#if i'm writing something longform and have a lot of time to just. pick at it and make sure every possible

[technovillain]

everyone always says "don't make your first comic project one that you're overly attached to" for the sake of 'your big idea you're in love with is probably way more ambitious than your skill level will accommodate for' and that is a statement that i generally agree with. not me though, i'm different. /silly

i just feel like there is an alternative to that statement too which is both "you can start it anyways but just accept that later your early work will not be as good as the later work, creating a bit of a quality gap over the span of the comic" AND "the power of hyperfixating on your own characters for years at a time can make you actually do the big project so dont let the generalized advice about starting an overly ambitious project snuff the fire of your interest by making you feel like you have to wait 'until you're talented enough'. like you can always go back and re-do the old parts once you're better and that's okay. or you can leave them as a reminder of how much you've grown with your big passion project"

[raccoonfallsharder]

Hello, dear friend. I’d be interested in hearing your take on any of these questions. I always love hearing your thoughts.

A: Of the fanfic you’ve written, which is your favorite and why?

E: What character do you identify with most?  Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

F: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?

H: How would you describe your writing style?

K:  Do you have a guilty pleasures in fic (reading or writing)?

L:  Which of your fanfics was the most emotionally challenging to write?

Q: Do you like getting prompts from your readers?

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

X: How would you categorize your fanfic reading?  Are you a voracious reader?  Do you carefully pick and choose?  Something in between?

so many questions!!! you sure do know how to indulge a girl ♡ thank you, dear friend. you are my favorite daffodil full of sunshine.

A. window across the galaxy and adorations are my favorites. i think window’s the best longform piece i’ve ever written (and probably ever will) and i poured so much of myself into it. it was everything i wanted for rocket and it was healing for me, and i love and identify with jo so much. and adorations just makes me happy. ohhh you know what? i also really like ugly sweater and traditions. and machinery from prompt week. and triptych, sunshine, sweatshirt girl, and reconnaissance for beginners. and some of headcanons & imagines. shit.

E. i put a lot of myself in every oc and reader tbh. sweatshirt girl and jo are probably the most transparent self-inserts so far and came from places where they were 100% what i wanted to give rocket + the comfort i needed (sweatshirt girl was very much a reflection on my life at the time). well, and reader from tomorrow, which was 100% my attempt at self-comfort after a bad day at work. i reflected a lot of my real-life experiences through those characters, and i based the way they interact with others almost entirely on how i try to move through the world. i also expect to identify with noa at least as much as jo (oc from other duties as assigned, which might be why it’s so hard to write it). and honestly? i identify with rocket a lot. he wears his pain differently than i do but we both have skeletons that are not doing what we want them to do, chronic pain, and buckets of survivor’s guilt. plus i headcanon rocket has a sequencing disorder like me (ꈍᴗꈍ) i allude to it a lot in cicatrix and certain headcanons (like the sudoku one!) and some other things and i'm trying to write a fanfic about it lol

F. the only fic i have a mental playlist for is the very boring adventures of space pilot & sweatshirt girl, and it’s mostly chillhop essentials winter 2019 and aviino’s plush and cocoon albums but the thing is it HAS to be on vinyl because that’s the whole sweatshirt girl vibe

H. my writing style is chaotic, exists entirely outside the bounds of space & time (mostly because of the sequencing disorder) and is more about feeling than making sense. my word choice is self-indulgent and erratic and based more on what tastes right to me than anything else. emotions are way easier to write than plot. (huh. maybe that’s the sequencing disorder too.)

K. do i have any guilty pleasures in fic-writing or -reading?? girl i write raccoon porn. it would all be a guilty pleasure if i believed in guilty pleasures. but i don’t. i try really hard not to feel guilt about any of my pleasures. life is short. capitalism sucks. write about raccoon dick

L. it’s hard to say which piece of fanfiction was the most emotionally challenging for me to write because i think writing is actually a way of organizing and processing emotions for me. if anything, writing emotional scenes feels cathartic — a relief. but finishing things always feels risky. endings rarely satisfy people. so the more people like a piece of mind (blackmail material, window, windfall), the harder it is to end. it's more about trying to manage imposter syndrome than anything else i guess

Q. GIVE ME ALL THE PROMPTS

R. markus zusak has been one of the most influential writers for me. i love that every character in his books has their own story, their own value and journey, independent of the main narrative. jonathan safran foer writes the sentences i want to write. the read like a gut-punch. (he gets quoted a lot in other duties.) both of these writers would probably be horrified by this because im fairly certain they do not write smut, especially not featuring raccoons

X. how do i characterize my fanfic reading? it really depends on what is going on in life. we all have to ration our time and i hate having to choose between reading and writing and drawing, but here we are. if it’s a fic by an author i like, i prioritize it. it can be really hard for me to read things that are released chapter-by-chapter over an extended period, so i am more apt to read things that are short-run or that are close to being finished. but i especially like to support writers i know — which is why i always ask folks to add me if they have a taglist ♡

[purgetrooperfox]

Have *you* ever thought about rewriting any of your oc's stories? I only ask because of some discussion about what kind of stories glorify problematic behavior vs what kinds are simply representing complicated dynamics. Do you have any thoughts on it?

well it's tricky because all of my longform OC writing is just in my gdrive and hasn't been seen by many people. but. I've done a few reconceptualizations, I think that's a natural part of the writing process

none of those rewrites or reimaginings have changed the core of any relationships though. the stories I'm interested in telling (for now, if I ever finish) are more about people and their relationships to each other than anything else, so it would feel disingenuous to scrap the entire foundation. Kit and Nocte are fucked up on purpose. they are, fundamentally, an exploration of

what if it can never be perfect

what if we try. really try. and do almost everything right. and it still hurts

what if circumstances will always shove us backwards

what can be overcome? what's worth the effort?

