Fic questions meme

[john_amend_all]

Memed from aralias:

Pick a fic of mine and a question (or questions) and I'll tell you:

1. What part was most difficult?
2. What are you most proud of?
3. What's a reference you made no one has picked up on yet?
4. What's a bit that sums up your take on a character?
5. Favorite line(s) of dialogue?
6. Favorite lines(s) of prose?
7. Were there any points where you were trying to do something specific with sound, vocabulary, or rhythm?
8. How many drafts did the work go through?
9. Were you listening to anything while writing the fic? If so, what?
10. Imagery that is important to the fic, either while composing or in the fic itself?
11. What were you most worried about during the composition?
12. How do you want readers to react to this fic?
13. What did you want them to take away from it?
14. What inspired this fic?
15. If you used a beta, what did you agree or disagree on?
16. Did anything surprise you during the writing?
17. Were any parts written under the influence?

This entry was originally posted at http://john-amend-all.dreamwidth.org/77248.html. Feel free to comment there or here.

Comments

[liadt]

3, 11 & 14 for Genius & Geniality, please.

[john_amend_all]

I'm going to do these out of order, for no particular reason.

14. What inspired this fic?

It traces its origin back to an LJ comment-fic post about pairing up companions who never met onscreen. Someone prompted Zoë & Victoria, and I tried writing a ficlet for them. In the first attempt, which was set in the future, Zoë was getting to do everything while Victoria just stood there and watched. So then I thought, "What about doing it in the Regency?" (I think this was shortly after lost_spook had posted Pride and Petulance, which explains why the Regency was in my mind). Anyway, I wrote and posted the ficlet, which more or less approximates to Zoë's altercation with the Lieutenant at the ball.

Later on, I started wondering how they came to be at the ball, what problem they were trying to solve, and so on. So I began trying to expand the ficlet to a full-on story; it took rather longer (six years!) than I'd anticipated.

3. What's a reference you made no one has picked up on yet?

Lieutenant Dennis's surname. This is going to take a bit of explanation: When I first encountered Pride and Prejudice, I found Wickham's surname amusing, because to a trainspotter like me a Wickham is one of these.

When I looked them up on Wikipedia, I found the trolleys were so named after the founder of the company that made them, one Dennis Wickham. Hence Lieutenant Dennis.

11. What were you most worried about during the composition?

Since the composition took so long a time, I had all sorts of things to be worried about. But I don't think any of them related particularly to the fic.

[liadt]

Blimey, six years! It was worth doing though.

The Wickham looks cute. Wickhams remind me of 'Robin of Sherwood'.

Thanks for answering:)

[john_amend_all]

I hasten to add that I wasn't working on the fic continuously for all six years. I suppose a better answer to question 11 might be wondering whether I could get the bits I wrote years ago to cooperate with the bits I wrote this year.