Writing meme answers!

[dorinda]

A. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.
Heh. Okay, I'd say a Typical Dorinda is m/m slash, and is a first-time rather than established relationship. It's in 3rd-person past tense. There are these two guys who are already partnered in some way, see. One of them has a secret (I mean, often both of them have a secret, but one of them has a BIGGER secret. Which he represses!). Often at least one of them is a clam.

Through Circumstances & Events, including a heapin' helpin' of broccoli, the bigger secret is revealed, and if there is a clam, the clam cracks to some degree. The revelation and/or crack in the shell allows the partners to at last express their connection on a romantic/erotic level, which in the end leaves them more deeply partnered. It has a happy ending.

It is extremely unlikely that anyone says "I love you" using those words, but there will be at least one line of dialogue that secretly means that exact thing.




B. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?
A proper full-fledged idyll! It's one of my favorite tropes to read, but I never have written it. The closest I've come might be my I Spy story He Travels Fastest, since they're vacationing in a luxurious Italian villa, but the idyll is diluted in certain ways--most critically by the presence of other people, including an antagonist. I am longing to tackle an idyll that rolls straight up the middle of the trope as I enjoy it: the characters alone, peace and luxury, abundance of food, swimming available. See question D below for more on that.

C. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
Mpreg comes to mind. Not that I'm against those who enjoy it, you know, dig what you dig! But it is so not-for-me it might as well have a not-for-Dorinda sign on it. None of the themes that seem implicit in mpreg have any attraction for me, to write or to read—pregnancy in general being a big one, as well as children, bodily transformation, etc., plus the level of crackiness/departure from realism that is often required to have the M in the preg. Sorry, nopin' out.

D. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?
I have notes on a handful of ideas, sitting on the back burner in various stages of simmering or hibernation. Sometimes even beyond notes—I confess, I have a Sherlock Holmes (Granada flavor) story intended for marycrawford that's up to some 13,000 words, but I got bogged and lost and set it aside for later. (More on that under question R below.)

The next story intended for the active hopper (after my current Haven story is submitted for this year's TroublesFest) is an idyll story for Sinbad (2012), a one-season British series with a big found-family theme and a lovely slashpair. (I should post about that show some time. But first I gotta make screencaps!) In the early planning stages it sometimes feels a little intimidatingly plotty, but we'll see how it goes as I sketch it out.





E. Share one of your strengths.
I think I can do a good job of evoking the tone and atmosphere of my chosen canon, especially if it's something historical (I tend to write a lot of historicals).





H. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
I've been thinking about my Casablanca story Nom de Coeur lately, and there are some things in there I quite like.

Like (without a snippet, though, as there's a fair amount of prose/description in among the dialogue in question), I like the dialogue early on between Rick and Sam when Sam implies he's coming along and Rick stops him. It felt very Rick, to me, in ways both good and bad: he knows Sam's greatest virtue (his loyalty/caretaking) and forcibly uses it against him, to keep Sam safe and basically force him to stay put and take care of everyone else in their little Cafe family. Sam can see it coming, pleads with him not to do it, but in the end (because he is so profoundly loyal and caretaking) he agrees to cooperate, despite the deep pain it causes both him and Rick. It's the exact same powerful cruelty/idealism Rick brings to bear in the movie upon Ilsa, and I liked the parallelism there—Rick loves these very loyal people, and he knows how to use that loyalty against them but for their own good, and it's painful for everybody involved.

But that might be more about the characterization of the scene in a larger sense than the dialogue in specific, so here's a snippet I like on its own merits, from much later in the story. Rick and Louis have made their way pretty far south by now, out to a fort near the Sahara. And all along the trip, Vichy officials have been coaxing Louis to take this open position in a post near Oran, but he keeps smoothly slipping out of the net. Early on, Rick actually said he should take the job and wondered why he doesn't, but to his surprise Louis gets increasingly clammed up and even angry whenever he mentions it.

So they're out in this fort, sharing a little room, and Louis has just told Rick about another Vichy official who was sounding him out about the new job (and who he therefore was glad to avoid):

Rick grinned up at the ceiling. "Louis, you slay me. You're like a bachelor on the run from a bunch of matchmakers."

"Some men are just not meant for matrimony."

"Maybe. But I don't get it. You and Vichy bureaucracy, it's a match made in heaven. You can't tell me you didn't even consider it."

The silence went on this time until Rick was sure he'd had the last word. But again Louis proved him wrong, speaking hesitantly. "I should have."

Rick thought about the prospect of crossing into the Tibesti alone, really didn't like it, squelched that train of thought, and answered. "There's still time."

"Not 'should have taken the job,'" Louis said, his voice sharp now. "Should have considered the job. Should have wanted the job. But I didn't."

