25. What part of writing is the most fun?

And so we come, albeit belatedly, to the end of the meme. Its "25 Days" have spread over more than a month. But all good things....

Fun? Given the "pulling teeth" (occasionally hen's teeth!) aspect of writing, I'd have to say that the most fun is going back afterwards and reading what I've written.

I don't mean editing, which is really part of the writing process. Nor do I mean the repetitious rereading required for polishing, which is a compulsive process that continues for several days—if not weeks—after a story is posted. Call that the necessity of self-beta'ing: time is needed to gain perspective. I can go back weeks later and spot not only typos but places where the story could be tightened up. Even plot holes. If it won't be too obvious, I'll tweak. Posting on line does have advantages over print.

No, I'm talking about going back much later. Years, like as not. And then you look at what you wrote with wonder that the words actually came from your own brain. So coherent! So pertinent! So insightful! So true to character!

Well, sometimes. ;)

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24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

I like to think my writing has improved! Seriously, though, the obvious change is that a major part of my early writing was in the form of scripts (or a modification thereof) whereas now I write prose.

I think one consequence of the way I modified the script format so that I effectively transcribed what one would see on screen (i.e. with all the camera angles and edits) is that I had to learn how to visualize action. It wasn't easy, either! I could hear the voices quite easily. All I had to do was put the characters together, give them a bit of a nudge, and write down what they said. After that, of course, I had to go back and clean it up by removing ums and ahs and digressions; but that's pretty straighforward. However, I had great difficulty seeing things in my head.

Nevertheless, this was necessary, not only so that I could write out the larger things, such as car chases and fight scenes (which were relatively rare) but how people moved around the sets (which they do all the time). I also had to add in the small stuff you see on screen that is added by the actors in performance—the so-called "actor's business", in which they bring the part to life with such petty details as picking something up, scratching their nose, or shifting in their seat. As a result, I'm a bit better now at adding such things into prose fiction as well. Usually I do it as I revise the story. It helps me fatten up the bare dialogue.

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23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?

Back around 2006, I got an idea for a long Alias Smith and Jones story that would tell the early history of the characters. By the time I'd written Chapter Two (at which point they were still kids), I'd already decided to scratch off the serial numbers. I'd come to the conclusion that I didn't want to be bound by the hints in canon, but preferred to create my own story. So I renamed the two protagonists, did a fair amount of library research into the early American West, and figured it would finish up a full length novel if I put into it all I envisioned.

Well, what can I say? I got as far as Chapter Eight, plus doing the final chapter. Then the AS&J message boards where I'd been lurking suddenly closed; and shortly thereafter I discovered maryrenaultfics, which, at that time, was a very active community just about to start a major meta discussion. Between that and FORKNI-L, which was also active back then, I somehow lost the impetus to forge on.

So The History of Hadrian Deane wound up abandoned.

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22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

Not the very oldest, which are in a box somewhere. And it's been a while since I've dipped into my virtual season or my war!fic. However, I do go back and reread my old stories—not all of them, but at least some. How do I feel about them? It's hard to believe sometimes that I actually wrote them: that I managed somehow to pry out the words and phrases and get them reasonably right. I look on my handiwork and see it is good—and it's downright astonishing.

In case you are curious, these are ones I probably reread the most. Most of these are longer works, which is not to say that I don't now and then browse through the ficlets. I also check my more recent stories; but that's partly a matter of belated polishing. Not that I don't find typos, even sometimes after years!

For FK:
• “Simcoe Day”
• “The Sun of Cairo”
• “Phases of the Moon”
• “Couched Work”
• “Out of the Night that Covers Me”
• “En Vacances”
• “Festival of Festivals”
• “The Father, the Son, and the Unholy Ghost”
• “The Siege of Hastings”
• “Gone Where the Goblins Go”

For Mary Renault's The Charioteer:
• “A Dog’s Life”
• “The Road to Rio” (X with Swallows & Amazons)
• “Applefic”
• “Exit Stage Left, A Wounded Warrior: The Lost Chapters of The Charioteer”
• “A Fork in the Road to London” and its sequels

For the Arrowverse:
• “Stopped Cold”
• “Rogue Kiss”
• “Silver is Gold”
• “Double, Double, Time and Trouble”

