Writing meme

[gwyn]

I fairly certain no one cares about any of this, but I'm trying to find reasons to post to break me out of my dumps. If you want to know the answer to any of these, let me know (or if you'd like to apply it to vidding, I'm game for that too). I've been enjoying reading other people's!

A. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.
B. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
C. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
D. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
E. Share one of your strengths.
F. Share one of your weaknesses.
G. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
H. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
I. Which fic has been the hardest to write?
J. Which fic has been the easiest to write?
K. Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?
L. Is there an episode section of canon above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?
M. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?
N. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?
O. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?
P. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?
Q. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?
R. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?
S. Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?
T. Describe your perfect writing conditions.
U. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?
V. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).
W. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?
X. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?
Y. What do you look for in a beta?
Z. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
AA. How do you feel about collaborations?
AB. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.
AC. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?
AD. Do you accept prompts?
AE. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?
AF. How do you feel about smut?
AG. How do you feel about crack?
AH. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?
AI. Would you ever kill off a canon character?
AJ. Which is your favorite site to post fic?
AK. Talk about your current wips.
AL. Talk about a review that made your day.
AM. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?
AN. Write an alternative ending to a fic you've written (specify by title, link or general description].

Comments

[catwalksalone]

O, please, because I wonder if your visual sense has anything to do with how you write.

Also, if you don't mind, AC.

[ratcreature]

V sounds like an interesting comparison.

[dorinda]

I'd love to hear about L, please!

Also, if I can double-dip, how about B?

[killabeez]

Oh, my gosh, I want to ask you all of these. M first, but then E, Q, and/or R?

[grammarwoman]

I'm leaning towards Q or Y, if you're up for it.

[musesfool]

A!

[gattagrigia]

AO: Do you feel that writing/posting for the interweebz is different than writing for a zine?

[gwyn]

Man, that is a tough one! You know, as tempting as it is to pick a sexy or romantic story to see what I wrote filmed and my people making out on screen, I'd probably pick either my old Magnificent 7 story Cold Enough to Snow, because that story has a lot of visual notes in it that I would love to see on screen -- the mountains of New Mexico, a fiesta at night in the town, beautiful horses on a gorgeous ranch, etc. and Vin and Chris a few years older. Or I'd pick the current Captain America: The Winter Soldier WIP just because I would kill to see the WWII flashback scenes on film. ;-)


And AC: I read a story recently that broke my heart, like, it was just so effing sad and though it was so beautifully written I couldn't even leave kudos or comments because I was so fucking upset. And I would give anything to write the sequel for when Bucky comes home to Steve.

[gwyn]

L! Well, I am a canon girl. The closest I've ever gotten to an AU is a what-if AU, where it diverges from canon only from one set point in time. I'm sad that way. I think for most of my fandoms, there's a "well, now I need to write" moment or relationship that develops -- in Buffy it was Spike realizing he was hot for Buffy because I knew it would never be a canon romance, in the Magnificent 7 it was the obvious fact of how much Chris relied on Vin but that we'd never see that played out, and Fast and the Furious, it was Brian letting Dom go at the end of the movie, because really that says love like nothing else. Pacific Rim had all those moments where Herc and Stacker were together and it was so clear they had a long history together, and the Captain America stuff -- well, pretty much the entirety of Steve and Bucky's relationship, but that flashback in Winter Soldier with "till the end of the line" was like a fucking siren call to me.

B: You know, sometimes I wish I could do kink. I really do. It might actually make people read my stories! But I guess I never will be able to really do that. I'm not super drawn to it in general, but sometimes I wish I could go there.

[gwyn]

M: I guess I've never had a lot of writing advice (well, that didn't come from a book, like Ann Lamott's psychic gum stuff in her book about writing) that I paid any attention to (or maybe because I have to give it on a regular basis?). But one thing always stuck with me from a lit professor at college: I was griping about reading a book, and he said, "An interesting failure can be better than a boring success." And so I at least try to keep my failure mildly interesting, do something a little different from the norm or whatever. I strive to always be an interesting failure.

E: Strengths-- I guess the problem with no self esteem is picking a strength… I think I can write how people talk, and capture the individual styles of speech that's unique to each character. Like, I've had people tell me in writing workshops I should do plays, because I'm good at writing dialog that sounds like people actually talk. I am a good mimic, and I can hear the subtle differences in how people speak, and I think most of the time, my characters sound like themselves and not all of them speaking in the same style.

