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felixandflower

Here’s another look at my work on this hand embroidered portrait of Sherlock from the past couple days.

Having a ridiculously good time stitching this!!

Hand embroidered by Felix + Flower

wlwatson

They’re in a tense situation and John just.,.,,. takes his hand

wlwatson

Anyways here’s my “first I love you” headcanon,, John is just talking Johnchalantly™️ abt his Johnsense™️ and Sherlock scares the shit out of him

apitnobaka

syupon

I know everything is horrible but this post by @discosherlock made me smile so sweetly, it’s so sweet, those boys are sssososo sweet and DESERVE everything so I’m going to give them Everything

2zday-deactivated20141013

ewebie

Watson: Holmes, that’s insane! *grabs overcoat* It is a dangerous plan and downright illegal! *puts on hat* I simply can’t let you go through with it! *opens front door*

Holmes: Got the keys?

Watson: Yep, let’s go!

ghostbees

I mean, honestly.

ambientwriting

What sort of questions should I be asking my beta readers?

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR BETA READERS:

When I send out my chapter to be read over by my beta readers, I always include a set of questions typed out at the bottom, grouped into different categories such as: plot, pacing, character, setting, etc.

You might want to tailor the questions depending on the genre or which chapter it is. For example, if it’s the first chapter you’ll want to ask them about how well your story managed to hook them, or if they managed to easily get an idea of the world you’ve introduced them to. If it’s the climax you might want to ask if the action scenes are fluid, and if the plot twist/s were predictable or surprising.

Here’s some example questions that you could use:

Opening Chapter:

What is your first impression of the main character? Do you find them likable? Annoying? Boring?

After reading it for the first time, what is your first impression? Was it cohesive and compelling? Boring and confusing?

Did the first sentence/paragraph/page efficiently grab your attention and hook you in?

If you were to read this chapter in a bookstore/library would you be convinced to buy it? Or would you need to read further before deciding? Why or why not?

Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, what’s going on, and where and when it’s taking place? If not, what were you confused about at the beginning?

Does the first chapter establish the main character efficiently? Do they feel believable?

Characters:

Could you clearly imagine what the characters looked like? If not, who?

Who was your favourite character and why? Has your favourite character changed? (if this hasn’t changed feel free to skip this question)

Are there any characters that you do not like? Why do you not like them? (Boring, annoying, problematic, etc.)

Was there ever a moment when you found yourself annoyed or frustrated by a character?

Could you relate to the main character? Did you empathise with their motivation or find yourself indifferent?

Were the characters goals/motivations clear and understandable?

Did you get confused about who’s who? Are there too many characters to keep track of? Are any of the names or characters too similar?

Do the characters feel three-dimensional or like cardboard cutouts?

How familiar have you become with the main characters? Without cheating could you name the four main characters? Can you remember their appearance? Can you remember their goal or motivation?

Dialogue:

Did the dialogue seem natural to you?

Was there ever a moment where you didn’t know who was talking?

Setting/world-building:

Were you able to visualize where and when the story is taking place?

Is the setting realistic and believable?

How well do you remember the setting? Without cheating, can you name four important settings?

Genre:

Did anything about the story seem cliche or tired to you? How so?

Did anything you read (character, setting, etc.) remind you of any others works? (Books, movies, etc.)

Plot/pacing/scenes:

Do you feel there were any unnecessary scenes/moments that deserved to be deleted or cut back?

Do the scenes flow naturally and comprehensively at an appropriate pace? Did you ever feel like they were jumping around the place?

Was there ever a moment where you attention started to lag, or the chapter begun to drag? Particular paragraph numbers would be very helpful.

Did you ever come across a sentence that took you out of the moment, or you had to reread to understand fully?

Was the writing style fluid and easy to read? Stilted? Purple prose-y? Awkward?

Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in facts, places, character details, plot, etc.?

Additional questions:

What three things did you like? What three things did you not like?

Can you try predicting any upcoming plot twists or outcomes?

Was there ever a moment when your suspension of disbelief was tested?

Is there anything you’d personally change about the story?

Was the twist expected or surprising? Do you feel that the foreshadowing was almost nonexistent, or heavy handed?

Feel free to tailor these to your needs or ignore some of them if you don’t think they’re useful. Basically, your questions are about finding out the information about how others perceive your own writing and how you can improve your story.

-Lana

fozmeadows

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation.

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place.

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this.

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions.

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative.

earlgreytea68

So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t.

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre.

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused.

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me.

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about.

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.”

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that.

Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

nianeyna

“fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters”

yes!!!! I feel like I knew this on some level but I’ve never explicitly thought about it that way. this feels right, yep. Mainstream fiction often seems very dry to me and I think this is why - it tends to skip right over stuff that would be a huge plot arc in a fanfic, if not an entire fanfic in itself. And I’m like, “hey, wait, go back to that. Why are you skipping that? Where’s the story?” But now I think maybe people who don’t like fanfiction are going like, “why is there an entire fanfic about something that could have happened offscreen? Is anything interesting ever going to happen here? Where’s the story?”

earlgreytea68

Yes! Exactly! This!!!

This crystallized for me when I taught my first class of fanfiction to non-fic-readers and they just kept being like, “But nothing happens. What’s the plot?” and I was so confused, like, “What are you talking about? They fall in love. That’s the plot.” But we were, I think, talking past each other. They kept waiting for some big moment to happen, but for me the point was that the little moments were the big moments.

the-pen-pot

As someone who’s fic writing tends more towards the plotty, I still think that it’s very true to say fanfiction is a genre apart from others and is based almost entirely on the characters and their responses. The stories I write are only interesting because of how *those particular characters* are reacting to what’s happening. That’s where the ideas come from. It’s not “I have a story and now I need some characters” but “I wonder what John would do if he discovered Sherlock was an Omega after having lived with him for almost a year” etc. etc.

And as an aside, that’s part of why moving towards original writing is so challenging for me, and my approaches aren’t working. I don’t know the characters. I haven’t invented the characters yet, and until I invent the characters, I’m not going to give a rat’s ass about how they’ll react to stuff.

earlgreytea68

As a fic writer who struggles the same way, what I find is to give yourself the freedom you have in fic. You’re right, seldom does a fic writer write a story in the abstract and then plug characters in. Fic writers write the story for the characters. So, with original fiction, the thing I’ve started doing is starting with the character. I have an idea for a character, and then I just spend some time with that character. If I give that character room to breathe, that character finds a plot, and that’s the best kind of original writing. It might take “longer” to get to the “story,” but I think that’s true, because it would definitely take me longer to hammer out some kind of plot and then force a character in it. I just have to recast the work getting to know my character as every bit important writing work as doing an outline.

aumael

Just another Sherlock portrait 😁

nitefise-art

snooze.png

cascading-serenity

A 221B Christmas

cyborgenji

Potterlock AU Moodboard

for Anonymous

Want one? –> x

wenzhousoulmates

marcelock

sherlock rebuilt his life after being a junkie and being in rehab and set up his modest little website and said “i can help you probably, email me, be interesting please” hes so small and tries so hard and just wants to help ))):