#@thesweetnessofspring

[lemonluvgirl]

WIP Titles Game

thanks for tagging me @absnow

Rules: reveal the titles of the documents in your wip folder and tag as many people as there are documents. Let others ask questions about the ones that interest them and post snippets or explain the contents as you see fit!

Holy heck I actually had to count my WIPs and wow! I've got so many!

The Designation Games

Paper Hearts

Best Laid Plans

Build Me Up From Bones

Small Talk

Hitting The Target

Christmas For 3

Senorita

Drabbles/Oneshots/Misc.

This Rebel Heart

Promise Me, Little Brother

Golden Cages

Do you think I might have too many irons in the fire??? LOL Anyways, I'm tagging 12 people hopefully I won't be the only one with a double digit WIP count!

[thesunpersists]

(character ask) 15. What's your favorite ship for Haymitch?

thank you @thesweetnessofspring!! 🧚🏻

send me something for character ask game

Okay, I thought about it for too long. So, here is a stream of consciousness answer based on canon, and I would love to hear what everyone else thinks-- AU or otherwise!

I don’t really like Haymitch and Effie as a romantic couple. I do think that they care more for each other than they outwardly show, but their dynamic is much more compelling as begrudging coworkers. 

Maysilee or anyone we know from the Second Quarter Quell generation didn’t sit right either since we know he had a girlfriend at the time he was reaped. The whole thing is so tragic that I had to move on before I got too sad.

Hazelle (who is also QQ generation I guess) is such a strong and resilient character, and I can see her working well with Haymitch. The time she works as a housekeeper for Haymitch also coincides with the time that Haymitch must have been involved with some planning around the rebellion. I would love to read a fic where Hazelle picks up on something (a secret message, a phone call she accidentally picks up, anything 👀) and they bond over the secret they share.

Which would ultimately bring about the Gale question. Katniss always thinks of Haymitch as like her because he is from Seam but Gale seems to set Haymitch apart because he is a victor. It is intriguing to imagine how he must have felt like once his mom started working for Haymitch, and whether he would feel differently in the event of a romance. So, Hazelle takes the win for me, mainly because I liked where the story could take them and the implications for other characters! Plus a Seam-Seam couple as an adult would be different from the romances we got to see in canon!* *in canon so far because i am always holding on to the hope that SC will write another book & blow me away all over again

[mollywog]

AU game: Cinderella!Everlark

So I’m actually writing something like this so I’ll share parts of my WIP!

Peeta is the Prince, but is also the ‘Cinderella’ of the story.

After Katniss’s father dies, her mother remarries the baker (no relation to Peeta)

Peeta conceals his blonde hair with soot/cinders 👀 so he’s not recognizable as the prince

He wins a wrestling tournament at the harvest festival. Emboldened by his Victory, he asks Katniss to dance.

It’s not a rags to riches story, rather a rich and miserable to happy and not-rich.

Thank you for playing the AU Game!!

[notsocooljess]

Head doctor vs headphones?

ooo this one i think about somewhat daily but i’m have major struggles with exactly where i want the story to go, how long it should be, and some plot points to make it more interesting and generally a good read.

here’s a snippet! (from Katniss’s POV)

I’m the only person waiting for the bus, and this sparks more ideas in my definitely-normal-and-not-at-all-going-insane brain. To add on to the list of thoughts that have plagued my consciousness the past few weeks, my mind realizes that I would not even need to be waiting for the bus as a senior if my car didn’t get totaled. And my car wouldn’t have gotten totaled if I left a few minutes earlier. And if I left a few minutes earlier, Prim would still be here.

Before I can have a complete spiral, the bus pulls up to my stop. I saunter on, and the stale, humid air of the late-August heat trapped in the vehicle provides some distraction from any other thought my brain can conjure up. I find the closest spot to the back of the bus still available and spread my items across the seat. I don’t plan on meeting anyone today. I don’t plan on meeting anyone period. I’m here to graduate and move on with whatever “moving on” means.

[millennium-queen]

I’ve travelled long and far (on the train) and faced perils unknown (woke up early) so I can see Hades Town on the Westend TODAY!!! AHHH!!!

[wistfulweaverwoman]

🕯

@thesweetnessofspring asks: on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

Thank you so much for the ask!!! Um like an 8? I kind of love it. The hard part for me is getting the chapter written, but once it’s written I like to take time and edit and rework till everything flows well.

If the feeling (from the combination of words in a particular section) isn’t quite correct I’ll go through the thesaurus till it feels right.

[petruchio]

34 & 46 for the random asks!

yayyyy!!

