Writing meme: Answers

[john_amend_all]

These took some time to come up with, mostly because of trying to think of answers of more than a sentence for the trope-based questions.

thisbluespirit asked:

19. Any fandom tropes you can't resist?

When writing, it tends to be fixits all the way. And cakefics. And strange pairings. It's also nice to have a bit of a four-dimensional element to a fic; visiting the same place at two points in time, that sort of thing.

dbskyler asked:

20. Any fandom tropes you can't stand?

I think I've been asked something like this before. It's tricky, because of the risk that if I name something, it'll probably turn up in one of my fics. But here's one that's specific to the Doctor Who fandom: I certainly can't stand stories where Rose kills Martha (at least one of which exists, because I've read it).

16. Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an "architect" or a "gardener"? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

In general, when I start writing a story, I've got an idea where I want it to go — even if it's only "This is the situation at the start" and "This is the situation at the end". And there might be a set-piece or two I want to include. This has led fics to come to a grinding halt when I find that there isn't actually enough plot to join the dots together. There's a Jamie's Angels fic on my hard drive, for instance, where I've got one of the set-pieces (Samantha drinks a Mickey Finn intended for someone else) but I've no idea who actually was trying to drug whom.

liadtbunny asked:

25. A character you want to protect.

Apart from my already-noted tendency to lash out in the form of novella-length fixits whenever Big Finish do nasty things to Zoë? I seem to have written my fair share of fixits for Lucie, too, and created at least one fragment of Clara that didn't get killed when she was supposed to.

One might expect me to want to protect Victoria; certainly her fans on Tumblr all seem united in their desire to. While I have written fixits for her, these days I seem to tend more to stretching her — hopefully not so far that she comes to bits.

ghost2 asked:

14. Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Well, there are all those Unconventional Courtship prompts that the generator throws out. Some of them really ought to exist full-length. Such as that one thisbluespirit coaxed out of it a while ago:

232) Falling for Her Rival by Jackie Braun

For chef Lucie Miller, it's time to turn up the heat. Three years ago she hit rock bottom. Now she's ready for a comeback, starting with winning a TV competition to secure a spot running New York's trendiest kitchen! She just didn't count on her attraction to rival Karen Coltraine burning a hole in her plans…

Karen has worked her apron off for this opportunity, and total focus on the competition was the plan — which is difficult when all she can think about is wanting her opponent out of the kitchen and in her bed! But there can only be one winner, and sometimes, to win, a girl has to play dirty!

I wrote a snippet, but really it wants to be a full-blown Great British Bake-Off crossover / fusion, and that's outside my area of expertise.

Also, it would be nice now and again to find a subcontractor to write sex scenes rather than fading to black. This obviously applies to pairings that no-one but me would think of writing, such as Lucie/Karen as above or Jamie/Rose, but even a moderately widely-shipped pairing like Jamie/Victoria seems curiously lacking in explicit rumpy-pumpy.