#this is the roughest of rough outlines

[minwilder]

i need no further prompting

this is absolutely a two or three part episode

starts off like a normal episode of bones except tempe announces she’s going on vacation to visit her nephew kit who is the son of her older sister harry that no one at the lab has ever heard of and they have a LOT of questions that she doesn’t see the point in answering

i’m almost certain they can find some way to work a modified version of harry and kit into the show. anyway obviously they’re like why have we never heard of harry or kit or tory hello??? but tempe talks to kit and tory all the time she just is so blase about everything she doesn’t think it’s weird that she kept this so quiet

tragically there would not be screentime for every morris islander but the kids are doing their thing on loggerhead while tempe catches up with kit

and whitney who tempe strangely gets along with because whitney is nice and tempe understands her

hi shelton and ben all call her tempe to her face AND she calls them by their first names which makes the lab crew nuts because they would never get away with that

so the kids find this body on loggerhead and it’s a whole federal shitshow so tempe calls in booth

he is way more interested in meeting her family when none of them have committed any felonies (so he thinks). he and kit hit it off like a house on fire until kit starts talking about some of the stuff tory gets up to and booth is like. hold on. what

they ID the body as mike iglehart. we all cheered

suddenly booth is convincing tempe to bring the kids back to dc and she agrees because she wants tory to help with the case. tory is all for it. hi and shelton are like YAY FREE TRIP TO DC. only ben is seeing the issue here but he gets overruled

he still has to bring booth out to loggerhead and booth is trying to gently press him for info but it’s ben so he just clams up and will only talk once they start comparing Tips For Dealing With Brennan Women

anyway the kids get named persons of interest in the case and shipped off to dc. the boys get a hotel room. tory stays with tempe and tries to learn as much as she can just existing in her proximity

booth goes to sweets and is like something is fucking Wrong with these children will you please psychoanalyze them and sweets thinks he’s nuts until he gets the four of them in a room together and literally watches their eyes change color (blue era) and susses out that they’re reading each other’s minds and is seriously questioning his own sanity

booth starts digging into their history and comes up with a LOT of question marks and a blacked out phoenix inquiry file. subtly inquires with saroyan whether she’s seen anything weird. then pawns them off on her so she can observe them

saroyan gives angela and hodgins a heads up to watch for anything weird and they’re like ???

of course tory is following tempe around as the designated squintern of the week and doing a fucking amazing job. hodgins keeps trying to provide relevant case info and it’s just The Brennan Show on the lab platform so he and hi design a huge fuck-off disruptive experiment and almost blow up the building

this makes booth MORE suspicious obviously

shelton is hiding out in angela’s workroom and the two of them are geeking out over computer stuff. she’s like where did you learn this and he blurts out something about decrypting a flash drive because he can’t keep his mouth shut but she’s too focused on trying to figure out whether he and the hawaiian shirt kid are in a secret relationship to notice

also she LOVES shelton she thinks he’s adorable and can do no wrong

ben is kicking around the lab the whole time looking bored until saroyan finally lets him help her with something. then she figures out he’s interested in geology and gets him to help hodgins

cooper noses around minding his own business. saroyan keeps removing him from the lab. someone different lets him back in every time and feeds him treats. saroyan quietly loses her mind and threatens to fire the next person who lets in that damn dog. they all continue to let him in

booth gets the kids into an interrogation room and starts off asking about the case, then finally starts needling them about Why Exactly they have blacked out homeland security files under their names. they all mind meld and talk in circles until he and sweets are convinced they’re all demons

booth brings chance in and he just plays dumb and does his “i was obsessed with tory” spiel. booth is not impressed with chance. sweets absolutely believes chance was (is) obsessed with tory but knows there was more to it

booth figures out chance used to work with iglehart to spy on tory et al and it all gets way more suspicious

finally they get a lead on the case and do a whole thing with the monkeys because the monkeys are always involved

for a minute it looks like kit is a suspect but the killer turns out to be disgruntled former liri employee trey terry. booth is still not happy with the loose threads but the kids all had alibis and nothing to do with it

saroyan does some seriously illegal secret dna testing and comes up with canine DNA. hodgins has his I KNEW WEREWOLVES EXISTED I KNEW IT moment. they decide to tell booth who tells them to destroy the evidence because he doesn’t want to do anything that would hurt tempe

tempe advises tory to keep doing what she’s doing and she has a good shot at an internship in the future

booth agonizes over whether to tell tempe that her teenage grandniece is, for all intents and purposes, part dog. finally he tells her and she’s like oh yeah i know

