#it's my first time writing the entire first draft on scrivener

[ladysolitaire]

Welp. The first draft of my Sherlolly Screamfest fic kinda got away from me...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[quinloki]

What's your writing process like? Do you draft everything at once and then release chapter by chapter as you edit or something similar?

How to you keep your notes organized? I think you've said before in an ask you use Scrivener (me too!), how do you organize that? I love seeing peoples writing processes in general, if your comfortable explaining!!

Okay you're awesome thank you 💛

Process. Ah. Ahem. Organization... /sweats/

Okay, so organization I have something like that. Thanks almost entirely to Scrivener if I'mma be honest. My projects are organized by blorbo - so like all the Kid x Readers are in one project, and then broken down in files by book.

Except for A Light Touch - cause that's in the Grandline AU collection project, and all associated stories are in there with it.

Notes, though, and er... drafts... Ah.

So I would like to note I mean this in the stereotypical pop culture way, and not in the legitimate way, but I'm insane.

I have never known how long a story was going to be until I wrote it, and while I've had a few slapdash outlines for stories, I never manage to stick to them, so I barely even bother writing them out anymore.

Usually the process is something like:

Inspiration -> Idea -> details for Idea -> some notes -> decide certain parameters -> and time allowing either set aside or start writing chapter 1.

Quicksand, for instance, was inspired by a piece of fan art. It was going to be a one-shot. I started world-building and deciding functional parameters and uh... it's 20 chapters if you don't count the alternative story line. The inspired scene doesn't even happen until like chapter 18.

And even within that, I'd meant for Crocodile to be way more terrifyingly yandere to the point that Doflamingo was going to be the GOOD GUY.

That was the plan. That did not happen.

Inversely, I had the first 5 chapters of A Dragon's Clause outlined, and got so into it those 5 chapters were 8 chapters when I ran out of outline. There are, however, THREE different pages of notes for world building, characters and orgs, and important details, that I reference while I write, and I very much expect the story will be near to 50 chapters, if not longer.

Hey Doll has no outline. It's got a page of notes.

The Host Club AU as nothing set in stone except the Club itself and the owners. Yeah I did some headcanoning and world building via asks, but I still don't know what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to cut, and I'm going to start writing chapter one in June XD There is no outline.

Hell, the ending of a Heart of Gold was decided by a scene in A Light Touch, so one of the reasons I'm going to a little slower than usual is because I have to make sure Heart stays on track. (And yes, A Light Touch, Quicksand, Heart of Gold, and Thrice Prophesized all happen in the same AU at the same time - it's not just a backdrop AU for those stories like it is for Some Direction and Hey Doll.)

But yeah, that's uh... that's it. I don't really have much of a process beyond "This is what I want to work on" and then I turn on a appropriately themed playlist, pick some art to have on one monitor and write on the other. And honestly, thank fuck for like @swampstew, @mamaalpha, @standfucker, @lyndsyh24, @writing-yarn-goblin, @kazieai, @anon-germany, @theaceofflamesposts, @zorostittiesz, @leakyweep, @icy-spicy and @thus-spoke-lo and @mewiyev for all being awesome fucking friends.

Between writing sprints, and beta-reading and inspiring with head canons and thots and art and support and the list goes on and on - I just. (and gods that's not even including @friedbluechicken and @cyborg-franky and can you understand how long this list is gonna get?)

I just kind of stumbled into this whole fandom thing. I didn't know wtf I was doing or what, and I swear I tripped into being friends with Lyn and Raven and it's all kind of a blur and from those two to everyone else on that list to many more beyond that and these alarmingly talented people talk to me of all the random ass bastards out there, and folks are sending me asks thinking I'm cool and wanting to know my process and like -

I'm just a stoat in a trench coat man, I don't even know what I'm doing here.

/ahem/ Okay, I got a little off the topic, but I guess I can't really say I have a process, and I don't plan out my stories much at all. But I will have highlights like I want x, y, and q to happen, so how do I do that? And the real relief is being okay when the story goes a different way and I just let it. I wrote Some Direction inside of a month just doing that. The only thing I knew about that story was who the antagonist was going to be ^^;

[x-gon-give-it]

how's your writing process?

I think I've got a pretty good system down--at least for me.

Step 1 is the rough draft. And I mean the roughest rough draft to ever draft. Lot's a run-on sentences. Nonsense descriptions. Awkward dialogue. Really just getting the bare bones of writing on the page. The type of writing I wouldn't let anyone see lest they judge my writing capabilities.

Step 2 is something that every writer dreads hearing, and when I first heard of it my knee-jerk reaction would be to self-destruct instead of doing it, but it actually really works. That would be rewriting the entire thing from top-to-bottom. Full on blank page, retyping the whole thing word for word, but at a slower, more detailed pace.

I initially though it would be like pulling teeth, but actually, it helps me slow down and flesh out the world, scenes, and dialogue way more. It's easier to catch it if something isn't flowing right.

Sometimes, if I feel like the draft really needs it, I'll rewrite the entire thing 2-3 more times.

Step 3 is transferring the entire thing to Google Docs (I write on Scrivener), changing the font, tidying up the format, and going over it again in a new, fresh layout. Sometimes, I'll also edit it on my phone to give my brain a different perspective of it.

Step 4 is putting it into a editing software, like Grammarly or ProWritingAid (<- I prefer this one, personally). It has a lot of cool settings. The ones I typically put my stuff through go is grammar, flow, style, and echos.

Step 5 is then listening to the chapter in a text-to-speech app, which makes it way easier to any spot clunky sentences, weird dialogue, grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes etc.. that I might've missed in my previous run-throughs.

Sometimes--this is more like a side-step--I'll then have a beta go over it, because as any writer knows, the more you look at your own writing, the easier it is to not see mistakes T.T After the beta goes over it, I'll listen to it one more time, just to be safe, and then:

Step 6: Prosper. Post that shit on AO3 and obsessively check my email for immediate validation >.<

Writing it all out, the whole thing seems a bit complicated, but it works for me, so it's the general process I follow when writing stuff ^.^

[aria-i-adagio]

WIP Ask Meme

Bold of you to think I'm organized enough to have a WIP folder @hoochieblues.

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I'm adapting these to brief descriptions. If there are any ongoing files in my GDrive I'll include the title/first line, but those are temp then everything moves to Scrivener.

Tagging: @atypicalacademic @motherofqups @niffty24, @ankoku-jin and @hollyand-writes

Here's what we have going on right now:

(In addition to the super fun work of writing my own bloody geometry textbook because the major publishers can't be bothered to do it decently/even vaguely in line with the current academic standards.)

