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princip1914 · 3 years ago

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A few thoughts on writing longfic

I’ve had this post brewing for a while and I figured since today is a Friday I might as well let it out into the wild.

First off, this is not writing advice. I don’t feel qualified to give writing advice. This is a few observations I’ve made over the course of trying to write something that feels, well, long. Fandom is full of excellent authors writing long chaptered fic, but I don’t see a lot of people talking about how they go about producing such fics. I remember feeling like long fic was really out of reach for me when I started writing again in the summer of 2019 after not writing for years and years and I wanted to talk a bit about how that changed for me. Of course, this post comes with all the caveats that there is no need to ever write long fic if you’re not feeling it. Some of my favorite authors write mostly or only oneshots! But, if you are interested, here’s my lengthy, self indulgent, and entirely personal take on ~the longfic process~ below the cut.

First, to get this out of the way: long fic is anything that feels long or complicated to you, the author. “I’m working on my long fic” can mean that you’re branching out from microfiction to write something that’s 2k long, or it can mean you’ve got a multi-part 800k epic. There’s no objective measure of if something is “long fic,” Your own personal definitions can also change as you grow in confidence or change your focus as a writer (a little over a year ago when I finished Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire topping out at 31k, that felt very very long to me. Now it feels….still long, but not very very long.)

Here are a few specific things that helped me write something long. I don’t know if they will be interesting for anyone else, but at the very least writing these down has been a fun way for me to reflect on my own process.

Practice exercises. Ok, this is going to sound exceedingly obvious, but writing one shots prepares you for writing chaptered fic. Here’s what I mean more specifically: if you know you want to write (as a totally hypothetical example) a chaptered fic set in America in the summer that relies heavily on a nature metaphors, is written out of chronological order, and features a melancholy tone--it helps to write a few one shots like that before you embark on the Big Fic. Just like artists tend to do sketches before starting a big piece, it’s very helpful to write something small that gives you a feel for the ~vibe~ of what you’re trying to do in the long fic. It’s helpful for all the usual reasons--you get to know a specific version of the characters which helps plan out a character driven plot for the long fic--but it’s also helpful because you will learn if the tone and mood of the fic has enough staying power to capture your interest for the long haul. For instance, I have a few unfinished chaptered fics that have a humorous tone. I wish I had done more short humorous fics before starting them, because I would have realized that I don’t currently have the mental stamina to hold up a humorous tone for the length of a chaptered fic (hopefully that will change and I will finish Last Days some time this century!).

Plan it out ahead of time. I used google sheets for The False and the Fair. I do not think God intended google sheets to be used for fiction, but that was not going to stop me. On a more serious note, I think the best tool for planning fiction is the one you’re the most comfortable with--the notes app in your phone, handwriting, word, google drive, sheets, chalk board, summoning circle, the blood of your enemies, etc. The reason I chose to use sheets is that I knew from the very beginning that I wanted certain things to happen at specific places in the story--for instance, I wanted the first kiss to happen at the end of the first third of the story and I wanted the “reveal” about the mine accident to happen at the end of the second third of the story. But, I didn’t know what was supposed to go in between those elements. A traditional outline for a story at this point in development might have looked like:

Meet cute

Kiss

Reveal

Ending

But, what my brain needed was to preserve the blank spaces in between these story elements, and specifically to preserve the right amount of blank space between these story elements so that it didn’t end up, for instance, that the first kiss was halfway through rather than a third of the way through. In this way, I found google sheets an invaluable tool for pacing in the early parts of the planning process. I simply made 30 rows assuming 30 chapters, and started plugging in the elements I knew I wanted in the locations I wanted them. Then I filled in the blank spaces by asking myself “how do we get from X plot element to Y plot element in Z amount of chapters.” I’m not a mountain climber, but I’ve often thought about the first things that go into the spreadsheet in terms of mountain climbing terminology. In climbing, a crux move, which can be anywhere along the route, is the most difficult move of the route: if you can’t do it, you can’t do the route. I think of the first things that go into the planning spreadsheet as the crux moves of the story, the most important pieces around which everything else turns. It was not an accident that those were also all the first scenes of the fic that I wrote; if I couldn’t do those scenes, I couldn’t do the story the way I planned it so I wanted to know early on if I needed to make changes.

Make changes if you have to: even though it helps to have things planned in advance, don’t resist the story if it tries to change on you while you’re writing it. Usually the feeling that you have to make changes stems from having a plot that is not entirely character driven. As you write the story, the characters reveal themselves and sometimes the plot has to change to change with the characters’ motivations. Here’s an area where fanfic writers have a leg up on everyone else: if you write fic, you already know the characters really well. That means, (in my experience anyway) it’s less likely that you’ll have a surprise character development which leads to a rethinking of the whole plot. Less likely, but not completely unlikely, unfortunately.

Lie to yourself: The False and the Fair was supposed to be 90k words. I thought that sounded reasonable, a little less than 3x the longest fic I had ever written. Now it's 161k and will probably top out a little over 170k. Ooops. But I never would have set out to write something that long. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it, even though anyone more experienced looking at my plans for the fic probably would have laughed at the idea I could cover all those plot points in 90k. Ignorance is bliss. Protect your ignorance.

