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scenetocause · 11 months

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Twenty Questions for Fic Writers 💫

i got tagged by @verycoolwearsleather and now i have to pretend i have a writing process haha

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

it says 52 but there's actually a lot more due to orphaning/anon-ing things.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

345,519 but again i'm not sure how much tha's counting

3. What fandoms do you write for?

gross f1 twinks

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

just telling it like it is (lando/maxv)

pretty sure this is just cus it's the oldest fic i have since the account reboot because it absolutely does not merit being anywhere near the top 10 lol it's just a 5+1 about other mando being obvious (it's anon'd cus i got bored of a load of my fics and didn't want them as part of the emptyhalf canon anymore)

every colour illuminates (george/lando)

for something i started writing offhand cus some of my friends were saying there should be more trans men in f1 fic, this one sure grew legs. i'm still insanely moved by the comments it gets and the way it seemed to resonate with people. i'm not sure i can really convey how dumb i actually am in a way that'd make people believe me but i really did just write this on vibes and it's one of the things i can say i'm genuinely glad i did. idk, it's just queer porn really but maybe we need more of that.

(i) just wanna get a little bit closer (mando)

you know i don't even think this is close to my best mando fic (personal choice is no plans of staying on) so there's no accounting for taste and you absolutely should practice death of the author or whatever. anyway, it's mando cohabitation era boundary breakdown stuff where they fuck and then go on a date about it.

shoreline i see when i'm off course (loscar, mando)

people rly are thirsty for a/b/o huh. how'd this little fic get into the top five so quickly?

the usual, upside down (alex/george/lando)

literally THEE most head empty omegaverse threesome fic in history y'all are horny as fuck. it literally only got written bc george did some dumb insta post where he called lando and alex his mates and also then was walking around looking horny af in the black fireproofs and mask when he stood in for lewis. there is NO nutritional content here even by the fast food standards of emptyhalf fic.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i uh. i should. i would like to but my brain is quite severely broken. i do read them all and i bookmark a lot in open tabs to come back to and reply to because they mean a lot but then i have 6000 tabs open and no executive function.

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

we don't do that here. i guess maybe if you dig into the far distant past then it was probably i'm not just a fuck up, i'm the fuck up you love which is 18k words of jev not really getting over daniel that ends on a sort of optimistically blasted-open note.

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

most of them are happy but probably actually pick me up, no headlights where george and max end up with their weird little family worked out and the kids are doing well, y'know

8. Do you get hate on fics?

no i don't think enough people read them to beef me lol

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

hahahaha oh yea. i like to think i write something along the lines of realistic queer sex, with the way that means it's mostly kind of funny and sometimes awakward and isn't elegant or arch or even particularly romantic except that you're getting to do it with the person you do it with. writing lando and oscar being straight with each other, even if it's in a cringe fail way, made me realise i really do not write straight people and i feel a bit like one of those painfully hetero actors who does a gay kissing scene and talks about how they had to get themselves in the mindset by watching the l word or whatever haha. what do straight people do? who are they?

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

i was gonna say no but then i remembered i wrote logan and oscar going ghosthunting and being kinda pass-agg horny about it because. idk? logan gave me ryan bergara vibes.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i think someone reposted some of mine awhile ago and it got dealt with before i really knew anything about it idk

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i don't know tbh. someone made a podfic of one of my fics a way back.

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

yeah i used to do that quite a lot but now. i am a lone wolf. (too perverse for other people's minds)

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

jenson/lewis but society has never been ready for this

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

i don't. i don't wanna let doubt enter into it but my daniel goes to fe fic is up against a number of the dark souls boss level demons in my own brain 😔

16. What are your writing strengths?

uh. i uh. i can write on my phone? i have a relaxed attitude to whether what i write is any good at all? i don't actually think i really have any.

people quite often say i have a lot of emotional intelligence in my fics which is very funny to me because i am a deeply unemotionally intelligent person so idk how that's happened really.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

look we could be here all day.

