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lodessa · 11 months

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20. What’s a favorite title for a fic you’ve written? 21. Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why? 22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

Thanks for the ask <3

20. What’s a favorite title for a fic you’ve written?

Mostly I just choose song lyrics (or a word/phrase that is vaguely the right vibe to me) but I actually came up with four different real/good titles for The Half-Life Fallacy (thanks to @romeorevoarchive who helped me brainstorm). They were as follows:

The Half-Life Fallacy (The winner, basically referencing the lingering impact of certain events and how they never actually disappear completely.)

Star Thistle Summer (kind of a double meaning, both because star thistle is painful, stubborn and resilient, but also because it is one of those plants that will take over after a wildfire. It really just worked well both for the initial Blackout vibe but also the relationship dynamics/Matheson characteristics.)

Manzanita Blaze (Leaning more heavily into the plants/wildfire metaphor. Manzanita is one of those plants that uses fire to propagate, it's also a very twisty tree. It is double catastrophe that brings and keeps them together, no matter how wrong and impossible it should be on paper. It just fit them.)

Forks in a Circular Road (Learning into the sense of inevitability of where the fic ends up, and also the framing of Bass' narration. This is an AU where you can take a totally different path, but in some ways you are going to end up on the same road.)

I'm also pretty happy with the title of my most current WIP: The Backup, which ties into the many different uses of backup/back up:

Providing support, backing.

A secondary choice, being “on the bench”.

To step back, go backwards.

To rebound, recover, “get back up”

21. Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why?

I used to really struggle with this, so I developed an alternative method, where I just cut/paste the problem section into a new document instead of deleting it. Sometimes a scene just isn't taking you where you need to go to get to the next story beat, sometimes it doesn't really follow from what came before, but it is hard to get rid of something you wrote if you actually like anything about it. Taking it out of the context it isn't working in without trashing it made it so much easier for me to recognize when that was the case. Putting it in a new document sometimes means it just sits there, but I have had times where I ended up using it as the seed for a new fic, and times where later on it turned out if totally fit in the same fic I wrote it for, just in a totally different part of the story.

Right now I am actually debating this for a section I have written for The Backup that doesn't really make sense following what I wrote before it. I'm still trying to decide whether it just needs to be later in the story, or it needs to be in a different fic entirely.

*Putting a sneak peak at the end of the post under a read more if anyone wants to look.

22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing?

I usually have an idea of where a fic is going to end up, though the path there is often either murky or not the one I end up following. For some "current" WIPs:

k'war'ma'khon: Originally was just supposed to be a little flash ficlet, but once I decided to move beyond that, the inevitable ending had to be Georgiou (and Sarek and the crew of the Discovery) rescuing Michael (or I guess Michael breaking free). However, I definitely didn't initially think that Spock was going to show up or have any idea how I was going to get Michael out of Klingon prison.

Dragon Marked: The eventual ending to this one is very epic and complex, involving reincarnation, magic, science, conspiracy theories, politics, and dragons. I actually brainstormed the plot (not the what plot ;-P) part out with my husband. There's a lot of ground to cover before that though, so who knows what might change.

The Backup: Being canon divergent but set during season 3 gives me some nice boundaries. The reader and I know who the Heart Rapist is already. That's not the question, the questions are about how Veronica and Weevil who are now on a different path because of what's gone differently will solve that mystery, catch him, but also how they will manage the ways their dynamic has shifted. This fic started from the desire to have both of those things go in a different direction than canon did, so the ending is where I started with this one.

As promised, a scene I don't know whether I will keep in The Backup of not:

“Does it ever feel like nothing you do actually makes a difference?” V asks, at the bottom of the stairwell of Mac’s dorm.

Only every fucking day , he thinks, but at the same time he’s pretty sure that’s not actually helpful, and he wants to help Veronica, even though it all feels pointless most of the time. So he stays quiet and waits for her to say more.

“The world is a shitty place and it doesn’t matter how many answers I find, how many bad guys I take down. There’s always another one. So what’s the point? Why bother? Maybe I should just say fuck it and stop trying.”

“That I’d love to see,” he shakes his head, pausing before adding, “Veronica Mars standing idly by. Pretty sure reality might fold in on itself if you stopped digging at every mystery and hammering at injustice, V.”

“Doesn’t make it any less crazy that I do,” she deflects.