because love for us is something that wasn't supposed to happen. it's something we should have nipped in the bud. to continue is a choice we make, and it's work, and maybe it's doomed to fail. but we make the choice anyway

they're the jedi/clone ship from hell. they're messy and destructive but also compassionate and supportive and all these contradictions because they're people. that's it. they're people in a fucked up situation with a fucked up power differential living in a fucked up time. I'll give you a little spoiler too: none of it means anything in the end. they don't "save each other". so maybe their story is also just about inevitability

I wouldn't change any of that because that rings as true to me. making them fluffier would be dishonest (which isn't to say they're never fluffy, they're fluffy sometimes, but not All The Time). that's life sometimes, babes. you love someone despite it All but the All doesn't just go away because love isn't a magic cure

uhhhhhh. I think the difference between glorifying xyz versus just depicting xyz can be tricky to define sometimes. a lot of it is about intent. a lot of it is about consequences in-story. I also think most people are aiming not to glorify "problematic behavior" and some audiences will pick them apart regardless of whether they actually glorify/glamorize/romanticize it. obviously there are exceptions and that's why there's a conversation to be had in the first place, but generally

all of that being said, OBVIOUSLY no one is obligated to write about darker subjects if it makes them uncomfortable and if they chose to do so, that's no reason to go after them. if you don't like certain topics, don't read about those topics. monitoring your reading is your own job, not the writers'

I don't know if this answers what you asked but here you go

[royalreef]

@lambfated inquired: 🔥 + shipping? Unpopular opinions - Accepting

(( I might be very biased as an aro person, but honestly? A lot of shipping in general doesn't work for me. As in, for most of the ships I see, I am entirely unconvinced that these characters would ever spend time together, let alone be in a relationship with each other, and it gets to the point where I feel like it doesn't matter what the actual characters are like so long as they look pretty together. That's what my general impression on shipping is, actually — that it's just about sticking together two people who would look hot or cute if they kissed, judged by the person's personal attraction in it.

Which is probably why I'm ironically known as pretty hard to ship with... While I certainly do get whims of "Oh hey, maybe these characters would be interesting in a relationship," I don't stop there, and certainly that's not going to be the sole reason why a relationship happens or keeps them together. Yeah, Monster Prom is fairly slice of life and low-concept. But I feel like very few people listen to me when I say I don't write my fan-content like that and don't use the characters in that way, and still come to me expecting the usual dating sim rules: pick who looks hot, and they have to date you.

And it's odd how much I've noticed it's often other aro people who actually write relationships as a part of the plot and characters itself! It feels obvious, that alloromantic people should also care a lot about the relationships and seeing how they work together, have it have actual weight to it that fundamentally changes what happens and how the characters involved think, but it's something that I don't actually see a lot of. Even with stories in the romance genre, there's so much of a temptation to only save the actual relationship for the end and have everything else be a leadup to it, that it makes the relationship itself unimportant, set dressing.

And all of this extends into fandom and the RPC too, which makes it even harder to write longform content and exploration and slow change and growth... Which kind of sucks, and still shocks me how uninterested people are with relationships in their ships.

[4lph4kidz]

this is my first experience with longform writing as an actual adult and i'm finding it so, so difficult to direct my attention and effort into constructive and positive places. rather than focus on like, things that are helpful, or actually making something, my anxiety and perfectionism keep driving my into unhelpfully negative places, and i keep obsessing over potential problems and picking what i already have apart instead of making any real progress. i'm sick of falling into these constant pitfalls, never feeling like i can commit to my ideas because they probably suck and what if i realise there was something better i could have done later down the line... i'm also seeking out a lot of less than constructive writing advice and media criticsm that probably isn't relevant to what i'm working on and doesn't seem to do anything but feed my fears and stop me in my tracks. maybe i should stop doing that.

but like, i don't want to jam my fingers in my ears and write blindly? not on wide scale. i might need to consider being stricter about seperating the writing and editing processes, but i find that very difficult with an ongoing project like this. what i'm doing now is way too much of an uphill struggle to be sustainable. maybe it's just a temporary case of writers block, maybe i just feel frustrated that i haven't gotten into the flow for awhile because i've been focusing on the planning side of things for a long time, but i dunno. rough going.

[runeyseason]

Hey runeyseason! I am interested in participating in the Rune Factory RP, I've been searching all over the internet for the past few months to connect with other Rune Factory fans! But before I sign up for the RP, I wanted to make sure I understood the goal of the forums:

The idea is to choose a character I want to roleplay as and interact with other forum members in the form of short written interactions. So rather than it being written from one person's style of writing, we're all creating an evolving story together. I don't have a lot of experience with creative writing (other than my experience with literary translation), are there any sort of skill requirements to join? I'd love to have the opportunity to develop my writing skills!

Thanks in advance, I'm so glad you're organising something like this!

hello! thank you for your interest in Runey Season! <3

yeah, that's pretty much the idea -- when RPing for here, you pick a character from any game across the series (one that isn't already listed on the masterlist, because in our case we're a closed group) ((that means we have only one account / RPer for each character at a time)), set up an account on the forum for them, & interact with others!

one correction (sort of two), though -- it's not just short interactions, longform ones are also very acceptable! it all depends on your own personal preference on how you want to write, whether you prefer para-style / prose, action brackets, asterisks, etc., and how much you want to write. think of it less like an evolving story & more like a collaboration between you and other members, because you can plan and write things out with someone specific or you can just interact freely with as many or as few people as you want in an open. aside from any events we may host, there's nothing specific set aside, so no real 'story' to follow! just individual threads.

