Writer ask meme: 25, 31, 36, and/or 49!
What’s your worldbuilding process like?
Bad, lol. If I’m being honest, it’s why I actually prefer writing fan fiction to original fiction - I’m not a worldbuilder. And it’s taken me many, many years to be able to admit that without feeling any shame. I’m a character writer. I love writing the fine details of character interaction. I love getting into a characters’ heads, figuring out why they do what they do, and how that manifests in they way they move and speak, and what they choose to say, and how they choose to say it. Like I said in the last post - this is for both better and worse, because my hyperfocus on these types of details leaves me....ill-suited for the big picture stuff lol. Someday maybe that will change. For right now, I’m happy doing what I’m doing.
Top five favorite books in your genre?
My genre is *waves hands around vaguely*, so here are the top five books that I’ll say probably influenced me most as a writer, for a variety of different reasons:
The Outsiders by SE Hinton - the book that made me want to become a writer in the first place
Les Mis by Victor Hugo - the book that gave me the community I hold dearest
Like Life by Lorrie Moore - the book that helped me hone my particular writing style, and start pushing at its boundaries
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - the book that taught me that you can break rules and do whatever the fuck you want with language as long as it’s compelling
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - the book that made me realize what kind of original fiction I might want to write some day
(A bit from my Garrison Keith wip that I particularly like)
He’s shaking, he realizes, partly from exhaustion and partlyfrom…something else, a low hum of electricity in his limbs, sparking across hisnerves and quivering in a great storm around his brain. He’s familiar with thefeeling, though it’s been a while since he’s experienced it. Not since Shiroplanted himself like a lightning rod in Keith’s life, channeling his energy andattention. Without Shiro, Keith feels wild, itches to lash out, strike atrandom, set fires he can’t extinguish.
Favorite fictional world?
I cannot stress enough how much I am digging Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series and the world she created for it. Just. UGH. Go read these books. They’re so beautiful.