Scrivener: Long fic for me means “fic that is long enough you can’t hold all the parts of it in your head at once.” That’s where Scrivener comes in (or another app if you’d rather, but I really like Scrivener for the ability to see the project either linearly or as condensed notecards). You can put together an organizational scaffold in Scrivener that allows you to move back and forth between the forest and the trees. So, for instance, you might be going for a jog and come up with the perfect line of dialogue for chapter 27 when you’re only up to chapter 5 in terms of writing progress. With Scrivener, you can go home, and put that dialogue in the “bucket”/index card/whatever for chapter 27 without compromising your ability to see chapter 5 clearly or muddying up your google doc. You can then use the fact that you’ve started writing bits and pieces of the later chapters in conjunction with the tool of lying to yourself that, actually, you’ve written a lot more of the fic than you realize and that when you get to chapter 27 it won’t be as hard as chapter 5 because you’ve put in the groundwork already. In my experience, this lie turns out to be true about 50% of the time, which is better than 0% of the time.

Digestible mini arcs: The False and the Fair was originally broken up into thirds. I thought it would be 90k and 30k was the longest I had written, so thirds seemed to make sense. Also, 3 is a nice, time honored storytelling number. I think it’s good to give yourself seemingly achievable milestones along the way to completion. These milestones (for me anyway) lined up well with the “crux moments” I’ve described. If you’re someone who likes to write out of order, writing your way to an already written milestone can feel like sailing to an island where you get to rest for a bit from the stormy seas before setting out for the next island in the archipelago.

“It's all part of the process”: I’m categorically incapable of describing things without resorting to running metaphors, and so I apologize in advance, but I am now going to do the insufferable thing of comparing writing a long fic to running a marathon. Here’s the thing with a marathon. You are not going to feel good every step of the way. We all know this. It’s a marathon, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, especially at the end. In the same way you literally cannot write something novel length or even novella or long short story length without, at least at some point, feeling bad about yourself and your writing. But you also can’t run a marathon if the whole thing is agony, and for most people, it’s not--your meat sack shuffling along the course is subjected to the slings and arrows of all sorts of weird body chemistry that only happens when you push it to its limits. So, you’ll be in agony and then the endorphins will kick in for a while and you’ll be thinking “this isn’t nearly as bad as everyone said,” and then you’ll drink some water at a rest stop and feel like a God for half a mile before you crash and you’re in agony again until that one perfect song comes up on the playlist...and you get the idea. Writing something long, for me at least, is a bit like that. There are massive ups and downs. The key for me is to just understand it’s all part of the process, a necessary step on the way to the finish line. If the fic is 10 chapters long, at some point you have to write chapter 5. Just like you have to write chapter 5, at some point you also have to go through a bit of despair before reaching the end. It is unfortunately non-optional. In fact, despairing is something you can check off your list each time you’ve done it. Cut dialogue tags, check. Feel awful about my writing for thirty minutes, check. Write ending section, check. Often I feel that the stress and shame and fear that come with bad emotions while writing are worse than the bad emotions themselves. It really helps me to remember these emotions are all part of the process and nothing to worry about. If I didn’t have them, then I would worry!

I certainly have plenty more to say about writing, but this ramble has gone on long enough. If you’re interested in any of this stuff, please feel free to send me an ask.

I would also love to know more about everyone else’s writing processes, so feel free to pop into my ask box to talk about your own approach too! I am very interested in this stuff!

#long post #writing #fic #princip's fic #princip writes #princip's musings #longfic #how make words go

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theshinsun · 4 years ago

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brace urself, this is for the writing meta ask: 2, 6, 7, 14, 17, 19, 20 (if you need a direction for this... I always wanted to hear more about Bring Me Roses), 21, 22, and 24 bc i'm nosy and still very into your craft. thank you buddy!!

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

I'm so excited/terrified to finally start my knb college AU. I've been sitting on this idea for almost two years I'm so ready but at the same time I'm so not ready.

The gist is it's every single self-indulgent, chaotic, projection-ridden idea I've ever wanted for these boys all rolled in a big ball of shenanigans and character growth. It's a beautiful mess and I can't wait to make it happen as soon as ANR is done.

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

This is gonna come right the fuck out of left field, but I love writing Himuro. I have so much fun writing just... snark, and that boy is the perfect outlet, there's no bottom to that salt mine. I remember getting a similar kick out of writing Tsukishima in the past, I just live for sassy dialogue. It ain't much but it's honest work.

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

My style is very present, I think (which is funny bc there was a time I never would have considered writing present tense) focusing on what's happening and how it makes the character feel in the moment. I like to write specific, detailed imagery, but I try to keep it short and relevant to the scene, so I can move along and focus on what's important. I wouldn't call it fast-paced, exactly, but it is pretty to-the-point. And I think, based on the feedback I've received, that people who read my fics might agree with that. I've heard that my writing is very personal and character-driven, and I think that might be a byproduct of the time I spent writing in first person. Now I write almost exclusively third person limited, but I still like to get in the character's head and tell the story from their "point of view", I guess.

14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

It depends almost entirely on how quick I'm able to come up with a pun lol. Sometimes a fic has a title before I've even written the first sentence, sometimes I have to scramble for something, anything in the last few seconds before I publish it. A lot of the time I'll have a working title like "that one really fucked up aokaga oneshot" for pretty much the duration of writing a new fic… and a lot of the time I'll end up using song titles, even though we're past the days of writing songfics.

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 think, to a degree, people get different things from my writing than I intended -- which is good! The way a piece of writing can be interpreted completely differently depending on who's reading it is one of the best things about being a writer tbh. I think people might be surprised, though, how different my fics often turn out from how I set out to make them. These days I've usually got a pretty detailed outline for what's going to happen, but even with all the preparation in the world, sometimes a fic will take a sudden detour I didn't expect, or something I wrote before will take on new meaning and change the direction I meant to go in. This definitely happens more with my longer fics, but there are times even with oneshots where I look back at what I set out to write, and what I ended up writing, and they're completely different.