Thrift Shop Vikings continues. It is cringe, it is dark, it is... hopefully actually decent. It has also grown from, "eh, think I can make the Nanowrimo draft into a decent short novel" to "yeah... this is going to be three genre length novels." I want to say I'm 80% of the way to beta-reader ready draft of Act 1, but I'm scared of jinxing myself. (That said, if anyone is interested in not quite Game of Thrones level dark fantasy, with yours truly treating crack [omegaverse] seriously, HMU. This is... not for everyone, and much darker than the fic I've written.)

Once Sindre had recovered enough to not feel that he needed to sleep until the end of days and the final battle, he began waking with the sun. Misery barely described... There's an idiom: as useless as nipples on a man

Where the Elfroot Grows is not dead. It is just percolating. In fact, recently Jeanne has been very loud about being the POV character for the arrival back at Skyhold. Also, the fish out of water appeal of forcing Rhys though Halamshiral is just too damn much. Also, I feel entirely empowered to make up my own canon now.

Jeanne became one of Rhys's primary minders Scene: Getting Hawke moving Rhys wakes to a kiss pressed to the back of his neck Adrian's arm remains extended R&D Ocean

On that note, I'm not really filing the serial numbers off WTEG per se, because I think I've backed far enough up to basic fantasy tropes. Or maybe I'm filing the serial numbers off, IDK and IDC. Either way, I'm at the world-building, occasional scene writing, creating lore, boning up on history and anarchist theory stage of taking the elements I particularly like and running with them, while paying more attention to consistent characterization and general coherence in terms of theory and theology. Currently has more of a steampunk vibe, as I can't quite pull off the level of 'sweeping social change more than mage rebellion' with a thoroughly medieval world-build. I would get into my Xnity, but to the left, meanderings here, but it would turn into a thesis. Anyway, both this and Thrift Shop Vikings are engaged with the idea that anyone who believes god is on their side is as dangerous as hell, just in very different directions.

And @hollyand-writes I really do have enough of an outline for Gatsby meets Kirkwall to get somewhere with it. Just maybe not until the school year is over. Every time I drive past the road named for the local moonshiners I'm reminded/start thinking on it.

[professorspork]

ok someone may have already asked this but I’m curious, how did the idea for newsbees even come about?

luckily I have the discord receipts so I can relay WORD FOR WORD how I first started telling people about it and when

it was early November 2021, and I was reading many bees fics-- devouring longfics when possible, many of which were some genuinely very impressive AUs

I'd never really written anything like that before, and I found myself going "hmm, that might be fun... but I'm so picky about AUs having conceptual synergy, I can't imagine what I'd even do if I wanted to tackle something like that. I guess if I were ever to get the One Perfect Idea that would be one thing but that's Future Me's problem"

and I was just sitting there sort of vibing on that when my brain, nearly instantly, went NEWSIES!!! OBVIOUSLY, YOU'D DO NEWSIES!!, and Future Me became Present Me just like that

I couldn't possibly tell you what stimuli I saw that made me think of it, other than that I love Newsies and I love the bees and the parallels were sort of immediately and intuitively apparent to me. so then I started saying to basically everyone I know "it turns out blake wears high socks and a newsboy cap and inspires people to unionize is exactly the kind of stupid idea I will NEVER let go" (<- direct quote). the concept just... haunted me, all the time. I knew no one would ever write it BUT me and I also knew it would be The Perfect Thing To Write, so. what was I to do??

by late November I was flying home for Thanksgiving and read, on the plane, the Houdini book that included the "shake me, I'm magic" anecdote and it's like a key turned in my brain

I spent most of that holiday season daydreaming about the various potential fire escape scenes and the panic attack/bed sharing/waking up together that now ends chapter 12 and starts chapter 13

@theseerasures bought me Scrivener for Hanukkah that year and I started working on an actual draft (rather than scribbling in a scratch document for notes and ideas) in January of 2022. then I spent the entire next year writing it, mostly in 3k-6k bursts on the weekends because I was too burned out from my job during the week to get anything done. my goal was to have it completed and posted before v9 happened, but I'm rather glad it worked out this way instead.

and THAT IS THE GENESIS OF NEWSBEES.

[darlingpoppet]

i love wtdf so much!! how is the writing process and how far out have you planned the chapters?

Hi anon!! Aww thanks so much for your ask, you made my day! I’m really happy to hear you’re enjoying the story and also that you’re allowing me the opportunity to talk about the process :D

I’m normally kind of a pantser (or plantser?) when writing most of my oneshot fics—that is, at most I jot down only a vague concept that captures the vibe of what I want the story to be about, and then the rest of it comes together during the actual writing process.

Since WTDF is the very first time I’ve ever attempted a serialized longfic, I did not feel confident at all in my ability to completely go with the flow and find the story as I went along, especially with all the elements I’m attempting to juggle at once. In addition to the slowburn romance, I really wanted to include the sorts of tropes & techniques I love in stories, such as foreshadowing/chekov’s guns, unreliable narrators, uncovering a mystery, re-readability, stuff like that! (Chapter 1 especially is like, Foreshadowing: The Chapter and pretty much every detail about it has or is gonna become relevant in some shape or form later on lol!)

Admittedly idk how successful my execution will be so I don’t wanna oversell it too much, but if any of you out there enjoy looking for clues and theory crafting, fwiw that is absolutely something you can do with this fic ;D One of the reasons I was really excited about posting chapter 7 is because it was an opportunity to really start flexing those muscles and let a few planted things pay off… so if you liked that, there’s gonna be plenty more where that came from! ;3c

So anyway, all that to say I did a lot of planning for this story and in the broad strokes, I have the entire thing planned out all the way from start to finish. It’s not quite meticulous bullet points scene by scene though, that’s not my style—I’m still a bit of a plantser in that chapters & scenes are outlined at most with general vague summaries and maybe a few stated goals (there are some spots where I have to put stuff like “be sure to mention Thing A here which will be relevant to Scene B later on!”) and stuff keeps getting added and shuffled around (upcoming chapter 8 for example was a relatively late addition to the story and was split off from chapter 7 only a few months ago because I decided I really wanted to go whole hog with this particular episode lol.) I originally thought this story would be around 100k, which was already much longer than I envisioned, but now I’m certain that it’ll be at least twice that length, and I’m resigned now to the fact that this project is gonna continue be a big part of my life for at least the next year or two XD

That all said, I still wasn’t confident enough to start posting with just a roadmap, and I spent the last two NaNoWriMos in a row trying to lay down as much track ahead of the train as possible. As of right now, between published and unpublished bits over the span of the entire story, I think I have about half of the prose written.

