There is a meme going around

[nineveh_uk]

First seen by me courtesy of el_staplador, so she gets the credit!

Pick a number and I'll try to answer that question. Then you can do the meme or not as you choose.

1. Of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud?
2. Favourite tense That's really stupid. Make something up yourself. Actually, my favourite tense is the "passive aggressive".
3. Favourite POV
4. What are some themes you love writing about?
5. What inspires you to write?
6. Thoughts on critique
7. Create a character on the spot... NOW!
8. Is there a character you love writing for the most? The least? Why?
9. A passage from a WIP
10. What are your strengths in writing?
11. What are your weaknesses in writing?
12. Anything else that you want to know... (otherwise known as Fill in the Blank)

Comments

[castiron]

4, please.

(#2 would have been more interesting and made more sense as "favorite point-of-view".)

[nineveh_uk]

Considered on LJ! It was quite striking to think about and realise that in many ways, my Wimseyfic, which is what I've done a lot of in recent years, is atypical.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

4, please! (Themes)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Thinking of recent fic, I was going to say ‘I don’t know’, but that’s not true. Rather, Wimsey-dominated fic can be unrepresentative of things I love writing about. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there are two themes I love writing about:

(1) Wimsey-related things****.
(2) Other things.

You have seen quite a lot of (1). To expand upon (2), I think that what I love writing about, but which may not be evident from recent fanfic due to (1)*, is certain types of moral ambiguity. I am not sure how good I am at it, but I am interested in exploring it.

I like bad people who think that they are doing the right thing, and good people who know that they are doing the wrong thing, but think that it is necessary to do it (not so much “I defy augury,” as “I defy damnation”), and a certain sort of mental stoicism**. I like the compromised, and characters accepting compromisation as the necessary price of doing what needs to be done***, and people who are on their own sides. I suspect that this isn’t evident in a lot of my recent fanfic, but it is very evident in my original fic/ideas (not online at present). My original fic ur-texts are all about this, at root. However it’s also a strong theme in my Ye Olde Harry Potter fanfic still lurking on Fictionalley. Professor Snape was too difficult to write much as a pastiche, but one could do an awful lot on the theme with the Black sisters (and Sirius, the designated antithesis of the theme, who does the right thing for the right reason and it nonetheless a total dick).

It’s also an element, I think, in why the Giant Corsican WIP stubbornly remains an mpreg story despite the silliness. Not only because of Wimsey himself, in a situation with no good way out, but because I want to keep the Wittenberg scientist who is willing to risk almost certainly killing him, because the alternative is that someone else will definitely kill him, though she would like to persuade him out of it:

‘I had a child once, Mr Bredon. She was a Squib and she died, and I was injured in the birth so that afterwards I could not have another. I know what it is to suffer for nothing: it is better than death.’

Whether we are in fact talking infanticide is left unresolved.

*It occasionally creeps in in odd places.

**This is perhaps the connection to Harriet Vane.

***Definitely an element in what I liked about 17M.

****Will resist urge to keep altering text - the question does only say "some things" not "all things".

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Whether we are in fact talking infanticide is left unresolved.

Eep! Definitely a doctor you would only seek out in the direst of emergencies. It occurs to me that you're the world expert on the subject, so how soon after birth would it become apparent that your baby is a Squib? Is there some sort of test wizards do that definitely proves it one way or the other?

Your preferred themes hit my narrative kinks button really hard! I hope I get to read some treatments of them in the future (and I'm looking forward to those bits of the mpreg with great interest).

"People who are their own sides" is Schellenberg to a T.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Canon-wise, there doesn't appear to be a test. Children appear to demonstrate magic spontaneously, or can be pushed into doing so by putting them in physical danger (including of death) to provoke a response, as in the case of Neville Longbottom, who bounces when dangled and then accidentally dropped out of a bedroom window. Otherwise, the final answer comes when the Hogwarts letter arrives (Hogwarts seems to mystically know...). I have written a fic (https://archiveofourown.org/works/131956) in which I invented a test for magical ability, but at a later point than the Wimsey story is set.

It strikes me that you have done a certain amount of work on these or similar themes yourself! I really do want to pick up original things again, which is one reason to push to finish Corsica. Whether I am capable of writing them in a way that isn't tremendously id-ficcy, I shall have to see.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

4

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

See above!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[tree_and_leaf]

8

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Fic-wise, I’ve done an awful lot of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane and in ye olden days, Bellatrix Lestrange (something of a Mary-Sue, as I well knew, but I never got called on it). I do like writing Peter enormously. This does not seem to be universal among Wimsey fandom. He isn’t easy, but can be rendered easier by dint of keeping a novel open at the elbow and listening to the Edward Petherbridge audio versions, which somehow seem to channel exactly the right tone. I am presently nearly 80,000 words into the Giant WIP, and while I could wish to have spent less time on it, it is has been enormous fun and I’ve loved the focus on Peter. I think I’ve managed to keep him tolerably in-character, despite his bizarre experiences, although the final verdict will not lie with me.

In contrast, while I don’t dislike writing Bunter, I find him very difficult. He is somehow opaque, and hard to present in an in-canon way while preserving him as a character and not a collection of traits.