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 tend to write a lot of scenes with characters talking while in the car (cars are an intentional motif in ANR, but in something like GWGE there's not actually a lot of narrative purpose to this) I don't know why, maybe because it's a convenient way to have characters talk one-on-one, or maybe it's because I've had a lot of meaningful conversations while riding passenger, couldn't tell you, but it's cropped up more than once in my current fics and will probably feature in some of my upcoming ones (the college AU strikes me as a likely candidate), and I think it's worth taking note of.

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?)

SINCE you mentioned Bring Me Roses, and I never really get to talk about it, pls allow me to go on a lengthy tangent about my most underrated fic of all time. (Like 90% of the reason it's still incomplete almost two years later is because the response when I posted it was so underwhelming, but I still stand by it. Someday I'll finish it, hopefully, if just for myself.)

I'm so fucking proud of the language in this one. It's not perfect, by any means, but the imagery in my opinion is very strong, and almost every line of dialogue is saying something without really saying it. There are frequent allusions that something happened to Aomine's mother, relatively recently, and that Momoi is worried about him overworking out of grief or guilt, but none of those things are ever actually stated. There's also some pretty heavy implicit flirting between Aomine and Kuroko, even if it's a bit unusual and they're both playing it coy at this stage, the chemistry is there and the interest is mutual. And of course, because it's a florist AU, the flower symbolism… I spent so long researching bouquets, plant husbandry, how to prep and preserve cut flowers, and of course… flower meanings. The main ones that keep getting brought up are dahlias, which have just as many negative connotations as positive ones, including betrayal and instability, but also dignity, creativity and change, and come in a variety of colors shapes and even sizes (Islander or "dinnerplate" dahlias were definitely going to feature in part 2… as well as the connection between them and Aomine's mother). I know a lot of these things might not hit as hard because there's no actual payoff (yet), but still, in terms of "show don't tell" and setting up things to come, I don't think I have a single better example in my fic repertoire, I really went all out with this.

It's a shame I never got to follow through, but I got the impression that there just wasn't a lot of interest, and even if that alone is kind of a dumb reason not to continue, after I worked so hard to pull off what I did, the lack of response really killed my motivation. (I wonder sometimes if it would've been better received if it was an AoKaga fic… actually, I don't need to wonder, I'm sure it would have been, but that's not the story I set out to tell and I'm not going to change it.)

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Oh, I'd love to do some of my fics as comics. I even tried it at one point; GWGE was going to be a comic originally, before I decided a multichapter fic would probably be less exhausting (the first couple pages are still floating around in my art tag somewhere, though this was back in high school so the quality is… heh).

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

Yeah… I reread a lot. Usually while I'm working on a new chapter, I'll go over the ones that lead up to it to make sure I don't repeat the same phrases too much and that the continuity lines up, and I'll also admit to going back and just reading my own fics for fun. Sometimes the only one who's written exactly what I want to see is me.

How I feel about them depends on the fic… some of my older ones are a mix of nostalgia and cringe tbh, but there are some I still genuinely enjoy revisiting from time to time.

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Oh hell yeah. For… better and worse, honestly. I feel like I've lost some fluidity and confidence in my writing, and it sometimes turns kind of stilted, so I try to overcompensate which results in pretty jarring changes of tone, but at the same time, I've gotten much better with rhythm and syntax, my grammar skills are always improving, and I'm able to incorporate a lot more intentional meaning and subtext without always stating things outright.

#shin speaks #writer woes #this turned out... long #long post #knb #anr #bmr #gwge #aokaga #aokuro #meta #thanks friend it was really fun answering these!#not sure if I need a... readmore break here... ah well #answered

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stuckwith-harry · 5 years ago

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hey you, i only followed you recently and I really like your hinny fanfics and your poetry. Would you mind telling me about your process when you write? I really wanna learn how to write properly and you seem to take your craft so seriously. How do you built a story, how often do you edit, how much time do you spent on your work, what do you try to go for,...? Thanks xxx

Anon, this is the coolest ask I’ve EVER received, and I’m hanging it on my wall next to all the colour-coded flashcards with poems on them. This is going to be LONG, and by no means exhaustive - I’m gonna jump around and ramble a bit and if there’s anything specific you wanna hear more about, please ask! I fucking love talking about writing!

I’m gonna put most of this under a cut, but before we dive in: yes, I tAkE mY wRiTiNg sErIoUsLy in the sense that I’d like to publish some original bodies of work in my life and to have physical copies of them exist on a bookshelf that’s not my own. I don’t need it to pay the bills, but if you googled my full name I’d like for, like, a poetry collection to show up and not, I don’t know, the two poems I got published in a regional newspaper when I was eight.

(And please let the record show that they’re fine poems for a primary schooler. The cringe years came way after that, kids.)

So, even having some ambitions in the industry, the reality is that I’m a 19-year-old kid with a keyboard and a dodgy internet connection who discovered fanfiction when she was twelve and got hooked for life. We’re going to retire the idea of “writing properly” for now, because writing is supposed to be fun and I haven’t actually gotten accepted into that Creative Writing Bachelor’s degree I so desperately want to do. YET. Don’t let the fancy writing blog (@jessicagluch) fool you into thinking I know what the heck I’m doing. But, okay, with that out of the way, let’s get into what I’m personally doing right now, yeah?

Fanfiction

You asked about process, and the truth is, I don’t … really have one. For the Muggle/FWB AU called “Let Me love” I just published, I actually wrote a pretty detailed outline that I then filled in, which was fun, but it’s not a habit exactly. I’d written a lot of assorted scenes and pieces of dialogue for that one, too, so I had a lot of material and just had to put all the scraps and pieces in order and stitch it all together. After the brainstorming, word-vomity part of writing Let Me love, my #1 task was figuring out where everything went, and making sure it’s all there.