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

i guess it has never bothered me so long as the reader could be reasonably expected to work out the meaning from the context.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

cardcaptor sakura (i was 14)

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

hmmm. in terms of thinking it's like, good or whatever it's probably don't say no or you'll have to go, the fucked up valtteri/george mutual seat envy/horror of being compared to lewis hamilton thing. or really, it's an old spy au fic called ten seconds before sunrise that i deleted ages ago so: sorry about that.

but favourite is probably some dumb mando shit or i have extreme recency bias so maybe logan and oscar go ghosthunting or whatever. oh wait, no, it's genders maxy the how-to-find-your-identity-post-racing-in-your-pussy treatise that was born of crack but ended up. no, it's still crack. anyway, classic emptyhalf shit tbh.

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lime-bloods · 2 years

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Do you have any takes on why fiamet is wearing a aquamino sign instead of one more connected to her theorized sign of canra? I have no idea what it means honestly

I've only given it a little bit of thought... while my first thought is to agree that Aquara would make a lot more sense, I can think of a few reasons why it wouldn't be that.

we don't really know at this point in time if the aspect bindings and lunar sways are actually "a thing" in-universe; like, does a troll know what it means to have a sign with a "prospit sway" or to be "mind bound"? if those things mean nothing to a troll then the symbol they choose as a disguise is totally random... and if those things do hold meaning to a troll, isn't it more likely Fiamet chooses a sign that doesn't match her birth sign, to enforce the deception?

I realise, of course, that there are symbolic considerations, and that Fiamet didn't actually choose her seadweller drag sign. it was chosen by... someone? artist? writer? and it might make sense to assume that whoever chose that particular sign had a reason to do so... however, I think it's been well established by now, through various insights into and comments concerning the game's development, that these characters were not designed with their zodiac signs in mind. it seems to be that Fiamet was designed by Andrew's hand, and notably, without a sign; Trizza, too, was Andrew's design, and when she was first conceptualised, she was a Pisces. i know many will disagree with me or calling me boring for this, lol, but I stand firm by my assertion that the signs given to the Hiveswap cast are of little significance. and while the low regard i have for classpect-oriented analysis in general plays into this, I do think the quote unquote ""randomness" of the Hiveswap trolls' signs is deliberate in its own way. signs had a significance in Homestuck where heroes were born from ectobiology, and there were forces of destiny at play causing Vriska and Aranea to be given the same sign. Hiveswap exists outside of that mythology, on a more "realised" version of Alternia, where Trizza can be born from the Condesce's gene and appear to be in almost every way a clone of her ancestor, but be given a totally different sign.

ALL that being said, i'm not totally convinced Fiamet's "true sign" is gonna be Canra just cus of the obvious axolotl motif... it's possible the axolotl look was a coincidence, or even more likely, that whoever designed the signs (which in contrast is a process of which we know remarkably little... to my knowledge we know who wrote the extended zodiac copy, but the making of the graphics is basically an unknown?) knew hiveswap would involve a limeblood with an axolotl motif and saw the opportunity to make one of the signs fit, even if it wasn't the sign in question. I'd be silly to deny, of course, the possibility, or even the likelihood, that The Axolotl Sign is in fact fiamet's. but my existing hypothesis on Fiamet's sign, which part of me would still love to be true, is based on this carving in Dammek's hive:

which looks a lot like Dammek's sign carved next to what could easily be some greenblood's sign, but probably not Canra. if it isn't a carving of Fiamet's sign, then i've no idea what it is! but i guess that's the kicker, that I really have no idea. it's been tempting to think of these trolls in terms we're familiar with, where everyone's girlfriend has to be a character we already know about. but like I said, we're outside of that Homestuck mythology now, and any troll can be friends with any number of trolls we just haven't met yet...

#sevenchild #discussion #hiveswap #fiamet

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sepdet · 5 years

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Really good screenwriting tip by David Wappel on Twitter that also applies to other kinds of writing, including comics. Unrolled:

THREAD ALERT

Fellow screenwriters!