Q and R: I am a hopeless wannabe outliner. I can't do it, though, not on paper. I have to make a movie in my head. My movie has to be cast and have a beginning, middle, and ending. And then I go from there. For shorter stuff, that's easy, but for the longer stuff, I write snippets and large segments and then put them in as I write. Huge segments of my current WIP were written that way. The problem sometimes occurs when I have to go back and link them together without having them be episodic.

[gwyn]

I just answered Q above to killabeez, so I'll go with Y: You know, right now I would kill for a beta, period. Like, I've never had what I see a lot of my friends talk about -- a person who will beta your stuff no matter what you write, and give you useful feedback. I've had to ask a lot of random people lately and most of the time, I have no one in whatever fandom I'm in to ask, or they don't do what I'm writing, or whatever. And I think it shows. I mean, I'm an editor by trade, but editors know that they can't trust to edit thyne own selves, you know? I would give anything to have someone I could rely on to tell me important things like what sucks, what works, where I missed words, how things are confusing, overwritten, what have you.


Anyone who wants to be my beta buddy can apply within. ;-)

[gwyn]

I thought A would be so easy to answer but wow, it's not! I think I'm fairly consistent about certain things: lots of dialog; I love first times or people falling in love, usually under difficult or extraordinary circumstances; and I love a certain equality in relationships. Pining, if there's romance, but deep friendship or need if it's not a romantic story. And I am all about the love -- friends, lovers, het, slash, whatever. I love the love.

But a lot of what I've written doesn't fit any of that, so then I think, maybe I have no idea! I always thought I was purple and overwritten, but I've seen people say my stuff is spare and poetic, which kind of boggles my mind, but I've seen it often enough and from people I admire that I have to at least acknowledge it. I think my Band of Brothers story Safe is a good example of that, and a lot of what I wrote back in Magnificent 7 fandom.

So I guess a me fic would involve characters who either fall in love or develop their friendship, do that under something resembling a plot (I do like a good plot), have lots of dialog with each other and other characters, and discover something about themselves.

[gwyn]

Yeah. You can noodle on something till the cows come home. And I guess one of the good things about not being popular is that no one knows you're still changing things even months or years later. ;-) Zines also had, most of the time, such useful processes, of editing and feedback and rewrites. Now you can do none of that, and still get lots of hits and stuff. And that's another thing -- you can see what people are reading. Which is often really fucking depressing, but there you are. With zines, you only knew what someone told you about -- their sales figures if they knew, and maybe you'd get an LOC once in a while. Sometimes it's really easy to just churn out stuff to click bait, too, for a lot of people, not something you could do back then. Unless you wanted to publish your own zine, you were completely limited to what someone else would want to publish, so you wrote accordingly.

[grammarwoman]

I feel exactly the same way. I have people that will look at something if they know the fandom, or they have the time/spoons for it, but not a guaranteed beta who knows me and my style and will help me shape my stuff to its fullest potential.

I've tried to be a beta for other people, but I'm more of a cheerleader or nitpicky editor (missing or extraneous punctuation marks, misspellings or misused words) than a plotsmith.

With that in mind, you could hit me up for a look-see of your stuff, if you wanted. :)

[catwalksalone]

I love the sound of both those choices. Who can we call to make that happen? :D

Did you write the sequel in your head to fix it? I do that sometimes. And then if I say it out loud to someone else or write down the outline it somehow makes it all better and I don't need it any more.

[gwyn]

You know, I have tried and tried to figure this one out, but I can't find anything that would really work. There are whole pieces I would like to rewrite in toto (my first couple stories I wrote when I discovered media fandom in The Professionals), but it's more for pacing and to tone down purple-y stuff. I don't think I've changed essentially enough to just pick a paragraph to rewrite, it'd be something larger with bigger picture issues. Possibly because I was a pro writer when I found fandom, so I already had a history of writing under my belt.

[killabeez]

Thank you, those are all neat insights to have about your process! You're one of the best writers I know, so I'm glad for the chance to nibble your brain a little.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

G, H, Y

[sperrywink]

How about T?

[daria234.livejournal.com]

AC and AL

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

I want A but the YOU-VID - like, your vids seem very diverse to me and so I wonder what you think a "you vid" is!

[ixchel55.livejournal.com]

I'll ask for the same slightly altered question I asked someone else because the answer was so interesting: AN but I won't ask you to actually rewrite an ending. Just pick one of your fic that you wish you'd ended differently and tell me about it.