As soon as I’d written a full first draft, no gaps, and the anatomy of the whole thing had somewhat clicked into place, I moved away from it for a while. Wrote something else. Came back maybe a week or two later, polished up the prose a bit very late at night.

Figure out when your creative hours are, if you can pinpoint it at all. Mine are precisely “I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago and I’ve got an important thing tomorrow” o’ clock. Sigh.

Just - leave it alone for a bit, come back with fresh eyes. I love writing Let Me love - I’m working on part 2 right now - but after you’ve fucked around with the same sentence fifty times, you get sick of it. And I did. At some point you have to decide to put down the pen and let it be.

Especially because fanfiction isn’t something you’re writing for a publisher - hopefully, you’re writing it mostly for you - no one is holding a gun to your head to get rid of every last adverb or stuff like that. I can do what I want, MOM. I am allowed to make the thing I’m writing as tropey and campy as I want and hold up a big old middle finger to the rules, if that’s what I want to do.

Fanfiction, to me, is this grand, batshit writing playground. That’s why I fell for it in the first place - it’s inherently self-indulgent and hedonistic and that you can write everything EXACTLY as you please is the primary purpose it serves as a genre. So go wild.

(Process-wise, the one thing I do very consistently is making moodboards and playlists. I like having some inspiration material to swim around in, which helps me figure out what the story looks and feels and sounds like in my head.

Every fic has a soundtrack. SOUNDTRACKS ARE IMPORTANT, PEOPLE.

Like, Let Me love is all coloured lights and night-time London and texts left on read. It’s neon signs and wearing somebody else’s t-shirt, messy bedsheets and hangover breakfasts and quarter-life crises.

This is the Pinterest board.)

What I pay most attention to is the stuff that gives the text depth beyond the surface. I look for metaphors - and I personally prefer the ones that carry through the whole thing, ideas we explore throughout the story and revisit at the end. I look for themes that hold a story together beyond the plot. I look for subtext and imagery and I want symbolism, goddamnit.

(That’s the poet kicking in.)

And of course, I’m a product of my generation, so I love referencing other bodies of work and subverting tropes and stuff like that. Hey kids, intertextuality is fun!

(Like, do you see what I did there? See how the phrase “hey kids x is fun” in itself is a reference to something? See??? I’m a fucking genius.)

I think we need some examples. Allow me to toot my own horn for a minute.

In the Halloween 2018 oneshot I wrote, which is about Harry grappling with the anniversary of his parents’ death when he’s a little older, he visits the graveyard with Ginny and Lily Luna. Ginny comments that “it’s freezing”, to which Harry responds with the titular, “you’re warm”. And yes, it’s October, it’s probably cold. They’re keeping each other warm. And yes, it’s maybe about comfort in harsh situations in general, a more metaphorical warmth, if you will. I get it.

But when you remember this exchange is taking place on a graveyard, you might start to wonder about warm, living bodies as opposed to cold, deceased ones. And then you think about how this whole story is about the living remembering - in a sense, living with - the dead. And how it’s about death as a part of Harry’s life. And you can probably guess by now that all my literature teachers fucking adored me.

(But he’s also choosing a side here, maybe. But I’m merely the author, you don’t have to listen to me at all. My words beyond the words don’t mean shit unless you decide they do and even then you’re going to find yourself knees-deep in a debate around authorial intent in record-time. In the age of “Nagini was a cursed human woman all along”, I’m not sure I want that.)

I also reference other pieces of work a lot. Often poems, and even more frequently, songs. The songs in Let Me love are VERY IMPORTANT and I can’t show you the full playlist right now because SPOILERS. But the chapters are split into sub-sections via song lyrics. Those are part of the playlist. There’s also a lot of referencing songs in general because Harry is a big music fan in this one, but that’s just indulgence on my part. If I want to make a 21st century Harry a Mitski stan, then I will. And I did!

(AND Let Me love has a Friends reference. For funsies, but also, for much more than funsies.)

“I love you / please do not use it” was inspired by a poem by Savannah Brown called “organs”. (It’s linked in the author’s notes at the beginning.)

“It’s two sugars, right?” borrows and/or references a ton of lines and phrases from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Most noticeably:

Sublety isn’t my middle name, exactly. (The forget-me-not-blue sky in The Bride On The Train, anyone?)

In short: I like when my fanfictions are worth rereading. I like when you can come out the second read having found a little more than you did the first. I like when you can wander around a little, and, like a treasure hunter, make some strange new discoveries.

Lastly: of course, writing from your own experience helps. Spy on your own life. Collect all the ways in makes you feel, like a thief, write it down, memorise it, put it in the story. Reuse! Recycle! ✊🏻

I fortunately don’t relate to Harry’s childhood trauma, but the feeling at the beginning of “We’ll figure it out” - which is a story set shortly after him and Ginny find out she’s pregnant and he’s struggling to connect with everybody else’s simple bliss, because he’s terrified, and he’s terrified of admitting he’s terrified - that was real. That “wait a minute, this moment is amazing. I’m supposed to be the happiest person on the planet right now. Why am I not feeling it? What is this emptiness? Am I not happy right now? Why am I having doubts? I’m not supposed to have any doubts! What the fuck is wrong with me?”, that was lifted from a specific experience.

Side note, I’m really proud of that one.

Okay, poetry!

Where there is even less rules and more fucking around ensues!