A thread on writing action lines, with special attention paid to word order and what I call "anchoring" nouns.

These tools are part of my process, and I’m not advocating for them over anything else. I just want to share some of the things I think about as I write.

Here we go!

Let's start off with what I think action lines are aimed to accomplish:

1. Describe what is happening.

2. Describe how we see what is happening.

A lot of the scripts I read from aspiring writers often focus solely on 1. More experienced writers focus on 1 and 2. The best writers do both, but hide 2 so you don't even realize it’s happening.

1 is important. It's the story.

But 2 can help the way you tell it.

And that’s what I’m going to focus my thread on, and hopefully illuminate how craft can allow you to make those choices in the script, without bumping the reader out of the story.

Alright, so we're focusing on "how we see what's happening"

The first thing to discuss is the ongoing debate over "We see" and all its forms.

As I said, I'm not here to advocate for one thing over another. Generally, I try to avoid "we see" (though I use it twice in my latest spec) mainly because I think it's implied in the fact that it's a screenplay. In most cases of "we see" it can be struck and nothing is lost.

"We see a bushel of apples under a tree." could just as easily be "A bushel of apples sits under a tree."

I think "we see" works is when you need to explicitly limit the audiences view. So you're more describing the fact that they "only see" what is right there.

We see a single flower. It stands alone in the center of muddy, war-torn No Man's Land as mortars kick dirt into the air.

It's important to clarify we only see the flower at first, otherwise the reveal isn't as powerful.

Ok, so that’s a quick bit on “we see” but now I want to talk about what I really came here to talk about:

these things that I call “anchoring nouns”

An “anchoring” noun provides the unit in which I want the reader to interpret the visuals I’m presenting. It is the noun that “anchors” the reader to how they should be picturing what is unfolding.

While remembering that I totally made up this nomenclature, an “anchoring” noun (AN) can be defined as the first noun you encounter which provides context for the size of the action you’re being asked to hold in your brain.

From my experience, the human brain doesn’t do anything more than it needs to. It’s super lazy (or super efficient depending on the water in your glass).

So if I say “picture an apple” you’re only going to picture an apple. You’re likely not going to picture an apple hanging from a branch of an apple tree, or in the mouth of a pig at a luau. You’re probably just going to picture the apple.

And that apple picture is of a certain size: just big enough for the apple.

This is where you can ask: What camera shot contains this noun? Is it really, really far away? Probably not. Are you so close, you can only see a part of it? Also probably not.

It’s probably just big enough to see the apple. Might be what’s considered a close-up. So without mentioning a camera at all, your brain is actually creating a shot size.

If I say “the stem of an apple” you’re likely picturing just the stem. (ECU)

If I say “An apple” you’re likely picturing an apple. (CU)

If I say “Five apples” maybe we move to a MCU

A bushel of apples.

A row of apple bushels.

An orchard. (EW)

But all those things have an apple in them.

I’m trying to use ANs to orient you to what they are.

(stem, apple, five apples, bushel, row, orchard)

The AN is (with a few exceptions) the first noun you encounter, which provides context for the size of the action you’re being asked to hold in your brain (because remember, you’re not going to hold more than necessary, you lazy-brained human)

So in one case, that AN may be “apple,” but in another it’s “bushel,” and in another it’s “row” These are the first nouns the reader encounters in that description...until another one bumps them off. (More on that later.)

Ok, now at this point, some of you may be thinking, “But there’s no action there. You’re just describing things in different sizes. That’s not screenwriting.”

You’re right, so let’s put this notion into practice.

Read the following.

Sally reaches into her back pocket.

Her hand slips into her back pocket.

Both describe the same action, but you’ll likely see them differently.

In the first, “Sally” is the AN. You may picture anywhere from a MW to a MCU, but generally, you’re probably picturing a person.

In the second example, “hand” is the AN. Most likely you’re picturing a CU.

Neither one is inherently better than the other, but understanding how we interpret words into images can help you make choices that have different dramatic effects.