+ there are no skill requirements to join! just an interest in roleplaying & an interest in Rune Factory. this is a casual thing for fun! not something super exclusive. :]

i hope this answered all your questions!! but if it didn't or if you have any others, feel free to ask.

[earthdeep]

it's been several years now since I finished writing the honorary gavin, and honestly I'm still very proud of it. it was definitely an important benchmark work for me, and it mostly holds up exceedingly well.

that said, I think with the benefit of hindsight and more years of longform writing, I can see its weakpoints with more clarity. I was never truly satisfied with parts of its ending, with how the final crime was stopped. back then, it made perfect sense and was congruent with the background plot while I was planning it out, but when it came to writing it, the limited narrator had no way of actually expressing any of that so the entire thing got lost. instead apollo got away by coincidence, and the final irony of kristoph's actions are disjointed from the rest of the case.

of course, it's been half a decade since then, and I've become a lot more practised at plotting with a limited narrator in mind. and now have a much better idea of how to fix it up. I'm putting the rest of this under a cut for both length and also spoilers. (if you're newer here, you may have not read my most popular work, so I am going to shamelessly shill it here, lol.)

so we're picking up late into the story, in chapter 38. apollo has gone to gavin law after hours to investigate kristoph's stalking, only to be caught by the man and knocked the fuck out. as far as I'm concerned, this is fine. he's drugged and shoved into a car boot, and kristoph drives him off. fun stuff.

now for how I would do it now.

apollo comes to, on the blurry edge of death, just in time to experience the vehicle he's in pulling to a stop, jostling him as it's parked partially on the curb. something is clearly wrong, as he can't quite wake himself up even with the help of the harsh motion.

the boot opens, and he's dragged out of the car like a sack of potatoes. kristoph doesn't say anything, but apollo can tell it's him, even with his hazy mind and the low light of background streetlights.

kristoph struggles to heft him down the street - short as he is, he's still a full grown man - but in his current state there's not much he can do to escape. he can barely interpret his surroundings, where his boss is taking him. ...people park?

but then, just as the threshold is crossed, apollo's is dazzled by a sudden burst of light. he slumps out of kristoph's grip and onto the floor as the man turns in surprise.

the gateway to the kitaki mansion is thrown open, light from the house spilling out around the silhouetted figures of the kitakis themselves. and they have god damn swords (which, for the record, are decorative antiques, officer, and perfectly legal to own thank you very much).

kristoph is on his own, unable to do shit as more minor Family members traipse out into the open, pissed from being woken by an alarm being raised. apollo is picked up, and the last thing he sees before the sleeping pills get the better of him is the cute fox logo of the kitaki bakery's company van.

apollo wakes up in hospital, to learn the equally unnerving facts that kristoph gavin has been admitted into police custody, and that he apparently threw up in the bakery van on the way over.

it's clear in court that kristoph can do little in his defence but attempt to discredit the kitakis via their shady past. but he can't hide how much he underestimated the family, and how they genuinely care for their own. so unlike his own regard for them as lucrative customers.

he completes the pattern. the pattern of failing to frame the kitakis for murder, and the pattern of apollo's victory. even if he didn't manage to put together the perfect case, the evidence snatched from his fingers by his assailant, he is safe now. and he has people who have his back.

coda. apollo's first case as an ex-member of gavin law is contesting the speeding fine big wins picked up while driving him to the hospital. it goes nowhere. the world of traffic law is a cold and unforgiving place.

[trialbystory]

Why I am Like This Pt 1

So before I made a return to writing in general/fanfiction in particular, I was toying with the idea over the summer of doing some video essays/blogs/something over on Youtube talking about stories I like and/or were influential to me and why that's the case, and also just why I like stories in general and examining the nature of escapism and storytelling and all this high concept stuff that I never did. But now I have this tumblr thing, and I'm more comfortable with the written word anyway, so why not do it here? Now my original plan was to start with a discussion of why I think stories are important to society/humanity/reality, but the unfortunate passing of Jason David Frank just about a week ago makes it suddenly relevant to skip that for now and jump into a brief discussion of the one-two punch that first made me... Aware, I guess you could say, of long-form narratives in the first place. So let's talk just a little about Power Rangers today, and later we'll talk about what the second half of the combo is (I can almost guarantee it's not what you're expecting)

So there's tiny me back in the early-mid 90's. I like Hot Wheels and Dinosaurs and Tonka Tucks. And PEZ Dispensers for some reason. I also watch a lot of TV, mostly cartoons. I remember Bonkers, Bobby's World, and Life with Louie were the big ones I got into. And then there was Power Rangers, which different and exciting for me for a few reasons. First there were Giant Robot Dinosaurs, which I thought was just the best. And there were toys I could have the giant robot dinosaurs, which made them even cooler. But what made it stand out was that it was live-action. Those were real people getting to ride in the Giant Robot Dinosaurs that I had toys of. Power Rangers was my favorite. But the thing about all these shows was that the episodes were all self-contained. Everything happened in the space of a single 30-minute block. Characters are re-introduced, an issue pops up, and they deal with it in some kind of conclusive way. Even Power Rangers was very monster-of-the-week for the most part. Then Tommy shows up. I cannot overstate how mindblowing it was for younger me to be going through daily life, minding my own business, and out of nowhere, for the first time in my life, at the hands of my favorite TV show (arguably my favorite thing, period), experience a cliffhanger. And then they did it four more times. Finding out that you could have previous episodes matter in newer ones changed everything I knew about television. And it wasn't like things went back to normal afterwards, either, Tommy stuck around, the Green Ranger was just part of the team. I'd never seen that before. And they kept doing it. After 'Green With Evil,' they did a two--parter where Tommy lost his powers ('Green No More') and another where he came back as the White Ranger ('White Light'). And then, after training me to accept that continuity (not that I knew that word) was a thing, they ended OG Mighty Morphin' and made a new show. And Power Rangers Zeo was a direct sequel, picking up right where the Power Rangers I knew and loved ended. And it kept going on with more multiparters and continuity continuing through Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers In Space, and to a lesser extent Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. It was great, I loved it, and it opened me up to a whole world of ongoing/longer-term stories. So to Jason David Frank, the man who was the face of my initial introduction to longform narratives, you will be missed.

