hi! can you do 4, 9, and 19 for the author asks? <3
Yes of course! Let's see here.
4) favorite character you’ve written
So this one is a little difficult because I feel like I've written a lot of characters because I've made so many fanfics, some that have never seen narrative prose (stayed as self indulgent outlines) or because I've spent so much time with the same cast of original characters for so long.
For fanfiction characters, I think my favorite is either Lucretia Doppel, the X-men OC I made, or Velstadt from Dark Souls 2. Doppel has a cool powerset that I've given her and she's kind of a damaged warrior that seeks out the good in others regardless of their alignment. And Velstadt is a loyal, strict, disciplined, faux-noble and was my primary example of Character Voice in writing.
As far as original content goes, I haven't really given anyone a solid characterization as yet. Alden was supposed to be my husband's humor masking side, but he's kinda devolved into an emo grump. Idania was supposed to be a better version of me to pair with Alden, but she's actually become her own character, an opinionated servant that suffers some great tragedies and then finds her strength out of spite to become a force of nature, literally. Billy, I think, is my favorite, just because I've spent the most time honing his character through his immortality survivor's guilt.
As a bonus! My favorite DnD character that I've made was the original version of Dahlia/Rokaria. She was intended to be a trickster Fae kind of character but the DM doesn't have the same idea of fae that I do, so it didn't work out. But none of my DnD games have, unfortunately, so.
9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?
I'm a terrible writer because I don't control myself or focus very well. There's plenty of times I will tell myself that I'm gonna write tomorrow/today and then sit around watching Youtube and playing video games and not writing.
But, I guess it depends on what inspiration means in this context. Is it the desire to write or is it like, what is your wip inspired by?
What gives me the desire to write is typically engaging with something that is well-written. Like watching a movie/show and realizing that they executed a story well and I wanna do that. Or reading something and having fun with the book and now I'm happy so let's get to typing. And the "I can't sleep so I might as well work on my story" and then waking up with ideas or something. Sometimes I just want to present my current situation to my husband, we brainstorm a while, and I start writing. I've also gotten an old friend to read my stuff and she sent me some feedback on my first chapter and it inspired me to go back and edit. (Then I remembered where I got stuck and got scared to keep going.)
For the other question, fanfiction inspiration is obvious, but the rest of it is hard. Because I don't feel like I write things with intentional inspiration, with the intent to make an ATLA inspired thing. It's more like I take the things I want to see happen, fantasize about them before bed, and then write. My husband came up with most of the premise of Zodiac, then I fell in love with it and took it over and I'm still trying to figure out what it's about and what I want to do with it. Wouldn't it be cooler if the Virgo Princess had agency and saved Alden and the other two idiots from their fate, but in doing so, made it look like they kidnapped her? Alden and Idania fall in love, but how long does it take and what brings them together? How does Gary being a Cusp affect how people interact with him and how his life plays out? You know, I guess ultimately the inspiration is answering questions.
I got super inspired and organized, however, when I started watching Youtube video essays about the craft of writing. Brandon Sanderson and Hello Future Me and OSP and such. TotallyNotMark and... other people I can't remember. People breaking down media that I already know and enjoy and showing me its core universal components. Like what my English 1102 class was supposed to teach me in college. But now let's discuss One Piece's themes and characterization.
19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?
It's only within the last couple years that I've started to actually work on hard worldbuilding for my WIP. I don't want to pay money for something like Scrivener and I tried yWriter but it didn't work for me. In a desperate bid to get people to pay attention to my WIP, I started trying to make one of those Comic Sans powerpoints and discovered a lot of things about my WIP and myself. The Powerpoint was really pleasant and I enjoyed using it to hold information. Then I started watching Youtube and started an outline of the overall series. And I did this because I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo at least once. Because I've written so many words at this point, but nothing publishable.
I have a MSPPT for like, characters. Then another one that my husband called the World Bible, which has all the worldbuilding for the 12 different races. Then the big like 71 page outline in MSWord of half the series where I finally ran out of ideas and figured I'd know how to progress once I fleshed out the stuff that was already there. (I haven't yet, because I keep splitting myself between whatever feels the best to work on as a way of procrastinating on the stuff that's hard, so nothing is getting very done.)
The husband has decided, since he wants to be more involved with the project, to convert all that information into some kind of Wiki and is looking into World Anvil (free) to see if it will function for our purposes.
I'm verbose, apparently. I hope that was enjoyable, at least! Thank you so much for asking!
Feel free to ask me more!