For other fandoms:
• “Afterword” (Alan Garner's Alderley Edge books)
• “Hot Buttered Crumpets” (Narnia X Alice in Wonderland)
• “Hobbiton Farm” (The Lord of the Rings X Victorian Farm series)
• “Season 7, Episode 4: Day Two” (Time Team X Diana Wynne Jones's Dalemark series)
• “Minstrelsy and Apple-Pie” (Elizabeth Goudge's A City of Bells)
• “Fairies of the Orchard” (Cicely Barker's Flower Fairies)
• “Fenlanding” (Dick Francis's Flying Finish)
• “Jean at the Witching Hour” (Janet Sandison's Jean Robertson series)
• “A Winchester Always” (M*A*S*H)
• “A Different Shade of Gold” (S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders)
• “The Rape of the Book” (Georgette Heyer's Venetia)

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21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)

Well, some of my fic probably wouldn't translate all that well. I mean, what do you do with a drabble? And, as far as my virtual season is concerned, it was written as a different medium. (This question has assumptions!) For FK4, the shift would have to work the other way, i.e. from script to prose. However, there's no doubt in my mind that some of my Arrowverse stories would work as television episodes. In theory, anyway. In practice, fan writers have the advantage over the pros: we don't have to hire the actors. The logistics of that are often insurmountable.

My story "Double, Double, Time and Trouble" is so like an episode that, as I wrote it, I kept thinking things like, "This would be a good place for a commercial break." Like an actual episode of Legends of Tomorrow, it's an ensemble piece; and it has much the same sort of plot. Of course, it's backstory of a sort: set between two actual seasons, with a plot that depends on one of last year's shows. However, that's in part because I'd already decided to do a story in which the crew had to return Shakespeare to his own time; and they jossed it just before the story reveals (for it was giftfic). There followed a mad rewrite.

When I wrote "Stopped Cold" a few years ago (also in a gift exchange), I had much the same experience of seeing scenes as if in an episode—indeed, I exchanged comments with sandrine about the differences between that story as fan fiction and the way it would need reorganization if it were part of an actual season of The Flash. Among a lot else, I wrote:

[I]f "Stopped Cold" were part of a Season of Rogues, it would need to be done over two episodes: one for the heist, and one for the fire. (In fact, the very first scene in the story would best be put as the tag for the previous ep; the heist would need to be shown in much more detail; and the last two scenes would probably be worked into the next episode.)

In other words, prose fic and scripts are different. I've known that for a long time since, after all, I wrote FK4 in what is basically a script format. Episodes of an actual TV series have a strict format: teaser, a specific number of acts, tag; and a rigid time limit. To fit in plot and character scenes is tricky, especially since (like most fans) I definitely don't want to curtail the latter. It is actually easier to do this over an entire season, since scenes that have to be clipped from one episode can often be fitted into another.

Basically, a lot of the Arrowverse fic I write is first seen in my head as if the actors were playing out a series of scenes. The same was true of FK4, of course: that's the reason why I wrote that as a virtual season. The organization of an episode (or a season) is different from the organization of prose fiction; but, in stories of this sort, the similarities outweigh the differences.

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20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

When I wrote FK4, each episode had a title page with a link to the zipped story file. However, there was a second link: to a page of notes. This might include canon information related to the plot or characters, background information on the historical period in the flashback, my inspiration for the plot/flashback/characterization, and some chat about my writing the episode.

I don't do that now. It's not part of the culture on LJ, DW, or AO3; so, unless someone actually asks about it, no one gets to know. On the whole, I think that's a pity.

Here's an idea: if you read this and want to ask a question about a specific story of mine, ask away!

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19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favourite verb, something you describe 'too often', trope you can’t get enough of?)

Christmas! Especially Christmas trees. I've written several Christmas stories down the years; and, if a tree is relevant, it definitely gets into the story. In fact, the seasonal episode of FK4 actually describes no fewer than three different trees.

My mother's family always managed a tree, even at the worst of the Depression; and Christmas was very important to her family. My Dad (whose mother died when he was just shy of fourteen) considered the holiday to be mainly for children; but no one else agreed with him. It's a family holiday for us: the tree, the turkey, and presents.

We had our first family tree when I was four. Or so I've been told. It was a tiny live tree (which my Dad planted in the garden afterwards, and dug up the following Christmas) with decorations that my grandmother had sent from Canada. According to my mother, I was astounded; and, the last night before it was taken down, I sat for ages just staring at it. The following year, I saw The Nutcracker for the first time. I do remember that: when the Christmas tree grew at the end of the first act, it was utter magic. Christmas trees have been special ever since.