[fruitzbat]

[cracks knuckles]

writing meme: 6, 22, 43, 51, 58, 79

Because I do what I want and choices are hard.

OH SHIT OKAY

6: What’s the last line you wrote?

The glass littered the beach the way it always had – making it look like a diadem, with its multicolored beads of smooth sea-glass strewn throughout the white sand. She knew it well. Once, she had thought it beautiful. Once, she had thought all of it beautiful. Once, she had come home from her initiation voyage with Emilia in the back of her pinulu and felt her heart sing at seeing this very shore.

22: Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process?  How do you come up with titles?

It depends. I like to have a plot first before I pick a title, but sometimes they come to me and I can't resist. I like titles with multiple interpretations. Crowned Teeth, for instance, went through a couple of titles. Wine-Dark Sea I re-titled when I realized the original title I'd chosen for it (Abaddon, the Man) kind of misgendered the protagonist, so I went for its current title in reference to all of the classical motifs that show up in devilverse in general but especially this idea of tradition and what it means to people that's such a huge theme within the story.

If it's smut, though, you know that I'm using a song lyric. That's bar none the quickest way to tell the content if I post something. If the title is a song lyric, it is almost without question PWP.

43: Is there a trope or idea that you’d really like to write but haven’t yet?

I've always wanted to be clever enough to write a compelling mystery or thriller. But I find I'm not patient enough to craft those kinds of stories, more often than not.

51: Does what you like to write differ from what you like to read?

I tend to draw a lot of inspiration from the stuff I read, so for the most part that's why all my stuff ends up being thinly veiled political allegories or historical fiction. I read a lot of non-fiction for both my own gratification and for my academic work, so I think that tends to bleed into how I approach fiction as well.

58: Do you have a favorite piece of figurative language you’ve written?

Oh, many, that float around in my head all the time; I struggle with chronic One Liner Syndrome as a result of being exposed to a critical amount of Whedonesque material at a developmental period, which I actively try to combat as a writer these days. I actually... off the top of my head, my favorite metaphorical bit I've ever written was a totally random chunk from this historical hetalia fic that I was working on for a while (baby's first longform project, the quote in question comes from the second installment that clocks in at around 80k, finished it circa 2016) where I was describing the difference between antonio (spain) and roderich (austria):

"Antonio had always admired the kind of high class, blue-blooded sort of ease that came with Roderich’s mannerisms; he had always struggled to be that effortless, carry himself with that same sort of milk-fed, housecat delicacy. But Antonio would always prowl instead of stroll and lunge instead of approach. That was just the natural order of things."

79: Do you have any writing advice you want to share?

WRITE! POETRY! EVEN IF IT'S 'BAD'! YOUR PROSE WILL IMPROVE BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS!

FANFICTION ASK MEME

[aiyexayen]

🧍5, 14, 17, 23, 26, 32, 43, 45, 46!!!!!!!

OH MY GOD I NEVER FINISHED THIS EVEN AFTER I GOT YOUR ANSWER ABOUT WHICH [INSERT FIC] YOU WANTED. this was like months ago lmfao i just found it in my drafts. whoops.

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic] (Sex Pest)? Answer it now! i can't say i have a specific question i wish people would ask about that one. maybe "how many of zishu's disciples DID drag off their newest shixiong once he was released from the infirmary, and is that who i think it is??" to which i could say "yes😌 it's han ying, and he went off with no less than four of his shidis. he deserves all the love. gentle, worshipful love from his boyfriends who thought he wasn't going to make it. celebratory, joyous love from his boyfriends who are all finally living their dreams at siji shanzhuang with him. they're having a great time tbh."

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer? yes. perhaps obviously, squicks or potential triggers. but also there's a lot of typical tropes or set-ups or even ships that i've given up on finding my particular flavour in for new writers. one of the primary things that comes to mind is actually the whole category of 'getting together' tropes. there was only one bed, fake dating, they were roommates, etc. i'll really only read that kind of story if it's from a friend, trusted writer, or there's something else about the story premise that really hooks me in spite of the trope tag. or if it's a subverted trope in some way. i can like it but i'm ~picky~

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it? i always have a number of extremely specific crossover au's that i'd like to see or write that i think might just be for me. but just like my obscure shl polyships zhou zishu/liu qianqiao/han ying and a-xiang/cao weining/xie'er, i may be surprised and find other people are actually super into it too. like, for current gaming-news-related reasons, my brain's been on a kick of "what if legend of zelda: breath of the wild, but link stumbles upon siji shanzhuang."

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to? so many. uh. i would really like to write a coffee shop au someday just so i can say i have. i'd also really like to write a full longform "what if they swapped fates" au for either cql or shl. i.e. what if lan wangji lost his core and went to the burial mounds and then died for 16 years and wei ying did not do that. or what if wen kexing grew up in siji shanzhuang and headed tianchuang and zhou zishu became gui gu guzhu. that sort of thing.

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue? i'm a lot better at writing fics that have no dialogue; i have already written ficlets with no dialogue, mostly character study snippets. it might be a fun challenge to write an only-dialogue fic. i can't imagine i could make a very long one, though. if someone prompts me for one someday i'll definitely try it.