HOW??? but she figured it out somehow and has no trouble wrapping her head around the fact that an altered form of parvovirus changed their dna and gave them enhanced physical abilities and silent communication

she also doesn’t see the need to tell anyone because it’s none of her business

ben knows booth knows. which means tory knows tempe knows. but as long as booth is loyal to tempe they’re safe

booth and tempe go for a beer and debrief and have a moment. the kids sit at the next table and have milkshakes and fries and argue about the case and toast a good riddance to iglehart

chance shows up at the last second and tries to cause drama. ben punches him. booth pretends he did not see it

no one tells sweets he was right so he just goes insane forever

show tempe gang crossover with the morris islanders would actually have been the best episode of bones ever. btw

[bloominglegumes]

Hello! Feel free to ignore if you’ve lost interest in your TFA microwave AU (love it). I noticed your sketches show Shockwave and Soundwave interacting with a mix of antagonism and near- tenderness… is this a frenemies situation? Changing dynamic over time? Thanks for the brainworms lol

yes!! i love that description so much oml that is basically what i wanted for them when first playing with the idea for that au, i really love the idea of them both being incredibly single-minded on completing their mission, but also as time passes, while being made to live and work together, they come to begrudgingly respect each other's dedication and value for the decepticon cause ;D from how i've understood these two in tfa, i don't think they could ever fully trust each other on a deeper personal level, but they both know that they can depend on the other to not drag the mission down or make careless mistakes that could get them both caught, which is already a step up on closeness compared to,,all other tfa decepticons??.,

neither of them would ever admit to anything as autobot-ly sappy as being "friends" but really they are best friends but at the same time shockwave would punt soundwave into traffic if he could and soundwave seriously considers poisoning shockwave's energon multiple times per day, except they are both too useful for their common goal to actually get rid of

glad you're enjoying this au idea!!!

(older doodle,, i think its fun tho)

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

ah, now that october is octover i can queue up a backlog of all the scribbles ive. uh. scribbed over the last month or so

[writtenonreceipts]

FINE. I'll give this story a plot.

I'm not happy about it but I'll do it.

Can't things just exist on vibes alone? Must we actually plan things out?

[cuz-reasons]

Summary: Ingo remembers.

It's fuckin time

[moonthecreator]

Working on a TFP Soundwave fic

Hi I'm super new to the Transformers fandom, but since at least THREE show series are available for free on Youtube, I watched a great bit at my previous mindless job.

Personally, thinking there's not enough Soundwave x OC fics out there, so i have a rough doc. It's by no mean's done, and has the roughest outline possible.

I would love the opinions and thoughts of peeps who have been in this fandom longer than me! Whether its by a decade or by a week. Please feel free to reach out to me and ask for a link to the doc.

Okay Here's the premise:

"Disguise has always been a key component of Transformer operations on other worlds. Pretenders attempt to take this concept to the next level. Pretenders are Transformers fitted with special external armor shells that can disguise their very nature as robots. Rather than hiding themselves as the machinery or vehicles of a world, Pretender Shells allow a robot to take on the appearance of a native life form itself." -TFWiki

28-year-old Jane Axelrod's life has always been an interesting one: From being born from a wish on a shooting star, to being virtually invincible, to being completely mute. But nothing could have prepared her for encountering giant battling robots in the Nevada desert, or playing keep away with a bunch of teens in her truck. Things only get weirder when she encounters a purple alien titan, who reveals to Jane her true nature as a Pretender, built to take on the form of native lifeforms.

Existential/Identity crisis aside, Jane is abducted into the politics and strife of a dead world she has no memory of. Things only get messier when her human twin sister involves the Autobots to aid in her rescue from Decepticon clutches, and MECH catches the scent of a new lab rat to even the playing field.

Despite it all, there's More Than Meets the Eye to both Jane and her primary captor, Soundwave. And maybe within their strange budding relationship lies the answers to an end to a millennia of war.

