#i think maybe i am no longer defined as a oneshot writer lol

[itstimeforstarwars]

Writing Patterns Tag Game

Rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

Tagged by @phoenixyfriend!!

Lava Cake (Galidraan AU, Arla Fett & Rex)

“Would you like to go shopping with me today, Rex?”

The Muddler and The Joxter (Joxter & Hodgkins & Muddler) (this isn't even star wars lol)

On the first day of spring, Hodgkins awoke from hibernation.

Cody’s Day Off (Cody/relaxation)

Cody woke up, and he didn’t have flimsiwork to do.

Three Jedi, Two Clones, and One Force Anomaly (Cody & Rex & Obi-Wan & Anakin & Ahsoka, plus ensemble platonic relationships, Galidraan AU)

When Master Dooku had landed on Galidraan, it was to stop Mandalorians from committing senseless muders.

Unusual Train Delays on the Scrapper Line (Cal Kestis & Prauf, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ezra Bridger, SpectObi AU)

When a Mandalorian fell through the roof of the train, everyone immediately decided that was not their problem.

An Ordinary Date Night (Anidala, Ahsoka & Anakin & Padmé, Ahsoka & Rex)

“Ani!”

Right off the gangplank, Anakin was almost tackled into a hug.

For Old Times' Sake (Quinlan & Obi-Wan, Quinlan/Obi-Wan, Quinlan/Ventress, Padawan At War AU)

The door slid shut behind Obi-Wan, cutting him off from Anakin and the others, and plunging him into total darkness.

Carbon Scoring and Conversation (Ezra Bridger and Obi-Wan Kenobi, SpectObi AU)

Obi-Wan Kenobi, newest member of the Spectres, stepped into the sonic fully dressed, minus weapons.

Alliances, Treaties, and Improvised Planning (Codywan, CWW Sith AU)

It had been a long day.

Blankets and Night Time Thoughts (Codywan)

It had been a long day.

You know, I was gonna make a joke about Phoenix making me realize that I start all of my fics in the exact same way, and then I got to the last two, which I LITERALLY started in the EXACT SAME way. So. Lmao. Either the first sentence gives you a character and important action, or it was a long day. Considering that one of those fics was written five years ago and only posted last month, I've clearly had this pattern for a while.

I tag @thefoundationproject, @ranger-jedi-knight, @campfire-octopus, @personontheswing, @kckenobi, @tarantula-hawk-wasp, and anyone else who wants to play!

[velkynkarma]

End of Year Fic Meme

Better late than never, right? Keeping Parasite Knight posting on a daily basis was kind of exhausting so I didn’t have a chance to fill this out at the start of the year. Now I have time!

Thanks @maychorian for tagging me, sorry it took so long to get to it.

Stats:

List of Fics Posted:

Identity Crisis (38,460 words) (Young Justice, multi-chapter adventure team fic, complete) Routine Maintenance (50,777 words) (Voltron, multi-chapter, Shiro-centric with team features, complete) The Nature of Leadership (10,837 words) (Voltron, one-shot, Shiro-centric) Road Trip to End Times (12,649 words) (Voltron, multi-chapter, AU, paladin-centric, still ongoing)

Bonus: Parasite Knight (86,840 words) (Voltron, multi-chapter, Shiro-centric, complete) (was 100% written in 2016 but not posted until 2017)

Plus an assorted 5,636 words of notes for future stories

Total number: 4 (5 with Parasite Knight) Total Word count: 112,723 published in 2016 199,563 including Parasite Knight

Ship/Character Breakdown: No actual ships. All gen. Character focus: Robin/Dick Grayson 1, Shiro 2 (3 with Parasite Knight). But, RM, PK and Road Trip all have character focus on the whole Voltron team, so…not sure how to count that.

Do I favor Shiro? Yes, maybe a little bit, ahahaha.

Specifics:

Best/worst title?

