Writing Questions

[lls_mutant]

gehayi posted an AWESOME list of writing uestions. It's a long list- 30 of them, with some longer answers. Since April is national poetry month and I can't stand poetry, I thought it would be fun to answer one of these a day.



1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?
8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?
13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What's the most interesting way you've killed someone?
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?
30. Final question! Tag someone! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!





1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Adamaey Rising is a little young to talk about this quite yet, so… Favorite fandom writing project.

I am torn between two. One is "Through the Fire", which was from my Pern days. "Through the Fire" had the benefit of being a joint project with a very good friend, and I really had a great time working on it largely because of her. She really stretched me as a writer as well, and we had the bones of a good story. And there is some good writing in that. However, there is also a lot of not-so-good, melodramatic writing, and we hadn't learned about how it's okay to use people's names yet. I don't even want to think about how many times we described eye color, and there is some serious over-the-topness in places.

The plot of the story was kind of interesting. The way Pern fandom is set up, Anne McCaffery has said that you can play in the world, but you are not allowed to use her characters or play in three spots (I think it's three- I think it's Benden Weyr, Ruatha Hold, and Harper Hall). Given that there are a whole bunch of Passes that are never discussed in books, people have no trouble getting around this, with the possible exception of the Harper Hall. So, all OCs, which I loved. But independently of each other, my friend and I had started writing sexual assault plots. We were going different places with them- she was going more the terror, how do I get out of this, keep it secret route, and I was using it to make my character bulimic, which is something I had some issues with when I was younger and was ready to write about. Interestingly, her character was a weyrlingmaster, and mine was a weyrling, so they were forced into contact. Her character had a major healing background, mine needed a healer… it was kind of spooky how well this worked. The story was very much about the two of them trying to deal with each other.

I don't know why, but yes, this is a very, very common subject in my writing. I like writing about recovery. I have written assault/rape several times; in Through the Fire, in Accidentally In Love, in The Space Between Us, in Measure of a Man, and it's actually my prompt for this year's lgbtfest. And yes, there are several characters in my original fic that are working through it.

Anyway, we did try to make this a project set on Earth that we could publish, but it didn't work. Mainly because in Pern, you had a structure where it worked. Earth doesn't. Oh well.

The other universe I would say I adored working on is The Space Between Us. I love doing AUs when I really get into them, and this was my favorite of the AUs I've written. The only thing that I hated doing in it was killing off two specific characters in the end that had lived in the series. This wasn't really a "fix-it" fic, but it was definitely a "what if" fic.

If you haven't read it, The Space Between Us is a novel-length BSG fic where Sweet!Eight decides to switch sides in the Cylon civil war and kidnaps Raptor 718 to go back to Cavil, taking the people on it as prisoners. This leads to two story lines: one, the people on the Raptor, and two, the story of the Fleet. The people on the Raptor is sort of self-explanatory- we have these people in a sort of No Exit situation, and they're trying to get off the Colony. But one of those people is Gaeta, and without Gaeta on the Galactica, the mutiny happens differently. I also changed the explanation for Starbuck- she's not an angel and she doesn't poof at the end. In some ways, I think I would have been disappointed at first if my explanation was right, but with the interactions that resulted, I ended up really liking it.

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

I honestly have no idea. I come up with characters all the time. But Adamaey Rising is going to be a cast of thousands, I suspect.

I don't necessarily prefer males or females. I've written both, that's for sure. I've also written more males. But, I tend to write the same males over and over- A'drias in Pern, Remus and Sirius in HP, and Gaeta and Hoshi in BSG. But then, I had some big stories for Linmei on Pern, and I've done novels for Dee and Cally, and Ellen and Pilot!Eight (aka Sarah) were huge characters in The Space Between Us. HP, however, I don't think I've ever done anything big with the girls, although Lily always features prominently.

I have found that there are times I will automatically reach for a male character. I remember once, in my Eiswelt project which will never see the light of day because I could never figure out who was supposed to win the war, I needed a petty crime lord. I immediately made him male. Well after the character was established in my head, I wondered why I did that. Why couldn't a crime lord be female? (The real answer, I suspect, has to do with I was sort of thinking of a Badger like character, and so my mind went to Mark Shepphard.)

What I really find, however, is that the characters that attract me have specific personality traits. People Not Allowed to Have Nice Things, for example… I mean, I adore Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and Felix Gaeta, but I also adore Sun Kwon and Juliet Burke and Olivia Dunham, and others that show up in books, not TV. But I don't fic those, so they don't often show up in my writing.
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

It depends.

For people with Terran based first names, I have a baby name book. This does for most of my characters, although for the most part I'm still working through baby names I liked for my major characters, or I'm just coming up with other names. For example, two characters in Adamaey Rising are named Tom and Richard. I have no idea why, because I don't really like either name. But even though I haven't gotten very far in, they are Tom and Richard (not Rick, not Dick, and not Rich), and that just isn't changing.

