20 questions for fic writers 2023
Thanks to @totallysilvergirl and @calaisreno for tagging me!.
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
195, currently in a holding pattern as yet another PWP one-shot turns into an actual narrative.
2. What’s your total A03 word count?
918,179. A lot of those nearly 200 fics are short.
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Primarily Good Omens, with a decent excursion into light Johnlock stories (crossover and straight-up), Star Trek (DS9 and TNG), and Doctor Who (also all crossovers with GO), and a smattering more of GO crossovers ranging from Hellblazer to the Desert Peach.
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
Looking Good, Mr. Fell, which took off after what must have been a rec on some very active GO social media group (no idea where, I got nothin’); Funny Old World, surprisingly – it’s the Hellblazer crossover, in which Aziraphale walks out of John Constantine’s summoning circle and reads him the riot act; The Rake, a festival of Victorian smut (Aziraphale took up a hobby in the 1800s) written to offset the misery post-s2; Binary Stars, my first, brief Sherlock/GO mashup (thanks to Silvergirl for the encouragement); and Never Letting You Go, an early and cautious venture into AzCrow dom/sub experiments.
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
As quickly as I can. I love comments. Comments make me write. Comments make me think. Comments make me a better, more responsible and sensitive writer. Comments lift me up and I want to respond with thanks. Sometimes I only can think of a clever series of emojis, especially if the comment is brief, but I cherish each one.
6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Probably The Infinite Which Was Hid, which drew anguished cries for an ultimate resolution, something for which I’m a pushover.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
I lean to happy endings, but I’m thinking one of my AUs – I’d guess A Business Arrangement, if only because the narrative arc in that one was so fraught.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
Only if you count the perplexing people who bookmark a fic only to leave a derogatory note on the bookmark, something I’ve come across a few times. (Just assume authors will look at their bookmarks; when I started on AO3, checking the other bookmarks in the profiles of readers who'd bookmarked me was my first way to hunt up other fic I’d probably like.) I mean, unless you consider yourself a widely consulted resource with a duty to warn a horde of followers away from a fic that you judge bad enough to precipitate anaphylaxis, why would you keep a bookmark on a fic you didn't like? I don’t care now, but the first time it happened, I was pretty new on AO3 and it really screwed my day in the caboose. Don’t do this.
9. Do you write smut?
Does a hobby horse have a wooden hiney? Genre-wise, I’m all over the place – I write crack, comedy, angst, fluff, romance, drama, and yes, whole-hogging smut (sometimes blended with one or more of these). Post-Good Omens Season 2, I've been consciously consoling myself with a rash of extremely smutty fic. It’s not always necessary to depict explicit sex in the story you want to tell -- I've written fic in which the pairing could be read as ace -- but it’s incredibly freeing to write stories in which the sex says a lot about the people who are having it and the way they connect. And, you know, a little heat is good for the blood.
10. Do you write crossovers?
Love them (see question #4). Get a bang out of making the connections – the parallels of pairings, the overlap of character traits – things like juxtaposing Crowley’s and Julian Bashir’s James Bond fanboying in Our Man Crowley, and TV Crowley’s eerie resemblance to the vampire Cassidy (Preacher comics) in Until The End Of The World. I’ve also done crossovers of GO with Star Trek Next Gen, Hellblazer and The Desert Peach as mentioned above, Sandman (comic), Doctor Who, and Torchwood, and for a bravura turn, Richard Wagner’s Meistersinger.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know of.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
One into Russian, and now I can’t remember which, and my eyes, with six distinct ocular ailments, are too much of a wreck to go looking.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
A few with my beta bestie @twilightcitysky – we have a little dump of short, dirty, dialogue-heavy GO one-shots under the series title Naughty Bits.
14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?
Aziraphale/Crowley, no contest.
15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
Let’s not go there. It would either hex the work(s) or result in my spending three or four weeks in the near future suddenly seized with the drive to complete it to the detriment of all other responsibilities.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Voice and tone most of all. I found somewhat to my surprise that I had a knack for making the Good Omens characters sound plausibly like their screen selves, so that readers comment they don’t need to be told who’s speaking, and also for giving an OC narrator a unique voice, like Roger the Demon in Immigrant Blues or Major Tom, Crowley’s Rat Commander. I love tracking the cadence and vocabulary choices that make up a person’s characteristic patterns of speech, and using paragraph construction and word choice to set a mood.
Sensory imagery is another thing I get comments about – scents, tactile sensations and so on.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
A tendency to write incredibly long sentences full of dependent clauses. Sometimes I get to the end of one of these monsters and realize it’s covered half a page. This is why I edit repeatedly and obsessively, in hopes that this is the only time you’ll ever find out about it. As a corollary, occasionally I realize I have written a phrase like “precipitate anaphylaxis” and had probably better use more transparent wording (see #8, above).
I also wish I were better at writing “case fic,” because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing in the Johnlock sandbox, but I’ve never been good at writing a whodunit-type plot.
I’m sure there are others but I’m too close to see them.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I have done it, with all the unwarranted assurance and bravado of someone who learned her German and Italian from opera and art song, and am infinitely grateful to readers whose native language it is for pulling me aside to correct a solecism. I’ve asked at least one of these good people for help in the future.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
The Man From UNCLE. While it was still airing – I am Old. I shared the fics – we called them “compos” – with other devotees of the show; we passed our ballpoint-cursive productions around the school cafeteria, and had no idea anyone else anywhere ever did the same kind of thing.
20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?
I swear, I can’t really pick but Lift Me Up, O Lord comes close. I put so much of my experience as a gym rat into it.
Tagging @twilightcitysky, @ngkiscool, @hasturswig, @ukcalico, @feraltuxedo (with, of course, no pressure).