[Meme] questions about writing

[edenfalling]

Created by sophia_helix, gacked via minisinoo and fabu.

Name one thing you do consistently well:

Um... blanking here. I'm good at not sucking?

Nah, seriously, while I think I do a lot of things well a lot of the time, there are always times I slip up on any given factor. But the one I slip the least on is clarity. The inside of my head is often extremely non-linear and full of logical chasms -- I jump from point A to point G without bothering to detail the stops in between -- and I know, from long experience, that this confuses and irritates people. So I work very hard to lay things out in writing so that you can follow the lines of thought and action. I also work to keep the actual sentences -- the words on the page -- from getting confusing. This doesn't mean I dumb down the vocabulary, but it does mean that I try not to use long, pretty words just for the heck of it.

I think I'm also pretty good at maintaining a consistent POV and narrative 'voice.'

And, of course, my spelling, grammar, and mechanics are practically perfect in every way. *grin*

Name one thing you do inconsistently well:

Dialogue. I try to 'hear' conversations, but sometimes it just doesn't work very well.

Name one thing you do consistently badly:

Sensory description. If I am not very careful, all my stories take place in front of a blank white screen. There are no visuals, no sounds, no smells, no tastes, no temperatures or textures, etc.

Also, I go off on tangents and ramble.

Name one thing you do inconsistently badly:

Um. Blanking again. Titles, I think -- I'm not very good with titles.

I'm also not great at scene divisions within longer stories. I think I'm pretty good at endings for stories as a whole, but the smaller pieces within them often cut off rather arbitrarily. I also have a strong tendency to end chapters with people falling asleep, since it's such a convenient and natural break point. I try to fight this, but I don't always notice until after I've posted the chapters or stories in question.

Name one thing you don't do well and feel bad about:

Traditional romance. I would really like to write a melodramatic, sweeping epic romance one day, just to prove that I can actually do something like that.

Name one thing you don't do well and don't feel bad about:

My sense of humor seems to be a very hit-or-miss proposition. I don't really mind that. I know where all the little jokes are, and they make me laugh. And actually, I don't mind that my descriptive skills are patchy -- I figure that if I don't describe things to death, then the image in the reader's mind is more personal than if I bludgeoned my brain until I had crystal-clear images and wrote down every last detail.

Describe the fantasy story that you'd write if you were the writer you'd like to be:

Any of my current unfinished stories, because if I were the writer I'd like to be, I would have actual discipline and I would get them done. *wails*

Mmm. There's also the really dark post-apocalyptic fantasy story with human sacrifice, obsessive romance, and subtextual incest that I've never quite figured out how to start... but I know that will come clear someday, so I don't think it really counts. *innocent smile*