However, the baby name book doesn't work for everything. For Adamaey Rising, I have several characters from non-Western cultures. These are tricky, because sometimes there are naming conventions I wouldn't be aware of. For example, one of the main characters is from Afghanistan. He's Pashtu, I know that, and he was former Taliban. So I have to be very careful I would use a name his parents would actually pick. Ditto his sons, although I have a little more freedom as the mother doesn't have to be from the same part of Afghanistan, or from Afghanistan at all. (I haven't figured her out yet.) Another major character is going to be from Africa. Again, this is a bit of a tough one. The Asian characters I can do a little easier- I'm much more familiar with Chinese culture, specifically.

Last names are interesting, too. I've been using a trick a friend told me- I pick up a phone book and go through it. It makes it easier to find last names that are vaguely common but not Smith or Jones. Although Tom's last name is Reynolds, and that's a family name. I'll use family names for my fictional characters ;) All these methods also hold true for HP and BSG names, incidentally.

For people not on Earth or not using Terran names, I have a tendency to just put letters together, although I like names you can pronounce. My favorite I ever made up is Aramelle. Other names I've made up have been A'drias, A'ron, Linmei (I like that one, too), and Dhamen. If I'm trying to give a fantasy look to a name, I like Dh or Kh combinations. For some of the aliens in Adamaey Rising, I've been trying to follow a few basic rules of other languages, like using the sounds they use in Hawaiian or stuff like that.

Place names… for Terran, I use real places. It's easier. I've never named a fictional town, and for Adamaey Rising, it doesn't take place on Earth, so that's pretty easy. For BSG places, I look up Greek towns. And for fantasy/sci-fi places, I just sort of assemble them again. Or- and this is another fun trick- I go to a language translator and type in words, and maybe fidget with a letter or two. For example, Eiswelt, one of my defunct projects, is… I think it was part Swedish, part something else? Ice world, though.

(Adamaey Rising is a bar name, incidentally. Adamaey is Pashtu for "Humanity", which makes sense given the plotline.)



Made those eggs as a hostess gift last night- hopefully they come out! Egg hunt party today, and then must clean the house for Easter. Sense my joy. :P

But first, time to RUN! :)

Comments

[ivanolix.livejournal.com]

I like this meme! It's got some really deep questions.

Your answer about male/female characters is interesting, especially the personality trait thing. I have a very strong "type" for characters I like, but I have more than one because...well, for example, I love the blunt-snarky-kickass combination in women (especially if it comes with a little arrogance), but if that combination is in a male character, it's treated differently and I don't like that treatment. Likewise my main type for men is something that I can like in women, but only if it's treated the same way it's treated with men, which is rare.

Hmm, I may have to steal this meme.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

Go for it! It's a fun meme. These are great questions, and it's interesting to get thinking about some of them!

[rebelliousrose.livejournal.com]

Oh god, you were a Pern person too? I really think that in a lot of ways Pern was the most accessible fandom for women at that time (all obvious AMC and fandom gender issues aside.......) but remains one of the most easily stereotyped fandoms out there. Pern taught me to be a better writer and to push my style, but the fandom itself was fairly toxic (and sometimes remains thusly) in ways more insidious than the shipper wars of BSG.

That said- ooh, what Weyr did you write for? Sable for me, in the glory days......

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

I was! And I think I might have applied to Sable once, I forget. And I agree- it was a lot more accessible for women. I LOVED that fandom.

I wrote for three Weyrs, maybe four. I wrote for Northlight, which was more an email RP weyr, I helped run Cascade, which had to be hard copy, and I wrote for Lakesedge, which was my favorite. By the end I got into Rocky Crater or something like that, but they had Issues with my plotline for some reason- I don't even remember what- and it bugged me. But Lakesedge was the one I was most into, and that's where A'drias and his crew lived.

I'm trying to remember the toxicity. Some of it was bad, I guess... I think the reason I don't remember it so much is because I met pfrsue there, and that friendship has been so strong and so enduring and so great that it colors a lot of my memories of Pern fandom.

[rebelliousrose.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's not as bad as it was in the 80's/early 90's now- back then I went to a con and was introduced to a group of Pern fans as Oriana, Weyrwoman Second of Sable and you seriously would have thought I was Angelina Jolie from the amount of attention and deference I got- Sable and Fort were the "big clubs" then, with the 100+ page zines, and the queenriders were rockstars. I think that's why BSG fandom just rolls off me- I've been a BNF and it had no appeal at the time, you know?

The toxicity is partially in the stereotyping- then (and kind of now) Pern fans came in four kinds- overweight, pasty women with long hair and glasses, skinny, scrawny little girls with pasty skin and glasses, overweight, bearded men with glasses, and small, wee men, also with glasses and ten to fifteen buttons on their message t-shirts. So anyone who wasn't in that stereotype was kind of automatically suspect. There was also (in the Southern fandoms) a LOT of hostility toward homosexuality, in spite of the waving flags and the "we write boyporn!"

