#no but also i kind of have half of a fic idea 😐 and i’m like what ok what do i do w this

[kuiinncedes]

bro i’m literally reentering my j/atp era but like backwards

[pikapeppa]

Hi pikapeppa ! 👋😊

I'm a huge fan of your work, so I wanted to ask you something, if it's okay, of course...! ❤️

I know that most people, when they're writing, often have a global idea of what they are going to do but ...

Before you write, do you imagine a scene completely unfold in your head first, then write it down ( with, I guess, a few modifications, of course )

Or you just go with the flow and write with only a vague idea of where you're going, the moment you sit down behind your desk ?

I ask this because, I do the latter and it really is killing my focus. I keep going back and forth between being in the zone and being distracted when I do that. But I'm also afraid that doing the former will kill my creativity in the long-term, I don't know why ...😐😢

It's very abstract, so I hope I managed to express myself clearly ...!😅

Take care ! 😘

You're a great writer ❤️❤️❤️

Hiiiii sweet friend!! 🥰 I’m so sorry it took so long to reply to this!! The reply is a bit long, so I'll put it behind a cut!

This is a great question — and my answer is that it depends! Sometimes there will be a very specific scene that I’ve imagined in detail, e.g. how a first kiss/first sex scene happens, or sometimes I have a very specific dialogue in mind that I want the scene to revolve around. When this is the case, the writing does involve fleshing out that imagined scene/dialogue and turning it into words. For example, I recently wrote a scene of Aloy and Kotallo slow-dancing, and I had a very specific mood in mind: this scene from Love Actually (but more horny LOL). So for the writing of that moment, I had that movie scene in my head, and I was trying to translate it from visuals and into words. To be honest, this is some of the writing that I find most challenging — how to turn something that’s so visually effective into something that’s just as effective in words!

But there are other times when I do sit down with only a vague idea of how I’m going to get to a certain point in the fic. For example, for Chapter 2 of Coming In On A Western Wind (Aloy/Avad), this is literally what I had in my outline for the second half of the chapter:

The night she leaves Varl behind, Aloy sneaks into Avad’s room and they have sex. He wants her to stay the night; she says she can’t, but she’ll stay until he falls asleep. He make a gentle joke that he’ll stay up all night, then. But inevitably, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, she’s gone.

That’s really not much detail, which means I had to fill this in a lot without anything clear in mind. I had to figure out how Avad gets back to his room after dinner with the fam, then what he’s doing at the time that she sneaks in, then how they transition from her sneaking in to actually having sex — e.g. are they going to chat first? Would they just jump right in? And then the actual sex scene: I didn’t have anything specific in mind for what positions or sex acts they would engage in, so that was more flying by the seat of my pants. So for this chapter, I was kind of just going with the flow and going with the mood of the characters while letting them lead the conversation, rather than trying to transform a specific scene in my head into words. This kind of writing can be challenging, too, especially figuring out how to deal with transition moments, e.g. what Avad would be doing in his room before Aloy came. When I’m having trouble figuring out how to make those transitions happen, what I usually do is get up from my desk and go clean something in my apartment BAHAHA. For some reason, the getting-up and moving-around helps me find the solution more easily than when I’m staring at my screen! 😂

Most of my chapters involve both of these kinds of writing. There’s usually a specific significant moment/scene/dialogue that I want to hit in each chapter, but I don’t always (or even often!) have it clearly fleshed out how I’m going to get there. I’m more of a plotter than a pantser, though, so the way I deal with this is by point-form plotting out how I think I might get to that scene — nothing special, nothing fancy, just basically scribbling down ideas. Then, once I have those ideas written down, they form more of a “skeleton” for the flesh of the chapter that I can build up on. Each chapter often involves many cycles of jotting down point-form messy ideas, then fleshing them out, then repeating the cycle as the chapter progresses. 

In terms of worrying that visualizing-then-writing will kill your creativity: hmm, it’s hard for me to comment on this, because everyone has different styles of writing, and what works for one person won’t work for someone else. Both styles of writing work for me, as I mentioned above, and I’m also admittedly a very “plotty” writer.  But I have some friends who just know that if they were to plan too much, they’ll get overwhelmed or lose interest in the project, so flying by the seat of their pants or jumping around between scenes in their fic is what keeps their creative juices and motivation going. 

Since you're finding that the "vague idea" route is killing your focus, I wonder if you might try the idea I mentioned earlier, about point-forming your ideas to flesh them out a little more before jumping in? It’s something of a compromise between plotting too much and being too vague, so it might give you just enough structure to help stay focused! 

I’ve elaborated more on my process of writing a longfic here, though I think you might have already read that 😂🧡 but it explains in more detail about how I use outlines as a memory aid and to guide myself, and how I keep myself motivated while writing a really long project!

I hope this is helpful, lovely friend!! Happy writing!! 😘

-- love from your friendly neighbourhood Pika! xo

[etherealising]

I 1 BILLION % AGREE! Carmy should not have any kind of relationship, no one deserves the kind of relationship canon Carmy would put people through. As much as I love him and would love to fuck him realistically he’d be a horrible partner to anyone. I think you do a really great job of keeping his really awful traits like the not opening up to anyone and doing things to ruin his own life at the expense of people around him but also making it feel like he deserves all the love in the world.

I have some more comments about the last chapter after reading through it again today! So Carmy was expecting Baby to still be there after he got back from work? That must have felt a little like betrayal to him. I mean you’ve just given over all of yourself to someone you really love and you turn around and they’re gone. It must feel like waking up to an empty bed. As mad as I still am about the old acquaintance thing I can understand, he was probably really hurt after, I would be.

And about The Chain™️, did Baby leave the pendent or was it something Carmy bought himself? It’s sweet either way, if Baby left it it’s like she was leaving a piece of herself with Carmen (like he left a piece of himself with her even if it was only for a short while) and if he bought it himself it’s like he needed to have her with him all the time.

These two are honestly driving me up the wall, how am I supposed to get anything done when I spend half my day thinking about these two and how they could possibly figure their shit out.

-🎀

canon carmy definitely has some healing to do, both claire and sydney deserve better than him. and i cannot explain how much the whole ‘sydney can/does make carm a better person’ argument grates on my nerves like no thank you syd is not a gardener and carmy is not a plant it’s not her job to grow him into the person he needs to be for himself and those around him.

but i too would fuck carmen berzatto not like i’m writing a fic about him or anything 😐

not the re-read that’s love! yes he was! they both weren’t in a good mental space (mikey ya know…dead) so the whole weekend was like one big delusion for the both of them. they were just like yeah we can make this work (even though carm admits he can’t commit and baby knows she’s needed in chicago + her job). that weekend was never gonna work out between them because as soon as one of them verbally mentioned mikey (and carm’s absence at the funeral it would have gone downhill) he’s hurt about a lot more than just that, next update explores it more.

aww both of those ideas are so cute, and sadly i cannot give you the answer just yet! 🤭

the age old question really. but we’ll be getting more maturity between these two in the next update!