On that note, my process for writing an individual chapter at this point seems to be: 1) write as much prose for the rough draft as I possibly can (or in other words, filling the box with as much sand as possible); then 2) I copy the individual scene documents on scrivener into a fresh single “second draft/editing” doc, where I 3) try to fashion it into something more refined, until I ???? and then 4) PROFIT/end up with the finished final draft.

This middle process takes A WHILE because I’m usually adding as much as prose as I’m taking away; and I’m often inspired to take more outline notes or skip ahead to write a bit of prose for something further down the line; I’m referencing my notes, referencing past & future chapters to make sure everything is staying consistent, doing new research; and I’m always trying really hard to be careful & particular about how I’m wording things… I often have several alternate wordings or sentences in every paragraph that I spend a long time swapping between and fussing over lol. And even then I often step away several times during the process to let the words marinate for a while. So if you’re wondering why it usually takes me about two months on average to complete a chapter, that’s why haha (even longer if god forbid I get blocked like I did with Chapter 4 oooughhhh). I’m sure many can relate! I still feel like I’m particularly slow though, and it’s only been getting harder as my story grows more intricate XD But I’m also having tons of fun with it!

I think the other thing that has helped me chill out a bit is keeping in mind that AO3 works are editable and so I can always just go back and fix stuff if, worst case scenario, I accidentally write myself into a corner or something like that haha. (Hopefully that won’t ever be necessary though!) I have already occasionally gone back to quietly tweak wordings or add a sentence or two that help keep the earlier published chapters consistent with the later ones (for example, I recently decided to stick with using the anachronistic term of “Greeks” rather than “Achaeans”, since it’s more consistent with Hadesgame naming conventions and ultimately this is a Hadesgame-verse fic.)

I think right now my biggest source of anxiety with this story is over how well I’m executing the pacing… whether or not I’m revealing things too soon/not soon enough, or whether or not the flashbacks are enhancing or undermining the momentum in the present story, especially the slowburn—it seems to me like the sort of thing where I can’t really anticipate at all how it’s gonna come across until I’m able to reread the complete story, haha. But I guess I also tell myself that I’m doing my best to order it in the most impactful way possible… and hopefully y’all are enjoying it too, so far :) I recently expressed this in an updated fic summary, but this story is now fully a three-in-one Hades fic: a canon divergence AU, a canon-compliant pre-canon story, and a mostly complete Iliad retelling with a Hadesverse spin… so the final word count is gonna reflect all that.

Thanks so much again for your ask! I’m delighted & eager to discuss my stories or Patrochilles or Hadesgame or the Iliad or anything else tangentially related to those topics any time, so my ask box is always open <3

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Timelines & Trackers

Okayyy, so I've written about the drafting process in detail. But along the way, logistics problems tend to pop up that can't be solved in words alone.

Mostly, it has to do with knowing exactly where someone is or what someone is doing at the same time as another character I'm writing. For instance, when does Alva get back to the Base? How long is she there before Aloy shows up?

I didn't always take detailed notes on this during my first play-through. And after I abandoned my Scrivener file, (more about this here ⚙️) I decided to refine my timeline.

I already had a great foundation based on my first play-through and my New Game+ speed run. So, I started fresh, with a new game file and good old fashioned pen & paper. I'm still working through this as I write. (Just finished the Scorcher side quest!!)

*This is in a Master-size (A4) Leuchtturm notebook, in which I'm working back-to-front. I prefer purple pen and grid paper always.

Yes. I know. I am a psycho. As I mentioned in the Preamble, gaming timelines are a special interest. 💁🏼‍♀️ Plus, I build client-friendly Gantt charts for design projects IN MY SLEEP. So, taking my timeline from paper into Spreadsheet status felt like a v natural next step.

💡I started with a weekly at-a-glance, mostly because I needed to coordinate when various characters arrived back at Base:

Why yes, I am tracking Zo & Aloy's periods. Because there is no single, magical herb you can take to stop pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I dig this trope! It's important to discuss family planning, and our genre is ✨fantasy✨ after all. But I can only suspend my disbelief so far, and there are other ways to get around this, which a Matriarchal society would probably be clued in on.

💡 This quickly evolved to a daily at-a-glance once Kotallo made it to the Base:

This spreadsheet helped me IMMENSELY as I was writing chapters 13, 14, 16, 17, & 19! Basically any time Aloy & Kotallo are not in the same location. Knowing what Kotallo is doing at the Base while Aloy is off mid-adventure has been super important to make sure their Focus calls work and feel natural.

Likewise, knowing exactly what day Erend returns, and how long they have before Aloy gets back all helps with continuity and flow.

Other Things I'm Tracking:

💡Datapoints. The whole point of the GAIA Gang is that they're sorting through the data Aloy collected during the events of HZD. And since that was an absolute whirlwind year for Aloy, I'm thinking her files are a fucking shit show—and almost none of the people sorting through them even know how to read. 😵

So, I started by accumulating all the files by location. I am assuming they're probably geo-tagged—if not, they're at least assembled in order of pick-up, which would mean they're ordered by Aloy's general location at time-of-discovery anyway.

*I crossed them out as I moved them to the next spreadsheet tab...

From this hot mess, I figure that Zo, in her infinite wisdom, took one look at Aloy's files and went, "Oh hell no."

💡Here's the way I imagine Zo organized her playlists, much to Varl, Erend, & Kotallo's relief (Meanwhile, Alva re-filtered everything, and discovered entirely new metadata categories, obviously):

The most important detail here was time!! Most of these are like 1 minute long... but 1 minute in the game is like, 20 minutes IRL. So you've gotta figure the GAIA Gang is back at Base binge-watching an entire docu-series, while simultaneously learning how to read (and procrastinating with hours and hours of bodycam battle footage).

No wonder they're always busy when Aloy shows up!

💡 And yes, these are all tabs on a single spreadsheet:

💡 "Population" is literally just a mess of numbers & formulas as I try to figure out how we went from ~20 E-9 Cradle inhabitants to multiple tribes in the span of ~700 years.

I mean in 3041 we're prolly sitting at like... maybe ~15k in the U.S.?

*On second thought, that Oseram number is probably higher.

Anywayyyy, as fun as a blank page is, my brain really does work best on a grid. The process is totally intuitive, and I create the necessary docs as I go, the same as I would for any client or project. Sometimes, you need to explain things in a way so everyone is on the same page, and I find spreadsheets invaluable in that regard. (Y'all should see my wedding planning spreadsheet, lol.)

This whole process has helped me to find what works for me, and writing fanfic is truly preparing me to write my own original works. What I've discovered is that spreadsheets are part of my flowstate. They bring me a deep sense of peace and they help me to stay on track and oriented while I'm in the weeds.

