1 and 4 for the fanfic writer asks, please. ❤
1. How do you approach worldbuilding (if it’s an AU) or research (if it’s an established canon)?
With worldbuilding, historically, I’ll carve out a handful of major details in advance - the kinds of things that are gonna be noticeable right off the bat - and then work out the smaller things as they come up, while being careful not to contradict anything that’s already happened. Of course, ‘as they come up’ can be in the story itself, or while I’m just thinking about it on like, the bus or something.
As for research, I hate doing it, which is probably why I like writing for aliens so much ^^ I tend to just write out my stories, until I come to a place where the research is unavoidable, then I throw in a placeholder and come back to it later. With Transformers, I rely a lot on the fanwiki (which is the best wiki of anything ever), and sometimes I’ll go so far as to look up the original tech specs for a specific character if I don’t have a clear idea in mind for what they can do.
For some specific research examples, I’ve had to spend a lot of time looking up how electricity works (then giving up when I couldn’t find the specific answer I needed), and on one particularly awkward occasion, I wound up looking up how much force would be required to destroy a bridge. (A science-y character was describing his creation, which, according to its tech specs, could ‘destroy a bridge with a single punch’ or something). Naturally, this was needed for exactly one sentence.
4. How does your writing happen? Do you visualize scenes playing out in your head, or do they come out in words as you type?
It’s a little of both, I think. As I approach the scene, I have an idea of all of the major beats I need to hit (which can be as vague as ‘everyone argues - eventually they reach (blah) concluison’), and a fuzzy picture of the setting, characters, etc. Writing it out is what takes this fuzzy picture and makes it clear for me. More importantly, it covers the sometimes giant amounts of buildup required to get from point A and point B in my outline, including all of the emotional beats and character actions. Sometimes, I’ll even wind up straying from the original outline if the mood I’ve stumbled across doesn’t quite fit the plan. On the other hand, if say, I’m writing a particularly complicated fight, I’ll choreograph that in advance and try to stick to it quite closely.
