The question of the week...(drum roll) what inspires you? what makes you want to write? where do you get your ideas? how do you organize them and turn them into something that you want to share with others? what made you start writing fanfic in the first place?
Hi, lily_diablo! :D I started writing fanfic when the TV series Angel ended and Tubbyk, the owner of the message board Cold Dead Seed, suggested that CDS's members all try to write some AtS fanfic to cheer ourselves up. I'd never written fictional stories before, and had never even considered doing so until then. But I was very upset and unsatisfied with most of the show's final season, especially the ending (okay, I hated its guts), and decided to make up my own "Season 6" to address or change some of the things I loathed disagreed with about Season 5, Seasons 6 and 7 of BtVS, etc. That sounds like a recipe for BitterFic, I know, but I always take care not to let the stories be bashy or angry
( ... )
I think it's important to keep the bashing angriness out of stories, even if you loathe a particular character. It is very much possible to "settle a score" for your favorite character without being gratuitous or mean spirited about it. It sort of turns the character you don't like into Mary Sue's evil twin...(which might be a good spoof idea in itself, actually).
I also really enjoy it when a writer has a good sense of the cinematic nature of the situations/characters/settings involved in fanfic. I've actually enjoyed the same aspect in a lot of Stephen King's writing (which strikes me as totally odd, seeing as I almost always wind up at odds with the movie versions of his work...).
Writing is going okay. I've been working on my seasonal spuffy/Halloween horror fic, which I need to get back to today. I have the first chapter of a three chaptered Thanksgiving fic sent to beta. I've joined Kallysten's writing_fest LJ that has prompts for the month of October. Which I have a plot for and I plan to sit down every night for twenty minutes and write for the prompt. Then later I can expand the chapters to be enough words to be chapters.
Inspiration comes from just about anywhere. In fact I'm overwhelmed with different ideas. Sometimes I'm scared to watch any tv or movies because the ideas just swamp me. I keep ideas in either a file on my computer or on a file on my desk, depending on where I was when I had the idea.
I should probably get to thinking about holiday fics...(sigh) once again, I ask: where does the damn time go? You're WAY more on top of your stuff than I am! (I have, however, started my embroidery, and I think I'm going to learn to knit this year, for Christmas presents. Also rounding up baking and candy making supplies
( ... )
I'm not talented enough to make homemade gifts, so I am envious of you in that respect. Not to mention I am doing the organizedhome.com's Holiday Grand Plan to get the house ready ( http://organizedchristmas.com/holiday-grand-plan/list-week ). As for my holiday fics, I write them down in my daily planner just like all the other appointments. It helps get me started anyway. Everything creeps up on me otherwise.
Or you're in the middle of the supermarket trying to herd your kids. That one is extra challenging, LOL. However if an idea is particularly strong, I tend to think hard about it. Sometimes though it's just a little scene that hits me. That's how I ended up with Scenes without a Story at my site. Just a way to get rid of ideas that pop into my head.
I started making homemade gifts during my first year in AmeriCorps, when we were just flat out *too* broke to do anything else. I made bath salts, and cookies, and I think I crocheted scarves and such. Since then, each year, I try to add something new to the reportoire. One of these days I want to try stained glass work. :) For now, crochet, candy, baking, bath salts, rice bags, and rudimentary sewing are part of my arsenal. I even tarted up plain glass votive candle holders with beads and stuff.
I don't have kids of my own, but the outside, RL demands (including a husband and BIL and extended family...) tend to keep me running. I like your Scenes without a Story idea!
What inspires me or where my ideas come from, for the majority of my body of fan fic work, anyway, entails lots and lots of fanwanking on scenes that are just plain missing from the series, and involves me filling in the blanks without disturbing canon.
I started because...I started reading fan fic during season six, and something inside me said, "Hey--I want to do that too! I can do that!" Even if my first piece kind of proves to the contrary :P Luckily, I got better, so yay! \o/
I have also been inspired through song lyrics and "what if..." scenarios.
I write because it makes life bearable. Well no, it's like...it's just something I must do. Regardless of what kind of writing it is, it's just something that is inescapable, and I have no desire to escape it anyway.
Thanks for responding -- I hate to admit that my own first steps into fanfic originated with a much less altruistic (not quite the word I want, but I'm not patient this evening) source. After an evening of wading through an amazing amount of *crap* fiction, and stumbling across a real piece de resistance at about 4 in the morning, I got disgusted and thought "I could do better than that, for God's sake!"
Then, the little competitive voice that mutters in my right ear said, "so let's see you, if you're so f-ing good, then!"
So I think, "Shut up! I'll do it! I'll show you!"
Yes. It happened pretty much exactly like that. :)
After an evening of wading through an amazing amount of *crap* fiction, and stumbling across a real piece de resistance at about 4 in the morning, I got disgusted and thought "I could do better than that, for God's sake!"
Yeah, see...
That's the exact part of my original comment that I deleted cause I felt slightly ashamed for thinking that (even though it was totally true). But hey, I'm not alone! Awesomeness.
Honestly, I was shocked that I still *could* write fiction after putting it on the back burner for nearly a decade; so in spite of my less than admirable motivations, something positive did come of writing fanfiction, lol!
I don't do well with hard core outlining and stuff, either, for the most part. What does happen is I'll get concepts for an entire story, rather than just a story line, so I wind up making all sorts of notes and trying to figure out where they belong in the sequence of the story, etc.
I've wanted to write since I was a little girl. I've always had a big imagination and loved books. Even while looking at picture books, I would dream up my own stories with my own pictures, in my head.
