Writing meme

[john_amend_all]

Memed from lost_spook:

Give me a number and I'll answer the question (or try to anyway):

1. Which is your favorite of the fics you’ve written for [name of fandom]?
2. Favorite piece overall?
3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?
4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?
5. What is an image/set of images that you’re particularly proud of?
6. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?
7. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
9. Favorite character to write?
10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you’ve written
11. If I’m showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?
12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?
13. Are there any things that might have happened in any of your stories, but you changed them at the last minute? (So-and-so dies, they don’t actually kiss, main character has long extended ballet-based dream sequence, etc.)
14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?
15. Does font matter to you when you’re writing a draft?
16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.
17. Any mean comments? How’d you deal with it? Who laid the smackdown?
18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?
19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?
20. Go nuts, and talk about writing. Or write me a little ficlet-whatsit using a character/image/line I shall now specify—

This entry was originally posted at http://john-amend-all.dreamwidth.org/64014.html. Feel free to comment there or here.

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Number 6, please.

[john_amend_all]

Well, let's see. There was one that was going to be set in the This Time Round verse, involving an evil Jo from the mirror Universe and a remote-controlled duck, but I was never happy with the good guys' plan which they were trying to prevent.

Then there was the adventure with Two, Jamie, Zoë and Martha. That suffered from my tendency to write the beginning and the ending of a fic, and then try to work out how to join the two ends together. Martha got kidnapped by the villains quite early on and that left her with nothing to do. (Though I've just looked at the file, which was last modified 5 years ago, and it begins with instructions from my past self explaining how the plot should be redesigned to fix that).

Oh, and of course any idea I have for smut tends to run straight into the brick wall of looking at what I've written, deleting the file, and shredding it so there's no possibility of recovering it.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I'd probably be so pleased with myself for coming up with the mirror-Jo and the duck that I wouldn't be thinking much further than that - you are a more conscientious man than I.

And yes, I know what you mean about fitting bits of story together. I'm a bit the same when it comes to plots - I tend to wing it something awful, as well as foolhardily posting parts of things before the later bits are finished. You may notice in my multi-chapter fics that the chapters get longer and longer towards the end sometimes. That's me wriggling and manoeuvring desperately to get where I think I'm going after veering off on various tangents along the way... And I know all too well what that brick wall feels like, too.

Anyway, I hope you eventually manage to resurrect those and do something with them that you're pleased with. I suppose the trick would be getting your future self to leave you instructions on how to fix things. ;)

[john_amend_all]

On those occasions that I can force myself to be disciplined about it, I don't let myself write the ending — even if I know exactly what it'll be — until I've got there the long way round. Thus giving me something to aim for, and a reward if I get there.

I've still got a fondness for the duck, but I think it needs a better stage on which to shine :-)

[thisbluespirit]

7. Since you asked me that. ;-p

[john_amend_all]

There are bits of my own writing I don't like to reread, but I think the only one that made it out onto the Net was one of the 15-characters ficlets (the second one here). Specifically, the passage where I try — and, in my view, utterly fail — to pastiche E. E. Smith.

[liadt]

4 please as I'm nosy.

[john_amend_all]

I think, with a question like that, I'll hide behind as literal an interpretation as I could force onto the question.

So... William Harwood in Extra-Curricular Activity is somewhere between a self-insert and a self-parody; I gave him various aspects of myself, chiefly the ones I dislike.

And the office Donna is temping at in Uninvited is the office where I worked at the time I wrote it. Suitably adapted to the demands of the plot, of course.

[liadt]

A brave answer. I'd write a self-insert where I'm great, because I am(!), good job I don't write.

[john_amend_all]

Ah, I'm too busy writing Zoë as a Mary-Sue (canon possession variant) to put myself in as the hero :-)