I read and promptly lost a quote recently about how explaining a song sort of defeats the purpose. (I’ll link it here if I ever find it again.) In some ways, poems and songs work really similarly, and I think it applies here as well: if you could really explain the whole poem in one sentence, or a few sentences, if you could accurately and concisely summarise exactly how it feels, then you wouldn’t really need the poem. My favourite poems (or songs) tend to be the ones that outline a really specific emotion via a few powerful images, but I couldn’t precisely tell you what the emotion is. Like, I know exactly what this thing is saying, I know this exact feeling, I GET-GET it, but don’t ask me to explain the thing, just READ the THING, and you’ll KNOW.

Mitski does this really well. Like, I couldn’t explain to you what Last Words Of A Shooting Star makes me feel, but it does. I can tell you that “I am relieved that I left my room tidy, they’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things” cuts through me like a hot blade but I can’t pinpoint exactly why and I don’t want to. All I know is she Gets It, and that I want her writing chops, goddamnit.

Or, like, look at Laura Gilpin’s Two-Headed Calf. Yeah, I’ve read that poem a hundred times and thought a lot about all the themes it’s presenting me with. But I have zero desire to explain those themes to you, because I’d kind of be robbing it of its magic. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. I want you to read it and I want to simply sit with the knowledge that we know, we Get It, that “twice as many stars as usual” kicked you in the shins, emotionally speaking, as much as it did me.

Few words, max impact, is key.

In Mary Oliver’s words, we want something inexplicable made plain, not unlike a suddenly harmonic passage in an otherwise difficult and sometimes dissonantsymphony - even if it is only for the moment of hearing it.

I’m realising right now that leading with these shining examples and then following them up with my own thing is nerve-wracking. But I like to think that I accomplished something like that with a little poem I wrote called Basements.

It’s is based on the prompt “back to nature” and follows that, uhm, somewhat loosely, a little subverted. I think it’s about impermanence and nostalgia and the fact that the places we lived in continue to exist even when our lives in them don’t anymore. It’s about that and a lot of other things. Maybe. The truth is, I don’t want to explain it to you: I just want you to read it, and then I hope that it made you feel something, and I’m going to trust that you Get It. Maybe you don’t get the same things I did, but that’s great. I’d love nothing more.

Before it was all those things, it was a poem about my life. The neighbourhood with the yellow house across the graveyard that I spent nine mostly happy years in. (The house, not the graveyard.) Every single thing in there is true: my sister really bust her lip and we both cried; wild lilac really grew there; we did spend most of our summers catching tadpoles, and yes, that neighbourhood was a construction site from the first day we lived there to the very last.

And I really sat in the driver’s seat of the family car about a year ago and watched it from afar. I didn’t come up with that - it’s my life. I only went on a scavenger hunt through my own memories, through the places and records and mementos of my life, and arranged a few specific anecdotes in a way that would give them meaning.

It’s kind of what I’m proudest of when it comes to my poetry - that I get to just live my life and see the metaphor and the meaning and symbolism as I’m experiencing it. I sat in the car and I thought, huh, that’s definitely making me Feel A Thing right now, that I’m sitting in the driver’s seat looking at this place I haven’t really been to in years, my childhood home, where I don’t live anymore. That I drove here myself.

I think that, when done right, specific makes universal. If you arrange a kaleidoscope of memories in just the right way, what it’s making you feel will speak for itself, and you won’t have to explain it. Most people who’ve read “basements” probably didn’t spend countless summers playing in literal holes, originally dug out for basements that were never built because no one wanted to move there. Holes that then grew full of weeds and wild lilac and felt like miniature jungles right outside our parents’ houses. It was perfect, it was specifically mine, but the feeling behind it is universal, I think.

Like, that’s how half of Taylor Swift’s RED works. That’s how most good Taylor Swift songs work. That’s why the bridge in Out of the Woods is so good and why I love New Year’s Day so much and it’s EXACTLY why All Too Well is considered her best song by so many people. Because she zoomed in on the details of her life and let the world take a look. Because “we dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light” is a line in that song. THAT’s why it MAKES YOU FEEL THE THING.

Back to poems? This:

So we tell them all about the dayWe planned revolutions on my bedroom floor, or how we onceSpent an entire Monday lunch break making life plans over ice creamAnd most of our parties talking politics over beerWe both paid for ourselves.About the days you drive me to school. In your carI am the girl, front-seat passenger of our lives,Who does not need reach for the steering wheel –The road is alright.

isn’t fiction. These are my memories, carefully selected and re-arranged for Politics at Parties Boy.

I didn’t make up these film stills of a non-romantic relationship that never became anything other than non-romantic because neither party ever made a move. What I did is look at my own life like it’s a piece of fiction. If these memories were a movie, you could pluck them apart and say, see, the screenwriters put this scene here to communicate that.

The truth is, I am the screenwriter and the protagonist and the actress and the director and the camerawoman. I looked at a teenage girl who refused to let her friend buy her a beer at a school party and decided “huh, I guess that tells us everything we need to know” because I was that girl.

And I did pay for the beer, so we’d never move into “let me buy you a drink” territory. He was already driving me to school.

That’s my best lesson on poetry, really. I look at my life like it’s a piece of fiction and then I make it one. I put personal memories in poems meant to be read by other people, I overinterpret everything that happens to me, am literally constantly thinking about how to work every knock-back and struggle into my narrative arc and look for symbolism in anything from the date, the weather, and the colour of my front door. I watch myself in third person all the time and thus become my own muse. I’m the painter and the painting.

It’s a somewhat narcissistic and masturbatory approach to poetry, but as far as writing about your own life goes, it’s what works for me.

As far as writing about not yourself goes - well, I’m a narcissist and I’m bad at that, but I wrote a poem about the Mars rover Opportunity that shut down this February called Spirit shuts down and Opportunity feels no tremble, no ache. For stuff like that, if you don’t happen to be Struck TM by a lightning bolt of inspiration (which is the exception, not the rule), a good old-fashioned mind-map helps. I just let my robot grief go wild on the page for a bit and what I ended up writing about was death and the human condition and being a teenage girl, maybe.

