[Meme] Forty Questions for Fic Writers

[edenfalling]

I've seen slight variations of this floating around both Dreamwidth and Tumblr, and I'm bored, so why not?

Pick no more than three letters and I will answer those questions.

1. Describe your comfort zone — a typical you-fic.
2. Is there a trope you've yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
3. Is there a trope you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?
4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
5. Share one of your strengths.
6. Share one of your weaknesses.
7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you've written and explain why you're proud of it.
8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you've written and explain why you're proud of it.
9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?
10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

11. Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?
12. Is there a section of canon above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?
13. What's the best writing advice you've ever come across?
14. What's the worst writing advice you've ever come across?
15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?
16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?
17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?
18. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?
19. Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?
20. Describe your perfect writing conditions.

21. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?
22. 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).
23. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?
24. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?
25. What do you look for in a beta?
26. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?
27. How do you feel about collaborations?
28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.
29. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?
30. Do you accept prompts?

31. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?
32. How do you feel about smut?
33. How do you feel about crack?
34. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?
35. Would you ever kill off a canon character?
36. Which is your favorite site to post fic?
37. Talk about your current WIPs.
38. Talk about a review that made your day.
39. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?
40. Write an alternative ending (or the summary of one) to a fic you've written. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions.)

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Answers!

--2, 14, and 18, for akatsuki210

--8, 29, and 38, for lady_songsmith

--5 and 7, for rthstewart

--13 and 37, for heliopausa

Comments

[edenfalling]

I already answered #8 over here. Would you like to choose a third number?

Anyway!

5. Share one of your strengths.

One thing I am good at is maintaining a consistent and non-self-contradictory world. Which in fanfiction terms means I am good at canon-compliance, both in the sense of acknowledging events and places, and in the sense of making sure my character interpretations are plausible extrapolations from canon knowledge. (In original fiction terms, it means that I abide by the rules I set up at the opening of my own story-universes.) This is not necessary for fanfiction, of course, and in AUs obviously some things get thrown aside and other altered, but I like putting things in order and building coherent structures, insofar as possible. World-building, timelines, you name it. I will make things make sense. (Even if canon itself didn't!)

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you've written and explain why you're proud of it.

This is from Knives, a story wherein Ginny Weasley captures Lucius Malfoy at the end of the war (it was written before the publication of Deathly Hallows) and keeps him as her prisoner for several years:

-----

He winces as you draw the knife along his bearded cheek; a narrow line of blood wells up through the gap in his skin and trickles through the tangled golden hair. 'I was under the impression that the righteous didn't lie. Then again, you did shelter and conceal the Dark Lord's soul for nearly a year, so I suppose--'

You're not listening anymore.

He's accusing you of helping Tom. He's accusing you of opening the Chamber, of Petrifying Hermione, and Colin Creevey (who died screaming and you couldn't save him), and Penelope Clearwater (who spends her days locked in the closed ward at St. Mungo's), and Nearly-Headless Nick (who faded with the other ghosts, holding the castle wards during the final battle), and Justin Finch-Fletchley (who betrayed the Order and died at the end of Harry's wand while you kept the other soldiers from interfering).

You are not like Tom. You are not like Voldemort. You are not like him. You can't be. You refuse to be.

And yet...

The knife is heavy in your hand. Blood coats your fingers, thick and tacky as it dries. Guilt and shame stab into your stomach, and he's breaking you. You have all the power, but he's winning. And you can't let him go.

You freeze him with a spell, while his mouth is open and dark. You haven't asked him any questions; you aren't looking for answers. He won't have to stand trial.

He doesn't really need his tongue.

-----

Ginny's been torturing Lucius for nearly a year by this scene, but I think this is where she really tips over the edge.

"Knives" was a combination of three things, really. First, I had wanted for a while to try writing a story about torture from the torturer's POV, to see if I could make the reader feel complicit the way Lolita makes the reader feel complicit in Humbert Humbert's pedophilia. Second, there's the story of the captured fly that Ginny tells Lucius much later in the story; that is directly taken from my own life. And third, I wanted to write Ginny going dark for her own reasons instead of suffering residual possession evil-by-proxy or whatever.

It was a weird fic to write, in a lot of ways. I tried to write it in third-person. I tried to write it in first-person (and I don't like first-person). But the story insisted on being second-person, and it has a very mannered, patterned style of prose. The scenes aren't directly connected to each other; they're more like a slideshow than a smooth narrative. Sometimes the sentences and paragraphs pull a similar trick. That jump-cut effect is deliberate. So is all the color symbolism, and the Snow White imagery, and the paralleling of Harry and Lucius.

"Knives" is a dark story, and it's a pretentious story -- second-person, outside of Homestuck fandom, tends to make readers jarringly aware that they are reading a story -- and it's a story that doesn't have a proper ending because I'm not always a very nice person. But I think it's one of the best things I've ever written, and the scene above is one of the key moments.

[rthstewart]

I so agree about your solid views of canon, internal and otherwise and Knives is positively chilling. The 2nd person is so interesting here too - definitely not something I read much from you.

[edenfalling]

I have actually written a lot of second-person stories over the last two years, but they've been almost entirely for Homestuck, so... *shrug* The canon for that series is told in second-person -- it's mimicking the form of a text-parsing computer game -- so it feels natural to continue the style in fanfiction. I would go so far as to guess that the majority of Homestuck fanfiction is written in second-person. But that's a weird case. Generally speaking, second-person is going to read as weird and offputting, so unless you're aiming for a specific effect, it's best avoided.

With "Knives," I was deliberately trying to be unsettling, and to draw readers in and make them feel complicit -- to say, "What would YOU do in a situation like this?" -- which I think is why the second-person version worked so much better than my aborted attempts at writing in third- and first-person.