#tldr vibes. and an outline i fill out as I go

[untitledrockstar-if]

I'm so curious about your writing process, could you please shed some light on how you approach it?

Aside from already having a vision for the plot, do you have ideas about scenes you want to include and then write the chapters around them, so to speak? Or is it more like, "the goals of this chapter are to reach this and this checkpoint with each character," and fill in the blanks like that?

Sorry, I have no clue how writing is done, but I enjoy your writing so much that I really wanted to ask! 🐒

I don't recommend the way I write to anyone ever but to be honest, I go off of vibes a lot.

I have a vague outline in my notes with rough chapter numbers attached and pivotal moments that push the plot in different directions (the cheating reveal, who ???? is, the choices you can make in response to the cheating and starting a new route/what happens during them or choosing a career, the setting changing, mc's family appearing)

the rest is kind of improvised. I have a couple long scenes/convos written and saved in a doc and go from there but I've never been someone that managed to write a full chapter outline beforehand/went into details and stuck to them (I wish I did though lmao)

at the beginning of starting a new chapter I look at my IF outline and decide how far I want the plot to progress and how to make that happen. then I write down every new idea I have for a chapter at that moment and decide whether to shift a specific interview to a later chapter or if they should continue the tour then/how long they stay in a city and what happens during those scenes/what should be revealed about R and mc or any of the other ROs during one-on-one scenes/if a new character introduction makes sense.

editing is where I go in and take note of the details I included/side plots i should expand on and include them into my outline to remember later on! so the outline is kind of filled out as I write.

which is. bad. but it worked for all my projects so far and it hasn't failed me yet! :)

[jojolightningfingers]

Pick your favorite fic/wip. #'s 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 19, 21, 26

4. If the fic required it, what did you research in order to write it?

where the heart is has stalled out mainly because I am agonizing over 1. the original characters and 2. getting the details of how people in a little village way up in the mountains live accurate. How do they survive up there? How isolated are they? What will grow there, what kinds of food are viable, what can they reasonably be expected to HAVE? Hopefully one day I'm just like 'man fuck it' and remember that magic IS a part of that world and can shortcut for some of that stuff, but man.

5. Did you outline the fic?

I outline most fics these days, to some extent. Even the ones where I just start writing a scene because I want it out of my head (moth, meet flame comes to mind), I'll put notes to myself on things to incorporate, or directions the thread of the story follows. As I get more and more of those I'll start putting them in a rough order before I start trying to fill in the gaps around them. Most of my larger wips have somewhat more extensive outlines that I put together before writing much of them, but those are still more like reminders to myself of what I want to have happen when.

7. How did you decide what character(s) would narrate the fic?

Answered this for the first two parts of teethmarks already, and the same principle holds true for all of the stuff I write, I think. Mostly that decision is 'I want to see how [character], who has X characteristics, deals with this specific situation'. For WtHi, it's 'how does Therion, someone who was betrayed by his closest/only friend, who is a reserved, solitary, and wandersome individual as a result, deal with the solidarity Olberic offers in having had a similar experience, with having somewhere to go BACK to?' for THotS it's 'how does Grimmjow, who by means of survival equates touch to violence, who is human in spite of it all, learn to accept that he can WANT a softer touch?'; in mirror image to that, TMiYM asks 'how does Ichigo, who wants to protect people, who has a good heart at the center of his being, learn to accept the part of himself that WANTS violence?' Those two in particular are about accepting uncomfortable hidden aspects of oneself by accepting them as they are externalized in one another. (This is what a soulmate is to me)

Obviously this isn't quite as true for the erotic stuff necessarily: thy neighbor (thyself) was an exercise in having three narrators at once while also having only one narrator. Gogeta is Gogeta, but also Goku and Vegeta. I spent a LOT of time picking the wording such that some parts of it felt like one or the other (or both/neither). I guess for erotica the decision gets made by answering 'who gets fucked up the most by it?' In MMF, Ace really is doing this more or less for the hell of it (with a side of 'oh this blonde's eyeing me up but I don't think he realizes that, maybe he needs some encouragement?'); Sanji on the other hand is having an extremely lowkey Gay Panic about it. For before it's too late, admittedly they're both equally fucked up by the situation going on, but Seth has that added extra layer of 'I am a knight and Eirika is my liegelord, i SHOULD NOT BE DOING THIS.' This would occur to him because he's older and more experienced in the social systems he and Eirika exist in, he can't help but think of the consequences for both of them, but by the same token those systems as they pertain to the immediate have been blown to cinders. For Reiju in this cursed wip, it's because she numerically (the numbers are important) suffers more acts of violence, plus the inherent violence of the goal and their father's role in it. The brothers only have to bear one each. Ergo, her head has more to work with in it.

