hi! Sorry to bother you, but I've read a couple of your long fics (Misopaterism, Whence I Came (Fragments), The Best and Worst Thing), and I was left soooo baffled by how good they were planned (and many other things but they're not important right now). It’s okay if you don't want to, but could you share your methods in writing long pieces? Thank you :)
(again, it’s okay if you don't want to share that).
(and i love the backstories you gave both Nathalie and Gabriel!)
Hi! Thank you for asking :)
It’s a long time since I’ve written fic, so I had to think back on this. The question actually took me by surprise. I don’t think structuring and plotting stories is my strength.
Typically, the process of writing a fic would begin with a single moment. One scene, or one dialogue exchange that captured my interest, and the rest would branch out from there.
For example, Ten Thousand Pounds of Feathers started with this line of Nathalie’s in Chapter 3: “When did this become about me?” That fic is really a study of Nathalie’s morality as well as her motives. What happens when the fate of everyone around her suddenly depends on her knowledge and how she reacts to it?
The first scene I wrote for The Worst and Best Thing was Gabriel and Nathalie’s tense conversation in Chapter 4. This fic was very self-indulgent angst. Gabriel is diametrically opposed to change and now, the life of this person he loves (Nathalie) is about to change completely. Can he accept it and let his life change along with hers? What will it cost him?
Apart from these moments of exigence, I wrote my fics in order, chapter-by-chapter, and generally did not sway from my outlines excepting small details. I always knew how a story would end. If I didn’t, the fic wasn’t finished (see: Inkwell). I have to know where I’m going with it. I have to know what I want to accomplish. This is what made writing Gabenath fics so easy for me; my desires for the characters were always the same. I wanted them to be together, so however that could take place within the given circumstances, that’s what I went for.
With my longer Gabenath works, I always felt like I needed to address a certain number of things: Gabriel’s obsession with/grief for Emilie; Nathalie’s self-worth; identity reveals and the subsequent aftermath. Whence I Came (Fragments) was the only longer fic in which I didn’t fully explore all of these, but that was more Nathalie-centric than Gabenath.
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