Hi lex! Sorry if my wording is poor, but I'm just so curious on how you go about your writing process. How do you just write soooooo I can't even describe it it's just so good.. how far along do you plan the plot? Do you make the scenes separately and then find a way to connect them? When writing internal monologues and interactions, how do you make the dialogue fit the character's personality? So many questions I'm just super intrigued
Hiya Anon! Your wording is more than fine, I promise <3 I’m deeply honoured you’d want to know about my writing process, so let me see what I can do to explain it! With me being how I am, this is, uh …. probably going to be a long post, but I think it’s obvious by now that I’m not good at writing anything in moderation. If running my mouth paid me, I would be a millionaire.
I guess, to start this whole thing, I am notoriously a pantser - the act of plotting a WIP is a nightmare for me, where I try to force my brain to structure things in a coherent way and fill in gaps that it just doesn’t want to, and fail miserably the whole time. Trying to plot also convinces my brain that the story is Done, complete, has nothing left to work on, and then it stagnates forever. So my version of “plotting”, if I absolutely have to do it, looks more like this:
These three screenshots are from my STC doc, my GENESIS doc, and my BOAG doc respectively, all three of them longfics. Since a longfic takes …. a lot more of everything, I have to put in a bit more work to make sure the idea doesn’t extinguish upon conception. First, each longfic comes with a collection of scenes my brain wants it to have, so I spend a bit of time jotting them down in the barest of forms and then loosely shuffling them from place to place until they find a right place to sit in a vague timeline. Sometimes a scene or a detail won’t fit in the way I want it to, which is deeply frustrating, but it always ends up resolved as I keep writing and a natural spot for it to for in reveals itself. Basically, I’m not forcing any of these scene or plot puzzle pieces into gaps to see where they fit - I’m just sorting them out so I can grab from their pile later when the right place makes itself obvious. My friend Katy calls this being a discovery writer - where you discover what happens as you write - and I think that’s a brilliant term for it!
That’s all longfic stuff, though. When it comes to short fics? Most of the time, I have a rough idea of what I want the scene to look like in my mind, and I spend the entire writing process chasing that. If I have an end idea, I’ll scrawl it down, and if there’s a dialogue bit I think of that I want to fit in, I’ll write that down too, but most of the time I’m chasing a giant question mark and letting my brain take me where it wants to go.
I write linearly, starting with the beginning of the fic and ending at the end, mostly because it’s just how my brain works, but also because I love working with callbacks and references. I can’t write out of order, because if I write out of order I lose the narrative glue that sticks everything together! The best example of this I have is in GENESIS - chapter five ends with Jepexx saying you wouldn’t know a hard life if it hit you in the dick. Chapter six? It starts with Wemmbu saying my life is hard, you know. I am the snake eating my own tail; everything becomes context that can be referenced and revisited later! I can’t imagine writing any other way :] if I go revisit the you come crawling back doc, for example, it looks a little something like this:
Which is, admittedly, a bit denser than most of the planning sections I keep look like! Some of the fics I’m working on right now look a little more like this:
I also write a lot with music, which I know is something people either love to do or hate to do, with very little in between. For me, it’s about 50% because I have debilitating ADHD, and can’t focus any other way, and 50% because I have had a special interest in music for about a decade now, and it’s really important to me to have at least one song that captures the intended tone and feel of a piece. I can’t create without listening to music, and I can’t listen to music without wanting to create! I also often make pinterest boards for longer fics, just because I enjoy having that extra visual component. These days, I also write in a notebook a good bit - either because I’m at work and can’t use my laptop, or because I’m stuck on a piece and find the change in interface triggers a new part of my brain.
This also isn’t something you mentioned, but I feel it’s important to also bring up that I am always working on multiple WIPs at a time. Like leaving a field out to fallow, I need to constantly rotate what my brain is focusing on in order to feel inspired. I need to have multiple things to throw my focus at, or else the house of cards collapses and nothing feels new or interesting or engaging enough for me to work on. I am a graveyard of abandoned and unfinished fic ideas for this very reason - so many things just never manage to capture my attention for long enough, or end up needing more plotting that I want to commit to, or I doubt my grasp on the characters and throw in the towel instead of choosing to fight with them. I’d much rather give up the ghost than force myself to write a fic I’m unhappy with!
When it comes to getting things to fit the character’s personality ….. I stress about it? A lot? I know that’s not helpful HAHAHA but it’s true! I spent a lot of time worrying, and then when I’ve let the anxiety run its course, I’ll pull up either the list of quotes I’ve saved, a clip from the season I think defines them (if they’re a MCYTer) or a promo that encapsulates the state of their gimmick (if they’re a wrestler). I find immersing myself in the canonical side of things often helps remind me what they’re like Outside of my own head, which makes it a bit easier to feel like I’m writing them “in” character. If the line I’ve written feels like it fits in line with what I have written them down as canonically saying, it’s probably gonna be fine.
Though, I’m going to be honest, the concept of any piece of writing being “in character” is something both wildly personal and highly context dependent - there are a variety of things that go into each portrayal of a character, and what one person sees as canon another person will see as OOC. My Zam will not read like another person’s Zam, and what I think is in character for her could be wildly OOC to someone else! My Jack Perry is (ninety percent of the time) sourced from his Scapegoat gimmick, which would be OOC to someone looking for his Jungle Boy gimmick. It’s hard to hear that in character is context dependent when you want to be in character, but also, one of my favourite BNHA fic writers writes, objectively, an extremely OOC Shouto. I still pop for her fics every time, because I enjoy her works and I enjoy her interpretation of the character. There will always be someone who likes an interpretation of a character, you know? (At least, this is what I tell myself to feel better!)
As an end note, I suppose, when it comes to you asking how I write the way I do - the best answer I can give you is practice. Lots and lots and lots of writing, and practice, and abandoning WIPs. It sucks, because there’s really no easy advice I follow or technique I use or tactic to approach things overall; I just really, really love this hobby, and feel like a shell of myself when I’m not telling stories. When I was younger, I was always told to stop living in fictional worlds because I’d forget how to live in the real one, so like … I’ve just always loved stories, and writing. I love writing, and I’m also intensely critical of my own work, which means I’m always looking for ways to make it something I hate rereading a little less. I spent a couple years forcing myself to learn how to write description even though it felt like pulling teeth, because I could only write dialogue well! These days, I read books in the genres I like to write, and take screenshots of the parts I enjoy, even when they’re silly as hell. (Why do I have “my dick’s a non-profit, baby. Just call me UNICEF.” saved in this collection of quotes? Dunno! Just enjoy it.) Telling stories doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so I try my best to branch out, to find things to draw from, to take what I enjoy and use it as fuel.
I’m definitely no professional, just some cripple with a lot of free time and a love for telling stories, but this is the way that works best for me! A lot of chasing question marks, listening to music, WIP-hopping, and procrastination. Each WIP also has a habit of coming together differently, so my process isn’t a huge one-size-fits-all type of thing. It’s just whatever works best and feels right at the moment!
