13, 25, & 38 for the fic writer asks, bc I love learning about people's processes! 0: And 23 just for fun~
13. Do you outline your fics? How much of a headache would someone get if they just looked at an outline of yours without reading the fic?
Yep, I outline the heck out of my fics. Sometimes multiple times in various states of consciousness, and then I have to combine the outlines into one usable document before I can try to write actual prose. My late-night phone outlines with typos and shorthand probably wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else, but some of the outlines I’ve had in the wings for a while are practically readable chapters.
(This includes the last chapter of The Ghost In You, which has been fully outlined for over a year. I’m trying so hard to turn that shit into paragraphs, I promise! One of these days, I may just give up and publish the outline so at least y’all can finally know how it was supposed to end. Here's hoping it's still appropriately emotionally devastating in bullet point form.)
25. Do you listen to music as you write? If possible, link your writing playlist.
Ha. Hahaha. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this on tumblr before, but I’ve definitely joked with folks about how my writing playlists make sense only to me. Sometimes I latch onto a song for the lyrics; sometimes it’s for the vibes. Sometimes the lyrics/vibes are relevant to the story; sometimes they are only relevant to my extremely specific focus needs for that chapter. (I follow similar weird conventions to title my fics, so if anyone’s looked up the songs they’re named after and been very confused about a couple of them, this is why.)
I can’t post any playlists because I don’t use or trust music streaming services, but maybe that’s just as well. Like, for example, I wrote one of my fics while listening to this Jesus and Mary Chain album on repeat (and no, it was not the one that ended up being named after a song on that album, though that did end up being one of my few fics where the writing soundtrack and the title match). The chapter-by-chapter writing playlist for The Ghost In You, in particular, would blow your minds (and not in a good way). Maybe I’ll share it for shits and giggles if I can still remember all the songs. There are some real doozies in there. [ETA: I did it.]
38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?
I’d say 5-ish. I tend to write chapters in order and I outline a lot, but I also have a bunch of random idea notes floating around that I have to keep track of and every fic has at least one extremely chaotic text dump file. That makes me feel safer rewriting huge chunks of text, because I can revert back to the old version if I decide I don’t like the changes, but I make absolutely zero effort to organize those. Things get pasted in whatever part of the file happens to be on my screen at the time, with no regard for chronology or relevance to the surrounding bits of information.
23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?
I wish I wasn’t quite so predictable, but I think we all know it’s hurt/comfort. What can I say? I love making fictional middle aged men sad.