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read? depends on my mood and the hook, but i usually like fics in the 1k-15k range best i think? i do like to popcorn-read small ficlets in collections or series or if someone's done a challenge, though. and i also like to find a really nice premise and settle down for a longhaul fic now and again.

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written? i do take prompts. i love prompts. (everyone please send me prompts). there's absolutely no way i could pick a favourite prompt i've gotten or fic i've written to a prompt. even if i eliminated things like prompt week challenges i've decided to participate in or sign-ups for events and i just limited it to, like, prompts sent via tumblr ask, i still couldn't pick a favourite. i've gotten too many good ones.

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic? probably everything. i wrote my first fic when i was quite young lmfao. uh. in recent years specifically think my dialogue's gotten better. i think i've gotten better at incorporating sensory details and visual details among the internal thoughts.

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write? i vastly prefer writing on the computer. i type pretty fast and i can get in a flow a lot better when i can actually get my brain to focus. i also feel less claustrophobic about it, i think is the word i want--like the process of writing, to me, involves a lot of trying out strings of words and then backspacing them all and trying again, or switching a few words around in the middle, and then rereading and realising it all belongs two paragraphs earlier, and then reading back through those two paragraphs after the transplant for flow before i can get my brain to move onto the true next sentence and inevitably finding a word i want to change...etc. and doing that on a phone is super difficult and the clicking on and off the touch keyboard and the screen bouncing around and losing track of things more than four lines back at a time and not being able to see the paragraph shapes at least half a page at a time just makes me feel absolutely feral. boxed in. i used to just try to power through it when i had a less functional computer setup but now i'll only write on my phone anymore in a pinch or if it's a really small blurb. for similar reasons i really struggle to write anything by hand. the first time i want to move something around and can't? i can't even look at the page anymore unless i rewrite it all out perfectly on a new page each time and very quickly into the process i just want to burn the whole notebook and end up crying instead. (i'm completely neurotypical idk what you're talking about)

anyway that was probably more information than you cared to know but you did ask sjdlfjskdfk

[daswarschonkaputt]

Lordy, I want to get to the point where my writing has themes!

i've read ur writing rebell (can i call u rebell?) and i'm going to be real: it already has themes in it. (check out a few of my favourite rebell ficlets: porsche and korn play chess, porsche is angsty about being minor family head, and porsche confronts vegas abt the diamond auction.)

like, one of the very present themes that i have noticed in rebell's kinnporsche ficlets is this idea of leverage and bargaining, not just between porsche and others (porsche and korn, porsche and vegas [what a thing of beauty that was]) but between porsche and himself. porsche noticing the different chains the people around him wear, who's holding them, and how to pick them up himself.

stuff like this gets more pronounced with more longform fic, but it's still there in one-shots and ficlets. just because you're not consciously aware of it doesn't mean it's not present in your writing!

realising when you're doing this and then consciously deploying it will come with time! usually i approach this matter from the perspective of what i'm trying to communicate with my writing, what's the greater story i'm trying to tell -- and then how i want everything to fall within that thematically. but themes also emerge organically, when you tell a cohesive story with a consistent mood.

in the case of sheets, power and agency were very present on my mind right from chapter one, because those were themes from the show i wanted to explore. when i was still in the early writing phase of sheets i sent a dm to my sounding board bestie, chris, with my thesis statement for the fic:

(looks at the "must protecc pete" statement. looks at the concussion i gave him. says nothing.)

writing them out like this was a good way of me checking that i was doing what i wanted to do. and, if you're struggling to keep your writing on target and cohesive, i'd advise doing the same thing. take the subtext out of the subtext, and then go back over your writing with a critical eye. and, if you can't make your writing communicate what you want, go back and look at what you're trying to do thematically and see if it's incompatible with the story you want to tell.

i think it's really important that any fancy technical writing stuff come secondary to telling a compelling and satisfying story. priority one should be doing your characters justice. and -- well, if you do your characters justice, themes very frequently emerge organically.

i do want to state that it's not always a conscious choice for me, either. sometimes i write something and look back on it and i'm like, "oh wow, this was really about consent/depression/sacrifice/duty/insert theme here." but when you're writing longer fic (sheets is 70k) it can be important to check in, remind yourself what you're doing, and make sure you're on target. stuff gets lost in those sorts of stories.

lastly, though -- to anyone reading this who's now panicking about themes in their writing, don't. the best way to get better at writing? do lots of it. the best way to do lots of writing? have fun writing. don't stress youself out about the technical elements of writing -- the most important thing is to enjoy what you're doing. themes and motifs are cool, but they're not necessary to tell a compelling story. like i said: do the characters justice.

anyway, rebell, i hope i haven't embarrassed you too badly. i feel like this is the moment when a student asks their lecturer a question and the lecturer proceeds to pull up their assignment and go through it in front of the class.

tlr;dr: themes can emerge organically, but if you're a try-hard like me you can brute force it. rebell already has themes in their writing and you should read their fic. oh, and don't stress about this stuff and remember to have fun writing.

[olderthannetfic]

I've been low key obsessed with your blog. You've managed to cultivate a lot of interesting conversations and topics, so I wind up always coming back to scroll anything I may have missed. So, out of curiosity, what motivated you to create this blog, and what kinds of conversations and responses do you enjoy the most?

--

Heh. It's just my personal blog. I couldn't get my usual username, so the name is a random joke about some 1990s fandom wank I was reading about at the time. I don't really do side blogs or themed blogs usually. I just have a personal account wherever fandom has moved most recently.

What motivated me to join tumblr specifically was a promise I made to myself back in like 2003 to not be an embarrassing grandma next time we were all switching platforms and to try to be an early(ish) adopter of the next big thing instead of kvetching about it and needing to be dragged by my ear.