Louis lied when it suited him, sure. But Rick knew how most of his lies sounded, and this wasn't one of them. "You didn't. Why the hell not?"

"You don't want to know. Which, you are thinking, is a ridiculous thing for me to say, since the very act of saying it guarantees that you will want to know. To which I'll say, go to sleep."

Rick laughed quietly. "I guess that takes care of that."

"Good night, Ricky."

"You're really not going to tell me?"

"Let's not lose all the mystery in our relationship before the honeymoon is even over."

A few of the lines in here sound very much like the characters as performed in the movie to me, or as close as I could manage, and that's always a goal of mine. But also, I like how as Rick gets closer to the mystery, Louis is actually starting to tell him the answer, though Rick doesn't yet consciously understand. And in particular the marriage themes—this is, after all, a story whose summary may as well be RICK AND LOUIS GO ON A TRIP AND GET MARRIED (and Louis even changes his name, being old-fashioned that way :D ). The way Louis uses his natural sense of camp and archness, to tell Rick some honest truths disguised as his usual badinage, I enjoy that, as well as the romantic/erotic charge Louis is admitting via his particular metaphors (and how he's deploying them in this dark, private little bedroom). I really like lines that can do more than one thing, especially if the reader can see multiple levels while a character in the story believably can't (yet).




I. Which fic has been the hardest to write?
In terms of written-on-but-unfinished, I'd say the Granada Sherlock Holmes story I mentioned in question D--I was determined just to forge ahead without my customary outline or throughline-sketch, and I ended up tangled in a ball of yarn dangling upside-down from the chandelier. /o\ There are exchanges and scenes I do like, but I don't yet have a grip on where to lead them, climax them, and end them.

But that might not be fair, picking something unfinished. For something finished, I'd say possibly He Travels Fastest, the I Spy story where Scotty is recovering from a canonical gunshot wound in a fancy villa with Kelly. I started that story after a terrific fannish weekend visit from msmoat, and it was just intended to be a short "what if" thing for her: Kelly and Scotty always share a bedroom, so what if they are suddenly separated and it unexpectedly throws them off?

Well, the damn "short" piece just started growing, and I had a hell of a time getting and keeping a grip on it. I was in Scotty's POV, and Scotty was the one worst shaken by the separation and what it brought up in him. But, Scotty is a total clam, so I just didn't believe that he'd be at all quick to 1) admit how troubled he was, 2) recognize why, and 3) accept it (the way Kelly does mostly offscreen--but then, I think he's known how he feels about Scotty for a lot longer).

So, that meant I was following Scotty's slow process of upset and self-denial, with the import only gradually creeping up on him while he tries hard to batten down his hatches. And this meant that the story felt so slow to me, almost choked with detail, since I didn't feel able to skim ahead much if at all, in order to show the process of Scotty's clamtastic reaction while keeping direct realizations off the table as long as possible.

You can ask anyone I write with or who betas me, I already have a big problem with deciding ("realizing") about halfway through that my current story in progress is BORING, OH GOD IT'S SO SLOW AND BORING AND TERRIBLE, WHAT IS HAPPENING, etc. Even now that I've come to recognize that as a pattern in my psyche, it still happens ("Well maybe last time was just my old habit, but this time IT'S TRUE, IT REALLY IS BORING AND HORRIBLE"). These days, I try to lean on things like friend-feedback/cheerleading, and also challenge deadlines, to make me ignore the HallelujahBoring Chorus and just stick my shoulder to the wheel and shove. (Because even if it is boring, or slower-paced than it should be, the only thing to do is finish it, and then fix! That's what revision's for.)

But with He Travels Fastest, I was just writing it on a lark (so, alone), and hadn't recognized that particular bad habit yet, so I got stuck a lot. Lot lot. I'd get bogged down and set it aside for months. I can't remember how long it took between starting and finishing, but I suspect over a year if not more. I don't remember precisely how I finally managed to stagger to the actual end, but I suspect it involved whining at writing to friends about it, and sakana17 and klia beta-read and presumably thumped me on the head to stop my writhing around.

Luckily, all that time and fretting didn't make me hate the story. Whew. But it reminds me that I really should work on my "writing short" muscles, because I'm not strong in that particular skillset.



Q. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?
I write from start to finish. I can't remember a time I purposely wrote anything out of order—probably only when I don't realize additional scenes are needed, and later have to go back and add them. When I'm writing, I depend a lot on a sense of throughline or stepping stones, and I don't have the knack of being able to skip ahead and intuit exactly where the nuances of the throughline will be in the future without writing my way there.

R. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?
I'm an inveterate outliner. Could be a few jotted notes in a row laying the main scenes out; or could be nested numbers and parallel columns to keep track of plots, emotions, and secrets (looking at you, Buried Treasure Racket). Or something in between. I admire people who don't do that--it's a skill I just don't have or at least can't find. I used to admire them to my own detriment, actually, as if they were some sort of higher evolution of writing skill. Maybe partly because it seemed so foreign to me that I felt they must be higher beings—and also because I used to read a lot of writing advice (especially from pros) that denigrated outlines.

These days, though, I'm okay with my outlining, and find it a perfectly fine way of working. It's just a way of doing things, it works for me, and I don't need to strive after a different style as if it would automatically be a level above. (Though I will continue to admire the non-outliners!) I certainly grant the point (made by a lot of the advice-givers) that you don't want to outline instead of writing, where the eternal notes/outlines take the place of actual story-creation. But my outlines help me sketch things out so I can keep moving forward and get things done, which is the point.

And I still discover things as I write! My outlines are not inflexible, or complete to the last detail. In my Gimli/Legolas big bang plan, I had the idea for Gimli's secret chant sketched out, but then I discovered Legolas's coded knot-tying as I wrote, and that definitely had a huge influence on the rest of the story.

The last story where I just tried wading in with no outline was the incomplete Sherlock Holmes (Granada flavor) story mentioned above, and it bogged down and got stuck because I didn't know where I was going, and had no sense of where in all this detail was the actual skeleton/throughline. I'm sure in future I can go back to it and figure it out, but this time I'll let myself do what I'd rather do, which is jot it out and plan ahead.

T. Describe your perfect writing conditions.
See icon. :D

In more detail: perfect conditions mean a whole day for nothing but writing! After breakfast, I settle in on the laptop and open my Writing playlist in iTunes (which I tinker with depending on which story I'm working on). Lots of instrumental stuff, but not exclusively—there are also songs with words that help evoke a tone or character/relationship beats.

I like to get onto irc chat with some friends, if any of them are either also writing or feel like cheerleading. If folks are instead doing other things, I might write on my own and check in occasionally, but sometimes I have to make my excuses and sign out, because I get too easily distracted and don't usually write well in the midst of a lot of other goings-on.

If anyone else in chat is writing too, then I like to do it pomodoro-style: someone sets a timer for 25 minutes (I use my phone), we count down and start. I minimize the chat window and have disabled its notification noises. Then all I do during those minutes is write, and ideally not notes or outline pieces, but actual content without editing. (My internal editor can be my worst enemy, choking stories off before they can even get rolling.)

When the timer rings, I go back into chat. We usually trade word counts, cheer for each other, talk and relax. Then soonish we say, who's up for another? And off we go again. I really find writing with (or, near) friends in that sort of Parallel Play style very helpful in pushing me through my bad habits and mental blocks, and also keeping me in touch with what they're working on and how they're doing.

I can and will do this all the livelong day, with a break for food, occasional standing/walking about to ease my back, and a diet coke with ice near at hand.



Thanks so much for asking the questions, and indulging me!

Comments

[msmoat]

Ooh, I like this meme! It's so fascinating to hear about your process and some of the story behind the story. (And, good lord, I do remember how very, very long it took for you to finish He Travels Fastest! *g* You would send me tantalizing bits, and then months would go by. Torture. Really, really, it was torture. *g* But such a terrific story. I get the HallelujahBoring Chorus, but...I don't think it is actually possible for you to write a boring story/passage/anything!)

Oh, cool about the writing chat! I've done the bit of having a friend come over and we write for a specified time, but not this virtual version of it. That sounds like a really great way to leverage peer pressure and fun all in one.

I agree completely about your amazing abilities with canonical tone and atmosphere. Also voices. And stories. And finding just the right story for your chosen canon. Basically, you're terrific, you know! *g* Thanks for sharing all of this!

[dorinda]

If you wanted to do the meme at some point, I would totally ask you questions! I always love hearing your thoughts on your writing, and writing in general. Besides, then I could get you to post some snippets from bits of your writing you're proudest of, and it would give me a great excuse to re-read them!

He Travels Fastest is, in retrospect, kind of an ironic title. How about "He Travels OH GOD SO SLOWLY WHAT IS THE PROBLEM". *g* Cruel of me to send you little bits, but getting so bogged down felt even crueler to myself. That's what happens when I get an idea for a "short" treat. Yikes!

If someone would just invent the Star Trek-style transporter, I would love to write with friends physically. I did get to do that on my last visit to see mollyamory, therienne, and arduinna, and it was so great--we'd get fed and beveraged and settled in, then set a timer and off we'd go, quietly tapping away, cats creeping around to see what the heck was going on.