#seriously question 3 turned into a way longer answer than it aught to have but ... what can I say I'm verbose

[mass-convergence]

For the fic asks!

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

Okay so for #3 I accidentally wrote a whole goddamn novel so I'm putting that under a cut because I don't want to clog the dash.

42.

I'm not sure - I love all comments and they all stick with me. I suppose one that did stick out with me was on my first chapter of The Ones You Trust the Most where someone left an extremely lovely comment about being intrigued by the premise and that my writing style was enjoyable.

Some of the other comments have come from my IRL friends who I usually go to when I'm feeling a little down on my self. One of whom has said they regularly pull up the PDFs of excerpts I send them whenever they're feeling down because they like my writing which ... 🥺

45.

Something I've improved upon ... whooo ... uh. Commas. Yeah. I mean I still sprinkle commas liberally through my fic but at least I'm more cognizant of the fact that semi-colons, conjunctions, and hell even periods exist.

I think, especially with a more complicated/intricate plot line that I'm planning with The Ones You Trust the Most (be forewarned) ... I've been getting better at getting into a character's mind and motives to really say "why would she do this?" "why would this be their strategy to achieve their goal? How would that conflict with another's goals/strategies? How can I create tension and conflict out of that?"

It's carried over into my NaNo fic though that pile of shit (and I say this affectionately) is going to need an entire rework since I'm just getting into the character's brains finally.

3.

Tropes: I really like the Deadpan Snarker character trope and you can pry that from my cold, dead hands. Though I am careful not to fall into the Whedon-dialog trap where snark is literally all the dialog and there's no sincerity.

Self-insert: Self-inserts happen probably more regularly than I care for. There's like two warring factions in my head about it: the "most authors in original literature have put themselves somewhere in the story to comment on it", just have fun with it Mass and the deep-rooted self-loathing I've developed due to being a fanfic writer in the late aughts when Mary Sues and self-inserts were synonymous and also the worst crime unto fanfic/literature one could commit. I don't think I'll ever truly get over that mental block.

And the thing is, self-inserts ... aren't really that bad and logically I know that - again, many authors in original fic have done the same. Some of them were a little pompous with their insert-character waxing philosophical on some very weird shit (looking at you Heinlein) but some of them were so subtle you didn't really realize it upon a casual reading. Emotionally, however, I'm reverted to high school me just religiously checking a literal Mary Sue checker to see if they were Sues... Which wasn't great either. Because your character can be a fully fleshed out character with pathos, flaws, etc. and still have like purple eyes and bat wings or some shit and their name is Enoby.

Also ... y'know ... have fun with it. And I think my issue is that even though I have that instinct to put an SI in ... that other side of my brain that still clings to high school writing absolutely does not have fun with it while mature me is like, "I'm writing fanfic, not [insert literary "masterpiece" we had to read for English class here]"

Dialog and nodding as a crutch: and this is a kinda bad habit I've picked up over the years, I get a tad worried I'm using "[character] said" too much - and like I know: "said's not dead" etc.

But my brain's like, "Maybe add them doing some kind of gesture or movement?"

To which my instinct is like, "I WILL HAVE THEM NOD"

Which then upon rereading I realize my characters are a bunch of bobbleheads and I've gotta rewrite the interaction. I am working on rectifying that and finding better things for characters to do during dialog or even saying, "Every piece of dialog doesn't need a character doing something unless it's something worth pointing out in terms of the personality of the character."

Results have been varied and I have written an entire essay on my writing style. I don't apologize.