By now, I'm much more used to Tumblr, and Dreamwidth feels awkward and unfamiliar, which is pretty funny. I wouldn't have predicted that back in 2011.

--

I enjoy meta. I like it when people have long text comments about how they see a fandom or a trend in fandom. I love it when people post about bits of fandom history I don't know about. I like hearing about fandom outside of English. I like people posting personal impressions and anecdotes as much as harder facts, but I don't like appeals to emotion. I like people celebrating their rare fandoms and underappreciated fannish interests but not guilt trips.

If you really love the thing, go make the thing happen! Don't bitch about nobody else doing it for you! In fact, that's the root of a lot of what I like in fandom: the DIY, can-do attitude of community and infrastructure builders that we see in niche subcultures. I think it's been diluted a bit as fic fandom has become more accessible and mainstream, but it's still around.

Basically, I like an oldschool Livejournal and mailing list vibe. I'm in fandom for conversation and discussion and longform text.

I want that oldschool style but without the depressive wangsting about being left behind or the full dose of 'offa my lawn' that sometimes goes along with it in the genuinely oldschool spaces. I want to see younger people picking up bits of that LJ vibe because they enjoy it and it's a cultural style that can be applied to any community, not because they think they were born decades too late.

It's never too late to go consume old media or research an interest or pick up a hobby! It's never too late to create new communities, using what we like of the old and discarding the shitty bits. Somebody made a Miami Vice discord not so long ago. I was shocked but pleased.

I like it when fans who build things tell me about their cool projects, whether it's a little discord or something as ambitious as bobaboard. I like it when people ask me for help with their research or tell me the results of research they've already done. I love those "how do I find fandom history thing X?" questions that let us dive down a rabbit hole of figuring out what platform the thing would have been on and if there are any wayback links.

I guess I prefer happy things overall. We all need more happiness in our lives. But I'm not someone for whom pure squee of the "So dreamy!" *swoon* variety works very well: I express my love by analyzing and making things, and I like other fans who do the same.

I keep meaning to go back through the BTS a/b/o fic I've read and pick out all the weird gender roles and fun worldbuilding ones and write some meta about how this style of fandom led me to liking a/b/o where before I hated it. That's the kind of happy + navel gaze-y fandom thing I most enjoy. When I find someone else writing this kind of thing, even for fandoms I don't care about, I love it.

I dunno... I think it's pretty obvious what I enjoy from what I spend my time on: longform text, intellectualism, history, telling sanctimonious bullies to stuff it.

[prydon]

hey so feel free to ignore this, but i was wondering if you had any advice for newish writers? for context, i’ve only written a couple like 2,000-ish word things, but i’m taking on writing a script for a big project of mine, and i’m not sure how to go about it?

how much do you plan ahead before you start writing? do you have an in depth outline with every plot point or do you just have a broad overview and see where it takes you?

ohhh that's a tough question.... i've never had any formal writing instruction (outside of english classes in school) so most of my ability just comes from having been reading and writing a lot my whole life just for fun haha, which is great and all but makes it hard to think of advice beyond just "do it a lot".

though i do also recommend reading, i swear i got 50% better at writing by accident just because i got back into reading and subconsciously picked up on stuff i liked or didn't like in the books i was consuming. especially when it comes to writing a script, i'm sure reading other work in that format would be helpful.

as for planning... it does depend on the story, but my outlines tend to just basically be a chronological bullet point list of everything i've thought of for the story, especially the major beats.

i try to at least have a plan for what every scene is going to be before i start writing a one shot or a chapter, even if that plan is just a single line, and then i tend to flesh out the outline as i think of more things. i don't think there's anything wrong with not having a 100% finished outline before you start writing the story. write down the base ideas, then flesh them out as you keep writing/thinking of things.

idk if you've read my childhood friends fic constellations, but it's the only one i have an outline on hand for lol (because i delete my outlines after i finish writing a story, alas) so here's an example of my outline from ch6 of constellations:

so yeah, not very professional but gets the job done :"D

i guess something that's notable is that i tend to write the *purpose* of a scene in my outlines. like, going into writing this chapter, i didn't plan "okay so a bunch of chorus girls are gonna see peter and start whispering about how they don't recognize him, then go up and ask his name/who he is bc they have a crush, and he'll get nervous thus prompting annie to step in and tell them he's her brother". i wrote "annie calls nureyev her brother". because the lead up to that didn't really matter and could have happened any way that i came up with while writing, the base POINT of the scene was to establish how annie now sees their relationship and that peter knows she sees it that way. that was what was important to me to have planned.

and i do think every scene should have a purpose! that's something i've learned over time. even with longform stuff, every single scene should serve a purpose to the narrative, even if that purpose is just to show character development or to give the audience a breather/a false sense of security before an intense moment. often they can serve multiple purposes! something really fun to do is trick the readers by including a moment that they think is only relevant on an emotional level, but--surprise!--is gonna be relevant on a plot level later. if you just shove a chekhov's gun into a scene, people are gonna be like "what's that doing there" and expect it to come into play later, but if you disguise it as just being for the purpose of character development then they might not notice it. 

in general: set up and pay off good. if you set something up, you should probably pay it off. if you make a big moment happen, you have to have set it up. i know that seems simple but it's something that took me an embarrassingly long time to learn as a writer lol, and it's important for both big plot stuff and little character stuff.

themes are good. parallels are good. motifs are good. is there a way you can connect a scene at the end of the story to one at the beginning? have a character repeat the same thing they did in scene 1 but this time it takes on a different, deeper meaning. have a character be unable to catch their friend before they fall off a garden wall while playing in scene 2 that's passed off as a silly moment, then have them be unable to catch said friend again in scene 19 but this time their friend is falling from a radio tower. do it. be evil. people will be like "OHHH SHIT" and have the entire first section of the story be recontextualized for them upon reread.