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

S.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

G: I really ended up liking how most of a Pacific Rim Hot Dads story turned out last year; it was different from a lot of what I write in that there isn't a ton of dialog, and it's not a first-time fic, etc. I loved trying to write a guy who is really repressed but also has big emotions roiling under the surface, and who is doing most of this interiorly. And this was one of my favorite things to write in it, where Herc's been basically cage-fighting because he's running away from everything connected to losing his son and his lover:

Once in a while he looks at himself in the mirror longer than it takes to shave or brush his teeth. There are so many new scars to go with his old ones, and the bruises bring them to vivid life. He runs his hands over his drivesuit circuitry scars, the ones Stacker used to trace with his fingertips, his lips, a blind man reading the Braille history of Herc’s combat. He can almost feel it now, still, Stacker’s mustache bristly against his pale skin, his hand covering the scars in ownership, or protection. Herc cherished the chevroned lines of circuitry scars on Stacker’s left arm, the curlicue that rose along his left ribcage and led up his side. They would sometimes trace the lines of each other’s tattoos, a different kind of mark upon their bodies, telling different stories.

H: I am so fucking torn about this one. I love the dialog between Wendy and Bucky in the Middleman/Captain America story I wrote last month, There Must Be a Joke in Here Somewhere, because I think it's just so much fun and so in character. Also, the whole story is centered around dialog, and writing Wendy Watson is just oodles of fun, always. But the Justified story I wrote for Yuletide back in 2010 is always the one people mention to me, and this section of dialog has been quoted back to me more than almost any other thing I've done (which, not a lot, but any time anyone mentions something to me, it's this). And it's hilarious because I always thought Tim was gay, and then this past year, the producers finally confirmed that Tim is in fact gay:

“You have wide-ranging tastes for an ex-Ranger,” Raylan said, flipping through a bunch of announcements from various clubs stuck together under a fridge magnet. “That your family in those photos? With their kids?”

“Yeah. All three of my sisters.”

“Three!” Raylan acknowledged with wonder and a shake of the head. “Always wished I could have had sisters. But that would have been a nightmare for them, havin’ a father like mine.”

“Didn’t seem like it was good for you, either,” Tim said. He’d wondered, after the night he saw Arlo strike Raylan in the face, if his father had just been a random, temperamental hitter or more focused in his violence, but he had a feeling Raylan would push any questions about that away with a cryptic smile.

Raylan pulled one of the flyers down. “Crossings ... isn’t that a gay bar?’ he asked.

Tim stood at the sink and kept his back to Raylan, so as not to let him see his smile. “One of the very few. That’s definitely an area where I share your feelings about Kentucky. It has a pretty narrow nightlife, comparatively.”

Raylan tacked it back up on the fridge. “That where the former snipers hang out these days?”

Tim tried to hide his smirk, and moved into the living room. Raylan stood in the doorway, scanning the room, looking intently at Tim. “Oh,” he said eventually. “Oh.” He paused. “Well, aren’t I the asshole?”

Y: I answered this over on my DW http://gwyn.dreamwidth.org/102744.html?thread=406104#cmt406104 , but basically, I just wish I HAD a beta. Someone who would read whatever I wrote and would be a kind but hardassed buddy.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Ha ha! T! Yeah…I used to have good conditions, in that I could sit at my computer and play music and drink something that put me in a mood…but now I'm in constant pain and it's a battle to type. It's definitely had an effect on me in terms of how I struggle to write. Sometimes being in a place like a coffee shop or having a bunch of people around me talking paradoxically makes me write like the wind -- there's something about the energy of people talking that can fire me up. One of the best writing experiences in terms of churning out something good really fast was at an Escapade con -- I was sitting at a dealer's table with M Fae Glasgow on my left and Rachael Sabotini on my right and they were talking over me, and I wrote so much good stuff while that was happening!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

AC: You know what? I'd love to write what happens after Steve brings home those porn pics in that story you wrote, Work Up a Sweat? When Bucky finds them…

And AL, because I hit post too soon:

I don't think I ever get reviews…I get some comments, but I don't really ever get reviews, not for a long, long time. I think the only one I can even remember is from ages ago, when I was writing a lot in Magnificent 7, and it made me feel really good at a time when I wasn't feeling very good at all. It's for a story called Cold Enough to Snow, from a site where a group of fans posted reviews and recs and general information for Mag7 fans:

This lovely, gentle story of lost opportunities and second chances even moved the hard-hearted Outrider. It's a very fresh and moving entry into the crowded Chris/Vin's first time category. The beauty of the writing made my heart ache.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I've come to believe I don't have a vidding style -- after years of participating in the Challenge show, and sitting there listening to people say, "Oh, that vid has to be so and so" for every vid I did and never thinking it was me, I was pretty convinced I didn't have a style because no one ever thought of me for my own vids. And I stopped looking at the Guess the Festividder for the same reason -- I think I'm so nondescript, so all over the board, that no one could pin a style on me.

