#scrapmetaldoe

[raccoonfallsharder]

hi ! i’m writing my first fic right now and i feel like it’s not going anywhere. do you have any general writing tips that you think would be helpful, like at all (i’m really struggling) i’ve written multiple narratives before but nothing like this and it feels Daunting. thank you =3 !!

well if it isn’t my favorite rocket-raccoon-presentation-creator! ♡♡ thank you for trusting me with this question little sunbeam. I will do my best to answer well & do the question justice

before i get started i wanna make a few things clear.

writing fanfiction should be fun.

it should be fun. the end. if it’s not fun, it’s either not the right fanfic or it’s not the right time, and it’s okay to put it aside and come back to it later. it’s also okay to put it aside and come back to it never. fanfiction should never be a chore. you don’t need to complete every fanfic you start, and none of them need to be perfect. fanfiction is just a place for you to play, experiment, find catharsis, fantasize, or connect with a community. it’s not a thing you need to produce for a grade or a paycheck or to prove your worth. it is only here for you to love.

also, i tend to shy away from giving “advice” because everyone’s writing process is so unique and what we create is so singular and comes from such personal places inside each of us. you are the best expert of your own habits and needs! but i can tell you what i do when i get stuck in a rut, and you can decide if you want to try something like it. maybe my strategies can give you some ideas of something that will work for you ♡

Daydream. it’s actually really hard to daydream these days, you know? i swear it’s so tempting to always have a screen in front of my eyes or a podcaster or show blaring in my ears. when i get stuck in a narrative, i try to do something that allows me to daydream. for me, this might mean standing in the shower or going for a walk or sitting on my apartment balcony in the rain (best of both worlds tbh) but one rule i have for myself is no words allowed. no reading, no podcasts, not even lyrics to my music because i’ll want to sing along. just me and my thoughts, which i am focusing on how my characters are reacting to whatever is happening in the story. ~

Map. for me it’s really important to know where my story is going. i have to know the end before i can really commit to writing anything in order. i also map my chapters. what themes am i hoping to tackle? what emotions am i trying to evoke? knowing where i’m going and what i’m trying to do along the way gives me motivation and inspiration. ~

Fuck it up. whether it’s a part of a longer piece, or the whole damn narrative — if i get stuck, i try to write from a different perspective or a different point in time, or ask myself whether the narrative really is what i think it is. one of my favorite (old, non-rocket) oneshots from my first life in fanfiction was driving me crazy because I couldn’t figure out how to end it — then i realized that it had already ended itself and i was trying to add more that didn’t need to be there. maybe what you think is a longform fic is actually a one-shot, or a series of one-shots. maybe it starts later than you’d realized, or ends earlier. i got stuck in a chapter of florescence and then tried to rewrite it from the perspective of an orloni and it suddenly became so much easier. i couldn’t figure out how to get rocket to ask reader to be his date in welcome to the knowhere christmas party, so i just plopped him down on a barstool and had him tell the story to reader himself. sometimes you just stare at something for so long that it stops making sense, so you gotta pick it up and shake it and let all the parts resettle. ~

Write whatever comes to mind. you don’t have to write in order, you know. If you want to write chapter 22 and you’re only on chapter 10, write chapter 22! who’s gonna stop you? you can refine it when you get to it. if you don’t end up using it, oh well. you can turn it into something new or use it elsewhere or gracefully retire it, with gratitude for it being so fun to write when you did. ~

Find another way to tell the story. sometimes when i'm stuck, i spend some time focusing on some other medium while i think about the story. this is when i work on a moodboard, or doodle a favorite scene. if you have someone you like to discuss your fandom with (or like, a beta reader), try talking to them about the part of the story you're stuck on! sometimes your brain just gets worded-out and switching over to a different creative medium helps shake things loose! ~

Take a break. you're not on a deadline. the people who love what you write will wait for it. let me again refer you to my very first point, which is that fanfiction should be fun! so go read someone whose work you admire (published or unpublished). go do some daydreaming. play a game, watch a movie. take some time off, whether it's three days or three months or three years. fanfiction isn't a job. it's only there to satisfy your own heart, and to share with people who love what you love.

i hope some of that helps, if only a little bit, little love. and i hope you are able to overcome whatever's obstructing your writing right now, and that something beautiful comes of it — even if it's not what you expected. ♡♡

RELATED: writing thoughts writing feedback vs writing advice | making time to write & avoiding burnout | you don't have to write in any particular order

[raccoonfallsharder]

haiiiiii, i don’t know if you’ve talked about it but rocket making gifts wether it be like little playlists filled with music he’d think you’d like or small trinkets he built himself would be such a cute idea yk !

little deer, YES. you are SO right. i'm sorry this took so long for me to respond to but i've just been luxuriating in the idea. rocket is so deprived of love (in a way that is at least somewhat self-inflicted). it's very hard for him to receive incoming messages in any love language. he'd relish a kind gesture of physical affection, if he ever trusted anyone enough to touch him; he'd love to be genuinely praised, if he could ever bring himself to believe the words. he'd adore spending quality time together in parallel play - him listening to music and tinkering with something while you read a book or doodle on your datapad - but he'd have to trust he wouldn't open his mouth and say something rude to ruin the moment.

