cruiscin_lan | Hey writers. Let me poll your brains.

Man. I've got writer's block like whoa right now. I can't write anything smutty, and I can't write anything even remotely humorous that doesn't turn to crack instantly. The only thing I can write right now is angst, and that is not working out with my

heroes_exchange prompt.

So you know what I'm going to do instead of write? I'm going to do a poll. I love polls.

For anyone who has ever written before, this one's for you. We'll be playing it fast and loose with definitions, so don't stress it too much. I'm just wondering what you write, why, and how. Ticky box poll so you can check as many boxes as you need!

[Poll #1502315]

What
I think, for me, most of these poll questions would depend on the fandom I'm writing for. I haven't written much for Veronica Mars, but what I have written leans towards angst/romance. Glee lends itself more to cracky or funny fics. I've written so much for Heroes that it probably relies more on the characters or pairings (i.e. Mohinder/Elle tends to be fluffy and silly, whereas Sylar/Claire is really dark and angsty).

Why
As far as why I write what I write is concerned, lately much of my output has been generated by prompts. I would even say that I prefer working with prompts for one primary reason: I like to know that someone's going to read what I've come up with. Normally the length or genre is dictated by the prompt or challenge, so that's taken care of for me. When I choose prompts, it's often determined more by what seems feasible than anything else. I tend to stick close to canon when I can.

How
My writing process right now is kind of ridiculous. For some reason when I write a scene I always start by writing the dialogue first, and then I go back and fill in all the action and description. While it's really useful to do this a lot of the time, it's not the best way way to go about writing scenes that don't require a lot of dialogue, like a really smutty scene, or a scene driven only by one character. I very rarely do any outlining, unless it's a really, really long fic or I'm trying to make sure it fits a specific prompt; otherwise my stories develop pretty much organically. I don't write from beginning to end, though - I normally start with one or two scenes and then fill in scenes around them as I feel necessary.

Okay, flist. Tell me about how you do things.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I usually write long, chaptered fics (I've written ficlets and one-shots, but those are secondary, one-off things. The sit down and actually work at it, every-day writing I do it for longfics), almost invariably OTP-based, but usually with action or h/c plots. The last time I wrote a fic that was just straight romance rather than action/drama, I spent the entire length of the big bang challenge I wrote it for freaking out that my big bang fic had no plot, and my co-writer had to keep reminding me that a relationship plot *is* a plot ("You read romance novels on a weekly basis! You know the fic has a real plot!").

I write most of my long fics with a co-writer, and the two of us generally do a scene-by-scene outline first, and then write the fic with the two of us sitting in front of one computer together and me typing (when in different physically locations, we talk on the phone, I type, and then I email her each 200-500 word segment as we go. Or I type the scene in lj comments). Dialogue is often the first part of a scene that gets written, with us going back to add in physical descriptions.

One real benefit of outline is that it lets us work a fic out in detail when we first get the idea for it (usually when in the middle of writing something else) and then save it to go back to it later. And having a structure set in place before we start writing makes writing much easier, because most of the heavy lifting of plot, structure, etc. has already been done when we start writing.

My co-writer reads the beta commentary and does the editing, because I hate editing and she likes it. Plus, I've found that criticism works well for me when a story's in the outline stages and hasn't actually been written yet, because then it feels like brainstorming ideas with someone, but can be anxiety-inducing when the fic's already partially written, when it feels like being graded -- I can do it, but it's easier to make her do it for me (I never wanted to look at term papers when the teacher handed them back to me, either. I had to *force* myself to see what grade I'd gotten, and then force myself to read the notes the professor had written on it). Which is one reason why we like to send our outlines to be beta-ed -- plus, major changes in structure or pacing or plot that would be impossible to do once it's written without gutting the fic and starting again from scratch are easy in the outline stage.

Hmm... It's probably also worth adding that I tend to think of key visual images or emotional high points in the fic first, and then come up with a fic to go around them. The longest fic I ever wrote basically exists for the sake of four scenes -- 1. one female character bathes by candlelight and a second female character watches her, 2. main character A and main character B have one night of stolen time together in the middle of a war before A has to return to the front and probably death, 3. main character B kills the main villain in a specific, extremely badass way, and 4. main character A is tortured by the bad guys and main character B finds him in his cell and thinks for a second that A's dead and he was too late, but (yay!) he isn't. The Id-vortex stuff comes first, and then comes the work of making a framework to hang the Id-pr0n on and then trying to make the result actually good.

It's probably also worth adding that I tend to think of key visual images or emotional high points in the fic first, and then come up with a fic to go around them.
I would think this is similar to working with a prompt, except you're coming up with it yourself (although I guess a visual image would be easier to work with than the emotional part).

I've always wondered how it is to work with a collaborator. I imagine that an outline would be necessary when writing with a partner because, with just one author, there's still a thousand ways for a story to go - and with two people, I imagine it's even harder to reign in the plot.

I never wanted to look at term papers when the teacher handed them back to me, either. I had to *force* myself to see what grade I'd gotten, and then force myself to read the notes the professor had written on it
Hey, we work hard on those comments! I usually just make notes in student papers where I think the ideas need to be developed more or clarified -it's nothing bad, I promise. :)

Oh, I know it's usually nothing bad (my mother's an English teacher, and a bunch of my classmates in grad school were TAs, so I've seen the paper-grading process from the other end) -- it's the paralyzing fear that it *might* be bad and I might get a bad grade that got me. I was the same way about checking my grades for classes at the end of each term.

I'm not sure how it works with most people who co-write stuff -- seanchai and I live in the same apartment, and before that we went to the same college, so we've always been in the same physical location for most of the stuff we've written together -- the outline is less to keep us on the same page as far as the story goes, and more because we both like having that structure even when we write by ourselves (I don't know what we'd do if one of us was the outline-writing type and the other was one of those writers who finds outlines stifling). If we had to collaborate via IM or email the way I know a lot of other people who co-write do, I suspect we'd work differently (ex: I know some people will divide up who writes what scene, round-robin-style, or who writes which character, rpg-style).

Hey writers. Let me poll your brains.

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