#feels like a good way of giving that conflict a tangible aspect to it thats easy for the stans to point at and talk about as a way of-

[scepterno]

hi its me again ..

sorry to bother, just wanted to ask if you have any tips on how to start off a fic.. i have an idea ive been sitting on for ages and i have so much planned but i just... can't start it!! how did you start an insulting indifference...

oh man.... im so ass at giving advice.... but thank you for asking anyways! let's see.... this got long so im placing a read more

the way i write is very based on improvisation. i either go into a fic with a very very broad idea of what i want to accomplish, and let the story take me wherever it wants. if i think of something randomly that i want to write, then i go to the bottom of my word document and pound out about two to three sentences IN the moment or scene, just to set the tone. i typically end up hoarding about 3 or so pages of disconnected story moments or character dialogue. by doing this, i can also foreshadow events or make parallels that span across several chapters in the story.

work OUT OF ORDER!!! its fun!!! it keeps it exciting!!! there was one fic i wrote where the last chapter was the first ever thing i wrote for it, and so i had a better picture in my mind about how the entire thing would GENERALLY play out. i like to leave the details in the moment, which is where the improv aspect comes in. if you let yourself ride the tide of the story, you wont have to force it in certain directions as much. sometimes you have to correct its course, but mostly youre there to cruise along with the story thats coming to life!

think of it like... a bunch of big dots. and these dots are all connecting by lines. like a big web. everything in the dots are BIG STORY BEATS, and the lines are the exposition between them. the lines don't have to be straight, either. they can have loops, or wiggles, or tiny tiny dots of their own. it may not be as exciting as the HUGE dots, but its still necessary. then again, maybe it isnt! dont feel like writing a scene? skip it! trust in your readers' abilities to make inferences based on all the other context clues you give them in the text.

as you can see, i suck at giving advice HAHA. my brain is.... not very good at sorting the chaos into something tangible for others to understand.

if you have an idea, just run with it! write for the sake of writing SOMETHING. anything is a good starting point. ANYTHING. you can always go back and edit it later. write what you DONT want to write so you can get to the stuff you DO want to write.

)--)o

i would also recommend never deleting stuff youve written. if you write a scene that you end up hating, cut and paste it into a separate document just for safe keeping. it might come in handy down the line, even if you never actually USE it. you might be able to look back on it and REALIZE what does and doesnt work about it, which will improve your tone and general skills for OTHER stuff you're going to write in the future.

and one of my favorite things to do in a story when im stuck is STEP OUT OF MY BOX. especially if youre writing from a single character POV. we've been following the story of a single person, but every single other character they interact with has been going through a fanfic of their own. what is happening to them? what are they saying? being told? experiencing? what would cause them to change their mind about something suddenly? or act irrationally? the best part about writing for humans is that they're flawed. all of them. so we can write them making mistakes and doing stupid things. it helps push the plot along. it creates conflict, WHICH IS INTERESTING. we love conflict.

find something you want to write about in a fic, then expand the world around it. when i started an insulting indifference, my goal was to write about Alejandro's trauma, Noah's mental health, and have them experiencing healing by mending their relationship with not only each other, but the world and people around them. and then it grew from there!!!!!!!!!

ok im done

i talked WAAAY too much about utter nonsense. i hope at least 5% of this was helpful to you. LOL!! thank you again for the ask!!!!