in terms of how he tries to speak his affection, though? it's all acts of service and gifts.

if you're new on the milano (or the benatar, or the bowie), you might not understand what he's doing at first. he's probably loading you up with new blasters and cannons every cycle, muttering about how you're clumsy and a crap-shot, and he doesn't wanna end up distracted on a mission because you can't frickin' take care of yourself. but sooner or later, you start to notice that your firearms are always perfectly maintained, and the aim and recoil is easier to handle every time. you'd like to say it's just because you're improving, but you know you're not getting that good that quickly. someone must be messing with your guns, remaking them to meet your needs ~ fine-tuning them every time he sees you using them.

later on ~ once you've started to develop a real friendship ~ you'll find things shift. little thoughtful inventions, intended to make your life easier, perhaps. an adapter that you can plug into your phone to connect to the intergalactic transmissions and communications system. a program shows up on your datapad that translates any major intergalactic language to your own ~ so you can read all sorts of documents, of course; but it isn't lost on you that someone has also downloaded some shi'ar adventure novels and skrull fanfiction for you to read when you're bored between missions. more frivolously: an alien, cobbled-together handheld gaming console that somehow contains clones of your favorite games from terra, and a few new ones that are strange but similar. and finally: six crinkling bags of zargnuts that someone must have rescued from drax's hungry maw, just because he noticed you like them.

these little gifts show up tucked in drawers, or on the shelf of your bunk ~ so discreetly-given that you might have missed them for a couple rotations before you finally realize they're there.

when you ask where something came from, rocket only gives you one of two pre-determined responses: a blank stare and a shrug - i don't frickin know; do i gotta keep track of everything on this ship? - or an embarrassed palm to the back of his neck and a scowl. i was just bored. i just had it lyin' around. don't make a big deal outta it.

rocket's not only pragmatic, though. don't get me wrong: when he's finally fully comfortable with you, the practical gifts don't stop ~ though nowadays he might toss them to you with a wink and a smirk instead of pretending like they just appear in your bunk out of thin air.

but deep underneath the scars and the skittishness, nestled next to his metal bones and manufactured organs, rocket is first and foremost a lover of beautiful things: of open skies, and sprawling stars, and ships that slice through the fabric of space-time like beautiful, blazing bullets. and so eventually, at least some of these gifts will reflect that: no longer restricted to small pleasures he can write off as purely sensiblistic, but things that are just his way of sharing a tiny fraction of beauty with you. you’ll find a tiny welded scultpure of an everbloom, left on your pillow one day. a pin-drive with a playlist of his favorite songs, cloned from pete's zune. a patched-glass lantern to go over your bunk's plasma orb, casting colorful stars over your walls.

and most recently, a pair of magnification goggles he's altered to show you holosnaps of his favorite places in the universe.

late in the sleep-shift you both sit in your bunk ~ you've added a hammock for him in the corner, and sometimes he crashes there for the night ~ and he shows you how to add new holosnaps to the goggles, and the sliding switch that shifts them into projector mode. the images glow, three-dimensional and silvery, between the two of you.

that one's tarka, he says, tossing a handful of zargnuts into his mouth ~ these ones swiped more recently than the six bags from before. and that's tryl'sart.

what's this one? you ask, swiping through to the next shimmering, luminous image. mountains and thin waterfalls gleam in the dark air — bustling cities and colorful banners shiver with thin lines of static.

aladna, rocket tells you. you wanna go?

you snort. of course i do. i want to see all these places.

he tilts his head. his thumb coasts the edge of the goggles. i could take you, he says at last. steal the extra ship and go on a little roadtrip. kinda wanted to pick you up a little somethin' there, anyway.

you lean back, cradling your head in your palms, and your eyes soften.

you don't have to always give me things, you know, you tell the pipes of the ceiling softly. i don't need gifts to be your friend.

he huffs, and a slant of your eyes tells you he's scrubbing at his whiskers self-consciously.

well, you'll want somethin' nice if i take you to aladna. as a pay-off. he shrugs. the place is frickin' paradise, but the people are weird.

he tosses a bag of zargnuts at your belly, and when you glance over at him in the silver and shadow, he's got a rueful curl in the corner of his mouth.

too happy, he tells you. and the language is weird, too. even with a translator ~ they can only speak in song.

your grin widens while you close your eyes, and settle into the quiet shadows with sleep lapping at the edge of your senses like a quiet shore.

that sounds even better then, dude, you tell him, folding your hands over your gifted bag of zargnuts.

i could listen to you sing all day.

headcanons & imagines | navigation | fanfiction masterlist

related imagines: rocket & origami | rocket & coloring | rocket & sudoku, crosswords & word-searches | rocket & hanayama puzzles | rocket sings