#this has been sitting in my drafts for a week bc it feels super obscure but if I don’t post it how will ppl know how cringe I am | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

toastytoaster22 · 2 years

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5, 10, 14 for the asks!!

Oooh thank you! These are fun ones!

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

With the amount that I write Teru, I think most people would assume that I am projecting on him to some degree, (and I am with one aspect of his character) the character I actually identify most with is Mayuko.

Which is hilarious because I low key made up her entire characterization. But over the years she has transformed into a person that I enjoy and feel for. Just a mom doing the best she can with what she's got. I work with kids and whoooooooo it is NOT easy. She's just out there wrangling all these traumatized kids with no psychology background. Just pure Mom Instinct. And she isn't perfect, but she is better than a lot of what's out there.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

HEh. Meticulous. I don't ever just sit down and write. I no longer know how.

I get an idea and I think about it for days. Weeks. I let it sink in and let all the juices flow. I ask myself a million questions about it until I feel like I know the idea inside out and upside down. When I feel like every option has been explored, I pick which path I want to take it down and start outlining.

Maps. I map EVERYTHING. Character arcs. Physical locations. Timelines for good guys. Timelines for bad guys. Interactions and conversations that I deem most important. Everything gets its own page and I work on that for X number of days until it feels thorough enough.

Then comes the writing. I write the entire fic in note form. Everything I just mapped out on paper? Move it to a word doc and put it in the timeline. Once the whole story is there I look through and chop it into chapter sized chunks based on what I want beginning and ending events to looks like per chapter, and what the theme of the chapter might become.

After that I let Devi look at the draft. Any huge glaring plot holes will be apparent by then. She asks 500 questions and every time I answer them I note it down in the right spot.

And then, ONLY THEN. Do I let myself sit down and start actually writing chapter one. And every time I sit back down on a new day, I make myself reread the whole chapter up to where I was so i can be all refreshed.

Throughout the writing process I tweak and edit the upcoming chapter outlines constantly to reflect any little details or changes I made.

It's not fast, but I really like the quality of the stories I put out these days, so it works for me!

14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?

Oh god. Well USUALLY I try to make one up BEFORE I get to the Ao3 prompt at posting time. Uh. Sometimes that doesn't happen. With my long fics I have a lot more time to plan things out, and I like strategic and thematic titles that are 1-4 words, so I have my work cut out for me.

Socha came from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Issho is Japanese for "with/together". Some of the titles come super easy and are fun to pick out. Nightjar.... Nightjar is its own story that maybe I will tell people when the fic is over bc its absurd.

#abysslll!#toasty answers #writer's meta asks #nightjar is a long story but hell its a weird and funny one #don't start now is a song title #most of the others i just come up with at some point during writing

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