“Maybe not,” he concedes, but if she’s crazy what does that make him? “But if it helps people, I would call that the good kind of crazy, and you do help people, Veronica.”

Giving up is the logical response to hopeless situations, but if he did that what would be left for him? What would be left of any of them?

“You want to know a secret?” she asks and he thinks, I want to know all of your secrets.

“Is that a trick question?” he says instead.

“Most of the time, I don’t care about helping people so much as making the bad guy pay. I’m motivated by vengeance and the lure of secrets, not the good that comes from whatever it is I find.”

“Most of the time?” he questions.

“This case is different,” she owns, something he already had picked up on.

“And that’s a bad thing?” he responds instead of asking why even though he wants the answer to that question like a smoker fiending for a cigarette.

“Maybe. Honestly, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Part of him wants to take this moment of uncertainty and push things a little, see if she would fall into his arms, turn to him for comfort not just security.

I’ve got you, querida, he could say, pull her close, one hand cradling the back of her head and the other wrapped around her waist. V seems so brittle and shaky right now and he wonders if there have been other times she was like this and he just didn’t know her well enough yet to see it: if he missed the clues or if she hid them better when he was a stranger.

This would have been easier, he suspects, if he’d seen that vulnerability two years ago, back when he was a gang leader and she was an outcast, and they were some sort of high school cliche. Back when she was an intriguing unknown.

But he didn’t see it then, and she’s not a stranger anymore, and maybe it is better they can both pretend he doesn’t see it now.

“Well then, my prediction is that you are going to take this asshole down and someone is going to erect a goddamned statue of you: Veronica Mars: protector of Hearst.”

“Okay, maybe my guess is better than yours, since that is totally not going to happen.”

#about writing fic #weever

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insecateur · 2 years

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😈🎢🎶👀

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

i mean does ending chapter 6 of slawcs with a cliffhanger that makes it unclear whether or not lysandre survives count as being playfully mean... i feel like i have been getting less mean over the years actually!! i'm too nice now!! this is actually a long con so that people are no longer expecting me to fuck them over and i can just backstab them out of nowhere

🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

I MEAN SLAWCS?? PROBABLY?? i feel like the whole premise has become mundane to me bc i worked on it for almost a decade but it is kind of wild objectively

i was thinking of the main fic mostly but honestly the whole series is a wild ride when you think about like... the origin point... compared to where we're at now... and then there's the kinky sex on top of that... there are so many ingredients in this soup.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

not that much actually bc i mostly write on my phone and i'm too lazy to put music on my phone that i like i only have old stuff that i still like but i'm not necessarily super vibing with... if i'm on the computer i will listen to music while writing though... fun fact i did that one 1-hour word sprint challenge thing listening to the mp100 season 3 op the whole time (i need to finish that at some point... the fic i mean not mp100 season 3 it hasn't come out yet)

ALSO HONESTLY WHEN YOU SENT THIS ASK I'M PRETTY SURE I WAS STILL LISTENING TO RAZIA'S SHADOW ON LOOP SO THAT PROBABLY LMAO

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

ok i will tell you about my soulmate AU even though you already know about it: so it's something i'm working on for a challenge where you can't go over 5,1k words basically and it's really fucking hard and i'm at almost 4k i think and it's like barely a soulmate AU it's more like... a soul horny AU. it's an AU where when you meet your soulmate you get uncontrollably horny.

no but okay at this point i have spent so many words on that subject that i'm like... i can't go back anymore this is what the plot is about. but also i feel like this is something that only appeals to me personally and people are probably going to be put off by it but at the same time i DID post my other, old soulmate AU that doesn't involve that much horny so it's not like there isn't something else people can turn to i guess. i have been agonizing over this and i only have like. a week and a half to finish it to the deadline and it's been difficult. (and that's without getting into me getting sick!!!!)

oh and uh the plot is that lysandre and augustine are soulmates and it's told from lysandre's pov and he agonizes a lot about his soul mark in the first half and then it just goes downhill from there. please let me know if that interests you i honestly keep debating whether i should give up on it or not nnghhh (i know it interests you as in noah who is sending this ask.)

#la réponse d #just the entire concept of having a set word count i can't go over is apparently crushing me #like the maw of a terrifying mechanical device that i cannot escape from #me: this will be a fun challenge! my brain: HISSSSSSSSS

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