![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingMore questions about writing, yay!
4 – Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the fic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
I had no intention whatsoever of using Hatake Kakashi in "The Way of the Apartment Manager," but he was of the opinion that he should administer the first test of the chuunin exam, and he would not go away afterward, to the point where he became one of the main characters and vastly improved the story. I would never call him a muse, though, and he has not repeated the behavior in any other story. I think it was just my subconscious trying to tell me I was missing a story role and Kakashi would fill it better than a random OC.
I have never had any other character do something similar. There are characters I use as go-to POVs, but that's more because they are easy to use for particular purposes than because they are muses. I do sometimes say things to the effect of "So-and-so has moved into my head and set up housekeeping," but that is mostly shorthand for, "I think I really have a handle on So-and-so now, and because I have been thinking about hir, most of my recent plotbunnies have included hir in some capacity." Which is just a question of focus, really.
-----
5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
I worked Kakashi into the plot. It was useful to have another canon character to balance the OCs, it was simpler not to introduce a new character as my team's "client" in the second test, it was reasonable for the team to find a teacher before the third test, and Kakashi's personal history added to the theme of people working together -- of a team as a chosen family. If he hadn't added to the story, I wouldn't have let him barge in.
-----
6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?
If there is no pressing reason to make OCs male, I try to default to making them female. As for canon characters, I use the characters who fit the story I am trying to tell. I think it averages out to about 50-50. (It probably helps that I am not a slash writer, though I have written slash.)
I don't find much POV difference between male and female characters, to be honest. At base, we are all people, and on the surface, I think individual differences are much sharper than any generalized "archetypal" sex and gender differences. This is not to say that being female or male does not affect a person, but it's only one tessera in a mosaic of character traits. If you define a character first and foremost as "a man" or "a woman" instead of, first and foremost, as "this person, who has this, that, and the other personality traits, who enjoys such-and-such, who does this for a living, who dreams of thus-and-so, who has this pattern of speech, who tends to notice this kind of detail instead of that kind, etcetera," then I think you are doing something wrong.
When I was a kid and planning original fiction, I always structured my stories with roughly equal numbers of female and male characters -- at most, there would be a one- or two-person imbalance, like five boys to four girls or eight women to six men. I think I just figured that was fair. A year or two after I started writing fanfiction, I noticed I was using mostly girls and women as my POV characters -- which is perfectly understandable, since I was mostly writing about Ginny, Hermione, and occasionally Petunia -- and wrote a bunch of male-POV stories to see if it was a technical issue. It wasn't, and I haven't thought much about it since.
I sometimes wonder if I'd have a different opinion on this issue if I wrote more porn and romance, but I don't, so it's basically a moot point.
-----
I am safely back in Ithaca and worked a closing shift at the smoke shop with no more problems than usual. In other words, the crazy duly arrived sometime between three and four o'clock, as it always does on Sundays, but it then duly slunk away sometime between five and six o'clock and I had plenty of time to get through all the things I needed to set up for Monday, plus do some tobacco inventory and write up orders to be called in this coming week.
Vicky is safely down in D.C. and has started apartment-hunting already. I wish her the best of luck!
And my parents are safely home in New Jersey, along with their dog. So all is well with my nuclear family. :-)
4 – Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the fic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
I had no intention whatsoever of using Hatake Kakashi in "The Way of the Apartment Manager," but he was of the opinion that he should administer the first test of the chuunin exam, and he would not go away afterward, to the point where he became one of the main characters and vastly improved the story. I would never call him a muse, though, and he has not repeated the behavior in any other story. I think it was just my subconscious trying to tell me I was missing a story role and Kakashi would fill it better than a random OC.
I have never had any other character do something similar. There are characters I use as go-to POVs, but that's more because they are easy to use for particular purposes than because they are muses. I do sometimes say things to the effect of "So-and-so has moved into my head and set up housekeeping," but that is mostly shorthand for, "I think I really have a handle on So-and-so now, and because I have been thinking about hir, most of my recent plotbunnies have included hir in some capacity." Which is just a question of focus, really.
-----
5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
I worked Kakashi into the plot. It was useful to have another canon character to balance the OCs, it was simpler not to introduce a new character as my team's "client" in the second test, it was reasonable for the team to find a teacher before the third test, and Kakashi's personal history added to the theme of people working together -- of a team as a chosen family. If he hadn't added to the story, I wouldn't have let him barge in.
-----
6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?
If there is no pressing reason to make OCs male, I try to default to making them female. As for canon characters, I use the characters who fit the story I am trying to tell. I think it averages out to about 50-50. (It probably helps that I am not a slash writer, though I have written slash.)
I don't find much POV difference between male and female characters, to be honest. At base, we are all people, and on the surface, I think individual differences are much sharper than any generalized "archetypal" sex and gender differences. This is not to say that being female or male does not affect a person, but it's only one tessera in a mosaic of character traits. If you define a character first and foremost as "a man" or "a woman" instead of, first and foremost, as "this person, who has this, that, and the other personality traits, who enjoys such-and-such, who does this for a living, who dreams of thus-and-so, who has this pattern of speech, who tends to notice this kind of detail instead of that kind, etcetera," then I think you are doing something wrong.
When I was a kid and planning original fiction, I always structured my stories with roughly equal numbers of female and male characters -- at most, there would be a one- or two-person imbalance, like five boys to four girls or eight women to six men. I think I just figured that was fair. A year or two after I started writing fanfiction, I noticed I was using mostly girls and women as my POV characters -- which is perfectly understandable, since I was mostly writing about Ginny, Hermione, and occasionally Petunia -- and wrote a bunch of male-POV stories to see if it was a technical issue. It wasn't, and I haven't thought much about it since.
I sometimes wonder if I'd have a different opinion on this issue if I wrote more porn and romance, but I don't, so it's basically a moot point.
-----
I am safely back in Ithaca and worked a closing shift at the smoke shop with no more problems than usual. In other words, the crazy duly arrived sometime between three and four o'clock, as it always does on Sundays, but it then duly slunk away sometime between five and six o'clock and I had plenty of time to get through all the things I needed to set up for Monday, plus do some tobacco inventory and write up orders to be called in this coming week.
Vicky is safely down in D.C. and has started apartment-hunting already. I wish her the best of luck!
And my parents are safely home in New Jersey, along with their dog. So all is well with my nuclear family. :-)