#this was for Sports Anime Planner at the beginning of this year haha!

[peevishpants]

ping pong gamers Smile and Peco on the bus... gonna miss their stop

[sugoi-and-spice]

2 6 and 13 for the ask game?

2. Has your writing changed over time?

Most definitely. I mean, I started writing fanfiction when I was like, 13? On Quizilla and then FFN -- so improvement since then obviously goes without saying.

If we want to go off of fanfiction I'm actually willing to show people, well yeah - even then, super different. I ran a Sports & Shounen anime imagines blog before this one, started it my senior year of high school back when I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed lol -- so the content was pretty dang vanilla.

Now, I'm a jaded working professional on antidepressants with a whole-ass screenwriting degree -- so the way that I write and the things that I like to write about are drastically different, lol.

6. If you plan, what does your planning process look like?

Hoooo, boy -- do you have an hour? Lol

Yeah, I'm a big planner. Outlines are my bread and butter, although the beginnings are a little more free form. I'll usually get an idea and start writing a couple pages (or chapters, if I'm already planning for it to be a long fic) to see if it's actually a viable idea I want to commit to, and then once it is, I'll take some time to outline it.

As mentioned above, my education and professional background is in screenwriting -- so I tend to take an approach that's pretty similar to different stages of a script or story bible.

First I write a brief, broad premise of the whole story. It's not particularly pretty writing, much more like a Wikipedia summary - just kind of a way for me to determine the beginning, middle and end.

From there, if it's a long fic, I'll expand it into a Beat Sheet. I map the fic out chapter by chapter with about a paragraph or so summary of what happens in each one. It helps me a lot to know what exactly I'm building to and to not start with a blank page every time. If I have ideas for dialogue in that scene, but know I'm not going to get to that chapter for a while - I'll usually throw some of that in too.

Here's what Play Nice looked like at that outline stage:

From there, I'll go through and track the different Plotlines and make sure they all get the time and beats they need to arrive at a compelling resolution.

You can also probably tell that, by this point, a lot of plot points have been fleshed out and locked in, and look a lot more like what was actually in the chapter than in the original, vaguer outline. I'll usually do a lot of character and theme work during that time too - writing out backstories, wants and needs of the characters, etc, etc.

And then that's what I work with. I don't behold myself to the outline completely or anything. Sometimes plot points change, get rearranged between episodes, or get cut altogether. Sometimes scenes last longer than I expected them to or I get some new ideas that I really love and I have to add more chapters. But having a roadmap like this really helps me stay motivated, keep track of where I am and what I'm trying to say with the story, and, maybe most importantly, stay on course towards the ending, even if I take a couple of detours.

13. Multichapter fics or one shots?

Haha I guess multi-chapter fics, but I do like both. A lot of the time when I'm writing a one-shot, I get way too invested in the idea and want to expand it into a multi-chapter (lookin at you Play Nice and Burnt Bridges lol -_-)