30 days of fanfic meme, questions 24-30
Jul. 30th, 2011 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitFinishing off the meme now that LJ's back.
24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
I think getting a story beta-read is always a good idea. And yet I don't do it very often. Many of my stories are short, and it feels ridiculous asking someone to beta 600-1500 words unless I have some kind of major concern (e.g. I'm writing in a new fandom or I need specific details--a historical setting, geography, Australian slang, or obscure corners of canon--looked over). Longer stories I usually have beta-read at least once, as well as Brit-picked when applicable, and they are much the better for it.
Most of my betas have done a great job. But once, when in a new fandom where I didn't know anybody, I asked for someone to beta a story. The person who volunteered asked me to change constructions that were grammatically correct into constructions that weren't (in narration, by the way, not in dialogue where grammatical incorrectness might have been more in character). I quickly found a second person to beta the story as well.
25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
It depends. Complete quiet doesn't work for me (see #27), but if I listen to music, it usually needs to be music that either doesn't have lyrics or that I'm quite familiar with so it turns into a kind of mental wallpaper. I don't really use playlists--I am old-fashioned and tend to listen to full albums. I listened to the Decemberists' The Crane Wife a lot while writing "Midwinter"; I don't think the album's content has much of anything to do with the story (except possibly that there's a lot in both about mortality) but the music felt right somehow.
26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?
I do a lot of research, because I like it. Probably the single oddest thing I ever had to try and find out was the name of a particular kind of figure of speech, in which use a term that has both a literal and metaphorical meaning and you intend them both simultaneously. It is, for the record, hard to find things out in that kind of backwards way. In the end I picked the term antanaclasis which isn't quite right but is the closest I could find. That was for "Midwinter," which also found me researching men's clothing, including undergarments, from the fourteenth to early nineteenth centuries (because the Discworld has weird time compression, and so my fashion-forward when off-duty Drumknott wore a hypermodern frock coat while Vetinari still got dressed in the late middle ages), British names (I still love Valentine Gandy, the name I gave to Drumknott's favorite novelist), the history of silk and wool, and how aluminum is made (from bauxite, hence an obscure throwaway reference to Vetinari visiting a dwarf foundry experimenting with bauxite ores).
The least fun thing I've ever researched for a story, which the question doesn't ask about, is the Holocaust-related reading I've been doing to write X-Men: First Class fic.
27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
I write most successfully when not at home, so I often go out to a coffee shop. This is an expensive habit that I urge others not to acquire.
28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?
Generally I write alone (cue dramatic lonely-superhero music) but back in my Buffyverse days I co-wrote a long, long series of Giles/Oz improv fics withgloss; It's Like Jazz is here, where you'll also find a list of related stories we each wrote individually. And, although it was a post-facto collaboration, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_twatterby drew a couple of beautiful pictures illustrating "Midwinter."
29 – What is your current project or projects?
I'm working on an XMFC story, Charles/Erik of course, which at the moment can best be summarized as "the night before Cuba, they have sex for the first time and then argue about politics." It includes what I am confident is the world's least romantic pillow-talk. Once I get this one done (*hopes*) I might try to finish another one or two of my many WIPs. But who knows?
30 – Do you have a favorite fic you've written? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
Although I think In the House of Dust may be slightly the better story, my favorite is unquestionably Midwinter; you'll have heard quite a bit about it already if you're been reading this meme through. It's my longest story, which I spent two intensive months writing and editing, and it takes a character who's nearly a cipher in canon and gives him a background and family, an inner life, desires and hopes and frustrations, and even trivial things like a taste for long, sensational novels. It also includes the most emotionally complex romantic relationship I've ever written. "Midwinter" feels like it's mine in a way that's unusual for fanfic. It's the closest I've ever come, as an adult, to writing original fiction; perhaps it's the closest I ever will.
24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
I think getting a story beta-read is always a good idea. And yet I don't do it very often. Many of my stories are short, and it feels ridiculous asking someone to beta 600-1500 words unless I have some kind of major concern (e.g. I'm writing in a new fandom or I need specific details--a historical setting, geography, Australian slang, or obscure corners of canon--looked over). Longer stories I usually have beta-read at least once, as well as Brit-picked when applicable, and they are much the better for it.
Most of my betas have done a great job. But once, when in a new fandom where I didn't know anybody, I asked for someone to beta a story. The person who volunteered asked me to change constructions that were grammatically correct into constructions that weren't (in narration, by the way, not in dialogue where grammatical incorrectness might have been more in character). I quickly found a second person to beta the story as well.
25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
It depends. Complete quiet doesn't work for me (see #27), but if I listen to music, it usually needs to be music that either doesn't have lyrics or that I'm quite familiar with so it turns into a kind of mental wallpaper. I don't really use playlists--I am old-fashioned and tend to listen to full albums. I listened to the Decemberists' The Crane Wife a lot while writing "Midwinter"; I don't think the album's content has much of anything to do with the story (except possibly that there's a lot in both about mortality) but the music felt right somehow.
26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?
I do a lot of research, because I like it. Probably the single oddest thing I ever had to try and find out was the name of a particular kind of figure of speech, in which use a term that has both a literal and metaphorical meaning and you intend them both simultaneously. It is, for the record, hard to find things out in that kind of backwards way. In the end I picked the term antanaclasis which isn't quite right but is the closest I could find. That was for "Midwinter," which also found me researching men's clothing, including undergarments, from the fourteenth to early nineteenth centuries (because the Discworld has weird time compression, and so my fashion-forward when off-duty Drumknott wore a hypermodern frock coat while Vetinari still got dressed in the late middle ages), British names (I still love Valentine Gandy, the name I gave to Drumknott's favorite novelist), the history of silk and wool, and how aluminum is made (from bauxite, hence an obscure throwaway reference to Vetinari visiting a dwarf foundry experimenting with bauxite ores).
The least fun thing I've ever researched for a story, which the question doesn't ask about, is the Holocaust-related reading I've been doing to write X-Men: First Class fic.
27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
I write most successfully when not at home, so I often go out to a coffee shop. This is an expensive habit that I urge others not to acquire.
28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?
Generally I write alone (cue dramatic lonely-superhero music) but back in my Buffyverse days I co-wrote a long, long series of Giles/Oz improv fics with
gloss; It's Like Jazz is here, where you'll also find a list of related stories we each wrote individually. And, although it was a post-facto collaboration, lady_twatterby drew a couple of beautiful pictures illustrating "Midwinter."29 – What is your current project or projects?
I'm working on an XMFC story, Charles/Erik of course, which at the moment can best be summarized as "the night before Cuba, they have sex for the first time and then argue about politics." It includes what I am confident is the world's least romantic pillow-talk. Once I get this one done (*hopes*) I might try to finish another one or two of my many WIPs. But who knows?
30 – Do you have a favorite fic you've written? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
Although I think In the House of Dust may be slightly the better story, my favorite is unquestionably Midwinter; you'll have heard quite a bit about it already if you're been reading this meme through. It's my longest story, which I spent two intensive months writing and editing, and it takes a character who's nearly a cipher in canon and gives him a background and family, an inner life, desires and hopes and frustrations, and even trivial things like a taste for long, sensational novels. It also includes the most emotionally complex romantic relationship I've ever written. "Midwinter" feels like it's mine in a way that's unusual for fanfic. It's the closest I've ever come, as an adult, to writing original fiction; perhaps it's the closest I ever will.