Best title: I’m really partial to Routine Maintenance, even if the name doesn’t fit all the chapters particularly well. I also really like Parasite Knight because I struggled to come up with a title for that one, and that popped into my head. It was both fitting on multiple levels and it rhymed. ALSO it meant I got to call my writing file “Parasite Write” and I’m not gonna lie that really entertained me for stupid reasons. 

 Worst title: Road Trip to End Times. Titles are super hard for me to come up with and I was kind of in a rush to get the first of the prompts I’d written posted, so I just kinda took whatever first came to mind and slapped it in there. 


Best/worst first line?

 Best: “Shiro can’t put this off any longer.” ~The Nature of Leadership 
I kinda like that it immediately leaves you wondering, ‘wait, WHAT can’t he put off any longer?’ It’s a hook that means you gotta keep reading.

Worst: “It’s a miserable, exhausted, sweaty, mud-coated team of paladins that Shiro leads back to the Castle of Lions, after three days of trekking through the swamp-infested lands of the planet Ssagessh.” ~Routine Maintenance

This was my debut fic so I was still getting a feel for the fandom. I knew I had ideas that people would probably like, but I was a little worried that the first chapter I had chosen to start off with might not attract a lot of attention. It’s not a terrible opening but it had a kind of weak beginning.

Best/worst last line?

Best: “And, for the first time in a very long time, he feels surprisingly at peace.” ~Routine Maintenance Kind of funny that it gets the best last line but the worst first line. I really liked how the entire fic I was exploring Shiro’s difficulties and how frustrated he just was with his arm, and then finally I gave him a little peace at the end. It worked really well into the overall theme and I was really happy with the way this wrapped everything up, even if it was all individual scenarios and not one full fic. Worst: “He had a scientist to meet tonight, and it was an appointment he just couldn’t miss.” ~Identity Crisis I don’t really HATE this line per se, but it does require the context of the rest of the story to really make sense. Also, the entire last scene is completely unrelated to the main characters who had been the focus for the rest of the fic. I did it on purpose to replicate the way Young Justice episodes typically ended, but it also meant the character closure finished early, so this end didn’t have as much ZING as it probably could have.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? Honestly I hadn’t expected to write much of anything this year. I did Identity Crisis right at the beginning for a fanfic contest a friend of mine was throwing, but after that I just hadn’t gotten much of a creative spark out of anything. Most of the fandoms I’d been in were pretty dead or getting there. Or, in the case of Batman, alive but not something I really felt like writing for. I am genuinely shocked that I managed to kick out 161,103 words in the span of 3 months. That’s insane. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? Voltron. Hands down. I watched Voltron on a whim when I needed something to motivate me through a massive art project. I used it just to give myself a goal after reaching a specific workload, since I’d run out of fic in my fandoms to use instead. I was not expecting it to be all that impressive, I just needed something to fill my breaktimes with. How impressive could a show based on a silly 80’s cartoon about combining five robot space cats into a giant robot guy be? I was not expecting to fall in love with it. After that I loved the show, and checked out the fandom. Again, this is often a killer for me as a fandom might not produce the stuff I’m interested in, or the writers just aren’t very good. Happily for me I stumbled across @maychorian ‘s Boom Crash almost immediately upon searching in the fandom and was like ‘shit, people in this fandom can WRITE’ and decided to stick around and lurk a little more. Honestly I only ever intended to lurk. I never intended to write for it. But then something just…happened and I thought of some ideas that eventually turned into Routine Maintenance, and then people really liked it and I felt like writing more, and…well. Here I am.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

I am really really REALLY fond of Parasite Knight and I was long before it was posted, so I’m gonna count it here, since it had 0 feedback/kudos/comments/reviews/etc in 2016. It was difficult to write in some cases, partly because it’s so intense a lot and that’s hard to keep up sometimes, and partly because it got WAY longer than it was ever intended to be. Originally it was conceived as a (fairly large) oneshot, but I kept coming up with more and more ideas and details that I liked too much to get rid of, and then it turned into an 86K monstrosity. Also this one was a little therapeutic in some areas (particularly at the end), since it dug into some less than comfortable areas of my own head-space. It was a bit uncomfortable to write some of the later chapters at first, but once they were finished I felt a lot better for it. So yeah. PK is kind of special to me.