🖤 Really, I want to come back to something I said in my second 'Process' post: Do what feels natural. Everyone is different. If being 'organized' steals your joy, don't do it. Stay messy! Whatever! Who cares? The most important part is that you find your flowstate.

I found this old Hindu saying while I was copywriting for a Chinese Medicine client, and it really stuck with me: "There are a hundred paths up the mountain, so it doesn't matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain telling everyone else that their path is wrong."

I'm just here documenting my own path up my mountain. And part of me thinks that it's all incredibly self-indulgent and cringe, but hey—when has blogging ever not been?

If you've read this far, I'm grateful. It's all a bit shouting-into-the-void out here, especially when you're this deep into a niche that moved on a while ago. But I've always loved a slowburn. (And if you do too, you might consider reading The Marshal.)

xo, Sheesh.

[ilovedthestars]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

I was tagged by @dendrochilums and @blessphemy !

Words and Fics On AO3

29,868 words, of which 27,560 were actually fic (excluding meta and fanart image descriptions)

12 fanworks, of which 8 were new fics, 2 were fanart, 1 was meta, and 1 was a new chapter to a previously existing fic.

All for Murderbot, except for Things in the Shadows, my Witch King fanfic (and first foray into non-murderbot fic!)

My lifetime AO3 wordcount (since spring 2022) is 55,365

My lifetime actual written wordcount of Murderbot fanfic is somewhere on the order of 250,000 (give or take some duplicate drafts that are getting counted twice in scrivener)

Top Fics by Kudos

My actual top fics by kudos are mostly from 2022

Of the ones published/updated this year, An Unexpected Quarter wins. This is the one that I originally published in 2022 and updated with a surprise second chapter in 2023, so I think the age bias for kudos is still showing

The highest fic originally published in 2023 is Operation Parsec, which is 10th on the overall list. It's also the literal first fic I posted that year, as it was written for the New Years gift exchange. Yeah, I think my kudos rankings are almost entirely based on age

Fics and Fanart on Tumblr

By my count I made 12 fanart posts in my #stars art tag! This includes Many-Colored Strings and Ghosts of the Pressy, the two fanart pieces that I posted to AO3. (Ghosts of the Pressy is technically from 2022, but I didn't share it outside of discord until 2023)

Because I didn't have a tumblr until this year, I decided to go back through my list of ao3 works and post links to them under my #stars ao3 reruns tag

I posted snips from nine unpublished Murderbot fic wips for the Trick or Treat ask game (which are all linked in this post)

And had fun with lots of other ask games, tag games, and rambling about my wips in general! More can be found in #stars fic, #stars wips and #stars ocs

Fandom Fic Events 2023

Last year's Murderbot Diaries New Years Gift exchange ( @mbd-gift-exchange ), for which I wrote Operation Parsec for Lillow and received this gorgeous artwork from @acornwizard!!

The Aspec Murderbot Diaries event, for which I created Many-Colored Strings based on a prompt about platonic soulmate AUs

The Murderbot discord's AUpril event, for which I created several snips and small artworks that were shared only on discord

And several other less formal events/collaborations on discord, like the fictional art exhibition in the future of the MBD universe (i should get around to archiving the snips i wrote for this, I don't think I ever posted them, but I did help organize the ao3 collection)

Upcoming 2024

My gift project for this year's New Years gift exchange!

At least a dozen wips I'd like to get finished, and have no idea when or which order that will happen in, but among my top priorities:

The final 3-ish chapters of Old Unit, Young Unit

Several follow-ups to Salvage or Repair, ft. Yuma and Crowbar, particularly an immediate follow-up fic and a spinoff fic featuring two new OCs with an angsty past

Various other Polaris things that I can share after I finish OU,YU, including Niri POVs, some past & future spinoffs, and OldUnit's official company file

maybe that "Murderbot has a cat" fic that I already wrote most of but have been wanting to polish up for months now?

A revisit to my semi-abandoned Three time travel fix-it where One and Two live, perhaps? I'm low on energy but SC did give me some new ideas...

This was very fun, thanks for the tag! Rules copied below, I added some new categories but the main ones seem to be Words and Fics, Top Fics by Kudos, Fandom Events, and Upcoming 2024.

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

I'll tag @specialagentartemis, @every-eye-evermore, @all-all0s-eyes, and anyone else who's interested!

[chocochipbiscuit]

1, 2, 14, 15 (for fun and flavor), 37 & 38 if you'd like!

1) Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Gonna repeat what I said before, but:

Warm sensual smut with feelings, with an emphasis on oral sex and maybe some size kink. Or general shippy nonsense, usually femslash. <3

2) Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

I’ve written most of the tropes I’ve wanted to try already, is the problem!!! (Or maybe the joy of cutting my fandom teeth on a kink meme!)

But…I’ve never written sex pollen before, and there is a certain fic that’s been kicking its way in my brain for a while, so….

14) What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Oh my fuck, there was this snippet I read once, I forget what book it was in! It was a bunch of creative types talking about their process, and this section was about structure. A lot of people did the typical ‘lay out scenes/summaries on notecards, shuffle around to see if it makes more sense.’ Which also happens to fit my own process and why I love Scrivener!

Except…this one person claimed that they actually printed out their entire manuscript, then scattered/shuffled the pages around so that they were all out of order. Then they would pick them up and sift through them, figuring out if a better flow emerged. They claimed that it helped them pick through themes and arcs by seeing them in a nonlinear order, and maybe that’s true for their process! But that gave me such a visceral NOPE that it still makes me inordinately upset!!!

15) If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

A Most Edible Thistle!!! It was written to be more of a rom-com, and I would especially love to see the last chapter play out as a movie; the ludicrous assassination attempts! Josephine and Yvette squabbling and Josephine chasing her around the office! The entire chase scene with the goat!

37) Talk about your current wips.

OHOHO I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!!!

Awoo AU is my most active WIP, and it’s got the Cassandra/Leliana modern werewolf vibes up the wahoo!!!! It’s also the first fic (in a long time!) that I tried launching into without an extensive outline first, so…uh. It’s gonna be a real rough draft when this first draft’s done. It’s already teetered between horror/suspense vibes, family comedy, romance, and now I gotta finish this and get everything in harmony!

Originally I was thinking about ‘monstrousness’ as an allegory for queerness, and the way that we so often find refuge in loving the ‘other’ we have been taught to fear, but along the way it’s made me think about Leliana’s own relationship to femininity and the ways she performs those rituals and the contrast between how deliberately rich tourist femme she is in human form and the sleek monster of her wolf form. I’m just now writing the scene where she first lets Cassandra see her change into a wolf (she knows she’s a lovely human and a lovely wolf; those in-between shapes???? NO) and thinking about the tremendous vulnerability and acceptance there and how Cass has just begun to accept that she likes girls (and Leliana in particular) and loves the ‘monstrous’ parts of Leliana that are neither soft or delicate, and just!!!!

