#my beautiful spreadsheet i'm gonna miss you so much

[whatmakesagod]

Some things that have helped me (so far) on my journey to writing a novel

Caveat that I am not agented and am still writing. I'm just sharing what is helping me in case it might help someone else.

Writing a query after 10k. Nothing sucks more than getting 40k in and realizing that you don't actually have stakes. Or character motivations. Or a throughline. Or worse, all three are missing. If you are a pantster/gardener like me, it really pays to write until you've had a bit of time to get to know the world, plot, and characters and figure out what they are and what they are doing and then write a query. If you struggle to write it, you might need to pivot, especially if you realize all you have is events and characters passively doing things.

Be willing to let projects marinate. I'm not gonna talk about how many WIPs I have because that's a really embarrassing number. The amount of ideas marinating in the back of my head is even longer. When a project is just not working and you cannot force it, set it aside and give it more time. Come back to it when you're ready to tackle it; maybe you'll have new ideas and better ways to handle the subject matter or characters.

Writing short stories can be a great way to try things out. Want to improve your descriptions or combat scenes? Or maybe you really just want to get a better grasp on word choice and sentence variety. Maybe that idea can be developed further or maybe it's only meant to be a short story. Either way, the idea has been exorcised and you have a new project to develop your editing skills on on top of having worked on your other skills.

Do a reverse outline as you go. If you are not a plotter/architect, the idea of the outline can either be really scary or it can be counterproductive. If I write an outline before the work, I feel as if I've written it. The journey matters more to me than the destination and I lose all motivation if I have a finished, developed outline. Instead, I write a chapter and then jot down what the audience learns, what the characters learn/are revealed to have known, and the contents of the chapter. I also keep notes in a spreadsheet on characters, motifs, potential changes, themes, and worldbuilding details.

This is to my fellow pantsters: do not let yourself become too inspired by your New Favorite Thing when it comes to the WIP. Do not do it. Do not let the themes of infertility in the Witcher invade your retelliing of Snow White if you never had plans for it to be there without seriously thinking it over. Make a note, let it sit, and decide later when you are no longer as inspired. Sometimes it really can work and is the right choice. Other times...no. Mermaids do not belong in every project no matter much you love The Little Mermaid. Save yourself the grief of taking hard pivots you have to undo at a later date.

Not keeping everything in my head and writing it down. Things still in your brain are beautiful and perfect and are still so very malleable. You cannot possibly keep track of every aspect of your WIPs if it's only in your head and, worse yet, if you're anything like me, you cannot edit what you cannot physical see on the page. When it's on the page, then you can do the real work of figuring out if it actually works.

Regularly consume media from a variety of cultures, genres, and voices. Netflix has an incredible catalogue of works ranging from a Nigerian legal drama to a South African conspiracy teen drama to an Irish comedy about the Troubles and life under normalized violence to a South Korean historical zombie horror series. For books, there is a growing wealth of translated works from many different cultures and a sharp rise in diverse authors. Australia has it's own literary movements as does Japan and Brazil. There are more and more books by and for Queer and neurodivergent people. Even listening to music can help. It's important to see what groups outside of your own are doing in media and art, how they represent themselves and their identity/culture/history, and the kinds of stories they want to see and make. It might inspire you, but it's also a great chance to learn and help uplift other voices.

Reading. This is tied to number 7, but reading really cannot be understated. Read the age category and genre you want to write in. Read short stories professionally published online. If you do better with audiobooks, listen to audiobooks. Thankfully, more and more authors seem to be getting them.

Resources:

[runicmagitek]

4, 5, and/or 13?

Answered 4 over here, but will gladly tackle the rest! Thanks a bunch for the ask 💕

5) What aspect of writing have you most improved over time? How did you improve this? What are you trying to improve on now? Oh fuck, that's a lot to wrap my head around, because I've been writing for A While lol. I think in general, my project management of all my fics has improved. Thanks to a lot of spreadsheets, I have a good idea of how many words I can feasibly write per day and how long it would take me to begin and complete a particular fic idea. I've also done a lot to fine tune my editing process, which I was NOT good at in my earlier days. I could probably revisit Darkness/Starlight and shave 20k words off it easily, but hey, it's a learning process. I look at how long it took me to edit that and where I struggled… then look at What Leads You Here, which was longer and took literally a third of the time to edit. I'll take that win for sure.