I mean, I'm not technically competent, so part of my style is that I don't use a lot of effects. I can't do fancy graphics and stuff. I have synesthesia, so color and music inform my choices a lot more than most vidders, which is saying a LOT since that's a primary aspect of good vids. And I am motivated by feels, so I have to be really engaged.

I guess a me vid would be -- not fancy, but I am good at seeing pattern matching and structure, I am very narrative focused much of the time, feels focused, and color will play a huge part in the vid. I think I'm good at coming up with unusual concepts and even though I can't always make the vid I see in my head because of my tech incompetence, the ideas are interesting.

I think Orange Crush is a perfect me vid, as an example (actually, editing to say, both my Cap vids, because I think Shelter is a good example of this too) -- I'm proud of a lot of my edits in that thing, the way things flow into one another, and the use of color and structure and feels. My Beautiful Reward for Firefly might also be a good example of a me vid -- it has a story progression that a lot of people remarked on as being unusual at the time.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I have never had a muse. I don't even know if I'd know what a muse was. It's such a foreign concept to me. I think I just have always spent so much time inside my own head, from when I was a kid (I found stories I'd written that my mom kept, when we were going through her things, and I started when I was FIVE), that I've never known what that kind of thing would be like. I guess the closest I could come is an imaginary reader -- a person who's just like me who gets entirely too wrapped up in language and FEELS and loves to be swept along.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like the scars piece - very evocative. And so much going on in that dialogue! I've had some good beta readers (I think) but they do tend to be fandom-specific.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

I would so be there to read it if you wrote Bucky finding Steve's porn (that looks like Bucky), regardless of whether it has anything to do with that fic. :) Or anything where Bucky and Steve talk about porn :)

I saw AL and just assumed it meant comments, I didn't even notice it specified reviews. Is it on ff.net where they call all the comments reviews? I see why that review stayed with you - it's lovely!

[daria234.livejournal.com]

I LOVE the edits in your vids :)

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

I love you, but god knows you always find the most depressing way to put something that could be said a lot more flatteringly! "not a particular style" is not necessarily "nondescript" - I'd say you vid the FANDOM rather than your TICS, and that that itself distinguishes your vids from lots of other people's. And that you make very pure, very clean vids that don't have a lot of effects but instead match patterns and colors to create really emotional narratives. :P

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Ha! OK, fair enough -- but I will hire you to do my press from now on. ;-)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, awesome! I've never written to someone else's story before, but I have a fic to write next that's basically kind of remixing (read stealing) a favorite old zine story from way back and I think it'd be fun to take someone else's concept and run with it.

So, did you research the "blue" shops back then, or vintage porn? That's definitely an area I don't know a lot about, what kind of stuff was available back then and where.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

This is what I'm here for. :D

[sperrywink]

That is definitely a tragic side-effect. :-(


Interesting! I find I need the comfort of home to write, usually, but I like writing sprints because you can do it from home but with other people, and the writing is interspersed with interaction.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

I didn't do much research. I've seen some vintage porn and the people often look like ordinary people as opposed to a more extreme body type that is valued now like with the bodybuilder types. A friend of mine who also likes Steve/Bucky wrote sex worker fic set in the 40s and she did a ton of research on it, and she told me some things, including that for a brief while the trend in porn was for very skinny men who were "effeminate" but that when it came to actually paying for sex, the most desired type was more traditionally masculine and a bit muscular (like Bucky's body type basically, or maybe stockier). So Steve might have found lots of porn that looked like himself, but I don't think he would have looked twice at that.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, given the times and I think the way non-normative sex was starting to creep out into the light just a bit back then.

Man, I spent a lot of wasted hours on google last night, trying to find out about porn shops in the 1930s. I wish I had the time to pick up some books about it, but just don't right now. See, you got me all intrigued about how people actually got hold of this stuff. Damn you!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I tried and tried to find one that I would redo the ending to. Since I can't write unless I know exactly what the ending scene is, I had a really hard time. Like, impossible. It might be that the only story I think I wuold redo the ending to is one I never finished, because I couldn't quite get the ending to gel in my head, a Professionals story that has sat on my computer for years. Or the Buffy WIP I left off, Measure of a Man. I really wish I could have finished that, and it torments me still. I don't think there's even a Buffy audience left for fic, but damn, I wish I could find a way to end that.

[daria234.livejournal.com]

:D that stuff is really fascinating. i think the way other time periods viewed sexuality is always just so interesting

I'm sure whatever you write/vid concerning Steve looking at porn would be awesome if you ever felt like it ;)