I HAVE FEELINGS OKAY!!!!

if you love me (let me go) is the super-indulgent short post-RE2 fic where Ada doms Leon! If only because I love Ada and she deserves to have a good time bossing around this rookie cop!!!

It’s super short, the first draft’s already done, and I’m holding out for it until after finishing Awoo AU because I think it’ll be an easy revision. Just something to build up my confidence after all the longfic hell. :’)

Fallout Necro AU is the other WIP that’s been on the backburner, and I plan to make revising that my next longfic project after I finish writing Awoo AU’s first draft!!! It’s a Locked Tomb/Fallout fusion, where basically necromancy mushroomed like bioluminous fungi after the bombs dropped, and cav/necro pairs work as a sort of shitty soulmates AU. The right cav/necro pair can access greater power than either can individually, but oh boy! There are some toxic relationships there too!

Long story short: Hancock accepts Danse into Goodneighbor after Danse is kicked out of the BoS. They realize (to their mutual horror) that they are a perfect cav/necro match. Danse pledges himself to be Hancock’s necromantic juicebox (“one flesh, one end”) because he’s desperate to be useful. Desperate to be used. And Hancock accepts because fuck it, even as Goodneighbor’s most powerful necromancer, he’s running on fumes these days and wants to build a neighborhood (a future) that will outlive him.

Feels! Cool necromantic battles! Undead armies! Skeletal automatons tending the crops! And then the Brotherhood marching on Goodneighbor, and all the Goodneighbor citizens rising up to take a stand!

It’s. Uh. Over 40k words as a rough draft, and I’m both terrified and excited for when I dive into revisions.

38) Talk about a review that made your day.

ALL OF THEM!!!!

But I will confess….there’s a special delight to the comments that read like book reports, where someone picks apart themes and character arcs or points out key parts of the dynamic that I love! Or when I’m in an exchange and assigned to one of my friends or a writer I greatly admire (senpai notice me~!) and they write a super-nice comment while we’re still in the anon period!!!!

I just! At the end of the day, one of the reasons I post fic is because I crave that moment of connection, of knowing that the words resonated with someone else. In that sense, while I appreciate kudos, they don’t start a conversation in the same way. It’s a way of saying that I’m not entirely alone in this vast ocean of feels provoked by this one ship or character dynamic.

Thank you for the questions!!!! I’m gonna go roll in feels now!

(Asks are from this meme!)

[memendoemori]

I said this on the twitspace as well, but:

I've been doing Camp NaNo this year and for the first time, I'm writing it entirely in Scrivener to really take advantage of the program from draft to completion and I've gotta say, it absolutely whips ass to be able to separate my writing into chunks instead of using doc headers.

Last year when I tried NaNoWriMo I crashed and burned I think about a week into working on it because I was being terribly, horribly unkind to myself with every word I was writing. Writing a story was no longer a puzzle I was having fun putting together. It was a punishment game. All I did the entire time was berate myself and tell myself that I'd lost the spark, lost the drive, shitcanned my ability and that everything I wrote was a testament to that rather than me figuring out how to write again after taking about 6-8 months off.

A lot of my writer hang-ups are the same that many other writers encounter. I'm very harsh on myself when I feel like I'm not matching my ability or the ability that I think everyone else will enjoy reading. Perfectionism is a terrible habit and I was deep into it last year. For whatever reason, Scrivener's ability to separate chunks of writing into chapters that compile in the same project is breaking me out of that mindset. I started the first chapter three separate times. A and B didn't feel right but C did and I wrote the most with that one.

Because they weren't all in the same draft doc, not really, I didn't feel this annoyance and anger that I'd not met whatever insane, lofty standard my brain wanted to browbeat me with that day. A and B got me to C, which I like immensely. It's not perfect but no first draft is.

All of this to say that I'm finally enjoying writing again after a really long period of not doing so and I do attribute it to finally taking the Scrivener plunge and using every clever trick it's got to keep me productive and not hating what I'm doing.

[ahiddenpath]

Ideas for Approaching Sharing Fanfics

I've been trying to think of my ongoing issues with sharing my work online in a more constructive way, instead of being Big Sad about it! Ideas beneath the cut.

This is 100% spitballing, I have made 0 decisions. Heck, the most likely outcome is that I take a long break and then return to what I was doing with sharing my fics. Don't take these ideas as a threat or a promise, lol!

I do think these are interesting ideas, though, and I'm so curious what people might make of them, especially writers and fic enthusiasts!

-The simplest idea is to continue writing as I am now and share my work with mutuals/friends. I suppose this way, at least I know my writing IS being read and enjoyed, and there will be no AI scraping/misuse shenanigans.

-Practice Editing Completed Works

I've made great progress developing my writing as ahiddenpath. That's even more valuable than my stories themselves, which is a reassurance; there's no way I wasted my time. However, something I haven't done is edit an entire, completed work as a single unit. Fanfics are released on a chapter basis, and while I've learned to edit chapters, I haven't gone back over a completed work.

Basically, my work is all completed first drafts or in-progress first drafts. And that's fine, but if I'm going to seriously pursue becoming a novelist, then I 100% need the skill of refining completed drafts. The fact that I haven't is a bit alarming.

That's the next thing I want to do. I've referenced a "secret project" a few times, now. That project is a completely edited Growing Up with You, something I've been picking at off and on for a while, now. My initial plan was to edit it and release the new chapters on AO3, while leaving the FFN version alone for anyone who enjoyed that and doesn't want to see it change. As you know, I've also been working on an edited Four Years, although the GUWY project is much more ambitious, with new content. I especially wanted to fill in some spots (like the Chosen first meeting in early Adventure and some parts of 02) and add content about Galemon.

But with my recent feelings about sharing my work online, you can see where sharing an improved product is uhhh... Something I'm reluctant to do. So I guess that begs the question... What would I do with these edited fanfics, other than use them for practice?

-Sell epub files of my edited fics to any interested trusted individuals

I've recently been uploading my fics to Kindle and exploring Scrivener's file export options. It's so convenient to read fics on kindle instead of online! Obviously, while fanart creators can sell their wares, fanfic writers face additional/different challenges, so I'd have to figure that out/do a benefit/risk analysis.

-Start a patreon with epub files as rewards

This one seems kind of overly complicated/overkill to me, but I guess it's an option. It's also a way to share art if I want to continue making it??? Same issues as the previous suggestion, though, and no guarantee of protecting my work, really???

