Female characters + meme

[hedda62]

Wrote a post for International Women's Day about my female characters and how much I love them. Yay ladies! *hugs them all*

Aside from that, still having a hard time getting my brain into writing mode for long periods of time, so here's a meme (borrowed from avanti_90). Questions are mostly about fic, so I'll answer them that way unless it makes sense to delve into book-writing. Pick a number; pick two or three and I might answer them all if I have time.

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 an episode 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.
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 to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

Comments

[kivrin]

38 and 14

[hedda62]

#38: Talk about a review that made your day. I appreciate nearly all reviews (there are those few that just make me go WHAT and shake my head for a while, but they are few and far between luckily) and lots of them have made me happy. I appreciate the ones that go on for a while quoting things from the story, and the grateful ones, and the flattering ones, but perhaps my favorites are the funny ones, especially when it's clear someone's been touched and is being dryly humorous about it. I had someone tell me about "L'oiseau qui vole" that "I was expecting not to like this, but it tripped me in an alley" which is pretty much how I felt about writing it, and I laughed forever about gogollescent's comment on "the heart is hard to translate," beginning with a quote from the fic:

"but, instead, the brain-rubbish inventions about people he cared for being hurt or lost forever, or saying ridiculous sentimental things to him."

I'm so glad that those three scenarios are listed together, fresh out of nightmare. What a perfect moment. I mean, counting out the total number of times I thought "Oh, Simon" in this could take a while, but that one in particular-- just. Simon Illyan's deathly fear of being taken out behind the woodshed and told "You did a great job, thanks for the thirty years of intense loyalty to our family". And then maybe getting clapped on the back or something. Wow.

In other news this is really great.

That's perhaps my favorite comment of all time, though the one on the same story where raven talked French to me comes pretty close.

#14: What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across? I kind of blanked out on this one - I'm sure I've read some horrendous bits of writing advice over the years, but I purposefully don't remember them, I guess. There are some methods that just seem absurd to me - all of that making charts about your characters' favorite colors and preferred foods and family vacations and grade school embarrassments and so forth - but if they work for some people, I'm not going to put them down.

I do have a personal grudge against "Murder your darlings" because - though I understand what it's getting at; let's avoid the overly fancy and out-of-context clever-clogs bits - I think it makes many writers edit out stuff that's actually really good, because it's really good and they think that can't possibly be right, as if the singing phrase should be shot down like a songbird before anyone's disturbed by its noise. And I hate cute meaningless tips on principle - anyone who's ever murdered darlings in the right way already knew where they'd gone wrong without being lectured at, and anyone to whom the admonition might have been useful if it were phrased better was probably confused or depressed hearing it, or else oblivious to its wisdom.

How about we try not giving advice that makes people feel worse about themselves and their accomplishments, for a start, and how about if we feel we must say something then we explain what we mean instead of being pithy and trite? There.

[kivrin]

One of the things that bugs me about "murder your darlings" is that it assumes affection MUST be irrational. You couldn't possibly like, much less love, a line or a moment because it displays in microcosm the whole emotional thrust of the piece. No, you like it for some squishy, possibly estrogen-related reasons, and you should shoot those in the head. It's like an aesthetic doctrine of Total Depravity.

[hedda62]

*nods vigorously* And I suppose the corollary is that one should be indifferent to everything one writes, in a firm and masculine sort of way, patting it on the head and telling it to calm down.

I should have noted in the above response that I have a darlings tag for favorite lines from fics. I don't think it's completely up to date, but I haven't written much recently so it makes little difference. I think everyone should do this.

[eight_of_cups]

Agree with all of this, and add that self-suspicion is much better as a leavening agent than a tenderizing mallet. If I'm so taken with my own genius while writing, I give it time, knead it once or twice as needed, and if it turns into bread when I bake it, then I EAT THE FUCKING BREAD. No mallets necessary.

Most recently I had an idea for a darling just before bed, wrote it down on an index card, checked it in the morning to see if it had survived the passing of my giddy joy, and then wrote a whole fic around it. So if I'd obeyed the command to kill my darlings, an entire story would never even exist.