#I love the story the characters but most importantly I love that there’s dubstep

[singularshark]

An angel and a witch

[solesurvivorkat]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but how did you get the dialog for your Shadow of Steel fanfic? Did you use a site, watch videos, or something else? Your writing is amazing and I read it over so many times! I hope you’re well! ♥️♥️♥️

O.o  .......   ::stares at Ask and blinks slowly a few times::

...Someone is asking about my FO4 fic.....

;__;*  .......

Okay, well... first of all, you made my night by asking me about it at all, so thank you for that, lol!   *^.^*   Second, thank you SO much for the compliment! I know I’ve said it a trillion times, but I swear, I swear that I’m not done writing it. I know my writing has been soooooooo slow and long in between chapters, & I seriously can’t apologize enough. Not trying to make excuses, but in between my son, work, moving to a new house last fall, my other hobbies (I don’t have a lot, but they exist, lol), on & off writer’s block, anxiety & depression (being treated, but those who have it know that there isn’t a ‘magic, 100% fix’), exhaustion, and now the whole pandemic thing (I had unrelated bronchitis a couple weeks ago too, and my son had a minor version, so that was a fun event too)..... it’s been a tough year or so. Not BAD, but tough. I’m determined that I’m going to finish this fic once and for all, even if it takes me another few years.

THAT said...

I did watch Youtube footage of game dialogue for part of my ‘research’ (I have a whole long FO4 playlist of dialogue & specific game events, lol). I also talked to people online who shared the same passion for FO4 as me, bouncing ideas back and forth ( @the-dubstep-strawberry, @scorpio-skies, and @lothrilzul have been amazing for this during my whole process, thank you so much guys! Love yooo! <3 @marvilus73 has also made some awesome FO4 posts that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading!).

But most importantly (to me, anyway), I scoured the internet for any FO4-related resources that I thought would be valuable for my fic. I really did do a lot of research, b/c I wanted to sound knowledgeable in my writing and not just like a person that played for like, 10min & was like, “Eh, good enough, I’ll just make up the rest” (not that I’m dissing anyone who has done that, it’s just not my method).

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki has been the most valuable (again, for me personally) resource I’ve used. Though occasionally you come across some info that you kind of have to take ‘with a grain of salt’, it’s really been a lifesaver because there’s soooo much info there than came in handy. If you look up a particular character - let’s say for example, Danse - the site will list a lot of their main info/stats on the right side of the character’s page. At the bottom of this ‘info box’, it will often list a dialogue page (sometimes two) that lists all the dialogue (as far as I know) that’s in the game. This kind of info was like... a total ‘goldmine’ to me, for helping me to get my fic off of the ground.

.....THAT also said, a little piece of advice - if I had to go back to the very beginning & start my fic all over again from scratch (haha, never gonna happen, trust me, I’m just saying), I definitely would have done things differently. ...Yeah, I’m sure all writers say that, and my story would’ve been pretty much the same - but I feel that I relied on the game dialogue too much when writing my fic at the start. Plenty of people have played through FO4, and even for the people that never finished it, I’m sure they played enough to know how the game starts & what the main story is.

It’s fine to start a fic off at the beginning of a game/movie/series (what have you) as if the person reading it is experiencing it again, except through your character’s POV - but unless you’re going to have different experiences (at least somewhat) from what the actual character/POV player has, or offer deeper insight into what’s going on in their or surrounding character’s minds that we didn’t see ourselves while enjoying that fandom... it might feel a bit tedious and boring. Like... ‘okay, but... I already saw all this when watching/playing it myself, so... what’s my incentive to keep reading?’

Yeah, my Nora did have her own thoughts/feelings/experiences that weren’t necessarily canon for FO4 in the beginning of my fic... but I was a first-time fic writer, and I was nervous that if I didn’t put more game dialogue in the story, that my own writing wouldn’t interest other people, that they’d think my writing was bad/stupid/not ‘enough’, etc. I didn’t yet have the confidence in myself to not rely on the game dialogue to fill in chapters, instead of just enhancing them a bit.

My whole (VERY long-winded, I sincerely apologize) point to this is: if you - or anyone who reads this - go to write your own story/fic/anything, be proud and unafraid to be you. No one’s perfect, and many of us learn to write better as we go (I know I cringe when I read my early stuff, lol!). It’s totally fine to use resources, just don’t like... obsess over making them a big part of your writing (which is what I feel I did when starting out, hence my ‘words of caution’. I like... agonized over making my chapters as ‘perfect’ as I could, and I think I used up waaay more energy than I needed to while writing. ...Come to think of it, I still do that at times now, and drive myself crazy with it, LOL!).

...And... if saying the above stuff added to a question/point you weren’t intending to ask, then I sincerely apologize again for ‘going off on a tangent’, lol!  *XD 

Thank you again for saying what you said, it really did make my night & put a little spring in my step to know that people still appreciate my writing/fics, even if I haven’t had as much time to continue it lately!  <3 <3 <3 <3 <3