[andiamburdenedwithgloriousfeels]

Could I write a screenplay in 13 days?

Context: I signed up for a site to watch a few screenwriting webinars, and they have a screenwriting competition for 'Grown up movies'.

Now, I have an idea that has been nagging me that I've been plotting using to help me fall asleep that would fit this category but I haven't written an outline, really done any character digging, nothing.

...But. Maybe....

Maybe I could scrounge together the roughest of rough drafts in the next almost two weeks? Even if I don't submit it, this could be an interesting exercise—see how much I can get done between now and then, and how I feel about it and my process.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

for the director's commentary game - I had a lot of fun catching the Portal references in On a Bright Day, Next Week (I actually went and replayed part of Portal 2 bc it made me miss the game, and then laughed at "well they definitely didn't win a Nobel prize for being immune to neurotoxin" bit even more bc I imagined Ed saying it as well). so! were there any references that were particularly fun to put in? and at what point did you realize the fic was going somewhere different than a more direct Portal AU? I loved the much deserved happy ending and healing ❤️

Ooh, thank you so much! On a Bright Day, Next Week is easily one of my favorite things I've ever shared.

I'm glad you mention that line, because Ed's version of it was I think the very first game reference that I put into the first draft outline! All of Ed's lines that mirrored GLaDOS' were very fun to consider just because of the differences in their characters - a surprising amount of them worked very well or at least rhymed, simply because Ed in this fic has such a a powerful undercurrant of anger about what's been done to him. Quite a few of Izzy's lines in his last chapter were adapted from the song at the end of Portal 2, which was very fun to work in because when GLaDOS says them it's with this sort of deeply bittersweet irony but with Izzy the same lines easily read more as a profound lack of self-awareness. I think it works really well!

As for when I realized how different the fic was going to be from Portal...I think that was about as soon as I started really daydreaming about getting it together, before I'd even started on the roughest rough outline! I often play the first Portal game when I just want to play a video game and want something quick, and I was thinking "I bet you could make an AU out of this," and about as soon as I started imagining Ed in the GLaDOS role I knew I wanted it to be different. Initially, I was thinking about Stede as a very direct Chell analog, but that just didn't seem very compelling to me, especially since I knew I was already going to have to make this a very character-driven story to make up for having to translate a puzzle-platformer game into a longfic. When I started thinking about what other reasons Stede could have for being there, that's what really started to tie everything together, I think. And I knew from the jump that they'd more than earned their happy ending!

Ask for director's commentary on a fic!

[onekisstotakewithme]

🚀

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

A combination of both!

I do the roughest of outlines but also I am a writer who constantly falls victim to the Outline Curse (TM) where if I outline it, i lose interest in it.

So rough outline with room to discover things as I go is how I work best.

Thank you <33

[ineedaplacetostay]

3 and 20 for the writing asks!

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

The great thing is it often just happens to me. I get the idea and then I go into a writing frenzy at like 1am and at the end there’s a fic for me to lightly edit. I actually like the editing for frenzy cases.

But, oh, when it’s not one of those days, I have to do it the long way.

I start with the general idea and let that marinate for a bit, figure out the rough path the story’ll take with an outline that’s about a quarter of the story’s actual word count, then comes the roughest draft. Oof. Absolutely OOC dialogue, bare bones plotting, basically the messiness that still gets at the highlights of the story or the story’s ideas/themes.

From there I’ll pick at each paragraph, slowly but surely, since I try to read my work back to myself out loud as I go along.

When that’s done and I feel like everything’s where I want it, I’ll sleep on it and reread the next day. After those edits, the whole thing goes over to the AO3 formatter or tumblr text box where I catch new typos or issues.

After allllll that, then it’s posted and I find more typos. 🥲👍

-

As an example, my Tome fic from this week was the latter case—it fought me—and my Mukai fic was the former.

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

I know I tend to write characters at points of very high emotion—so even my fluffier fics tend towards sweeping changes—and usually that emotion is Unpleasant. Across my nine published fanfics, the POV character is having a real bad time in like seven of them.

There’s something very interesting to me about a character reckoning with their circumstances and/or actions.