This answer got away from me but like. tldr bro, I can't explain it concisely. I pick it based on Vibes.

10. How did you approach writing the fic? (e.g. wrote it start to finish in order, started with the ending, starting with the twist)

I don't know that I've ever written anything start to finish in my life except maybe the vignette-adjacent works. Typically my stuff happens in two patterns: I'll either patchwork bits and pieces in the middle and work my way outwards to an opening and closing (as in a touch of home) or I'll pin down the opening and closing and figure out a good middle to hook them together (as in cutting instrument). I feel like you can sort of tell which, in general, is which, if you read enough of my stuff. Short answer: it almost always comes together in bits and pieces that I try to smooth into one contiguous whole.

13. Did you write any of the fic by hand? If yes, which parts? Do you find you write differently by hand vs typing?

Man, I haven't written fic entirely by hand in YEARS. Used to be I would do the rough drafts and a lot of the editing by hand, then type it up. They're very different to me and it mainly comes down to the editing aspect, not in a way that I feel like I can describe well. iykyk. Maybe the last fic that I know for sure I wrote any part of by hand is the jonadio from forever ago, I still have a clear memory of doing at LEAST the scene with Jotaro by hand.

19. While editing, did you kill any darlings? What were they?

Yes, but I hardly remember most of them since I'm not in the habit (yet) of using a scraps document. There is one bit I know I have from ch5 of THotS, since that whole thing was written almost entirely in the discord DMs:

“I want to apologize to you,” she says a little later, as you’re both preparing to scour for some poor unlucky bastard to eat. “For the comment I made a while ago.” You’re confused which one she means, there’s a lot you’d demand apology for from her, but her next words give you pause. “About your Fracciones. That was… unkind. I’m sorry.”

One of those things where I had an idea for where I wanted to go from that and lost it halfway through so I just cut it and did something else.

21. Did the fic end up shorter or longer than you had planned?

god they ALWAYS end up longer. always. why is TMiYM longer than the fic it was epiloguing. Why is MMF THAT fucking long. why.

26. Share your favorite detail

I don't know that I really have any...... I've read and reread all my work so much that it all kinda blurs together. How about this, how about yall tell me YOUR favorite details in the replies or smth. I like finding out what people notice the most.

thanks for your ask <3

[invnciblesummer]

Idk if this is just me but I feel like “They’re basically siblings!!” Is just an excuse people throw around to invalidate perfectly fine ships that they personally just don’t like.

There was actually a good post that I read recently outlining why "they’re basically siblings" is not a super strong argument against Red Crackle. I added some of my feelings about it in the tags.

But yeah, I agree. Oftentimes people throw around the term "sibling-like relationship" for any platonic relationship that they see. I mean, do they realize that, yes, friendly sibling relationships are platonic relationships, but not all friendly platonic relationships are sibling-like? Not every romantic relationship started with a "love/crush at first sight" moment. Some romantic relationships started out as completely platonic friendships, that could be read as potentially turning into sibling-like relationships, or potentially turning into romantic relationships in the future, depending on the viewer’s interpretation.

Sometimes, when characters say that another character who is their unrelated friend is like a sibling to them, that can change in the future (especially if the "like a sibling" label doesn’t have much basis in their relationship). As mentioned in the post I already linked at the top, Pam called Jim as a friend who is "like a brother" at first. Alya called Nino as a friend who is "like a brother" at first. But the thing is, that changed. Alya and Nino knew each other for less than a year at school, before Alya realized that her feelings for Nino were not sibling-like, but rather, romantic. And they got together after that! Pam said that Jim was "like a brother to her" at first. They knew each other as coworkers when they were adults, and after a lot of events in their relationship, Pam realized that she did not see Jim as a brother figure, but instead as something more. And they got together too, and even ended up getting married and having kids!

Gray and Carmen only knew and interacted with each other for a year while they were both training at V.I.L.E’s training academy, when she was about 16, and he was about 18. Keep in mind that young Carmen was raised in an isolated environment by older thieves, and never really had in-person peers to be friends with. She was taught by those older thieves that V.I.L.E was her family, so it’s easy to imagine why she would have assumed that that automatically made Gray— her first in-person friend that she only knew for a year after he joined V.I.L.E— her brother figure (as this post points out). But then, Gray and Carmen had a falling out in Morocco, and Carmen stopped seeing Gray as an older brother figure. She did not see Gray again after that, until she was about 20 years old and he was about 22 years old. At that point, way after graduation, they had both grown up and changed quite a bit.

