Fic Ask meme: B, F, L, and letter of your choice!
Heya! Thanks for the ask.
B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
Oh goodness, probably too many of them to name. I feel like there’s always some detail that I put in, and then once it’s written, I forget about it until I re-read it.
F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
This is from Dynamics and Control, which features Melissa Hawke and Sebastian in Starkhaven. Isabela has a hangover and has requested both wine and dirty books from Sebastian, which Melissa has gone to get. I love this because it’s an AU, but this dialog is in character, flirty, and provides backstory while being amusing.
“I’ve read them all, so you’re welcome to them. If you borrow one of my favorites, please bring it back. Winter can be quite depressing here without them. The wine, I can arrange to have brought up once we find some books to her taste and some discreet wrapping.”
“Nothing Antivan,” Melissa directed, and so Sebastian bypassed most of the shelf he’d been heading towards. “Not the wine or the stories, sadly.”
“Her late husband was Antivan. Their marriage was almost as acrimonious as their separation, but not quite.”
“He’s dead now, since you said late. Did she kill him?” he asked.
In answer she didn’t say anything, but turned pointedly away from his gaze.
L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?
That just depends on the story. I’m not super patient when it comes to fic, usually just once if I have something ready to post. However, I have rewritten things that aren’t working, chapters that I’m stuck on a number of times to make them work.
Letter of my choice: O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?
Usually with the characters, but sometimes with part of the plot or a prompt. Sometimes I think of a setup that’s exciting and really fun to put my characters into, and I like to see how they bump up against the confines of the plot. When I’m not writing fic, I almost always start out with short stories for characters to get to know who they are, how they react in one situation. I love using short stories to help define characters, and that’s how I start more often than not.