uhhh what else... voices?? especially for a script, since they're dialogue-only, giving each character a unique voice is super important. i have it easy with this bc i usually only write fic and the characters in TPP have super unique voices to begin with that i can just copy, but i still think it's v important. if you can change which character says a line without changing the line at all and it still sounds right/in character for them, their voices probably aren't unique enough. that's not to say that every character should talk like a cartoon or smth, but i think it's helpful for them to each have their own recognizable vibe. (and a good shorthand for this can be changing how each character refers to others--by first name, by last name, by nicknames, with mocking endearments or with honorifics?)

that's pretty much all i can think of rn and i'm not sure any of it is useful at all but there you go aisfhuiasfh. and tbh i just appreciate that you respect my opinion enough on this subject to reach out haha!

[rukafais]

H, I, and M, for the fanfic ask meme

H: How would you describe your style? I'll do a different answer for this one! I like to juice up my writing with a lot of horror and a lot of repeating sentences and callbacks. Reading something longform that I've made is as much a memory test as anything because I LOVE to sneak little bits in there that are not compulsory to remember but if you do know them it's all like, SON OF A BITCH, WHAT IS THAT DOING THERE. Sometimes I'll use similar phrasing to imply characters are connected or straight up just know shit they shouldn't and see if people notice. I love the potential of written mediums to be sneaky.

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)? I like to get a bit irreverent/flippant with the narrative voice when I write, so I tend to be a bit wordy-comedic sometimes...but maintaining very serious intense tones for a long time without 'breaking face' is tough! I like to give readers a little bit of a breather if it's not short pieces meant to be consumed in one shot, otherwise I think it wears people out.

With reading, I'm a sucker for characters being stuck in positions where they have to be vulnerable with each other and it takes a long time for them to do that. Doesn't have to be much, just crack em a little. Peel the top off. Give me all the horrible horrible emotional tension before it happens. That's the good stuff.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share? My brain is a constantly spinning hamster wheel and things fall off periodically so uhhhhhhhh god. I think I've picked up most of my spinning plates, either through game development or just restarting (my ff9 fic is an example of the latter). I have a vague story percolating about these two idiots and their relationship with mortals and maybe I'll do something substantial with Wormwood and Calamus and that whole demon-angel setup, but nothing big.

[recurring-polynya]

Hi! I really like the weekly updates on writing you post (I’m in favor of adding teasers for upcoming chapters btw). This might be an obvious question, but how you keep track of your progress? Do you log evert writing session, or have a weekly round up? I write really slowly and sporadically, so it’s hard for me to gauge how much progress I’m making. Thanks!

Gosh, thanks!

So, first and foremost, I want to make it clear that tracking my writing both helps my productivity and it makes me feel good. Writing, especially long things, can be sort of a lonesome enterprise, and having some "numbers go up" aspect of it is positive feedback that gives me that sweet, sweet dopamine. For some people, tracking metrics results in stress and guilt, in which case, just don't do it! But I am happy to talk about what works for me!

So, I def do not track by individual writing session. That stressed me out even just thinking about it. 😂

I vary this up a little bit depending on what I'm working on, but I'll use my current project as an example. It's a longform story that I had been working on, on-and-off for a while, but I picked it up in earnest in July. I had about 50k words of disconnected scenes scattered around three Google docs, and a somewhat functional outline, at least for the first half of the story, although it was a little rougher towards the end. The first thing I did was to work on the outline a little more and get that into better shape.

At that point, I started a few Google doc and set my tracker to 0. As you might expect, the early part of the fic was a lot better filled out than later sections. I started at the beginning, and copy-pasted the scenes from one of the three old docs into the new one until I hit a hole. Then I had to fill in the hole before I could move forward. I sort of do this on a chapter-by-chapter basis, where I am allowed to have TODOs (I literally mark things I haven't written with the word TODO because it's easy to use the search function for) within the current chapter I am working on. As I finish each chapter, I make a note in the outline as to how many words it is.

Now, because I have been keeping these sorts of statistics for a few years now, I have a very honest understanding of my own writing productivity. I know what 1000 words feels likes and I know what 10,000 words feels like. After getting about three chapters filled in this way, I said, 'this is going to take me 1-2 weeks per chapter, working at my normal pace.'

Every week, as you know, I do a post on Tumblr, which includes how many words I wrote, and also some stuff about how I felt. I literally just do a Shift-Ctrl-C to get my total word count and subtract the number from the previous week's Tumblr post. These posts are very valuable to me for a couple of reasons:

1) Accountability. I'm more likely to meet a goal if every week I have to own up to how much work I did.

2) Looking back at the week before and saying, hey, what worked? What didn't work? Sometimes I just have bad weeks. Sometimes I hit a piece of sticky writing and my word count might be really low because I re-wrote something sixteen times. It happens. It's okay. The goal is for me to know how I am, because that helps me better set my expectations.

3) Looking forward to the upcoming week. Maybe my kid has a big project due at school, and it's helpful for me to say, "I'm not gonna get a lot done this week and that's fine." Or, I might say, "This week looks clear and I have every expectation of finishing Ch 7 this week" and then I do it.

Setting achievable goals and then consistently meeting them is an extremely powerful productivity skill. I do this in micro, too. I said earlier that it would stress me out to track wordcount per session, but what I do do is I sit down with an intention. If I have a big open section with nothing written, the goal might just to freewheel a little, to get some ideas on the page, to see where it's going. Conversely, I might have three scenes that are almost done, but they lack beginning or endings or they don't flow together properly, and that might be one evening's work. (Which is sometimes, like, 7 sentences, but those 7 sentences can be harder to write than 50 sentences of the freewheeling). I'm not super strict about those per session goals, but it's something to focus on and I meet them more often than not.