By the time we come to The Opera in the Outback Caper and onwards, I think it becomes very clear that their relationship is not sibling-like at all. A few instances that prove this include the following (after reading each one, ask yourself, if you replace Gray with Zack, and Carmen with Ivy, or any other sibling duo, would such a scene gross you out?):

When Graham met Carmen again for the first time after his memory wipe, he flirted with her, and she did not seem grossed out by this at all (unlike the reaction you would expect from someone whose "brother" just flirted with them).

He smoothly asked her out to a Friday night date at his favorite cafe, and she smoothly accepted (she was going to go to it too, if concerns for Gray’s safety hadn’t arisen in her head).

He asked her out again, and she smoothly accepted again.

This time, she actually went on that late night cafe date with Graham (and cute side note, there was a heart drawn onto Graham’s coffee during the date if you look close enough at ACME’s video at the end of the episode).

Chief called Graham a "smitten sap" for Carmen.

There are many other instances in their relationship filled with romantic and flirtatious tension/chemistry, but those ones are some of the more obvious ones. And overall, the looks that they give each other, the expressions that they make when they are thinking about each other, and the framing of a lot of their scenes together give off rather romantic/flirtatious vibes:

Though Carmen said that she considered Gray as a brother figure back in their year of V.I.L.E training, when she was about 16, I don’t think she would really consider him as a brother figure now that they’re older, and she left V.I.L.E (who were the people originally telling her in the first place that V.I.L.E, and by extension, Gray, is her family) and its misleading teachings behind. In the show itself, during the two instances she referred to him as an older brother figure, it was in past tense, as something she used to see him as. After the sixth episode of season one, she never again refers to Gray as someone who she once saw as a brother figure. She instead refers to him with titles such as her "old classmate" or "old friend."

Tldr, Carmen and Gray’s relationship by the time they reach their early 20s has way too much flirtatiousness for their relationship to be considered sibling-like. If Zack and Ivy, who are siblings (and can therefore demonstrate what a sibling-like dynamic actually looks like) had such a dynamic— where they flirt with each other, look at each other like that, one asks the other out twice, they go on a date together, and one is said to be a "smitten sap" for the other— it would be very uncomfortable to watch.

[amorecleverdevil]

@shiftingsupport​: 1 and 13?    ↪︎ ask the mun about writing. [ 𝔄𝔠𝔠𝔢𝔭𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤 ]

         𝔬𝔲𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩. Oh hell yeh! Question time! I threw your answers down below a lil read more because I’m what the kids like to call?? A rambler.

1). What does your writing process look like?

A mess?? Lmao nah;;; So, honestly it depends on what I’m writing, how long I’m going to be continuing the story revolving around it, and what my current mood is. In general, I am a person who has a hard time sticking to one particular style or approach because I just get bored of it a lot. I find it a lot of fun to come at writing in many different ways and I’ve found that it’s helped me really explore what I do and don’t like for each genre or character that I attempt to tackle.

That being said, though, I tend to have at least a couple consistencies. Basically, when I’m writing replies, the most important questions I ask myself tend to be;

What is my character’s reaction to what just happened?

What have I written that actively engages the other writer and/or their character?

Have I actually described the scene or merely provided dialogue?

Will this thread carry for at least two more replies and, if not, should I end it or can I add something to make it keep going?

I’ll go ahead and give you some examples using writing that I’ve previously written to paint what I mean with each of them. For the first point, that’s the one that most people I’ve seen tend to have the best grip on, obviously. People who do roleplay tend to really know their own characters and can write them really compellingly. Most of the time, this part of the writing comes from the other player setting up a question or scenario and my character basically engaging with it. Typically, reactions tend to be the first thing I’ll actually be the first thing I put into a reply and I think that they are really important to keeping a fluid transition from one character to the next. 

In the above example, you can kinda see what I’m talking about. Basically, Izzy made Gwen say something and Billy here gave a very basic response to it. Most of the time, I find dialogue or verbal responses are the best because usually the other character should pick up on them, but I like mixing in physical reactions and more internal monologues alongside those verbal responses. Sometimes, if two characters are in tune enough with each other, it actually can be really rad to get away with only physical reactions and internal dialogues, but that often requires a certain connection and history between characters to make accurate conclusions about what might be going through their head. Here is a great example between one of my mains and Nay from my old blog.

Basically, Nay notices that Oswald is probably getting emotional over the fact they’re standing in front of this grave and looks down to get a better idea of who Oswald is getting so upset over. Oswald then follows his line of sight to the headstones, themselves. It’s a more sad scene, so not only is the lack of actual verbal responses very fun to play with, it’s also much more appropriate for the tone of the thread. This is something I love to try and play with a lot, but I avoid doing it as much with people who I have not already threaded with a few times.

