Writing meme

[brigdh]

A meme, stolen from dhampyresa:

1. of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?
2. favorite tense (past/present/future)
3. favorite POV (first/second/third/etc)
4. what are some themes you love writing about?
5. what inspires you to write?
6. thoughts on critique
7. create a character on the spot..... NOW!
8. is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why?
9. a passage from a WIP
10. what are your strengths wrt writing?
11. what are your weaknesses wrt writing?
12. what’s your favorite place for writing resources?
13. who are your favorite writers?
14. anything else that you want to know XD

Comments

[somebraveapollo.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, nice meme! I'd like to know 13, and, if possible, 4!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

1, 5 and 9?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

1. I'm pretty proud of Nothing Better or More Delightful (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1044503) just because it's so looooong! 14k isn't long for a lot of writers, but it really is for me. And it even kind of has a plot!

Marks (http://archiveofourown.org/works/143225) also has a plot, and was the first– I think– story I wrote that had a lot of separate scenes. I think the ending might be a little too easy, but I still really like the story as a whole.

I'm also fond of We'll become silhouettes when our bodies finally go (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1076595), because it takes on such a sensitive topic (it's about the use of nuclear weapons in WWII), and I think handles it well.


5. Characters, definitely! I'm pretty terrible at coming up with or writing plots, but I love characters, I love imagining how they act and speak and look.


9. Ha, have a bunch of single sentences from different WIPs instead:
- But he sat very close, and his black eyes were bright with interest, and very steady on January's face.

- Rose shrugged and said, "It could be worse; you're not in love with a mule, unlike poor Titania."

- “Well, if you would prefer me delirious with lust, I’m sure that could be arranged.”

- Rose had grown used to sharing a bed; she found that sleeping alone anymore left her restless and tired the next day.

- January paused, aware of the heat that pooled in his belly. "Hannibal– I wouldn't ask–"

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

(You should do this meme too!)

I'm not sure if 13 is supposed to mean professional writers or fan-writers, but since I post a lot of fan-recs all the time, here are some of my favorite pro-writers:
-Ellen Kusher. I really love how she can convey a lot of emotion in very subtle, off-hand ways. She's great at using misdirection to bring out a stronger reaction.
-Terry Pratchett. He is just SO GOOD with words. I love his humor, and I love even more his views on life, humanity, stories, and just the world; he is cynical and yet endlessly kind.
-Rumi for poetry ALWAYS AND FOREVER. (I really want to make Hannibal quote him, but alas, the first translations into English don't seem to be until the 1880s, and I don't think Hannibal knows Persian. Maybe Ayasha could have taught Ben some?)
-Kim Stanley Robinson is usually writes characters with a bit too much emotional distance for me to quite fall in love with them, but I do really love his worldbuilding and sense of history and language and how well he writes multiple cultures, and how he can portray different viewpoints so fairly. I really like his humanism (it's similar to Terry Pratchett's, now that I think about it.)
-Neil Gaiman, as everyone who is at all fannish is practically obligated to love him. BUT SANDMAN IS SO GOOD.


4: Ha. I am not entirely self-aware enough to recognize my own themes, I think. But I like very much broken people and how they live on despite their problems. Not healing or entirely getting better, because I tend to find that only minimizes who they are, though I do like to write about them finding happiness or love or stability nonetheless.

I usually write established-relationship stories, where people already know each other well and trust in that, or about the continual struggle to find what works, than I write about how they first got there. A lot of first-time stories are about One Big Dramatic Moment that Fixes Everything, and I find the slow, day-to-day process of little steps way more interesting and realistic. I also write a lot of curtain-fic. I just like little daily details! Oh, and I'm definitely interested in relationships and how individuals relate to one another; I write very little gen.

[lynndyre.livejournal.com]

14. Which bits of archaeology would you like to include in fic, sometime?

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

ooooh pretty meme. i would like to have the 8!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

(You should do it too!)

Ha, it's funny, I usually don't write in the POV of my favorite character. Because, see, if it's someone else's POV, I get to dwell on how PRETTY and AMAZING and LOVEABLE my favorite is, like LOOK AT THEIR EYES or OOO THEY DID THAT THING WITH THEIR HANDS or I WANNA KISS THEM. And people generally don't think those sort of things about themselves.

So I often tend to write in the POV of whoever's conveniently located to be having those sorts of thoughts. But once I've written them a couple of times, and have spent time thinking about them and how they work, I often end up falling in love with them, and sometimes I like them even more than my original favorite. This totally happened to me with Yami no Matsuei: Hisoka was my favorite, so most of the stuff I wrote was in Tsuzuki's POV (because Tsuzuki totally spends a lot of time thinking about how awesome Hisoka is, this is CANON FACT I will not hear otherwise), but I've since come to really adore Tsuzuki on his own.

