Writing Meme: Re-reading your Fic
Mar. 12th, 2019 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiSet of fourteen questions about writing.
1. What made you start writing fanfic?
2. Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
3. Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
4. Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
5. You've posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you'd written it?
6. Name three stories you found easy to write.
7. Name three stories you found difficult to write.
8. What's your ratio of hits to kudos?
9. What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
10. What's a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
11. What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
12. For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
13. Name three favorite characters to write.
14. You're applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?
debriswoman asked for #2.
2. Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
I am constitutionally averse to ‘looking back,’ so I rarely re-read my own fanfics, but once in a while it is useful and/or necessary for three reasons.
Reference. 24 Caprices & a Bottle of Claret is a good resource, I think, for themes in Sherlock Holmes canon. Each chapter is dedicated to one subject (e.g., music, tobacco, wine, dogs, dressing gowns, Turkish bath) and when I can’t remember something like which of Holmes’s moods goes with which pipe, that’s where I go to remind myself.
Continuity. This is how I usually work. Post a fic, then three months, six months, a year later, a scene from that ‘verse will occur to me and I’ll add it as a chapter to the original work (not as its own work and create a new series). So, I usually have to go back and check a detail or two (e.g. how are the soulmates’ names arranged on John’s chest in Three?).
Masturbation. Not the whole fic, of course, but I do, on occasion, read specifics scenes or bits of dialogue from my own works as masturbatory aid. Thinking today, I realised it’s almost always genderswapped Mycroft [Three and Oolong and Falling is a lot like Flying and Yellow]. Frankly, I don’t know why that should be, I write so much more femlock than fem!Mycroft. Is it a touch of ye ol’ anglophilia? But, I mean, they’re all British, though Mycroft is more, in my mind, what an American considers as stereotypically British. Is it because Mycroft talks a lot, and I prefer dialogue to description? Does it play on a kind of auditory sensitivity I have to certain voices (because, of course, I hear her voice, like all their voices, in my head)? Or is that I secretly want to be swept away by a tall, androgynous, well-read, well-tailored civil servant with excellent taste in tea? A mystery for the ages because I shan’t dwell on it. Whatever it is, it’s efficient: I can get off and get on with things like sleeping or housework.
3. Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
6. Name three stories you found easy to write.
7. Name three stories you found difficult to write.
8. What's your ratio of hits to kudos?
9. What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
11. What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
12. For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
13. Name three favorite characters to write.
14. You're applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?
debriswoman asked for #2.2. Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
I am constitutionally averse to ‘looking back,’ so I rarely re-read my own fanfics, but once in a while it is useful and/or necessary for three reasons.
Reference. 24 Caprices & a Bottle of Claret is a good resource, I think, for themes in Sherlock Holmes canon. Each chapter is dedicated to one subject (e.g., music, tobacco, wine, dogs, dressing gowns, Turkish bath) and when I can’t remember something like which of Holmes’s moods goes with which pipe, that’s where I go to remind myself.
Continuity. This is how I usually work. Post a fic, then three months, six months, a year later, a scene from that ‘verse will occur to me and I’ll add it as a chapter to the original work (not as its own work and create a new series). So, I usually have to go back and check a detail or two (e.g. how are the soulmates’ names arranged on John’s chest in Three?).
Masturbation. Not the whole fic, of course, but I do, on occasion, read specifics scenes or bits of dialogue from my own works as masturbatory aid. Thinking today, I realised it’s almost always genderswapped Mycroft [Three and Oolong and Falling is a lot like Flying and Yellow]. Frankly, I don’t know why that should be, I write so much more femlock than fem!Mycroft. Is it a touch of ye ol’ anglophilia? But, I mean, they’re all British, though Mycroft is more, in my mind, what an American considers as stereotypically British. Is it because Mycroft talks a lot, and I prefer dialogue to description? Does it play on a kind of auditory sensitivity I have to certain voices (because, of course, I hear her voice, like all their voices, in my head)? Or is that I secretly want to be swept away by a tall, androgynous, well-read, well-tailored civil servant with excellent taste in tea? A mystery for the ages because I shan’t dwell on it. Whatever it is, it’s efficient: I can get off and get on with things like sleeping or housework.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 07:50 am (UTC)How about #11?
no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 12:03 pm (UTC)Sounds good!
no subject
Date: 2019-03-13 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-14 12:11 am (UTC)