[refriedrambles]

So I've restarted the comic, scrapped the majority of it, keeping the premise tho. It's a lot less fucked up and a lot more devastating. It's much shorter now and I've got the roughest of rough sketches for the first third. But like I've done all this in like the last hour so I think it's going pretty well. Like I've got the full outline already too

[ormspryde]

May I get 9 and 19 for the writers asks?

Absolutely!

9. what's your writing process like?

The amount of words I put out in a day can vary wildly, from a few hundred words to up to 3000 if I'm really motivated. However, the process is pretty similar in all cases.

For my current 'big thing', Seer of the Dead, I started by writing a very loose outline. I scrapped the majority of it partway through, but it was a jumping off point, and my second outline is much more secure. Either way, it was a jumping off point, and I have found outlines to be absolutely essential.

When I go to write, I try to think if there's a scene or maybe even a side story that jumps out at me. Like many other AuDHD people I know, I have difficult getting started; and working up something specific, even if it's going to be heavily edited later, helps to 'break the seal' on the day's writing, so to speak. If nothing appeals, sometimes I'll read through and do some editing, and that also helps get me started.

Editing for me happens in two or more passes - usually at least three, but up to five if I'm feeling insecure about my writing that day. The first pass or couple of passes, dealing with the roughest of rough drafts, I'll go through and look for consistency mistakes, places where I could stand to add more detail (I suck at describing stuff tbh, so I try to add more description at this point). Sometimes I'll find a place where the transition between one paragraph and another seems abrupt and write more to put there, or a good place to put some foreshadowing. Basically anywhere the story needs something more. Sometimes I'll find something that needs to be cut during this part; usually I like to take that and save it in my notes folder.

The last few passes, I use to check for spelling or grammatical errors. That's not to say that I don't correct those if I see them, they're just not my focus until I get to the end of this process. A lot of the time, my very last read through is just to satisfy myself that the writing's as good as I can make it and to appease the anxiety demons before I send my baby out into the cold, cruel world.

19. If you could write an ideal fic, what would it include?

You know, it's really hard to say. Right now, I think Seer of the Dead is the closest I could get to an ideal fic for me; I'm getting a ton of very enjoyable practice with description, worldbuilding, giving characters backstories, and just generally writing something that's a bit lengthier and heftier in plot than the 1k-2k character exploration fics that I've been writing since I started writing fanfiction in college over twenty years ago. (I'm old, yes) Tbh I wish I'd realized the power of outlines decades ago, but I'm realizing it now.

As well as being great practice, I'm enjoying a lot of self-indulgent moments with this fic; putting in references to things that please me, still writing those character explorations but putting them in the middle of actual plot...it's really really great. Not too long ago I wrote up a 3000 word chapter that included great detail of one of the characters going to an open-air market in Zaphias and I enjoyed the hell out of it too.

So there's that; something that allows me to improve my craft AND be self-indulgent.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

yeehaw just wrote over 3k and i can't publish Any of it without miles of fantasy au context

[bardic-inspo]

do you like transformers too or are you just embracing the megatron vibes? 2. your writing has been stellar lately ahhh 3. do you have a best practices mental rundown of how you go from daydreaming to forcing yourself to sit down and put words on the page? bc I would love to gain insight bc I'm wanting to start writing again myself :0 godspeed w the next BtG chapter!! P.S. when he said he will bring the gasoline... I said WHOAAAA he said the line!!!! very exciting times :)

Hi friend! :D

No. 1 - Good/fair question! It's actually an old nickname I got in high school that's stuck with me a bit. My name was very badly spelled on a certificate and people started calling me Megatron. I ran cross-country and people would shout it at me to cheer me on during races. It died down for a few years and then I had a co-worker who thought it was the funniest thing and started calling me nothing but. I incorporated the 'h' from my actual name as a differentiator. I know basically nothing about Transformers, haha. No. 2 - THANK YOU OMG. You are so so kind <3 🥺 I really appreciate that. Encouragement is always a huge motivator <3 Number three is under the cut for length!

