Fic Meta... it's been a while

[kellifer]

I've been asked off and on if I would write a post about plot, more specifically how I write and the method to my madness. (Believe me, there really isn't any...)

I have a little time so I thought what the hell.



Plot writing or - what the hell were you thinking?

The simple answer is, I have no idea.

I've been writing ever since I can remember but I mostly started exploring it when I got into roleplaying my first year of Uni. (Yep, came into my geekdom late and I think I'm way up there on the geek pyramid - only partially negated by the fact that I wear a skirt.). Hell, the roleplayers were friendly and predominantly *male* which was fun. I never had to buy drinks at the pub after a convention.

Playing other people's games though bugged the crap out of me because I'm a control freak who needs to know what's going on. I started writing and pretty much that's what I did. I ran "freeforms" which were large, live action games. (Think of a play with twenty+ people and no script - they all ad lib based on a character they've been given and plot you introduce throughout the game).

It was fun and I was in supreme control of large numbers of people who had to bow to my every whim.

Cool.

The important thing about roleplaying was that it taught me to World build. If you ever want to survive an apocalypse or have someone poke holes in your plot, have a roleplayer for a friend. They know that you need to control the pharmacy when all hell breaks loose (my non-LJ friend Kat is a freakin' genius!) and how to thwart every plot device you can think of.

The worlds and stories I created had to stand up to intense scrutiny, be visceral and have no gaps. I had to know intimately every sound, smell, taste of the place I'd created and I find that translates into my writing now. I can't start a story without having a lay of the land it's set in first.

I think that's why I also like AU's so much. Playing in someone else's sandbox is fun, but building a place to call my own is where my happy lies. I reuse original characters over and again because as soon as they've had the life breathed into them, they exist for me, forever after. In a few years when you are hopefully picking up something of mine to read off the shelves, you might see someone you know...

Every now and again though, I have to let my hair down. That's the only way I can explain stories where a sentient severed hand is one of the main characters, people randomly get turned into bears and dolls and sometimes you just grab a character you love from every fandom and chuck them together and see what happens.

It's my retreat, popcorn for the brain, my way of unwinding.

So, my question is... how did you start writing?

Comments

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

Hee... looking forward to it! :)

[amalthia]

thanks for sharing this. :)

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome. *smiles*

[lark_ascends]

I mainly started writing my first year of uni. I'd discovered the online world, and being enamoured with "The Bill" at the time, started reading a lot of fanfic and then tried my hand at it myself. Let me put it this way, that fic is never seeing the light of day.

That fandom died off when the show got stupid, and I didn't really rediscover online fandom until 4 years ago, when I got into Enterprise. I just started writing weird short pieces that was how I could see the characters, and a longer fic that I would totally rewrite/scrap now.

I've always tried to make something about the pieces I write 'unique', it's one of the most important parts of writing to me.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

Hahaa... I think we all have that very early fiction that will never see the light of day. I had *thought* I had only gotten into fanfiction relatively recently but I was going through some old writing that I found in my parent's house and found a Young Guns story that I must have written when I was about fourteen... *hands*

[strangevisitor7.livejournal.com]

Since you asked. I used to write when I was very young. I think I was writing fan fiction before such a thing was identified. I remember writing a "Mary Sue" Bonanza story about 30 years ago (5th grade) I kept writing journal and off until college(wish I could find them just to laugh.) Stopped until 2 months ago when I started this journal after reading fanfiction for years. I was inspired by many (including you) and encouraged to jump so I did. Now I can't stop.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

Aw that's awesome... *glee*

Hehee... yep, I was guilty of a few teen Mary-Sue's (mine were Young Guns... *laughs*)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I wrote fanfic in college. It was the peer pressure. : ) I wanted to be a writer, but coming up with my own characters as well as everything else takes so long, and here were these characters I already liked just waiting for more to do. . . .

When I started writing again, it was a simple story, almost all dialogue, because I knew why Jack agreed to leave the SGC and Sam took the assignment at Area 51 and all the rest, and just because the writers hadn't had the time (or the actors' availability) to tell the story didn't mean that the world didn't need to know what I knew.

Then, of course, I went on from there. I knew how Vala and Jack's first meeting went, and the show didn't let us see that, so I had to write it. Eventually I began coming up with plots into which to fit my scenes, but I still usually start with scenes. I don't so much write them as they just come into my head, all dialogue at first, and then I fill in bits.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

That's awesome... finding yourself filling in the blanks... :)

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always liked to write, especially when I was young. Most of my stories involved talking animals, flying carpets or spaceships visiting distant worlds. While I never wrote fanfiction back then, I used to make up Mary-Sue versions of me, insert them into my favourite TV shows and use them as a way to get to sleep, so I guess when I did find fanfiction it seemed quite natural to give it a go.

I discovered the web (other than for official research) about a year and a half ago and found a small gen RPG for Stargate Atlantis. I created my first character and it snowballed from there. So my first fanfic was a story written with those characters in it. Found live journal and met a few people by reading and writing crack!fic and I've never looked back.

I think that was TMI! But hey, you asked! :P

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

We're all very glad you didn't!! :)

[crayonbreakygal.livejournal.com]

I remember writing Star Wars fic when I was very young. Gah. It was terrible. Then I took writing classes in college which were fun. I took so many scriptwriting classes, it isn't even funny. But I didn't enjoy it in the least.

A friend of mine hooked me on Buffy and Angel. When Buffy went off the air, I wanted more so I started looking at fanfic as a way of filling that void. Then Angel was cancelled and I knew that I needed to fill that void, so I started writing again. I hadn't written anything in ages. I started off small, then wrote a huge action/adventure fanfic. I was hooked.

My problem now is trying to start the writing process yet again. I haven't written anything of length in such a long time. The plot bunnies sure do take up a lot of brain capacity though. I guess that means I really do need to finish my apocalypse kree fic right now. It's due soon.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

Hahahaa... I love finding out what people first wrote so I know I'm not alone with my godawful young guns fic... heheheee...

Kree!