What I'm trying to improve on now? Being concise. I always ramble too much in the first drafts, so I'd love to do lesss of that. However, I also feel that's just a part of my process and I know I'll edit myself during revisions, so maybe it's fine the way it is.

13) What are some must-read fanfics in your fandoms? Why do you admire these, and how have they impacted your works? If it's on my bookmarks page on AO3, I highly rec it. But here are some faves of those faves that come to mind, along with my bookmark notes for them. As for how they impacted my own works? Well, aren't we always inspired by the art that's around us? You experience something beautiful like catching lightning in a bottle and you never want to let it go, really. That's just being a creative type in a nutshell.

We Are Cinders From a Fire Burning Long Ago (Celes/Terra - Final Fantasy VI) Celes and Terra adjust to their new lives after Kefka's defeat and learn to not only live again, but come to love one another. A delicious treat of a story, equal parts witty and dark with the most well-earned happy ending I've read in some time.

In the Case of Bailey Gilande (Bailey & Royce - Transistor) A heartbreaking glimpse of Bailey's life before she left for the country.

Get On My Wave (Keitaro/Natsuno - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim) A lovely mid-destruction missing scene, where these two have a touching moment together, complete with hurt/comfort and kissies~

lifetime in repeat (BJ/Ei - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim) ~cries in gay~ oh my god, he's in love with the robot and it hurts so good and I love Them and- ~insert more hysterical sobbing here~

The Villain of Time (Ganondorf/Zelda - Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker) Don't mind me, I'm just lying face down in the rain and screaming forever. And by rain, I mean my tears. A fucking STUNNING take on Wind Waker and behind Ganondorf's intentions. Grab tissues - you're gonna need them.

[flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash]

Hi! Sorry if this is a bother, but do you happen to have a fic rec about your favourite Snamione/Lumione fics? :D I'm in need of some reading material tbh 😂

Hey! Oh, I can definitely give you some favs! I only recently got back into reading Snamione and Lumione, so I’m very behind on fics, and have a spreadsheet of like 200 fics of those two ships that I tell myself I’m going to read, if I ever have the time haha. I’ll give you the ones I’ve read so far that I really enjoyed. They’re mostly pretty long fics, because I tend to lean towards epic fics with loads of character development. If you do happen to read any of them, feel free to let me know what you thought! :D 

I’m putting a keep reading bar because this got a lot longer than I expected it to.

For Snamione:

-Chasing the Sun by Loten. This is my #1 favorite Snamione slow burn so far. It’s pretty long, has a reallll long slow burn, but is SO worth it. I dare you to read the first 3 chapters and not be hooked with the background tale she weaves of Snape. And that’s all I’ll say about that one, otherwise I’ll write an entire essay on how much I friggin LOVED that fic. 

-Post Tenabras, Lux also by Loten. This is another amazing one. Not as much of a slow burn, and it’s set 10 years post-war. But holy shit, it’s SO good. Loten is a genius writer, and she delves into the psychology and mental health of Severus and Hermione in such a beautiful way in both her longer fics. She portrays all the horrors of Snape’s past in a way that gives you all the feels, and then allows him to finally get the love and redemption that (I think) he always deserved. I walked around with a huge, goofy smile on my face the rest of the day when I finished both this and Chasing the Sun. 

-Pet Project by Caeria. This is a long as HELL slow burn. Seriously, it’s like almost all slow burn, which got a bit frustrating at times, but also, I love the torture of slow burn, and this was torture of the utmost level. It’s one of those fics where you squeal in happiness the first time Snape doesn’t openly sneer at Hermione and instead just neutrally glares, that’s how slow of a burn it is haha. It’s so much fun to see Hermione trying to be on Snape’s side and have his back, while also not wanting him to know that’s what she’s doing. It takes forever for her to win him over, but that’s what makes it so captivating a read, at least for me. 