34. what do you plan on doing tomorrow/this week?

tomorrow im getting coffee with my grandma, i have a bar trivia night on thursday and on friday going to a movie with friends!! then saturday im traveling back home bc ive been visiting my parents this week :)) so i actually have a v fun week

46. something that made you smile recently

yesterday had an intense wave of happiness because i realized that the thing im craving so deeply right now is peace and stability — but i realize that craving it doesn’t mean that the fact that it’s missing in my life right now is a bad thing. i realized that for me, being 24 is about living my life to to the fullest and creating memories that will last me the rest of my life, and that when i do find the peace i desire (bc i genuinely trust that i will!) i’ll be so grateful for past me for having lived the life i am now, for how much it’s teaching me and giving me. peace is coming. stability is coming. love is coming. then i went outside for a walk and it rained a light spring rain and then there was a perfect full rainbow. so i kind of felt like, yeah, that was the sign i was looking for. and i knew everything was going to be alright. (probably way too sentimental of an answer. but that’s what made me smile)

[buggiebite]

Questions from a Curious Child

and there was a tickle fight…the end.

this reblog has lived in the back of my mind for a bit and it inspired me to make this, so thank you @thesweetnessofspring

[thesunpersists]

5. A song that goes best with the love song in your work 💕

thank you @thesweetnessofspring! 🧚‍♂️

this is for "Katniss with a K" ☕

send me something for Writer Ask - Playlist version

[mollywog]

Anne Shirley 🤝 Katniss Everdeen

Hitting her future husband for a perceived slight against her that was actually a gesture of his affection.

(you might have already connected these but I wanted to share)

Oh!!! I love this!!

Anne and Katniss both have this one sided suspicion and misinterpretations of Gilbert and Peeta’s motives. They go on to have these beautiful friendships with feelings that they refuse/struggle to admit are romantic (not to mention, everyone else around them seeing it.) Then later, dramatic realizations over the depth of their feelings.

Then there’s this:

“Did you love Annie right away, Finnick?” I ask.

“No.” A long time passes before he adds, “She crept up on me.”

Which echos this:

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps. . . perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

(While the passage is Finnick discussing Annie, I think it also describes Katniss’s feelings for Peeta)

Thank you so much for sharing @thesweetnessofspring!!

More on Shirbert and Everlark Here

[charlunday]

When you’re busy murdering some dude in the jungle but your gf calls you

This was super quick but I was very inspired so here you go! Tagging @thesweetnessofspring for originating the post and also @rosegardeninwinter @triassictriserratops @katnissdoesnotfollowback and @katnissmellarkkk

[millennium-queen]

I suddenly want to tell Peeta everything about who he is, and who I am, and how we ended up here. But I don’t know where to start. Worthless. I’m worthless - Mockingjay p.316

Finally finished this piece based originally off a text post by @thesweetnessofspring but it kinda spiralled into its own very big thing oops

[wistfulweaverwoman]

💞

thank you for the ask @thesweetnessofspring!!

💞 = what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

Well I for sure look to achieve a balance of all of these things, but I think the most important is the technical stuff. As a reader I will absolutely stop reading a story (fanfic or published book) if the basic sentence structure is off. I find it very off-putting, because instead of being able to immerse myself in the work I am constantly pulled out with having to work out what the author actually meant. So I end up not even getting to any of the other stuff on the list that the author may or may not have done well.

My first goal as a writer is to make the words flow well together, and the second is be as clear as possible to avoid confusion. The other stuff is really important too, though I really like nuance and adding in lil nuggets of information in bit by bit, because I really enjoy that as a reader.

As for the figurative language, I hesitate to go overboard with it because one of the first writing tips I received was to not write something in 10 words if I can concisely express the same thing with 5 words. I've always instinctually saved figurative language for more emotionally charged moments.

This is something that I wrote back in 2014 as a new writer (The Awkward In-Between) and while I'd change it a little I think it's a decent example of what I mean by saving the more poetic language for emotionally charged moments:

Looking up at Peeta, it's as if Katniss has never truly seen him before this moment. Like a moth, her silver eyes are drawn in. His hair has dried haphazard and wild, and the sun, now directly behind his head, haloes his curls, setting them ablaze. The mesmerizing azure of his eyes are intense as the blue center of flame. He is a vision. Her sudden terror isn't that his fire would ignite her, but that his own light would be snuffed out, and she'd be forced to flit around in the dark forever, his loss leaving her an empty shell.

I also see it as a finisher, something I often add in the editing process, though there are some things I see long before I get to that chapter that haunts me till I write it out, like this example.

For my latest fic, The Apothecary's Daughter, I've gone through the process of plotting the entire story out, in three acts, using a specific method. I love writing and I actively want to improve my skill in crafting good stories, so I challenged myself to write this fic as if I were writing a novel. While the main plot points are simple and echo bits of cannon, there is a much more complicated subplot that's only been hinted at so far, that I feel wound be a lot more difficult to pull off if I hadn't already plotted out the basic story with bullet points first. After I'd divided up the basic story into three acts I further divided each act into 9 chapters (like THG books). And then I plotted out each chapter. Some chapter bullets have a lot more details than others, but that's okay because I've gotten more ideas as I've written each new chapter and in fact had to move some plot points to future chapters to accommodate them.

