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[bubosquared]

What revolution are You?
Made by altern_active

Personally, I still prefer the Belgian Revolution. Cause dude, what other revolution started with an opera? I love my country.

Today, I will write at least 500 words. I will. Because hey, dude, NaNoWriMo is coming up again, and I'd kinda vaguely like to participate this year.

Survey, gacked from karinberry80:

Do ideas come in little tiny pinpricks and then get expanded, or do they start great big and scopy and then get refined?

Pinpricks, definitely. The way it usually happs is, I'm talking to someone, I get a vague "What if" idea, it grows in my head. These days, usually to epic proportions. Sigh.

Why do you choose to write in the tenses you do (present tense, or first person POV, or third person) and how do you choose particular styles for particular stories?

I generally default to third person past tense, unless the story calls for it. I don't really know what makes a story "call for" first or second person, or present tense, but I feel it when it happens. Sometimes I switch it around halfway through the story, often subconciously, which is a pain in the arse.

Do you have music that inspires your writing? (That you listen to while writing, or certain songs that remind you of certain characters.)

I need background noise to write, even to roleplay. If I have to tap into my creative brain, there needs to be something distracting the rest of my mind. I don't usually have specific songs or whatever I listen to while I write certain stories.

I do have a mental "soundtrack" for some of my stories, or for pairings or characters, but those soundtracks do tend to change a bit with time.

How do you brainstorm what comes next in a story?

I grab someone on AIM, usually Zarya or Molly when I'm doing it on purpose, but it often happens by accident, as V, Fleur, Meryl and anyone I happened to be talking to when inspiration hit can testify.

Anyway, so yeah, I grab someone on AIM, and I Explain the bunny to them, asking them for advice on parts where I'm stuck, and often just explaining it out loud to someone is enough to make the plot take shape in my head. Also, sometimes they pick at the bunny and make me see possible future plot holes and things, which is good.

What do you do when you hit a road block?

Kick things, whine about it to people and on LJ, argue with my muses in my LJ, smoke too much, put on loud angry music and sing along (good thing I have no actual neighbours), try and work on an unrelated story for a while, or, if the block is total, not story-specific, I hit PaintShop.

How often do you end up deleting a whole bunch of already-written stuff, and how hard is it to let that stuff go?

Quite often. Beginnings are hard for me. I often write and rewrite the first few paragraphs of a story quite a few times until I hit the version that grabs my brain and pulls it along to write the rest of the story. And in the course of a story, I often get stuck and realise I took a wrong turn three sentences back, and need to delete stuff and start over.

It's not really that hard, to be honest, mostly because if the deleted sentences were any good, I'd not have to delete them and start over.

What if you really, really want to include something but part of you is saying it's not right for that particular story?

Hm. I usually scribble it down somewhere, to save in my Folder O' Porn, and to pull out every now and then and look at it and see if maybe I can build another story around it. Unless it's just a bit of dialogue I find aparticularily entertaining, in which case I know there's no way I'm gonna build a story around it, and I just post it in LJ for the amusement of others.

Do you take notes longhand, and if so, when?

I alternate between writing longhand and typing. Mostly longhand, though, and typing it in at work every morning, so I can work on it while "doing my job" and then printing it out in the evening so I can write out what I've typed and work on it some more. It sounds bothersome, but this way, I can work on stuff while at work and still also write longhand, my preferred method.

Do you use challenges by other people to inspire you?

Rarely. I have enough bunnies on my own, ta.

Do you do anything in particular to get you into the right mindset to write a certain character or characters?

I tend to pick a story/character depending on my mindset, not the other way round.

Which characters are easiest for you to write, and WHY?

My first reaction would be "Draco!" He's easy for me to write in that snappy dialogue comes easy to me, but it's kind of difficult to get into Draco's head properly. Then again, he's a lot easier to get into (so to speak) than the rest of my characters, so yeah, I'd have to go with Draco.

Which ones are hardest, and again, WHY?

Harry. Because he's kinda boring, and a lot of his canon characterisation makes no sense to me. One would expect him to be a lot more fucked-up because of his childhood with the Dursleys, but he's not, and that frustrates me, because he should be, dammit!

Which characters are most like you emotionally?

Um. I wouldn't have a clue, in fanfic. Hrm. Hermione, probably, but with a dash of Draco.

How often do you feel like what you're writing is fulfilling some emotional need - ie, when you're writing comfort, is it because you often feel that you don't get it IRL?

Very, very rarely, to be honest. I rarely write h/c, really, and I don't particularily crave more darkness in my life, thanks, and as my friends can testify, I get enough chances to be a smartass IRL that I don't have to excercise my skills in stories.

What about writing smut - do you find it easy, difficult?

Eh. I don't particularily like writing explicit explicit smut. It gets boring after a while, the stet-by-step, blow-by-blow descriptions, and in general, I prefer to just not do that.

What kinds of smut are easiest for you to write, and WHY?