I get my ideas from a lot of places. A snippet of conversation that I overhear while running errands, the news, watching episodes of the show and thinking about how things would have been different if A or B happened, and when I watch other TV shows or movies. Not My Reality came to be because I was watching The Bachelor and thinking about how I would find the behind the scenes things more interesting than the actual show. I wondered about all the camera men that you don't see and I wondered if any of them got the hots for some of the bachelorettes, because they would be around the women more than the bachelor ever would. And there I had a story in my mind that was going to be original fic, but I didn't think I could sell it because of the TV show being real. So Angel became the bachelor, Buffy a
( ... )
That's more my kind of organization! LOL! Do you ever make notes and then when you go back to them, you can't remember what they were about? I've even lost track of my own shorthand sometimes on long hand pieces (snerk). I usually don't break it up by chapter unless it gets really long and the word processor just takes too long to work with it. "Worth the Wait" is an excellent example of that. It exists in several incarnations in a folder marked "RPG." Other than that, I kind of write a chunk, see if there are good places for chapter breaks, try them out, write another chunk, see if it still works, etc, etc. And none of it has the decency to hit me in order, which is why it takes me so damn long to post (I also get very impatient about posting -- same way I suck at holding off giving people birthday and Christmas presents early).
I do sometimes scratch my head over a note that makes no sense. The way I keep things straight is that as soon as I use an idea in a note, I change to the color to a very pale pink or a pale purple. It's still there, but so light, I can barely read it. This way, I pay more attention to the notes still in black that I haven't used and if I need to remember a note for something I've already used, I can highlight it and still read it
( ... )
I've always wondered what it is about writing that prompts some sort of OCD behavior in most people. I've noticed that, even in people who use a minimum of files and notes and stuff (btw -- love your color schemes -- I use something similar when editing, including highlights, depending on what I'm editing for, lol) most have some sort of ritual or habit or something that makes the artistic process happen.
This isn't exclusive to artists. Musicians are probably second only to baseball players. :)
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what inspires you? what makes you want to write? where do you get your ideas? how do you organize them and turn them into something that you want to share with others? what made you start writing fanfic in the first place?
Hi, lily_diablo! :D I started writing fanfic when the TV series Angel ended and Tubbyk, the owner of the message board Cold Dead Seed, suggested that CDS's members all try to write some AtS fanfic to cheer ourselves up. I'd never written fictional stories before, and had never even considered doing so until then. But I was very upset and unsatisfied with most of the show's final season, especially the ending (okay, I hated its guts), and decided to make up my own "Season 6" to address or change some of the things I loathed disagreed with about Season 5, Seasons 6 and 7 of BtVS, etc. That sounds like a recipe for BitterFic, I know, but I always take care not to let the stories be bashy or angry ( ... )
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I also really enjoy it when a writer has a good sense of the cinematic nature of the situations/characters/settings involved in fanfic. I've actually enjoyed the same aspect in a lot of Stephen King's writing (which strikes me as totally odd, seeing as I almost always wind up at odds with the movie versions of his work...).
Thanks for responding!
Reply
http://community.livejournal.com/writing_fest/
Inspiration comes from just about anywhere. In fact I'm overwhelmed with different ideas. Sometimes I'm scared to watch any tv or movies because the ideas just swamp me. I keep ideas in either a file on my computer or on a file on my desk, depending on where I was when I had the idea.
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Or you're in the middle of the supermarket trying to herd your kids. That one is extra challenging, LOL. However if an idea is particularly strong, I tend to think hard about it. Sometimes though it's just a little scene that hits me. That's how I ended up with Scenes without a Story at my site. Just a way to get rid of ideas that pop into my head.
Reply
I don't have kids of my own, but the outside, RL demands (including a husband and BIL and extended family...) tend to keep me running. I like your Scenes without a Story idea!
Reply
I started because...I started reading fan fic during season six, and something inside me said, "Hey--I want to do that too! I can do that!" Even if my first piece kind of proves to the contrary :P Luckily, I got better, so yay! \o/
I have also been inspired through song lyrics and "what if..." scenarios.
I write because it makes life bearable. Well no, it's like...it's just something I must do. Regardless of what kind of writing it is, it's just something that is inescapable, and I have no desire to escape it anyway.
And organize? Me?
*looks around*
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Then, the little competitive voice that mutters in my right ear said, "so let's see you, if you're so f-ing good, then!"
So I think, "Shut up! I'll do it! I'll show you!"
Yes. It happened pretty much exactly like that. :)
Reply
Yeah, see...
That's the exact part of my original comment that I deleted cause I felt slightly ashamed for thinking that (even though it was totally true). But hey, I'm not alone! Awesomeness.
Reply
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(The comment has been removed)
I don't do well with hard core outlining and stuff, either, for the most part. What does happen is I'll get concepts for an entire story, rather than just a story line, so I wind up making all sorts of notes and trying to figure out where they belong in the sequence of the story, etc.
Reply
I've wanted to write since I was a little girl. I've always had a big imagination and loved books. Even while looking at picture books, I would dream up my own stories with my own pictures, in my head.
I get my ideas from a lot of places. A snippet of conversation that I overhear while running errands, the news, watching episodes of the show and thinking about how things would have been different if A or B happened, and when I watch other TV shows or movies. Not My Reality came to be because I was watching The Bachelor and thinking about how I would find the behind the scenes things more interesting than the actual show. I wondered about all the camera men that you don't see and I wondered if any of them got the hots for some of the bachelorettes, because they would be around the women more than the bachelor ever would. And there I had a story in my mind that was going to be original fic, but I didn't think I could sell it because of the TV show being real. So Angel became the bachelor, Buffy a ( ... )
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This isn't exclusive to artists. Musicians are probably second only to baseball players. :)
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