-Book bind complete/edited fics

Tbh, because of material costs and how long it takes to make a book, I'd have to charge so much for book binding that I'm not sure anyone would be interested (as opposed to epub files, which would only be a few dollars). I enjoy doing it, however, so this would be a great personal project.

-Change my fanfics and try to publish them

I'm a big AU gal, so it's possible that I might be able to edit some of my fics with publishing in mind. I have no idea how that would go, but regardless, it might be meaningful practice.

-Write and try to publish an original short story collection

I have a few short stories (many based on dreams) that I haven't shared, mostly because they're just a bit... Hm, they're just different than my fics, so I figured the reception would be pretty meh. These would likely be the most conducive items for publishing

-Work on an original novel

I've been working on a series of novels off and on since I was 14, and man, does the 14 part show, lmao! I'm not sure how viable this novel series would be, especially because some of the ideas I thought were so cool and unique when I was 14... Um. Honey. No, they're not. But you have a big heart and passion, young miss, and that's worth a lot!!!!

If you ask what my dream is, I'd say to be a novelist. But I also 100% assume that my stuff would never get off the ground, and statistically, that's likely. Still, my husband tells me that I'll regret it if I never try. I don't have dreams of grandeur, but I do know how to put the work in on something. Maybe it's time?

Those are my current thoughts! Keep in mind that I still would like to finish my ongoing fics, especially Puits d'Amour. I do think that editing a complete fic would be developmentally meaningful, so I imagine I will put more time into that.

For now, I'm not making any decisions, since I suspect I might just be burnt out and struggling with... You know... Existing in 2023. We'll see how it goes! Take care, and let me know if you think any of these ideas are interesting!

[crehador]

hihi welcome back!!! 3, 11, and 19 for the get to know your author ask game? if u want!!

hi hidey thank u hidey!!

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

front to back always, start to finish, no jumping around. i'm not even sure if that's the way i... like writing, the most? it's just the only thing that's ever worked for me

in theory writing the scenes that grab my brain the most, then connecting the dots between them sounds like the most fun! and it's something i would definitely consider trying again in the future

but tragically it's never worked for me in the past (not that it matters too much these days since most of my fics are Very Short)

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

ok this might not technically count as an aspect of writing but finishing things was always and forever my biggest weakness, for much of my writerly life i just could not finish what i started (whether fanfic or original works)

so some time back i decided this! this has to change!! and managed to convince myself that there was nothing wrong with shorter works, that finishing them would be good practice for finishing anything

which helped! i finish most things i start these days, though a lot of the time i still have to race through an entire draft before my brain figures out what i'm doing lol

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

i used to use scrivener, which had a lot of bells and whistles that helped in planning bigger projects, but often it became more of a distraction than anything (if i'm spending hours customizing and color-coding index cards to make them look nice i'm not writing!!)

these days a really beefy, thorough outline gets me through most longer pieces. scene-by-scene bullet points, jotted down snippets of dialogue that pop into my mind as i outline, comments saying "DON'T FORGET TO TIE X INTO Y AT SOME POINT" (only for me to forget about the comment anyway lmao)

a lot gets changed around when the actual writing happens, but a rambly outline tends to be a good enough foundation for me

the other big part of keeping track of things (and i'm sure this is not efficient at all) is just a lot of rereading. i'm almost always rereading an entire draft before continuing it, which is not feasible for very long works, but it does (i hope lol) help me keep earlier scenes fresh in my mind as i write

[xoxoemynn]

Was tagged by @wistfulcynic to share my writing process, fun! Tagging @abigailpents, @red-sky-in-mourning, @montygreen, @gayhoediaz, aaaaand....I think I've already seen all my writer mutals active on Tumblr tagged in this BUT if you have not been, please consider yourself tagged.

Do you write in order? I do. I have to. I will happily tell other people that if they're stuck, they should skip the scene and come back later, but when I try to do it, I fail. My brain just won't let me proceed with the next until I know exactly what happens in the moments leading up to it, because WHAT IF SCENE A INFLUENCES SCENE B? I do wish I could jump around, but I can't.

How fully formed does your writing come out the first try? Pretty damn finished. I may go back in and add some flourishes, but overall, I'd say it's about 95% there.

How many drafts do you go through? Depends if it's a one shot or something like WTDB. One shots usually it's first draft, possibly pass it off to a beta reader, revised draft, and then I do another round of editing once I upload to AO3 because I swear I always find new things to fix once I see it in a totally new format, bringing us to a total of three. WTBD? Depending on the chapter, but usually looking at five or six.

Tell me about your process. I've realized I have two non-negotiables. The first is music. Sometimes I don't have music on because I feel like I need to Focus and it turns out I just don't write anything. I created a writing playlist for WTDB that basically just became my writing playlist, period, because my brain now associates it with writing. Other non-negotiable is an outline. I need one. Even if it's just bullet points. Every time I try to pants it I just end up spinning my wheels until I give in and jot at least a few notes down.

Again, I'd say one shots are different than a longer piece like WTDB. One shot I come up with an idea, write down the gist of the idea and maybe key lines/details I want to include because my memory is shit and I WILL forget. Then I just open up the ole Google doc and get going. I'm a simple lady.

WTDB was a totally different ballgame. I used Scrivener for that, and I can't imagine writing something of that length without it. I had a tab for each character, as well as pages for key settings, descriptions, references, etc. before I officially started writing. Especially with the intro character background stories, I was often shimmying sections around, and Scrivener made it really easy to do that. Then I'd write a chapter, immediately send it off to @margotandthefox for a pulse check off "does this make sense, does this work, does anything stand out to you as off?" Get it back, make edits. Once I had a nice chonk together, I'd send off to @monksofthescrew to beta that entire section of chapters. I'd then do some initial revisions, then another round when it's actually time for the chapter to go up, and a final one on AO3. (Although with ch. 5 I skipped AO3 because I had already been looking at it so much and it was weirdly liberating.)

Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I'd be lost without @margotandthefox, who frequently lets me just throw half-baked ideas at her, sometimes via rambling text, sometimes rambling audio message, and work through areas when I'm stuck. Highly, highly recommend you get a friend like that. 💕

Only other note I thought I'd share is I read my writing out loud as I edit, which was a trick I learned from my days as a writing tutor. And when I read along in my head, the voice narrating WTDB, especially the intro scenes, is the voice of God/the narrator from Good Omens. Now you know.

