hi ella! 3, 16, and 76 (specific to The Stone hehe) :)
3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic
The first step really depends for me. Sometimes I just jump into an idea if it feels fully formed and write the first draft in one go with no outline. That's generally for shorter, simpler ideas (ie pwp). For anything more complex I write a vague outline of the beats I need to hit on a sheet of lined paper, then I write the first draft. I don't do any skipping forward as I write but usually every time I sit back down I'll reread what I've done and edit it as I go. Once I have a first draft, next steps also depend. Usually the faster I wrote something the less passes I do on it before I publish. My most recent thing I published was written and edited in one long sitting. When I do this I always find something I need to correct once I publish. For stuff I'm more invested in, I set a earliest possible publishing day and force myself to reread and edit until then. I always end up having some kind of break through that was really necessary in hindsight. Hope that wasn't too long!
edit: i forgot to mention about 75% of my fic ideas germinate when i am mostly still asleep in the morning
16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?
Ok, I have technically three? Two are sequels to things I've already written and one is the severance warrior cat au that I'll never fully write out because it would be a literal full book-length of plot, but I will think about it endlessly!
76. Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of The Stone?
I had to look through my old paper outlines and here's basically everything that was cut:
In the first part, Helena and Gemma were going to talk it out more and come to a mutual understanding, but that seemed super unrealistic to me once I was putting words to page. Helena was also going to be like verbally apologetic during the sex scene? Instead they said... nothing at all that whole time! I also considered making Helly be the one on the outside originally for plot reasons but I didn't think the dynamic was as interesting.
In part 2 there were a bunch of different ideas I had for a potential second gemhelena incidental meeting. At first I thought they would be at a bar, then a park, but I decided on Pip's for a variety of reasons, most of which was the photo/voucher switcheroo. Gemma was also going to cry in front of Helena who would soothe her, but that just never seemed to justify itself when I was writing.