Okay, NOW your most popular story. It’s a little hard to judge but I think this one is Routine Maintenance. It definitely has the most kudos, and has the highest comments-to-chapter ratio. Story most underappreciated by the universe? Road Trip to End Times has comparatively little focus compared to the rest of my stuff. I don’t really find it surprising though since it’s a zombie AU and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Story that could have been better? Honestly I was pretty satisfied with everything I wrote this year. Some parts of some stories could have been tweaked a little but I didn’t think any one fic had an overall major failing.

Sexiest story? lol sexiness in my stories that’s a good joke Saddest story? Nature of Leadership does pull at the heartstrings a little. Parasite Knight is also pretty agonizing through a lot of parts. Most fun? Routine Maintenance! It was really relaxing to just do individual pieces without having to sew a whole plot together. There was definitely a theme through the whole fic, but it was really nice to not have to worry about plot-holes and things. I was able to just write and I kicked out like a chapter a day because it was all self-contained. Plus I got to play with all kinds of different scenarios. It was fun. Story with single sweetest moment? There was some H/C in Parasite Knight that I really enjoyed writing, but I’m not sure if it’s sweet exactly since Shiro was still suffering (or only partly aware) through a lot of it. I guess if I had to pick something sweeter, either Ghost or Weight from Routine Maintenance. Both center around Shiro getting relief from his prosthetic-induced pain and he’s so genuinely shocked about it but so grateful. Hardest story to write? Parasite Knight. As stated above, it was hella long, it really got away from me, and there were some gritty parts that were difficult to write for personal reasons. Don’t regret it for a second though. Easiest/most fun story to write? Routine Maintenance. See above. Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters? Parasite Knight helped me get into all of the paladins’ heads better since I had to write out their core traits in quintessence form. That was an interesting character study that made me really pull apart what their defining traits were, versus their extraneous traits (ex. Hunk’s reliability/kindness being a core trait, while his goofiness or love of food are extra traits that are a part of him but don’t define his soul). It was a challenge but fun. Most overdue story? None, really. I don’t post anything until it’s fully written, so nothing can really be overdue since half the time nobody knows it’s due. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Kinda! Half writing risk, half social risk. After Routine Maintenance finished posting I hadn’t really intended to write more, but then @bosstoaster  commented on it. I was at work when I got the notification and had to literally leave my desk to keep from screaming in delight around all my coworkers, haha. Since I was a veritable Voltron n00b to the fandom I was blown away that one of the gen bigshots even noticed me. But I knew BT also did prompts, and I was like, “Okay, but I know BT also enjoyed my writing, so…maybe I could propose a fic trade?” So I offered to do a fic trade with BT, because I kinda also wanted to write more but didn’t have any ideas at the time, and also wanted to try prompts, which I needed more practice on. I think it turned out really well in the end and The Nature of Leadership was written. It was also a challenge for me because I had to take a prompt I hadn’t decided on and make it work, but I like that it made me think outside the box a little. What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Let’s see…


Just keep writing. Focus more on steady writing and not burst writing.


Try not to get hung up on details as much. I know this is a thing I’m most known for, but it’s also responsible for slowing me down or killing ideas/writing momentum completely, because I have to come up with a reason for everything even if it’s never shown. Have to learn to just loosen up and write sometimes, I don’t have to justify every detail.

Maybe try more prompts? Might help with the above goal.

Try to write shorter stuff. (HAH. Operative word here being ‘try’)

That was fun! Eeeeven if it was me basically talking about the same 4 fics over and over again lol.