[egelantier.livejournal.com]

(hah, i would, but i feel that overlap between flist/people who read my fics are, like, you, somebraveapollo and arsenic. i can do it here if you want :D)

oh, this makes tons of sense! because outsider pov is always more satisfying on your favorites, wherein they can be praised with impunity, yes!

and the second part is most definitely true: the more time you spend with secondary, the more you love them from inside their skin. yessssssss.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, I've never really been particularly tempted, probably because the fandoms I'm into have, like, no overlap with the sort of thing I study.

I do occasionally have daydreams about writing an epic fantasy series that takes vaguely Bronze Age Middle East/South Asia for a setting (as opposed to vaguely Medieval Europe) and that uses what we know of that place and time's mythology for the fantasy aspects (ghouls instead of trolls, for instance, or sphinxes instead of dragons), but it would require me to a) come up with a plot, and b) write original characters. So, uh, that's probably not going to happen.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

(Hey, three comments is still more comments than no comments! I mean, I've only gotten four, counting you. Though you are welcome to do it here too, of course.)

And yup yup yup. Writing a character's POV is an excellent way to end up with much more sympathy and affection for them.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman, as everyone who is at all fannish is practically obligated to love him. BUT SANDMAN IS SO GOOD.

I have complicated Neil gaiman Feelings, becuase on the one hand, SANDMAN IS GREAT but on the other, his novels don't really grab me, so heh, idk. I like most of his work, except his novels, I guess.

Speaking of Sandman, have you read Mike Carey's Lucifer? What about Sandman Overture?

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I really need to get to reading ALL THE FIC in Benjamin January fandom, don't I? And those other two fics sound great, even though I don't know the fandoms :(

You're great at characters!

These are all Benjamin January, aren't they? I approve heartily (and desperately want to read more).

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

(I am apparently commenting all over this post, sorry.)

I am imensely sad that this is not going to happen, because it sounds awesome.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, well, to be fair, there's less than 20 fics in the fandom (or, uh, about six fics not written by me) so it won't take you long. Alas, I tend to always end up in fairly small fandoms, so I'm not surprised you don't know them.

:D Thank you!

They are! Two of them should be posted before the end of the month, so you don't have to wait too long.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have that a bit. I do really love his first short story book, Smoke and Mirrors, and American Gods, but I haven't liked his other books as much.

I've read a tiny bit of Lucifer, but not nearly enough, and none of Sandman Overture. I really should read more comics, but I've mostly stuck with a few very well-known ones: Sandman, Watchmen, ElfQuest, etc.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

(Comments are always welcome!)

Well, maybe someday. But I'm nowhere close to writing it now.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I hope I get time to read them this week-end.

YAY!

[lavode.livejournal.com]

Maybe 7?

[somebraveapollo.livejournal.com]

Kim Stanley Robinson is a guy?? I read Escape from Kathmandu and liked it - like, it was quite gentle and dignified, considering it was about a yeti - I should look into his other books though.

NEIL GAIMAN IS EXCELLENT. I love American Gods most, though also Fragile Things. I need to reread Anansi Boys, I think I was very near loving that one but it didn't quite click. Wasn't the sweet badguy-slaying heroine there called Rose? I have this thesis that Roses make THE BEST HEROINES EVER (or heroes I guess) and I like collecting evidence for it.

I love your themes, particularly the combination of well-loved broken people and curtainfic. <3 <3 <3

[somebraveapollo.livejournal.com]

WHAT WOULD BEN NOT ASK THOUGH.

(((also, I do prefer Hannibal delirious with lust, and I am sure the Januaries will arrange it)))
(hmm, or maybe the line is by Rose? Either Hannibal playing cool or Rose being cool.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, the context is 'Ben and Hannibal have anal sex for the first time'. Ben is trying to be proper and not pressure anyone while Hannibal is like NO I'M OFFERING IT'S COOL PLZ SAY YES.

((The Januaries are very good at this, yes.))

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

He is! My favorite book of his is "The Years of Rice and Salt", which starts in around 1300 and takes the idea that the Plague was waaaaaay more deadly than in real life, killing off something like 99% of Europe. So it goes from that year up to the modern day, showing how history might have gone instead. The main characters keep getting reincarnated in different combinations (so, like, in one life they might be husband and wife, and then the next father and son-in-law, and then two friends, etc) and each life is told in a different style to reflect the time and place where it happens. IT IS SO GOOD.

He's also pretty famous for his Mars trilogy, which had way more detail about environmental science (as people terraform Mars to make it habitable to humans) than I personally needed, but the politics (Mars starts out as a colony of Earth, eventually gains freedom; also they make a medical discovery that allows people to live hundreds of years and this has predictable effects on how voting and population pressure and children and so on) were really well-thought out and interesting.

I need to reread Anansi Boys too. I don't remember anything from it!

Thank you! <3

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm terrible at this!

Okay: She's a pirate ghost, doomed to haunt a particular beach until someone finds the treasure she buried and scatters it. In the meantime, she trips up surfers and makes the lifeguards see things that aren't there.