A lot of people talk about having a certain time to write every day. I do, because that's just the way my life works-- It's usually about 7:30-9:30 pm, between the times that my kids start their pre-bed wind-down time and when my husband and I watch tv together. This is not 100% writing time-- it's also when I draw or write Tumblr posts and I also just goof off a lot, it's just my free time. I may have other times that I get to write, especially now that my kids are back in school, but I've had this time blocked out for several years now.

Every time I try to describe one of my writing processes to my husband, he makes fun of me, because it turns out to be some bastardized software engineering technique. If this sounds like a pared-down, one-woman version of Scrum, it's because it is.

To summarize:

- I set a realistic goal over a medium length period (two weeks for one chapter)

- I set a mini goal every time I sit down to work

- Every week, I report on my progress, reflect on how the last week went, and think about the week ahead

- I track word count because it's very measurable. How many words I write in a given time period is one measure of "how well I did" but it also gives me a sense of the pacing of the story and how to get the chapters balanced. Different stories are different-- in the one I'm working on, the chapters are 7k-12k each, but in another fic they're 2-4k. There is no right or wrong answer, the purpose is just to have self-knowledge.

Oh, one more thing I do is to keep up with my outline. When I start a new chapter, I look at what I already had written down (sometimes I find things I forgot about). I add any new bullets, because I may have brought up something in the previous chapter that I need to address further. I do a strikethru on any scenes I've already written. I refer to the outline a lot while I'm working on the chapter, and by the time I'm done, the outline reflects every scene in that chapter and an overall wordcount. In the end, I might need to go back and add a scene somewhere, or move some things around, and having an accurate, shorthand overview gives me insight into the overall structure of the story and makes it super-easy to figure out which chapter could handle an extra scene. (oh god. OH GOD. I document my own fanfic. throw me right in the garbage)

I really, really hope some of this was helpful! This probably sounds like a lot of work, but without this kind of structure, I feel really unmoored and it's easy to become depressed and overwhelmed. Doing it this way makes me feel like I know where I am in the journey and I'm able to feel concrete progress every week or two, which is really motivating for me. Good luck!

[noisytenant]

I think I've said it before but it's helpful for writers and people in the whole "fanfiction, ya, literary writing" discourse to be knowledgable of the concept of kitsch.

While some snobs decry kitsch as technically and conceptually devoid, it really isn't--it's cruel to devalue an artist's labor simply because you don't think their work "advances the culture" or the viewer's understanding of culture.

Kitsch has a number of definitions, but I'm using it as "art designed to invoke a specific high-power emotion (like melancholy, love, awe, joy) without encouraging analysis of that emotion, just allowing the art to be a space where that emotion lives". It's designed, as much as anything can be designed, for some level of universality. This is why we get so many paintings of cats, of beautiful landscapes--the artists believe that the majority of people will see a landscape and appreciate its beauty, will see a kitten and long to protect it.

Art that affirms our desire to feel something--and offers little more than that validation--isn't shameful, and in many ways it's necessary, but it's also not the kind of art that people spend a lot of time analyzing. Its merits are usually limited to the technicality of the work. One may say, "This romantic fanfiction is really well-written," which is taken to mean "the characters are consistent, the grammar is legible, the prose and language is evocative." In some situations, it means, "This fanfiction added to my understanding of the work it derives from." Rarely does it mean "this fanfiction fundamentally changed something about how I view myself or the world around me"--not to say that fanfiction can't or shouldn't do that!

We can and should critique art, literary or not, if we feel that it inadequately completes its established function. One might say, "I understand that the writer was trying to highlight the cruelty of racism by depicting it head-on, but I think it assumes readers will have the emotional intelligence necessary to hold both the perpetrators' and the victims' experiences in their minds at once and make the antiracist choice at the conclusion of the story. If I were writing this book, I wouldn't make that assumption, and I might replace unresolved graphic scenes with more consequence-focused scenes." One might say, "This erotic fanfiction is designed to sexually excite the reader, but it is depicting a decidedly abusive relationship, and I question the idea that there is anything exciting and not horrifying about that."

You don't have to say that whole mouthful every time you want to tweet complaining about a book you didn't like, but you would at some point want to make it clear through your art or longform criticism how you choose to address these issues.

We can also just say that we don't like something or that we're not personally comfortable allowing it into our lives. One might say, "Depicting brutal acts of racism brings to mind experiences in my own life that are traumatic, and I don't think this work can do what it intends to do for me personally." There's so much art in the world that seeks to do similar things; surely you'll find the works that touch you as long as you keep an open mind.

Artists of a primarily kitsch nature aren't incapable of critical thought, so if YA or fanfiction authors have good-faith critiques of more literary works, we shouldn't snub their criticism simply because they choose to focus on art of a more straightforward nature. However, a lot of the highlighted discussions (which are of course cherry-picked to look as dumb as possible--not maliciously, just naturally, because we remember the things that make us angriest) could be more charitably framed not as "this person is too stupid to understand a complex work!" or "this person's art is worthless, unlike this meaningful work!", but instead as "this person deals in a tradition of art that is popular and longstanding, but very distinct from the literary tradition of art they dislike. both traditions might learn from each other, but ultimately asking one tradition to transmute itself into another is asking for a different work entirely."

The line between kitsch and non-kitsch isn't clear-cut, but it provides a helpful framework for understanding why people seem to misunderstand what a work is designed to do, and how artists will sometimes obfuscate their established goal and tradition in order to avoid criticism.