I really enjoy taking two concepts/ideas and juxtaposing them, watching a theme unfold in the overlap. Like, it’s a poem about a robot AND about being a teenage girl and in between those two lies a poem about the futile attempts to teach a robot human emotion. Maybe.

It’s a poem about how my mum always cries at the airport and about me making my own happiness my priority and it kind of ends up being about my intense guilt of making my parents watch me change and grow and leave.

It’s about the night I wandered through a quiet street in Central London at 1 a.m. and realised that the city of my dreams sleeps like any other place, that people wake up early and make coffee and go to work and have bad days here. That it’s not all dream. It’s some people’s lives. But it’s also about watching another person sleep - the way someone’s face changes when they do.

In the middle lay a poem about finding a friend in a lover. Not the daydream, but my life.

Lastly, I can’t talk about my own poetry without talking about my darling poem 5 disasters. It’s my pride and joy. Like, you could kill me write now and I’d be like, it’s okay, I’ve written the poem I want to be remembered for and it’s this one. I wrote it in less than a day and every time I think about the fact that I wrote

I cravedsomething more violent than death, somethingviolent enough to bea beginningand for my life to be thousands of themI wantednothingto remainexcept the girl that sentthe disastersand survived -may this wasteland bewhere I find her.

… I lose my shit a little bit.

(5 disasters was a rarity in how quickly I wrote it. It often takes me weeks. Sometimes months. There’s poems I’ve been meaning to write for years now and I still haven’t found the words. Take your time.)

5 disasters is a lot of things, but within the context of the poetry collection it’s hopefully going to exist in one day, it serves as almost an instruction manual for metaphors: here, the floods and rainfalls are always change and the forest fires are always my highschool demons and my friends and how they look the same. The colour yellow is always referencing the same love. Basically, I like pinpointing my symbolisms and then crafting a poem around them. You end up creating something like an in-poem universe that you get to navigate like a fantasy novel. Like you’re telling a story about a natural disaster, but it’s all a metaphor, Hazel Grace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I do.

I hope this serves as a starting point of sorts, anon. Most importantly, have fun, don’t concern yourself with all the rules too much. Experiment, be bold, read lots.

Again, if you’ve got any questions, I’d be thrilled to help. Thanks for the opportunity to toot my own horn to this outrageous degree, it’s been a blast.

#this is SO LONG i'm SO SORRY i was VERY EXCITED #jessie the writer #owl post #anon

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phandomficfests · 5 years ago

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Writer’s Corner: yiffandquiff

Introductions

First things first, tell us a little about yourself. Hello! My name is Alexis and I am a 20 year old college senior from New York. I currently study Communications and English with creative writing and I’ve been watching Dan since 2013 however, I’m not sure when I got into Phil. I’ve been a massive YouTube fan since as far back as I can remember but didn’t get into fandom’s until 2016!

How long have you been writing for? I have been writing actual stories since I owned my first laptop at the age of 12 or 13 but I didn’t start writing fanfic until 2016!

Tell us about your current project. My current project is finishing my longest and most popular fic I Want It, I Got It. The fic started as what I assumed was going to just be a oneshot that has completely taken over my life. I don’t have much left to write for that so when that is over, I’m going to be focusing on the Phandom Big Bang fic that I have signed up for!

What is your current word count? 555,013 according to Ao3!

Questions on Writing

Do you have any WIPs? Oh yes! I have literally so many but I have a few WIP’s that I’m working on for some fics to hopefully go up by the end of the summer! One includes a dark circus au, a cute summer romance, and a parent!phan au!

How much planning and outlining did you do before you started putting words on paper? Has it been pretty smooth sailing or rough waters? When things get rocky, how do you handle needing to rewrite sections or scrap scenes entirely? I do a lot of planning and outlining actually. I have a really tough time keeping focus on what I’m writing if I don’t have outline to guide me. I quite literally have to plan every single bullet point for what I want to write before I can actually write something down and feel comfortable with it. As for if it’s been smooth sailing, right now, yes it is. If you would have asked me a year ago, I’d have said rough because I was struggling a lot last year to do any of my fics. I was struggling with numbers and notes and my own self-confidence. However this year, I’ve been feeling a lot better in my writing and I’m writing more and writing often and it’s a lot smoother. As for when things get rocky, my best course of action is to close my document and walk away for a few days, letting myself just take a breather. I find that if it’s getting to the point where I’m hating everything I’m writing and I’m wanting to delete everything I’ve written, it’s probably because I need a break and so I’ll close the document and walk away and come back when I’m in a better headspace and see what I wrote and what I need to do to fix it.

What one piece of advice would you give someone that wants to be a better writer? My best advice that I can give is to read other fanfics! I know many people don’t want to do that because they’ll feel like they will start comparing themselves to the authors of those fics but I think the one way you’re going to improve is by reading the subject you want to write on. So for me, if I’m writing a fic on a specific topic, I’ll find a fic with a similar topic and read it and it’ll help me a lot. I think if someone wants to become a better writer, it’s best for them to read what they can and they’ll see their skills improving without even realizing it.

What part of the fic writing process feels the best to you? For me it is definitely the actual fic writing! There is honestly nothing better for me than to have my fic outlined and ready and then see it all come to life with my writing.

Are there any themes or tropes that you like particularly like to explore in your writing? I’ve never really been one to stick to exploring just one specific trope or theme but I often find within my fics that I do add little pieces of tension and angst and I think that there is just something kind of nice to explore the sometimes ‘not-so-nice’ parts of being in love.