-The Love You Take by Subersa. This is a very interesting fic, in that Hermione is cursed by Voldemort to be sexually bonded to the first man she sees when she wakes up. He means for it to be Dumbledore, but Dumbledore pushes Snape in front of her, instead. So, we start off the fic with Hermione being cursed to need sexual release from Snape on a VERY frequent basis. I was really hesitant to read this one, because they sleep together really early on in the fic (and I tend to prefer slow burns), but holy crap, this author kept me hooked the entire way through. Besides the plot being phenomenal, she proved me wrong in thinking I couldn’t enjoy a long fic that started out with smut. The diversity in the love/sex scenes was just…ugh, so good. It never felt repetitive or boring, and the very end of the fic, at the post-war ceremony, had me in tears. It was beautiful. 

-Of Muggles and Magic by Aurette. I just finished this fic on Friday, and it was a glorious historical AU Snamione fic. It starts out when Hermione is 11 years old, and goes through her growing up, in a way that is very different than her canon Hogwarts experience. It has a very Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre type of feel, which was really fun to read. And there were some hilarious parts that had me choking back cackles while reading on my work breaks. This was my first time reading a fic by Aurette, and I know it will most certainly not be my last, because her writing is phenomenal. 

-Clash of the Conjurers by llorolluvia. This is another one where Snape and Hermione are cursed together, thanks to Voldemort. In this one, Hermione is cursed to obey any and every command Snape gives to her. She’s seen by the Death Eaters as a sort of “pet” for him…but he quickly comes to see her as much more than that. This was another fic that wasn’t a slow burn, but still kept me captivated the entire way through. I especially loved the other characters’ reactions each time one of them found out about Snape and Hermione’s relationship. That’s a trope I adore, when the others find out and are so enraged and suspicious, but then they slowly see little moments of Snape showing affection towards Hermione, and come to learn that he really does care about her, after all. Le sigh. 

-Debaucery by Desert_Sea. This is a post-war fic where Severus has handled his demons by…basically…becoming a playboy. He goes around sleeping with every woman he meets, since he’s now seen as this attractive, bad boy, war hero. Hermione is pretty disgusted with him…but also intrigued to know if he’s really as good in bed as all the other women around her say he is. It’s a funny and sexy fic, as are all of Desert_Sea’s fics that I’ve read so far. 

-Doing it for the Order also by Desert_Sea. This is one where Snape (and the other Death Eaters) are cursed to sleep with at least one muggle once every week, courtesy of Voldemort (he sure does like to curse this couple lol). Rather than Snape try to find a new muggle each week, Dumbledore enlists Hermione to help Snape with his, uh, little problem ;)

-Tango also by Desert_Sea. This one is just pretty much a few chapters of PWP but omgggg it’s so hot! One of my favorite Snamione tropes is them dancing together in front of the rest of Hogwarts. And that’s how this fic starts out. With a sexy as fuck tango, which leads to even sexier as fuck smut. 

-Teaching Miss Granger by OracleObscured. So, I am only about halfway through this fic, mainly because if I read more than 2 or 3 chapters at a time, I run a very real risk of spontaneous combustion. This is a huge fic of pretty much pure porn. It’s also mainly BDSM porn. It’s dirty as fuckkkk and it gets me too overheated to read a lot of at once, so I pick it up here and there to read a bit of when I feel physical prepared to do so. 

-Quartet also by OracleObscured. So, like the other fic by this author, this one is pretty much all porn with some plot thrown in. But, this one is a Hermion/Snape/Lucius/Draco fic. Yes, they all fuck her at the same time, as well as on their own. Draco is more like her sub in this, Lucius is the loving, sensual dom, and Severus is the authoritative, I’m in charge dom. They all play really well off one another (altho not gonna lie, I prefer Severus the most). It’s another dirty as hell fic. It’s not completed, which is a good thing, because I can only handle this one a chapter or two at a time, when it updates. 