[void-botanist]

WIP Titles + Canons

Because I posted my first genuine Old Canon snippet yesterday and I also talk a lot about Old/Middle/New Canon now I wanted to take my list from the WIP titles tag and break it down a little more into my rough canons, with some notes about how un/hinged some of these ideas were. I will in fact answer asks about these but I reserve the right to [skip egregious James nonsense]

Pajiir & Delphonus

(the numbered ones are versions typically with multiple drafts)

Old Canon

[1] Azalea the Book (sorry it's just Secrets of Droon but…not that great I was like 8-10 for this. Azalea is the princesstagonist and Zalen is the barely-seen villain)

[2] Azalea Sequels (see above)

[3] Azalea Dream Beginning (ambitious. weird. chocolatey. there was torture??? this draft sucks [mostly affectionate])

[4] Azalea 3 (the origin of Dez and Julian, but they were pawns/patsies in Zalen's wildly ambitious plan to kidnap the entire royal family and then become king [bc he was Azalea's cousin]. I also got super distracted with him just like. falling in love with the royal police chief. There's some really cute stuff in these drafts but most of it is barely plot relevant. There was also a secret spy organization that was plot relevant or would have been eventually? Also first appearances of Kirnus, Hoven, Candra, Emmitt, Bean, and Franny)

[4.5] Meldraco (tiny draft about an orphan adopted by a nobleman who shadow runs a country, from whose estate he plans to escape. sounds cooler than it actually was tbh)

[5] Hope (the last hurrah of "Zalen is the villain" stories)

[6] Princess Azalea (what if the conflict was not "Zalen is the villain" but ghosts, need to procure magic seeds for an overly convoluted birthday present, summer camp, swl power struggles, or maybe Zalen kind of I don't remember what was supposed to happen? Origin of Syndy and a bunch of swl and imbra characters.)

Middle Canon

[7] Spacefarer Stories (wild space adventure involving evil scientist aliens, the rebellion against evil scientist aliens, the previous version of Dez being a charismatic asshole action hero, early versions of Anni/Julian/Dez dynamics, Zalen being pathetic, and a teenager who just wants to stop enduring corporal punishment and being shot back to Pajiir in a tiny space capsule. First appearances of several Melichacha crew members)

[8] Zalen the First (Autobio) (literally what it sounds like, Zalen's autobiography & related. surprisingly not a bad read)

[9] Chykoff Stories (stories about Zalen going to college and studying abroad, having a bad time with his girlfriend and boats, being Silas's roommate)

[10] The War Files (remember that weird nobleman? yeah he started a whole war and I decided to get Azalea and Seriito involved because royals. kind of a nothing draft except I also introduced the first iterations of new Keearo & Kirnus)

[11] Elbas Stories (Zalen, still a rich inventor, decides to buy a whole island)

[12] Az 2019 (a half-assed retwisting of some Princess Azalea threads. Origin of the "Seriito is hot for [graduate student] teacher" concept that became Sheri)

New Canon

The Fourth Android (the Scrivener file is just called Dez. went through so many concept iterations even before I introduced it here that thinking about it makes me want to scream. however some of that old stuff is still a lot of fun)

Delphonus 2 and 3 (sequels to TFA without titles. I just had ideas and needed a place to put them)

Triad (need to post a new intro. I made it better tho I'm not actively writing it)

Syndy & Hoven (favorite aggressive snowglobe story)

Pajiir Reference (there was too much character lore to reasonably put it inside a WIP Scrivener file so I put it here)

Pajiir Side Scenes (there were too many side scenes to reasonably keep inside Pajiir Reference so I put it here)

Locality Space

(previously Faeryland)

Old Canon

Creepsters - Witcheden Phase (9 major versions. faery police shenanigans with a fast and loose association with actual Celtic/English folklore [my output when the input was so many UK cop/mystery shows + a copy of Katherine Briggs' An Encyclopedia of Fairies]. Source of the zipline incident. Kat is our primary human POV)

HS - Horatio's Story (attempted reframing, kinda nothing)

SNA - Standing, Nazib, and Associates (what if it was the faery police guys but they were cool PIs instead)

Spinder and Georg (a full 400+ pages of a so-so-ishly executed romance between Spinder & Isabel under a fake name)

Middle Canon

LiBN - Love in Brú Nua (what if it was the faery police guys but they weren't police or PIs they were just having relationships. in an underground city)

Tales of Tobar Si (what if I super honed in on whatever's up with Horatio & Sid. direct antecedent of Another Ocean's Moon)

Spinder and Isabel (closer to S&G than Nicea, but with more Rodney & Declan)

Isabelle and Spynder (the far superior version [read: it's sexy and the Faeryland/Earth logistics make sense and I made an actual attempt to pay attention to the folklore])

Christina & Kat (lesbian attempting to locate her lost great-uncle [Leon] and with questionable motives falls for a powerful witch [Christina] with an equally powerful and bitchy ex. Walked so Drowning in the Stars could run)

New Canon

Nicea (fun fact: Rodney's design is straight out of Isabelle & Spynder and does not resemble earlier versions)

Another Ocean's Moon (not really written at all yet, though it's pretty much just space Tales of Tobar Si. maybe the Avis & Sorian stuff will go in it)

Drowning in the Stars (except Kat is nice and awkward lol)

Locality Space Side Scenes (currently 99% Sorian and Avis and 1% Michael making amends for the Incident)

If you wanna know more about all the New Canon stuff I have a WIP Master List also.

[amewinterswriting]

🦋 tell us about your current wip

🍄 name a song that represents your mc

My current blurb for Magic's Servant is:

A dark rural fantasy set in modern day Wales, featuring Talli, a teenager who is in way over her head. There's also a talking cat with a secret, shadowy manipulative demons, and immortal figures from Arthurian mythology locked into a vicious stalemate over the centuries.

On a more personal note, the way I approached writing this is a list of my least favorite ways to write anything ever, and as such, this has been a thorn in my side for years. I started off with the idea of a mysterious magic cat and an abandoned church. To explore who the cat was and why he lived in an abandoned church, I pantsed a whole film script over the course of a month (Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo's forgotten and abandoned sister), which gave me a vague outline of a story, introduced a lot of main elements and scenes but also introduced a lot of loose plot threads, characters and sideplots that didn't really go anywhere. Worse, I really didn't feel like there was anything interesting or notable about my MC (which as we all know is utterly unforgivable in writing).

So over the course of the next few years, I wrote a lot of backstory, sidestory, continuation of the story and notes. I also rewrote some key scenes of the script. Some of which was in first person prose, some of which was also in script format and some of which was in third person. If this already sounds like a mess...well, it was. Which is why I procrastinated on doing anything else with it for years. (To be entirely fair, I still thought about it a lot, and thought about the themes I wanted to explore and other characters in that world and more directions I could take the plot in. But I procrastinated actually getting all my various drafts together into one readable manuscript in a single tense and narrative.) I also developed a lot as a writer, practicing longform fiction on entirely different work and finding a more coherent voice.