What inspired you to write fanfiction? I was in another fandom and I had known fanfiction existed but I had never done anything with it and one day, I stumbled on Ao3 and I started reading the fics in that fandom and I was really intrigued because I loved writing. I used to write just to write and I had always wanted to share my writing online so reading all of these other fics made me realize that this was something I could do. So I found a ‘30 days of Christmas’ fic list and I just started writing them in a document on my computer and although I never posted those, the rest is definitely history since look at what I’ve done since 2016!

What is your writing process like? Do you have any traditions or superstitions that you like to stick to when you’re writing? My writing process is normally I think of an idea, make an outline for it, start writing it, have a crisis and abandon it (lol) and then come back to it eventually. If I’m really into a fic, I can write around 5k in one sitting but it has to be if I’m really into my writing. I don’t really have any traditions or anything that I stick with. I mostly just think of an idea, outline it, and then begin writing and see what happens. Recently, I’ve been using a word count tracker and I honestly cannot see myself not using that during my writing process now!

How do you deal with writer’s block? I don’t lol So real talk, I actually don’t get writers block that often. It is actually really rare for me to sit in front of a fic and not know what to write because I do keep such a thorough outline for it. But if I do encounter writers block, I normally just will sit in front of my computer with the document open and keep trying to write and push through because sometimes you really just need that one little push to get you back into writing.

Don’t forget that you can check out Alexis on tumblr at @yiffandquiff or on AO3 here. If you’d like to be on the list for a Writer’s Corner feature, sign up here!

#writer's corner

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softforcal · 6 years ago

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hiii

hello! these types of questions are great don’t worry! everyones different but yeah, let me tell you about my writing process :) (this is a long ass writing rant and hopefully it’s helpful)

so for headcanons tbh, i just write them. like. i sit down and write it all in one go and tbh not much thought goes into them there isnt really a plot it’s just notes practically so headcanons for me are not difficult at all. fics/oneshots are where things actually heat up.

so for my fics i do note form outlines. what this means is i have all the major things that have to happen already lined out. i put it on a word doc on half my screen and the fic on the other and there’s no plan on how to get to each note point but i know i have to get there somehow, but having basic goals makes it easier for me.

when it comes to fics there’s usually a brainstorming process. i have two wonderful amazing loves of my absolute life @hereforlukescruff and @glitterprincelu and usually it will start with me saying an idea and we all just kind of start shooting ideas and bouncing off of each other. this process can take hours. like. i remember when i came up with gang luke (penumbra) i was in class and we ended up chatting about it for 3 hours and coming up with shit. when the main brainstorm is done i plot it all out. i have a few ocd tendencies, one of which is linear stuff means a lot to me. like i can’t start a fic at the end. i need to start at the start. so i’ll plan as much as i can but sometimes i stop at the middle and i re-evaluate once i get there and have a better sense as to where the story is going.

for me, characters are huge. like. i have the plot points but characters drive everything else. so i’ll often have a sit down and reevaluate what has happened to them and how they’re feeling and see if it’s all making sense for them, but, because i brainstorm a lot, usually i don’t end up changing much. strong characters are key my dudes.

my biggest motivator to get to the end of the story is well, the characters. i love them so much and writing for them feels so comforting to me. LOVE YOUR CHARACTERS. but also. something ya’ll gotta understand about me is that i’ve been writing fan fiction for 8 years. i’ve probably spent an average of 2 hours a day (and that’s seriously low balling it) so thats 2x365=730x8=5840 hours that i’ve written and that’s probably too low to be accurate. so i’m a writer. i type fast as fuck and i’ve been doing this a while so writing comes very easy to me, ideas are constantly flowing. this is legit what im pursuing as a job so don’t be discouraged if you can’t write 10k in a day like I do because... well, i’ve had a fuck ton of practice. writing 10k in a day is pretty common for me i’d say, once i sit down with a oneshot i don’t want to leave until it’s done.

but. i also again, have a bit of an ocd thing and when it’s paired with anxiety, it makes it hard for me to stop. i need to get things done. to check stuff off my list. or i get bored. if i leave a fic for even a day or two, it’s likely i’m not gonna finish it. so for me, and i know this, its important to wait until i have a sufficient amount of time to bust something out and a plan makes it so easy because i don’t have to stop and ask myself “okay now what”

what more can i say about writing.... uh... characters. so important. dialogue. key.

like i’ll start a fic with a general idea about an OC but as the fic continues they grow and i really enjoy watching them grow. i think a good rule of thumb if you’re having troubles with this is immerse the story view point in the most solid character you have (i’ll give an example of this in a moment) and use their perspective and musings on a different character, like what they notice, to promote growth.

example of what i mean when i say this. i recently wrote prince cal and from the start, he was my strong character. Ostara was new, she’s ashton’s sister, she’s back for the first time in a while. the very first paragraph establishes that calum is taken aback by how much she’s changed. there’s still some similarities to how she was growing up and i weave that comfort of the known throughout the story (with things like chicken fights in the pool or musing about how they used to play hide and seek as kids) but from the start, Calum is knocked off his feet by how beautiful she’s gotten and that’s a very obvious symbol of change, not just outside but in. so as the fic continues calum notices things about ostara. for example. the second time i wrote she was wearing a print of some sort, calum and i both mutually realized, ‘huh. she likes prints i guess.’ because ostara is ostara, i dont control her, in my brain she’s her own person, she’s dictating whats happening and baby just likes prints. and calum notices which says something about him, but its also little details like that that bring these characters to life.