Although my father always insisted on a "real" tree, I have one that is artificial: this is best for the glass ornaments, since there won't be any droop from drying out. It's only a six-footer; but that means I can reach the top without having to stand on anything. I've had it since 1986. As for the ornaments, I bought my first ones in the late seventies, and still pick up a few each year. Nowadays, I store them in carefully organized boxes in a cupboard off the living room.

This is my tree from 2020:



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18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

No, not really. When I was writing FK4, since it was designed as a virtual season, each "transcription" had to be the same length as an actual episode would be (if it had been filmed, that is, which obviously they weren't). Often this meant that I had to cut scenes to fit the time; and, as the plot had to remain intact, it was character bits that got snipped. However, I always saved them as separate files; and most of them got worked into episodes that I wrote later. So one could hardly say they were "abandoned".

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17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?

Readers? I don't know. Most comments I get seem reasonably to the point.

Non-readers, definitely. Quite a few people who make anonymous comments on fail_fandomanon (FFA) seem to think that I was the person who wrote a problematic Dragonriders of Pern story ("Queen") that was written for Yuletide in 2011. This assumption has been dragged up off and on for years. It's irritating because, although "Queen" has a cute ending, it's not really all that good a story. Fortunately, it's fairly clear from other FFA posts that people who have actually read my fanfic don't believe the canard, basically on the grounds that I'm a better writer than that. (Thank you!!!) Gossip, right? It can be a pain.

I think most fan writers feel there's never enough feedback. Current FK writers owe a debt of thanks to brightknightie for, as the mod of fkficfest, she encourages comments and always herself responds at length; and people do follow suit. Of course, one would always like more comments on all one's fic in every fandom! Comments are gold.

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16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)

In one sense, obviously. Whenever I do the Yuletide gift exchange I do treats; and these are often for fandoms I've never written in before. On the other hand, I've been doing Yuletide since 2011; so that part not's new. This year, I wrote stories for Diana Wynne Jones's Eight Days of Luke ("Embers") and Josephine Tey's Alan Grant detective series ("Queue for Exit"). I've seen requests for the latter each year for quite a while; and each year I've put it on my "long list" of potential treats. But it was only this past year that a plot bunny finally poked up. It's not the first time a story has come to me in such a belated fashion; and the probability is high that I'll never write in either fandom again.

Basically, I don't think I've done anything particularly innovative lately. Same old, same old.

This is not necessarily a bad thing!

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15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Oh, summaries. Definitely. Sometimes even a single, rather uninspired sentence is difficult. I don't want to give away too much, especially if it's a plotty sort of story. At the same time, I don't care for the common fallback of just quoting the first few lines. Especially given that my first lines are often short and snappy, but not very informative.

Tags are hard, too.

Not the character tags: they're straightforward. But the freeforms can be tough to decide on. The one that's easy is "canon-divergent AU": if it is, then that certainly needs to go in. If the story is heavily derived from a particular episode, then I cite that. Otherwise, I guess I may mention things like "historical" and "canon-derived", if they apply. Mostly, though, I don't use a lot of freeforms.

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14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

Usually, the name comes to me fairly soon. Occasionally before I even start writing! (There's a plot bunny named "Summit Blues" that has not a single word to its name.) Mind you, that's pretty rare; but it is true that, if I don't have a title to hang on the fic, I find it hard to get down to writing. Sometimes that means I use a working title, and hope that something better will eventually occur to me. Most of the time it does. If not, then somewhere towards the end I will start googling for quotations, quips, or sayings that have some relation with the theme or subject of the story in the hope that one will hit the spot. Normally, I find something in under an hour. And that's only if I have to go hunting.

It's rare for me to post a story and then alter the title; but it did happen recently. I wrote a M*A*S*H story in which BJ got a tin of peanut butter cookies from his wife, leading to some slice-of-life banter involving Hawkeye and Frank Burns. I initially gave it the title, "The Peanut Gallery"; but, at the last minute, I whipped in and altered it to "The Peanut Butter Gallery".

There was one multi-part story, though, that never did get its proper name. It was written piecemeal in response to a prompt on maryrenaultfics: "apple". As I couldn't think of a title, I simply referred to it as "my applefic". I did this so long that, when it came time to collect all the ficlets together, I couldn't think of it in any other way. So "Applefic" it remains to this day.

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13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?

Most of my stories are on the Archive of Our Own and my own website. However, there are two groups of things that are on my website but not on AO3: my virtual season and my war!fic.

In the case of the war posts, it's partly because it would mean little to someone who was not on the FK mailing lists, and partly because—even if you are a Forever Knight fan—you'd need the rest of the War to really get what's going on. I fought in Wars 13, 14, and 15, as well as writing a couple of ficlets set in the war!verse.