I knew that my first* original novel was doomed when I could not be interested in the central character. Some things happened to her that I found easy to write, but as a character, she didn’t work for me. I spent too much time making sure it was clear to readers the she wasn’t me, which is impossible, because everyone I ever write is me if only on the level of “If they back into the sofa by accident, at what point on their legs will they hit the cushion?”

*Not counting the one when I was 20.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

spent too much time making sure it was clear to readers the she wasn’t me
On the grounds that people think first novels are always autobiographical and you had to prove it wasn't? Well 80,000 words of mpreg doesn't have that problem.

Everyone else has taken the best questions. If not favourite tense, which is a stupid question, is there a favourite anything - indoor scenes, outdoor scenes, conversations, action, insides of people's heads? i.e. question 8 but not about characters.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That would indeed be the problem. The Giant WIP has been helpful on that front, because I am ten years older than the main original female character and seem to be managing to believe that people will believe that she is a character, not me. This despite the person who thought that the Hilary/Bunter fic was the most disturbing fic she had ever read and how could anyone find that hot. I resisted the urge to get a tumblr account so I could say “I don’t”, and resolved to remember it in future next time I was making assumptions about an author.

But I digress. I don’t know that I particularly like writing one category of thing above all others. I like writing the thing that goes well, whatever it is: that conversation, that description, that incident, that plot. Anything can be a grind, but anything might flow easily and there are a thousand words before I know it. I had a lot of fun recently writing some description of a landscape that Wimsey was walking in, because I was basing it partly on a place that I’d been and I was trying to convey what it was like. I tend to have a very visual imagination, so description is fun for that reason – looking round and writing down what it looks like. Possibly I should do more of it. I used to find dialogue hard, especially between more than two people, but I worked on that a lot in a very conscious way when I first got into writing Harry Potter fic, and it paid off, because now, though like anything else a particular conversation may be very difficult, as a whole I tend to enjoy it.

[tree_and_leaf]

I don’t dislike writing Bunter, I find him very difficult. He is somehow opaque, and hard to present in an in-canon way while preserving him as a character and not a collection of traits.

Yes, he is. I suppose that's some excuse for JPW...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

A fair point, although sometimes I feel that JPW's problem is that she is trying to avoid thinking about Bunter.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Number 11 :)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Where to begin? :-) Of course, I have the usual technical weaknesses that come with relarive inexperience. However I am going to talk some that get in the way of my writing:

Structure. A weakness, or just difficult? I don’t know. One of the problems with fanfic as a training area for original novels (should one be using it as such), is that short fics do not present the same structural issues as long novels. A writer who appears to have good structure in a short form can have their shortcomings exposed when they try something longer. I do not read a lot of long fic, but structure is often significantly lacking. A novel is not simply a string of scenes. In writing the Giant WIP, structure is something that I’ve really tried to work on at all levels. How to get from A to M in a way that works as a complete story. How far I have succeeded, I don’t know, but I’ve certainly learnt a lot in doing it. I’ve also stalled a lot in doing it. Not quite knowing what comes next can turn into a 3 months hiatus. It’s become very clear to me that the only way I can get round a problem is by thinking a lot about it. A short break to clear the head, yes. But if I don’t know what comes next the way to find out is to sit down and struggle through until I do know.

This, unfortunately, is hampered by that other weakness, procrastination and inability to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Finally, I use far too many commas.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I use far too many commas.

Azdak, after looking at a recent draft, tactfully told me my punctuation is idiosyncratic :)

I agree with you about the importance of structure, it's vital. I find when that becomes clear (usually after a lengthy struggle), the words flow much more easily. It's one of the reasons I can't write linearly, I fiddle around too much with the structure, and sometimes I need the scenes before I know how/where I want to use them. I can't imagine translating that to working novel length though. From what I've seen at pico, you always seem to have a very tight focus for the scenes you're working on, you've really thought them through. The short pieces I've read are beautifully structured.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That is tact indeed!

I am very much a linear writer. Not necessarily a linear thinker - I often know the end relatively early, and I certainly come up with lots of scenes that will be slotted in a later moment. But as far as the bulk of writing goes, it's like I have a story idea, important scenes that come up and that are sort of like islands, and then I have to canoe from one to the next. Partly, I think, because I am also a first draft = last draft writer, I don't find structuring short pieces too difficult, but long ones -aargh!

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

1?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I don't know! I really need to do a proper masterlist of all my fic... And "of which are you most proud" is not actually a synonym for "best". So some fics I am proud of:

That a Lover Have His Desire - for being an immediate sequel to Gaudy Night. I really wanted to do it and I was really pleased with how it turned out. And having not done much primarily romantic fic, that was taking a step, too. When I re-read it I might want to change the odd word, but I still really like it as a piece.

Early Harry Potter-verse fic. Because it was hard work, and really got me into doing quite a bit of writing and trying to get better at it. I actively strove to do different things - to use more characters, different settings, try developing characters. I like what I did with the various Blacks - there was quite a lot of Mary-Sue-projection going on in some ways, but on the whole it worked (at least, no-one ever said they noticed).

The Giant Corsican WIP. Because I've been doing it for years now, and it is nearly 80,000 words long and will probably hit 100,000 before I finish, and it may be fanfic, and mpreg, but I am proud of the mystery story, and feel that as a novel it is some distance ahead of the ones I wrote before, and I've learnt a lot in doing it. Not least the need to keep concentrating.