A month or two back I read through my outline and went back to the structure I was following because I'd moved stuff around and the story flow felt off. The I fell into a hole of rereading all the articles (I have some of her books too but I was too lazy to get one off the bookshelf LOL). While I'd originally planned for each act to be 9 chapters I discovered that while this method worked for SC (she's a master) that for me this shortened what should be the longest part of the story (act 2) and made the other two acts much too long. The formula should be approximately 25%/50%/25% for the 1/2/3 acts, respectively. I really took the time to understand the difference between plot points, pinch points, and the center point, and the purpose for each.

If anyone is looking to understand the technicalities of plotting I highly recommend checking out that blog and her articles.

As for the characters, those are for sure incredibly important too... but since I'm writing fics right now and have not dipped my toe into OCs I don't have to worry about creating characters, just making sure I keep my characters as close to cannon as possible, which is only possible through character analysis, which I have been doing for THGs characters since before joining the fandom back in 2014. The most consistent feedback I receive on my cannon divergent fics is that my characters are some of the most in character representations that the reader had read. I am very very proud of that, honestly, because it's not always easy to suss out meaning or intention with the POV of a person that's not always specifically aware of those things themselves.

Character in my AUs are going to be in varying levels of OOC because they've had different experiences that cause them to feel and react differently than they would in a cannon divergent fic. Part of that comes from identifying what it was in the characters background that lent to a specific trait and either changing those circumstances, or starting the fic at an earlier age, like in The Shape of Us.

World building is super fun for me. Sometimes I pull from my other fics, like some of the merchant culture I'm exploring in The Shape of Us . Sometimes I already know ahead of time when I'm going to add something in, and sometimes I'm writing out the chapter and need to give some context to something that's been plotted. And while I'm following an outline I still end up adding things to the story spontaneously, like the bath scene I wrote in the last posted chapter of The Apothecary's Daughter.

[thgfanfictionlibrary]

Never Hijacked!Peeta Fics Masterlist

Created: April 25th, 2024

Checked:---

A Cool Kiss-endlessnightlock (ao3)

Summary: When Peeta is rescued from the Capitol and brought to D13, he’s forgotten everything related to Katniss. The Capitol has erased his memories: no Valley Song, no bread, no games, nothing. It’s the perfect opportunity for Katniss to let it go. It’s what everyone tells her, but she still kisses his pearl goodnight.

A Fading Bruise-VanillaCottonCandy (ao3)

Summary: "We shouldn't be here," he suddenly states, as if we're not in a room surrounded by doctors and workers of District 13. And Haymitch. When my expression contorts to confusion, he clarifies. "I don't think we're safe here, Katniss." Alternate Universe in which Peeta was never hijacked in Mockingjay.

Accepting What's Real-Anna_Dandelion (ao3) Summary: Peeta gets rescued from the capitol, he is not hijacked. I am bad at summaries, not sure where I am going with it. Peeta's POV. If I could hold you for a minute-wendywobbles2016 (ao3) Summary: Little what-if piece. What if the Capitol hijacking didn’t go as planned?

Kingdom Come-bellablue27 (ao3)

Summary: I throw myself into his arms with so much force I’m surprised it doesn’t knock us both over. Luckily, Peeta has always been strong and stable, so he grips onto me with equal intensity, holding me steady. I look up at him, and find him glancing down at me, blue eyes swimming with tears. “Are you real?” he asks. “I’m real." Canon-adjacent Mockingjay AU where Peeta was never hijacked.

no cameras-orangecranscones (ao3) Summary: Katniss and Peeta reunite in District 13, and she realizes a thing or two.

Reunion-Mollywog (ao3)

Summary: A kidnapped but not hijacked District 13 Everlark reunion

The Only One-thesweetnessofspring (ao3)

Summary: A non-hijacked Peeta is rescued, but he's not being affectionate with Katniss like she wants. He thinks she's now dating Gale. She thinks he doesn't want her. They're both desperate for each other.

Underground-oh_wellau (ao3) Summary: No hijacking. No chocking her to death. But Peeta doesn't need to wear a 'Mentally disoriented' bracelet on his wrist for her to know that they match. we’ll fill our mouths with cinnamon-petruchio (ao3) Summary: Mockingjay AU. A non-hijacked Peeta is brought back to Thirteen from the Capitol.

[mylionskitten]

Can we talk about this? Katniss says she’s not used to being touched, EXCEPT BY PEETA or her family! CF pg. 81. She’s USED to being touched by him. So natural for her.

Later, in MJ while mourning for Peeta, she again refuses to be touched except by Haymitch, page 163, BECAUSE HE LOVES PEETA TOO!! So much significance in this! Ughh! Please share your thoughts!

#I’mtoast #socrushedforher #tellmewhatyouthink

@thesweetnessofspring @thesmileykate @little-lynx @everlarkedalways @tetheredfeathers @thesunpersists @waywardangel-wilds

[mockingjay-sings]

Everlark + Jane Austen inspired by a post by @thesweetnessofspring