Things like Polar, which have smut, and smutty imagery, but no step-by-step descriptions. This is possibly one of my favourite smut(ty) scenes I've ever written:

Afterwards, when the rest of the team was in the showers, Marcus pinned him down on a bench and sucked him off. It was over in less than two minutes, and Terence headed for the showers with his teeth imprinted in his fingers, bite marks from trying not to scream.

Because you get the imagery, but there's no need to drag it out, the vague imagery works a lot better than if I'd have detailed the sex scene.

Which of your stories is your favorite and WHY? Least favorite?

Right now, my favourites are Sin and Polar. Sin, because it heralded my descend into darkfic, and because it was one of the first really long, semi-plotted, characterised stories I've written. Polar, because it's the first fanfic story I've written that's really about the prose, about the flow of the words and the way they stick together and everything.

Least favourite, of the ones I still like enough to put up in HTML rather than hide them in my /stories folder, would be Comfort. Technically, things like Kisses In the Closet are worse, but they were never meant to be serious, so it's easier to just shrug them off. Comfort, though. Ow. I cringe. It's OOC, it's fluffy, it's bleh.

Which of your titles do you like the most/least, and why?

I'm fairly indifferent to most of my titles. Usually, I just pick one word that more or less describes the concept of the story, like Crush, or Bad, and sometimes I pick a song title or quote, like for Kodachrome, but in general, I tend to not angst over titles that much. (Summaries, on the other hand ...)

Right now, my favourite would have to be Polar, because it perfectly sums up the content of the story. POlar opposites, Terence and Oliver, especially in the way Marcus treats them, and the title implies cold, whereas the story's about long summer days. Yeah, I'm conceited.

Least, Could It Be Magic. I was getting desperate at this point, and so I just picked a song title, but I think in the end, I should've just gon with the working title, Haunted. How do you choose titles for your stories?

See above. One-word titles, song titles, song quotes, whatever comes to me and more or less fits.

Do you write differently with a co-writer than you do alone? Is it easier or harder?

I don't really do co-writing.

Do you write origina fic differently from fanfic (if you write it at all)?

Not really. I try to write original fic as if the reader knows who these people are, etc, becuase I find it annoying myself when writers explain too much. Show, not tell and all that. On the other hand, I'd find flashback scenes like the one inwAfter annoying if t were fanfic and I'd already know the background, so there's some leeway. But mostly, no, it's more or less the same when it comes to the actual writing.

For series and long works, do you decide a goal in advance to stop at or are they open ended? If you do choose a goal, how often do you stick to it?

I usually decide on a vague goal, some sort of idea as to where I'm heading, but writing epics, to me, is like walking down a long, dazrk, twisty country road. I kinda know where I'm heading, but I only really see the road ahead towards the next chapter, at most.

Of course, I rarely write for plot, so it doesn't really matter where I end up, what matters is the journey, what I've managed to explore about the characters on the way there. Usually, that'll tell me exactly where the story's going. With The Game, for example, I know it's going to end badly, because that Harry and Draco just aren't supposed to be together.

How do you deal with character plinkage?

I'm unfamiliar with the word "plinkage", but I can grock from context that it means characters doing what they want despite where you want the story to go, right?

Eh. I just go with it. They run this show, man, I'm just the secretary.

When a scene feels forced, what are the first few tricks you try to fix it?

Force my way past it and move on to the next scene, and go back to fix the scene once the story's finished, in the first edit. Usually, by that time, I'll have figured out what was wrong. If not, I grab someone on AIM to tell me what doesn't work, or I ask my beta.

Are most of your fixes deletions or additions?

Deletions. I hardly ever add anything in editing, really, and I try to delete everything that's not absolutely necessary to the story. I generally scratch about 5-10% between the first draft and the final version.

How long does it usually take you to write a story? How many revisions do you go trough?

Usually, it goes like this:

1. Pre-edit: Type up the story, change the odd thing.
2. Edit 1: Print out story, hunt for grammar goofs, spelling mistakes, typos, left-out words, punctuation errors, etc.
3. Edit 2: Print out corrected version, read story out loud to myself to see what works and what doesn't. Scratch all unnecessary things. Let story rest for a day or so, more if I can manage it.
4. Edit 3: Fine-comb, correct things that still seem off, scratch some more things.
5. Beta: For style issues, punctuation errors and stray Britishisms if the fandom is American.
6. Edit 4: Final read-through before posting.

Yeah, I tend to edit a lot. :)

Do you use beta readers?

Yes. There's a handful of cross-fandom people that I trust and whom I know have more or less the same tastes in style, etc. as I do, so I know they'll know what I'm trying to do and will have helpful suggestions to make my stories better.

Comments

[dramaturgy.livejournal.com]

An opera? Dude, America's revolution started with taxes. If you want to go a bit further, tea.

I'm going to buy an island and make myself the queen of the island. My country can be so st00pid sometimes.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yeah, an opera. Specifically, in/during an opera. The Mute of Portici. We're strange people, us.