I remember a wonderful moment where a story essentially taking place in a Pernese fern bar was shoved into my hands to read, and I was rolling in my chair- super queeny greenriders, funny as all get out, just like the gay men I knew my whole life, and I look up and the room's dead silent and one of the editors snaps "we're sending that back for rewrite. Gay people don't act like that."

And the story was written by a pair of lesbians.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

2. How many characters do you have?

If an original writer can answer that question, something is seriously wrong with their writing. Seriously. ;)

If there's one big thing about writing fanfic that makes you a worse writer, it's in creating characters. It's something you should do like snapping your fingers, not something to make such a big deal about all the time. Oh no, I need an original character, I can't write this fic. Oh no, that fic has an OC in it. Beware, it could be Mary Sues! Geez. How many characters have I created? Thousands? Easily.

[safenthecity.livejournal.com]

Whenever I have a need for OCs, it's not so much that I worry that I can't write them, but that my readers won't give a damn about them since they came for fanficcy goodness and not these people I went and made up. It's undoubtedly a silly fear, if those characters are necessary for the story and my readers want to read the story, but that's how my silly brain goes.

[ivanolix.livejournal.com]

Do people really avoid writing fic because they'd need OCs? Damn...I have a hard time writing fanfic longer than a oneshot that doesn't need an OC. It's just part of writing for a universe that's bigger than the main cast.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

Do people really avoid writing fic because they'd need OCs?

Yup, they definitely do. I haven't seen it happening in this fandom, but I know it's all over (some parts of) the Harry Potter fandom.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Yes, they do. OCs are all too often seen as Mary Sues or Gary Stus...even if they aren't warping the rules of the universe to suit themselves. Just being an original character is enough to make them suspect.

I've actually apologized for having OCs, and have said that I hope people won't find them too bad.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

I've seen it, too, in HP. Especially for a romantic interest. Which can be annoying, because sometimes you NEED an OC for a romantic interest. (Like with the marauders. Any girlfriends that aren't Lily have to be OCs.) People are more accepting for OCs of parents of a canonical character, though.

It's funny, though, because OCs can be such a plague, but give your OC a canon name, and even though they're still an OC, people will accept them. Like Hoshi, for example. You have so few parameters on how you write Hoshi if you want to keep within canon that he might as well be an OC. Or in the HP, my favorite non-OC was Caradoc Dearborn. He was mentioned once, in the Order of the Phoenix (I think just once) as someone that went missing in the first war. We know so little, you can really write him as ANYTHING (including a frog eyed scientist with no concept of personal boundaries.)

It bugs me like crazy, but I have to say the BSG sector I hang out in is a LOT better at accepting OCs, and I can think of several off the top of my head that have been fabulous. But yeah. People really avoid them.

[trovia.livejournal.com]

That trick works for Harry Potter, too. Nobody ever complained about my character called Filch being a Mary Sue. ;)

I ran into this problem right away when starting up in the HP fandom. My first story was a long epic tale of the first war, focusing on the Aurors. Some of them, I could "import"- i.e., Sirius was an Auror in that fic. But I did need a cast of approximately 20 Aurors just to kill them all off one after the other. I did find, to my delight, that people were perfectly happy to accept all the OC once they figured out they were well-written and not about to overtake the story. As this happened in the much smaller German part of the fandom, something interesting happened, actually- people would borrow my OC for their first war stories to avoid having to use OC of their own. :p

There also seems to be a bunch of people walking around who think "Altair Pepples" is a canon character, asking me where in the books he appears... It's quite amusing, but I guess it's also another sign that people aren't ready to accept OC.

[lls-mutant.livejournal.com]

I fully agree! I LOVE creating characters. I'm trying to think if I've got a novel length fic where I don't.

I really think it's easy to avoid an OC being a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. Most of my OCs come from function, and as long as they have a function for the plot, then they have every reason for being there. (And who are we kidding? BSG has a lot of people who might as well be OCs, like Hoshi and Narcho and Chuckles and the like.) ::hugs her newest pair, Danielle and Caroline. Because how can you not like the chick who kissed Figurski and a hot Marine?::

I actually find that what fanfic worsens me in is setting. Characters are still easy for me, especially since I do shamelessly use either OCs or near-OCs. But I am still crap at setting, and fanfic doesn't stretch me there at all, and I need to. ::sigh::

[trovia.livejournal.com]

This makes me think you should write more battles. :) I learned a LOT in the HP fandom about creating settings for action sequences. I also ended up drawing a map for Aurors' Headquarters in the fic I mentioned in the other post.

I do agree on settings of a bigger scope, though. I'm glad I don't have much of a problem with that- I used to write original fic for a long time before starting to write fanfic. I'm pretty good with all things visual, my weaknesses are elsewhere- especially in the area of writing emo and fluff.

Maybe you could write fic set before the mini. You'd need to create quite some settings for that. :)