i mean. i don’t know how other people write characters. my characters are always alive to me. they have their own voice and knowing their reaction to things is second nature to me. but this can be attributed to the fact that i legit wrote fan fiction about actual characters (MCU, TVD, Teen Wolf, etc...) for 6 years and being able to step into those characters and do dialogue that seemed legit was the most important thing for me. so i have a FUCK TON of experience on characters. so once again, if its hard for you to step into your characters thats okay. maybe do those things where you have a fill in the blank sheet on whats their fav food, their fav colour, do they like summer or winter? etc....

i think there isnt one way to write. i think i’m blessed that i’ve ALWAYS been a writer. since i was like 4. you know in elementary when they made you write and they’d give you those little booklets and shit? other kids had like one or two at most but this whore was always on book number 6 or 7 like, im a writer. it’s what i am. it always has been what i am.

im also a multitasker. so most of my writing is done while watching shows. which means its a double whammy for me. like. im learning about characters and plot WHILE writing so... as you can see, i’m hard core as fuck about this shit.

my point is. my process is a process that i think is pretty particular to me. most people i know cant watch tv and write at the same time. most people don’t sit down and bust out 10k in one sitting. and thats fine. if you enjoy writing then do it. focus on what you can be doing better, this isnt a competition. at the end of the day, the only person you should be trying to be better than is the person you were yesterday, or last week, you know?

find people who are creatively inclined because holy shit it makes a huge difference. bouncing ideas off of supportive people is really important. without my friends, Birdie in Penumbra might be named Cherry, the Gang AU wouldn’t have an ending all planned out and ready to be written, and i would have missed out on so many hours of face time calls and back and fourth messages with two of the most important people in my life right now.

so lets break down what the fuck i’m even saying

-find supportive people (but it’s important you support them as well. if they’re gonna let you throw ideas at them and help you out and pump you up, reciprocate hoe)

-focus on yourself

-find what you’re good at. plots? characters? dialogue?

-find ways to strengthen the things you’re not so good at (character fill in sheets, plot planning, etc...)

-find what, at the end of the day, really works for you

-don’t put pressure on yourself. writing is for fun. it should be fun. and if it is fun, i think motivation will come easy? but i could be wrong, once again, i have an addictive personality and writing is a fix i need every day or i go insane.

yeah. if ya’ll have any more writing questions let me know. i love answering these because i think it’s so interesting to really look at the process :)

#Anonymous

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mr-deblob · 5 years ago

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Tagged by @elennare (thanks for the tag!)

Your name: Online, people just call me some variation of blob, which I am absolutely cool and fine with.

Fandoms you write for: Well, I’ve only really done High Rollers fics. I hope to write for more fandoms, and I’ve thought about writing a Kingdom Hearts fic at some point.

Where you post: Ao3 all the way baby! Hugo-award winning site where I put up my technically award-winning by association fics.

Most popular one-shot: If you follow my blog, you probably know it. My first fanfic and the first Aerois-specific fanfic that’s also a shipping one: Safe. The super fluffy Quillucius fic that spawned from about two lines worth of RP. I’m honestly surprised that people liked it so much and that people still go ahead and reread it every so often. Thanks to all of you folks, I got myself motivation to write a whole bunch more!

Most popular multi-chapter story: Heh heh heh, I haven’t done one of those yet. But I’ve got two multi-chapter fics that I’m working on... will work on once I finish one of my oneshots.

Favorite story I’ve written: I know that I’ve got small pickings here, but I honestly gotta go with Love Languages for this. Even though it’s a short collection of drabbles, the small nature of it had me really cram as much warmth and affection into the Quillucius interactions, and when I actually read it for the first time in a while, I made myself get overwhelmed with how sweet it was? The things you don’t realize while writing...

A story you were nervous to post: Gifts. This one, I made myself a deadline to get it out on Christmas Day since it was a Christmas-themed oneshot the crew did, and the day before, I somehow managed to write over a third of the fic in one sitting on the Notes app on my phone. I was really nervous that I rushed and could’ve possibly ruined the ending by doing so, but it received a lot of love from you peeps! Thanks for that!

How do you choose your titles? I generally have an idea in my head of what I want the fic to revolve around and put down the first title that comes to mind. This usually leads my fics to have one word or phrased titles that bear the main theme of my story.

Do you outline? Every time I’ve done an outline, it was never for my personal writing. I generally let myself make up the plot as I go, having certain scenes or points in my mind that I try to connect and incorporate into what I’m actually doing. Doesn’t always work out though...

How many of your stories are complete? Well, you can count them on one hand. Got three published fics, but I’m hoping to break the double digits this year!

How many of your stories are in progress? Four! Two of them are multi-chapter ones (which I have to finish writing the first chapter of) and the other two are spawned from a prompt from @dementorsatemysoup. It was originally one fic, but then I realized that I actually began writing something completely different from what she gave me to work with. Hopefully, I will finish one by the end of this month. So long as college does not kill me.

Coming soon: Hopefully it’s the prompt. That’s the one that I’ve been working on the most recently. Usually my latest WIP takes precedence over others, but I might need to work on a rotation schedule to make steady progress on all my fics.

Do you accept prompts? Abso-bloody-lutely I do. Generally I come up with ideas on my own based on how the campaign is going, but feel free to hit me up if you have something specific you want to see me write!

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: Well, I thought up of a possible Quillucius Coffee Shop AU. I’ve been working out certain things in my head for how it would go, and I’m excited to start writing and exploring that type of AU that seems to be in every fandom!

Tagging @nekosounds @neonbluetiefling @dungeonraided @maddy-mack-writes and anyone else willing to do this! I only really tagged people who I know have Ao3 accounts, but I’m totally willing to read up on any fics any of you have written!

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