It’s also worth noting that I had to change the verb to fit the noun. Reaching is an action that generally involves the shoulder, arm, and hand, so using that verb will almost always trigger a wider shot in the brain. But a hand slipping, that’s subtle, and small.

Is this “directing on the page?” I think yes and no. On set, the actress just has to get something from her back pocket. She can do it however she wants. Also, the director can shoot this however they want. But at this point, as the writer you ARE the actress and director.

So act and direct how you think this story should best be told.

When it’s time, they’ll come in and do their jobs, and hopefully that collaboration will yield results better than any of you could’ve done on your own.

Alright, so that’s ANs.

Now let’s talk about word order.

Your word order can help suggest camera moves, edits, tone, you name it.

In my writing, first and foremost, I try to use an AN to orient the reader to the shot they’re looking at.

Then, I try to move through the action using...

word order

grammar

sentence structure

...to suggest camera moves and edits.

Below are five different ways to write the same action.

Each have the slug line INT. KITCHEN.

How do you interpret the camera moves and edits (if any) in each example below?

John scrubs dishes in an empty kitchen.

In an empty kitchen, John stands alone at the sink. Scrubbing dishes.

A sponge swirls on a dirty plate. John scrubs away over the sink. Alone in an empty kitchen.

As he washes the plates, John sighs, alone over the kitchen sink, the table behind him covered with ten more dirty plates.

SCRUB. SCRUB. John’s eyes look up, and out the window. A sigh. He returns to his scrubbing.

Disclaimer: In no way am I saying that there is a 1-to-1 with the way things are written and their visual interpretation. As in all things screenwriting, there are no “rules.” I’m just saying that certain writing is going to suggest different visual tones for the same action.

Now, look at the difference between the first example and the last. In the first, the action of scrubbing the dishes seem to be the important thing to notice.

But in the last, it’s about his emotional reaction. I don’t mention dishes.

(Yes, the other examples primed you for dishwashing. I may have gotten a freebie there. Depending on context, I may or may not be able to do it in the script.)

Alright, remember when I said that a new AN can bump you off an old one. (Do you? Lazy-brained human?) Let’s look at one of the examples above to see it in action. Let’s look at the third one, which I’ll repeat here.

A sponge swirls on a dirty plate. John scrubs away over the sink. Alone in an empty kitchen.

I think this is clearly communicating three shots, in specific order. The sponge on the plate. John, the holder of the sponge. The empty kitchen. Each new sentence has a new AN to trigger you to see something else, and this time I’m going from CU to a W.

The new AN’s “bump” you off the previous one, and you’re just seeing images, one after another. So you never have to worry about a reader getting visually stuck in one shot, unless you want them too…

A sponge swirls on a dirty plate under running water. The sponge stops. A sigh. The water runs. The plate and sponge are put down, unfinished in the sink. SQUEAK. The water stops.

Hopefully, that keeps you visually rooted in the sink. (Once again, you already have some context, so I’m getting some freebies there with what’s going on, but hopefully you understand the concept I’m going for.)

In summary, your action lines should be doing more for you than just describing what’s happening. They should describe how we see what’s happening, and hopefully some of the things I’ve said can help you think about how you might achieve that in your work.

I should note here, that in my process, this is one of the last things I do. When the characters and story are working (1), this is a fun tool you can pull out to orient the reader and communicate camera and shots (2).

I’ll end with a metaphor that I often think about when I think about the act of screenwriting. I think of a screenwriter as a sculptor. And I used to think that the screenplay is the sculpture, but I don’t think that fully captures what we do.

I’d say what’s more accurate is that you’re the sculptor, and the reader’s emotional journey is the sculpture. Words are your chisel, and the screenplay is the act of chiseling.

Everyone else’s job on a film is to use magic to bring the sculpture to actual life.

If this helped you in anyway, feel free to retweet and share.

And please let me know how you all are thinking about action lines! I love hearing nifty little tricks and paradigms for the nuts and bolts of screenwriting craftwork!

Write on!

- David

#writing tips

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