For Lumione

-Eden by obsessmuch. Okay, so this story is not for the faint of heart. It is angsty as hell, and the ending…omg, it will ruin you. I still think about it months later. Like, it’ll randomly pop up in my head and I just sit and stare at the wall and think “holy shit” because it just messed with my emotions that much. This fic honestly ruined me for most other Lumione fics, and I am struggling to find any other fics of this pairing that come close to this one. Lucius is NOT fluffy or romantic in this. He’s the canon Death Eater Lucius that I imagine him to be. He’s a horrible man, and he treats Hermione horribly. In fact, he tortures the hell out of her in the beginning of the fic, and I was at first shocked by my own fascination with the story. But I just…I couldn’t stop reading. This book sucked me up, wouldn’t let go until the ride was over, then spit me back out an emotional wreck. Their relationship is unhealthy, obsessive, Stockholm Syndrome at its finest, and if you dare to read it, I would LOVE to hear what you think about it. 

-Ninety Days of Darkness by Fragilereality. This is another darker Lucius fic (altho not nearly as dark as Eden). Hermione is a prisoner in Malfoy Manor, and the two are forced into an engagement by Voldemort. It’s a very interesting tale, although I will say I read this pretty soon after reading Eden, and I just couldn’t stop comparing it to that fic. So this one is great, but I should’ve given myself time to process my feels over Eden before trying to read it. 

-For Pure Blood by malfoycouture. So, I haven’t finished this one, which makes me sad, because it had me HOOKED in the beginning. Hermione finds out that the order needs a rare ingredient in the war against Voldemort, an ingredient only the Malfoys possess. So, she offers Lucius a trade: the ingredient for her virginity. What I loved about this fic was all the characters were so damn smart, and always a step ahead of each other. Not just Hermione and Lucius, but also Ginny and Narcissa. It has a lot of intrigue and is action-packed, but for some reason, I think that’s what kinda made me drift from it. I made it about 18 of the 22 chapters in (the chapters are pretty huge) before I lost interest and drifted off to read a Snamione fic, instead, and I have yet to come back and finish it. Perhaps I shall try to do so in the near future. 

-Girl Talk by Snapes_Goddess. This fic is on adultfanfiction.net, and the set up of all those fics is really weird now, with these weird symbols in place of all punctuation, so if you can’t look past that annoyance, I totally get it. I found this fic back when I was first obsessed with HP fanfiction yearssss ago. And honestly, just about anything by that author is fabulous. She writes a lot of Snamione and Lumione fics, both short smutty ones and longer ones. I was obsessed with her back in the day, and Girl Talk is one of my favorites of hers. It’s mostly smut, but also has a romance to it. Basically, it starts out with Lucius overhearing Hermione tell Ginny that she’s never had enjoyable sex. He offers his…”services” and god damnnnnn the smut is hot in this. Lucius is a sex god. I go back and re-read certain chapters of this fic more times than I care to admit. Mostly the first 5 or 6 chapters. The scene where he fucks her up against a pillar at a Ministry ceremony, with Harry and the others only a few feet away… *fans self rapidly*

There ya have it! Those are the main Snamione and Lumione fics that popped into my head that I’ve enjoyed! If you know of any others that you’d recommend, feel free to throw em my way! 

Also, I’m currently reading this AMAZING vampire romance/mystery fic I found on Wattpad (it’s the first non-fanfiction fic I’ve read in a long time, but I’m hooked). I actually have been picturing a younger Severus as the lead vampire while reading it haha. If anyone is interested, go check it out. It’s called Belle Mort by Bella_Higgin. It’s the first in a series of 3 books, and it perfectly blends together humor, mystery, and sexiness. I’m just now discovering how many amazing original novels are on Wattpad, and idk whether to cry in happiness or scream in despair that it’s going to cause me to add a billion more books to my “need to read” list lol.