In the case of the virtual season, it's a matter of formatting. Actually that's the reason I have a website at all. I wrote FK4 in a modification of full script format. Trying to adapt that into text in order to post to the mailing list proved so much of a nuisance that it was actually easier to learn HTML. (Plus, of course, it afforded the chance to do pretty things with webpage design. The actual episodes were uploaded as zipped Word files, each linked to its own title page.) AO3 also has formatting constraints; and, although I did essay the translation of the first two episodes into a form acceptable to AO3's server, in the end I never bothered to do any more of them. So FK4 is on my website.

There are things that aren't on line. These include a few things written once-upon-a-time long-long-ago, i.e. my old K/S Star Trek novel and five or six Next Gen scripts. Also an unfinished novel that started out as Alias Smith and Jones fanfic, but had the serial numbers scratched off before I'd even finished Chapter Two. I only got eight chapters in, plus the final chapter.

Wow! I'm more than halfway through this already!

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12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Let's face it: I write fan fiction for what mostly are very rare fandoms. By the standards of anyone into a megafandom, my stuff is scarcely read at all. And outside fandom, no fan fiction has any fame—well, unless it's had its serial numbers scrubbed off; and, even then, it pretty well has to be badly written BDSM smut. (I assume you know what THAT jaundiced remark refers to!)

Seriously, though, of course I would like my writing to be famous. (I'm only human.) It's just that my own definition of "famous" involves things like being found in libraries and taught in university courses. So I doubt if it will happen unless I finish some original fiction and get it published and it's critically well received. A fair few conditions there—and all dependent on the first, i.e. writing it.

Saving that, I think I'll settle for having those few who do read my stories enjoying them, commenting on them, and maybe even reccing them.

"Fame" in fandom tends to end in infamy, anyway. Who wants that?

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11. What do you envy in other writers?

The ability to keep on going to the very end of some really long fic idea.

Novels are being written out there today: I've read several written by ardent Arrowverse authors. Mind you, I've also encountered more than a few bogged-down WIPs. But there are people who really do slog on to the very utter end of something that's 200+ K words long. And there's a fabulous comics-based Flash AU by enina that started in 2015, is already well over a million words, and still going.

Once upon a time, long long ago, I slogged my way all the way through a K/S pon farr novel which had, besides that, a main action plot and a subplot involving a set of junior crew members. I made myself write at least one page a day, every day. Longhand. It got written piecemeal; so there were big gaps between the scenes. If you can even call them scenes! Bitty wee bits. Eventually I typed the whole thing out, filled in the gaps, and revised it a few times. The first few months took a lot of determination; but, in the end, I got inspired to real speed and wrote several pages a day. I've never gone back to re-read it, and I dare say it isn't very good; but the point is that I did actually finish it.

Once upon a time, almost as long ago, I wrote an entire 22-episode virtual season. Initially, I was just doing "an episode" (and then another, and another); but I quite quickly got the idea of writing a full set. They, too, were written out of order. Eventually I had to decide how to organize the thing and fill in blanks. It took years.

Nowadays, I often find myself daunted approaching a gift exchange assignment that typically finishes up at a mere 3K or so. And it's not the fact that I'm writing to a prompt, either. What's depressing is the fact that I do still have a "big idea" or three; and I just can't get down to working on any of them really.

There is always something else to do. Witness the fact that I'm doing this instead of my worldbuildingex assignment!

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10. How would you describe your writing process?

Painful.

Well, not physically. But there are times when it feels like pulling teeth. Stories don't write themselves; and some of them are downright uncooperative. Yes, okay: drabbles and ficlets can be written very quickly. (Otherwise there's no point in bothering with something that short.) But the longer works! Aaargghhhhh!!!!

Oh, otherwise? Once upon a time I wrote longhand. Then I typed, and literally had to cut and paste alterations in using scissors and cellotape. Nowadays, I compose directly onto the computer.

Then I revise. The first revision is the one that really pulls things together. After that comes as much polishing as I have time for (given deadlines when I'm writing for a gift exchange). Even so, when I re-read my old stories, I often find typos that have eluded me. One advantage of posting on-line is the ability to correct them ... even years later. :)

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9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? Both, or neither?

I've not done much real longfic writing: novels and the like. However, I've written everything from drabbles to novellas. The shorter the fic, the more I pants it: inspiration goes straight to keyboard. Longer stories need plotting. This often takes place over weeks of thinking before I ever start writing.