No. 3 - Disclaimer that of course different things work for different people, so grain of salt for all of this. I'll just speak to my own experience as a way to frame this. This ramble boils down to three things: keep track of your daydreams, set a specific output goal (preferably with a group that will help keep you accountable), and the original draft is only for you. Before I really started writing again, I started keeping an excel sheet with basically a list of scenes I thought up/about. This works with a bullet list, too. At first, there were giant gaps between them all, but gradually, my daydreams started to fill in those gaps. This can eventually serve as an outline. But I think it's really important to never stop doing this; if you're at the beginning and you have fresh ideas for the middle or the end, write them down. You'll thank yourself later. Prior to BtG, I basically hadn't written anything for years despite many vivid daydreams and I was really really struggling with breaking back into it. Then I did NaNoWriMo. Going zero to sixty like that doesn't work for everyone, but it jump-started me. The only goal became getting the words down. Not making them good or anything my inner editor wanted to do. I experimented, I changed tenses and points of view without starting the whole story over, and found what did/didn't work for me. I kept forward motion even when I'd decided that, later, I'll go back and fix certain things. I proceeded with it as if they were already fixed for the sake of continuing. I kept up with smaller word-count goals for several months after that, at which point I realized getting words down was no longer my main obstacle and I transitioned away from tracking word count at all. It absolutely doesn't need to be NaNo, and I'm personally of the opinion that NaNo is best for creating "roughest drafts" or breaking a writing drought and don't personally see myself doing it again unless I'm doing more rough-drafting. But having a known, established goal kept me from moving my goal posts, and gave me access to a community to help cheer me on or commiserate. Setting goals with a group of writer friends or doing a set-your-own-goal sort of thing like Get Your Words Out (which I'm doing presently with a habit/# writing days goal) or Camp NaNo are also great options. The other thing that helped me immeasurably was the promise I made to myself: no one but me will see the original draft. I only ended up using very, very small pieces of it in the posted versions of BtG (and I'm almost out of it entirely now!), but I have viewed it as a sort of narrative outline, and an invaluable experience not only for helping my build my writing skills, but also for showing me what not to do with certain plot points. I wouldn't have known if I hadn't gone down those routes. Bonus bit: fanfiction is just a fantastic place to start with writing. You have less pressure in terms of world/character-building and can just focus on building yourself as writer, bit by bit. 10/10 would recommend. I'm seriously flattered that you'd ask me this and please know I am cheering you on so hard in your writing endeavors <3 <3 And I swear I can't say thank you enough for the support. It means the world :) (I'm so so happy you got giddy with the title line finally cropping up!)

[erotomania-if]

Arca’s Side Binch! The place where coding is actually going to be fun for me... hopefully ❤

*insert pinned post here*

So... yeah

The roughest of rough outlines here

[imagining-in-the-margins]

1. [Devil's Advocate] Thank you so much, friend! I'm sorry you didn't get a notification. I genuinely have no idea how Tumblr works 90% of the time; it makes no sense. The response to that fic shocked me, but I am very grateful and I feel the love ❤️ The fact you all take time to say nice things to me will forever be the highlight of my day.

2. Oh geez, that's so flattering! 😅 I'm glad the content is still interesting without the groundwork laid in the series! I appreciate you being here, and I'm happy that you're having fun ☺️

3. You absolutely were and I will think of you every week. Godspeed at work, friend.

4. Wow, I'm so happy you're going to start writing again! Writing is such a powerful tool for me and my emotional journeys 😅

(Long answer about writing process below)

As for how I plan my fics, hmmm. I think it depends. Blurbs I usually just go stream of consciousness (actually, that's most of my writing process). My favorite part of any story is dialogue. I essentially write stageplays as my outlines (dialogue + stage cues).

But, that is because I love dialogue. If you struggle with dialogue, that's probably not a good idea. But I tell my friends all the time - just write something down. You can always flesh out ideas later.

An outline can be the roughest of rough drafts - just put the ideas down so you don't forget them. Sometimes its literally just something like:

Spencer and reader go somewhere together (park? cafe?) and they run into Emily and Penelope getting coffee. Emily seems surprised, but Penelope is just giddy.

^ You can expand that scene significantly, but at least you have something to work with, so when you return to that scene later, you know what you wanted to write.

So, yeah, outlines are how I plan my works! I also ask for feedback a lot. I usually come up with several possibilities and get other people's thoughts on them (although whether I listen to them is another question entirely...)

I hope this helped!