 of your WIP, skip to the 7th line, and share 7 sentences:

I have lots of things in progress but only one that is more than 7 pages long where the seventh page isn’t in a chapter already posted, which I have also worked on this month, SO. From the Ace!Bitty epic, slightly more than seven very long and winding sentences:

“I thought he was asking because it was how he felt, and I was trying to be a... good teammate, a friend--I was older, I was trying to look out for him. So I kept saying, oh, that doesn't seem so weird, and I think everyone feels like that sometimes..."

Bitty laughed, and Jack grinned and pressed on, watching Bitty's face to see if he was properly lightening the mood.

"He wound up taking me to the ace spectrum group on campus--oh, hey, Bits, there's a group for this, when you get back to campus, I know I still see their flyers around all the time, because it reminds me of that time. They're really friendly, they didn't even get mad at me and Shitty for showing up and being idiots at each other and everyone else."

Jack paused, considering what would be an added selling point for anyone else, and added cautiously, "I think the cake at the meetings is from the grocery store, though."

"From the--!" Bitty looked horrified. "But--what if there are little frogs just figuring this out, and they--"

Jack did not point out that, in this department, Bitty himself was the frog just figuring this out.

Annnnd lazytagging whoever wants to do the meme! Say I tagged you, it’s cool, you’re allowed! :D

#memery #writing #ace!bitty #wips

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