Sometimes it happens through research: this is especially true for stories with a strong historical component. In such cases, I often wonder if I'm ever going to start to write; but actually what it means is that there's a period in which I'm taking in so much data that my brain needs time to synthesize it into worldbuilding before the plot can come.

Sometimes it happens through daydreaming: often I'll focus on critical scenes, going over and over them and working out what happens around them. At one time, I'd write those scenes first; but nowadays I usually go Humpty Dumpty style, i.e. start at the beginning and go on to the end and then stop. And then revise!

However, there are other times when the plotting is done section by section. This is especially true for the handful of longer things I've written. In that case, it's still done by thinking things out; but I only have a vague idea of how things are heading in the long run. The details of each section are worked out, it's written, and then I move on to the details of the next section. I do always know how it will end, though!

I don't write outlines. The planning is normally all done in my head. The only time I can recall ever working anything out on paper was the subplot flow for FK4; and that was done very near the end. Most of the virtual season was held entirely in my head over the years I took to write it. However, I should point out that each episode was written separately. It was only piecing it all together that needed a bit of pen and paper to make sure each subplot got ordered correctly across the episodes.

I'm basically pretty okay with how I plan (or don't plan) my stories. I just wish the actual writing came more easily.

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8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

Yes and no. I'd say that everything I like to write is included in the sorts of things I read. However, I read more widely than I write. When scanning the stories in a gift exchange collection, I'll take a look at fic for most fandoms where I'm familiar with the canon. I'll also take a quick look through the Original Fiction to see if anything tickles my fancy.

I read a lot more romance than I write, if only because such a high proportion of fan fiction includes at least some such scenes. I'm there for the plot, though—well, plot and characterization and worldbuilding. If I realize it's a PWP, I'll just back-button. Even with lovely plotty stories, I mostly skim fast over any smutty bits, because I find them boring.

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7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Ooh, this is a tricky one. I've done a bit of an analysis of the first and last lines of some of my stories. (In 2019 it was just first lines; in 2019, it was both first and last lines.) I concluded that, in both cases, I had a tendency to write something short and snappy. As I put it, "They're designed to grab you fast and toss you on to the rest of the paragraph, wherein lies the real interest."

Beyond that, I would say that I tend to change my style depending on the story. For pastiche, of course, I try to simulate the style of the author. For historical fiction, I try for something with the sort of complex sentence structure of a Victorian novel. For casefic, I'm more likely to write choppy vivid sentences, such as one might find in a police procedural. But it's very much "horses for courses".

In this year's Snowflake Challenge, No. 12 was to do one of the old memes from LJ days. I picked the "I Write" meme, and applied it to some of my FK fic. This is what I reported:

There was a tendency for the stories with a cop-show feel to be compared to Stephen King, while the historical vampire ones got either Anne Rice or Arthur C. Clarke. Agatha Christie turned up a couple of times. However....

The story "En Vacances" is written from alternating perspectives in Paris and a hospital room in Toronto. It is supposed to have a certain enigmatic air about it. Even so, I was surprised when the Paris sections got ascribed variously to James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and Cory Doctorow. And the hospital scenes were ascribed to James Fenimore Cooper, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen King, Ian Fleming, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde.

Granted, some of the sections are fairly short. But the whole thing was written by just me; and it's all one story, too. (On my website and on AO3.)

I don't know about other people; but it would seem the "I Write" meme agrees that my style varies a lot.

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6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

In some ways I think I answered this already: as a Die-Hard, I don't play favourites. Of course, that applies particularly to my FK fic. However, a lot of what I write nowadays is giftfic in exchanges—and much of that is treats, which being motivated by intriguing prompts in rare fandoms that I've often never written in before, tend to be one-offs. So it's not so much specific characters that appeal to me as worldbuilding.

I'd have to say, though, that I am intrigued by the character of Leonard Snart. Not so much in the comics—though he was always one of my favourite Rogues in The Flash, especially in the early versions of the group. The iteration in the Arrowverse series, on the other hand, has a lot to offer a writer.

There's his "Captain Cold" persona, which is clearly a role he plays for effect. There's his backstory: how his childhood and youth shaped him into the man he becomes. There's the shift in characterization from the villain whom the Flash first fights, to the more complex man who decides to join the Legends, to the hero who sacrifices himself to save his friend, his crew, and time itself. And last, but far from least, if he is somehow saved and returned to the present day, there's the further evolution of his character going into the future.

A lot of potential for fic, in other words.

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