After that, I then have to try to actively engage the other writer or create an opportunity for them to add to the thread as well. Especially when writing with someone new or for whom you may not have an immediate chemistry with, it becomes very important to throw them a bone, so I usually will do this as a follow up. I personally don’t love using questions to carry a thread, but it can be a good way to give an explicit indication of how the other person can contribute to it and it can be a lot more comfortable for people who are new to interacting with me and may be hesitant to just throw new ideas at me without having an extensive conversation about it. Here is an example where Naomasa responded to a question that Oboro poses and interacts with a nonverbal. 

These first two bullets are what I usually consider the meat of the reply, so the most work is put into them. Everything else is filler and tends to be what actually makes the replies prettier and more interesting. In many cases, adding the last two can even happen naturally when you are trying to come up with ways to do the former, but it’s still something I keep in mind to look out for when I’m writing. Of the four points, I think that the one I probably struggle with the most is the one that revolves around describing the scene and I think that has been what’s kept me from reaching that multi-para/novella goal that I really wanna be able to do when writing threads, but I’ve been putting in more work to try and get on top of that one. 

The final point is basically just thinking about what I can add to try and keep a thread engaging. This is when I really tend to bring in that plot and start advancing it. Introducing a conflict or a new activity in the scene that might not have otherwise been relevant before now can really revive a thread and I tend to do that a lot if I feel like a thread is dying out too quickly. Sometimes it takes, sometimes it doesn’t but it’s basically just my way of jumpstarting an interaction I feel like didn’t have enough substance to get off the ground in the first place. The example for this one is between Naomasa and Jasper - Yes, I know it’s the same person, again, but it’s because Fabgen is ridiculously good at doing the whole “yes and” thing and really we should all just take some time to appreciate them - in which the two of them are both responding to a crisis of some kind. I had felt the nature of the thread hadn’t given them a concrete way to continue to interact with each other, so I made up a random conflict that they both could work! In this case, it was some random kid running into danger.

After ALL of that, basically the last thing I tend to do for a thread is proofread and format. In a perfect world, I’d actually do the whole proofreading thing more often, but lmao nah. Basically, tldr, my writing process when doing threads is:

1). Respond to what the other person says. 2). Give them something to respond to. 3). Introduce a new plot point as necessary. 4). Fill in scene details and revise as necessary.

If you read back on my old threads, you’ll probably notice most of them follow this linear outline. Sometimes I’ll switch a couple things around, but 95% of the time you can literally cut my replies pretty into these parts without too much trouble. Also yall should go check out the people in these example threads because they’re all very talented and worth interacting with!! 

13). What do you look for in an RP partner?

Hmm.... An excellent question let’s see...

Typically, these are things that make or break rp relationships:

Have concise rules/ooc pages that includes information such as their name, their pronouns, their age and their triggers. For certain fandoms, I also tend to look for stances on certain major discourse points.

Have the ability to para or multi-para threads and 3rd person POV. We don’t have to always do this, but I do really prefer this kind of RP.

Have the ability to participate in joke/crack posting

Read my character info or at least my rules before interacting with me. I know they are long and tedious and that I tend to ramble, but there are some important things in there that may vastly differ from many other people in the RPC and it’s important to me that everyone takes those things into account when engaging with me.

Have discord for OOC conversations and extended plotting or, at the very least, be comfortable chatting regularly via IM.

Follow me. It’s not necessary to interact with me and I 100% will interact with people who are not mutuals, but I typically tend to assume others around me are mutuals only regardless of whether or not they actually are and it’ll often put most of the responsibility on the other person to come interact with me if they want to thread.

I tend to main with people who will have OOC conversations with me about our characters and who are willing to adapt to fit into the settings / verses which I have already created for my characters. I am always seeking out familial relationships of ANY kind and will usually be quick to main people who do these kinds of threads with me. I do have ships for many of my characters that I tend to indulge in, but my mains tend to be people who actually get me to start shipping something because the characters just ended up vibing so well. I actually really love shipping my bi male characters with women, but there just really aren’t enough ladies in any of the RPCs to have lasting ships ;;y;;, so if we are able to get one going, I’d probably consider maining with ya’ll

I tend to like people who like continuous threads and verse building. I tend to like people who don’t mind having a million unfinished threads. I tend to gravitate to people who do formatting and icons, but I do not require it. I tend to shy away from people who are too self-concious about doubles or who tend to prefer being exclusive. 

Overall, I’m open to at least trying to rp with everyone! And I’ve definitely formed lasting friendships with people who did not meet many of this criteria, but in terms of what I look for this is probably a pretty good list.