The main reason I'm actually working on it now is my wife. I realised while talking with her about it that there were interesting things about the story that I don't want just relegated to a hard drive somewhere, and I want it in a form that other real human people can read. Or as she said: you need to write the thing. So I spent an absolute age on Scrivener importing all the documents I had, even the scripts and notes and scenes I had three different versions of. Then I plotted out a coherent outline - where would it make sense for backstory to be placed between chapters? What backstory would make more impact just implied instead of outright text? What order do things need to happen in? Can I actually fit this subplot in this book or is this going to be better as a sequel? Scrivener was especially useful for the notecard feature - you can write up a quick sentence or two describing the chapter and move it around within the project, so I could play around with placement and get a feel for the flow of the plot. I also love the notes I can make for each chapter - since it can get complicated very quickly. I use them to make a note of what knowledge each character has by the end of a scene - especially because in the earlier drafts, characters (and thus, the reader) learnt far too much, far too quickly, so this refining draft has been about slowing down the rate of information and introducing more emotion. That means I need to know what characters know what information at an glance, since it's usually a lot less than I think it is!

Of course, the most important thing is that I now actually like my main character. I think this is something only time could fix - when I first wrote the first draft, I was an insecure teenager who felt like I wasn't notable or interesting, and I was writing a teenager in a similar situation. With time, I've grown and had life experiences and can also treasure the abnormal that seemed so normal to me at the time. In many ways, this is a collaboration with my teenage self and a love letter to myself.

Which neatly leads to the song that represents Talli, the MC. I have a few, but the one I've settled on is One Day by Kodaline. I think it sums up the experience of undergoing big changes that can seem overwhelming, the awkward self-consciousness of teenage years and not necessarily having the right help and support available to you. As the song asks: "how are you still holding on?" and that feels like a large part of Talli's struggle throughout the plot; barely holding on while powerful beings try to use her for their own convenience.

[sleepyowlwrites]

wip folders/titles tag (to end all tags)

briar-bush snagged by @aalinaaaaaa @talesofsorrowandofruin @mj-is-writing and @nicola-writes my goodness. it's been a little while since I did this, and I've got some new followers, so here goes. I'm doing groupings AKA scrivener docs. and I'm not gonna do this again any time soon, no matter what new ideas I get.

and other stories > Idea Box:

Rowena > Troublesome Princes, Twin Wizards, Vanishing Staircase, Sneezing Rain, Tiny Pirates, Lost Dragons, Doomed Crown, True Love's Kiss

Ghost Story > Violet, Trans-dimensional Ghosts

Spirits and Summoners

Spider Silk

City Story > dirt in the doing, gang up on crime

Death Story > The Score

Guild Story > House of Favors, House of Swords, House of Breath

Hunter Story

Apocalypse Story > Wasteland > Two Alone

Summer Story > The Summer Gallery

College Story > Previous Lives and Premonitions

old fantasy > 29 Days of October

Tumblr Shorts > remember/forget, know/don't know, greatest detective, riveting revival, villain/not villain, glow, study flirting, hell in a handbasket, the chosen one, the grave diggers, a universe of you, potions, trust?

Archive > The Illusion, ideas

Stories? > >100, you were a windshield

youth > The Ephemeral Infinite

Prewritten > scenes pt.1, scenes pt.2, supplemental scenes, episodes, chronological

Parts of the Story > The Garden, The Broken Eclipse, An Ocean of Moments, Skin Deep Spaces, Valley Under the Bridge, Mountain and Moon, Right Here, Right Now, Just Between Us, Void Inside the Soul, Kinder Lies, Abyss of Memory, The Bittersweet and Beautiful, The Dragons of Summer

Draft 02 > The Garden, from the journal

Sorting the Story > R and Mark

AUs > Spirits and Spectres

universe (space story)

first draft > anxiety story

The Beginning

The Bleed

The Encounter

The House

The Many Happenings

The Start of Class

The Weekend

The Routine

The Upset

The Anger

The Breakdown

The Storm

The Insides

The Stars

Spontaneous Scenes > ree's name, new snowboots, synopsis, meet theo, not angel ree, exist without

Name Swap > The Entire Thing

petrichor > draft

Act 1 > prologue, Meet the Fam (Kena, Kyt, One Family), Meet the Crisis (Drying, Dying, Crying), Meet the Quest (Walking, Talking, Stalking)

Act 2 > Meet the City (New People, New World, New Status), Meet the Magic (Internal, External, Paternal), Meet the Curse (Implications, Characterizations, Explanations)

Act 3 > Meet the Wizard (Choosing Sides, Switching Sides, Inside-outside), Meet the Recipe (Seeking, Speaking, Sleeping), Meet the Choices (Storms, Silence, Savior)

Burn::Freeze > name replace

Scenes > real communication, sardha is angry, a god laughs

Collections > Fandoms

The 100 > Punctuation, Sage

Shadowhunters

Avengers

Chicago P.D. > Shots

Power Rangers

ATLA

Misc.

Other Stuff > dialogue prompts, conversation prompts, setting prompts, title prompts

poetry and prose > Directory

Archive > 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017-19, 2020

Modern Collections: ellipses of thought, wwafllhdwg, walls and windows, weary and wanting, colors and creation, the kinds of being, you without me, sometimes words, what I will give you, discord, same again, deadly delights, the unknown, a palette of wonder

The Book of Lost Lyrics > love lines, lonely lines

The Book of Lost Lines > short, collectionless

free edits > ghosty's song, deathdancer

writing thoughts > character, story

sleepy subtitles library > The Library

C Dramas > The Untamed (Blood series, character study), The Lost Tomb (The Sounds in Silence, Functions of a Heart, Shorts, Living Death series)

Thai Dramas > KP (constellation), Misc.

kboys > Crossovers (gang, food & fruit, meta-portal), TXT (apocalypse, angels?), Archive Kpop

and that's it! that all the docs. I did it very thoroughly this time, covered all the wips, the parts, the ideas, the fics and the poetry. I even left a few out because they are barely ideas and I'll never write them. they're just pages with names, so they don't count. anyway. um. I don't remember who did this during the last go-round of tags. so just ignore me if you've done this recently. @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @uraniumwriting @ettawritesnstudies @viskafrer @zoya-writes @oh-no-another-idea @writing-is-a-martial-art OR ANYBODY, of course, as always

And Dreamy, who always wants to snoop on what I'm writing @writingonesdreams