Ask me things

[kawuli]

Cross-posted from Tumblr (I'm paperairplanerace) via phone because I am exhausted and bored.

Ask me questions?

What is your favorite fic you have under your belt?
What is your favorite snippet of dialogue?
What inspired [insert fic]?
Do you prefer writing long or short fics?
What’s your favorite headcanon you use in fics?
What’s the detail you wait on bated breath for readers to notice?
How much do you like symbolism in your fics?
How often do people catch onto your little details?
What’s the fic you like the least?What would you change if you had it all to do again?
What’s a fanfic idea you haven’t done yet?
What’s the hardest thing to write for you?
Do you have a favorite character to write for?
What’s your favorite shipping fic you’ve written?
Favorite gen fic?
Give us a snippet of something from your WiPs!

Comments

[lorata.livejournal.com]

I'm actually interested in #2! Dialogue is harrrrrrrrd.

ALSO THIS ONE: What’s a fanfic idea you haven’t done yet?

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Actually even though it's terrible, this:

“What did you mean he’s scum?” Shit. That was so not how she was going to start this conversation.

Lyme looks up, startled for a second before she covers it up. “I meant he’s a shitty human being and if there was any justice in the world he’d be in prison.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I know.”

“The jails aren’t big enough for all the people who...” Rokia isn’t sure what to call it.

Lyme’s face is blank but her voice is strained. “I know that, too.”

“It was normal. Plenty of people did it.”

“I don’t care if every fucking person in the Capitol did it, Rokia, it was wrong.”

“It’s not like it was just me. I didn’t even have it that bad.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Eibhlin’s the one you should be worrying about, not me.”

“I worry about both of you, but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

Lyme looks at her. “The point is that you shouldn’t have to talk yourself down from this anymore. The point is that you are well within your rights to punch anyone who so much as touches you without your express permission. The point is that anyone who paid money to fuck you should have the basic human decency to stay the hell out of your way.”

“Oh.”

From this one: http://kawuli.livejournal.com/6546.html

Dialogue for me...depends. Sometimes it's hard (see: Phillips and Brutus being Dudes and having to delete half the words in each sentence). Other times it just appears in my brain. The thing I just quoted was like that--I wrote it on an airplane, and then had to close my laptop and go hide in the bathroom for a minute till I could breathe properly again. Sara and Rokia dialogue tends to be easiest. Probably because they're the best ^^

Things I haven't done yet, that are on my mind:
--"the revolution from below" D6/D9 non-victors story (actually in progress is the part up to right after the Arena falls)
-- Victors plotting: the one where Mags and Beetee are running the rebellion and trying to keep Plutarch from getting his head too far up his ass, which is probably also the story of Johanna and Finnick being BFFs

I haven't written very many things that fall into fanfic tropes....although I am doing a "5 times" thing about Johanna climbing trees...

I also suck ENORMOUSLY at writing sex and anything like normal romance, which might be a thing I would like to get better at? Or I could just stick with fade to black sex and totally failtastic romance. That works too.

I'm also poking around the edges of writing Rey fic, because holy shit, she is the best character. I might write the world's most ridiculous thing where she meets Rokia at Hogwarts BECAUSE I AM ABSURD.

[xanify.livejournal.com]

Hogwarts Rey :D :D :D

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking I should write Rey but basically all I have is INCOHERENT FLAILING which, while fun, is not fic-making.

She and Rokia would totally be fierce bb mechanic bffs though >>

[seta-suzume.livejournal.com]

Aaah, Rey and Rokia would get along great!!

I bet you could do some cool stuff with Rey in whatever setting you wanted to write about her!

[xanify.livejournal.com]

SNIPPET /cough

And because I love details, how about:

What’s the detail you wait on bated breath for readers to notice?
How often do people catch onto your little details?

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Most of the little details in my fic are worldbuilding things. So there's bits and pieces about d6 scattered haphazardly through all the Rokia fics, and the D9 one has SO MUCH random head canon that I mostly just refer to vaguely because not everyone wants a treatise on agriculture disguised as fic.

The D9 "Tractors..." one is the only one where I'm actually trying to do anything, er, literary? In that the structure and tone is supposed to be a callback to Grapes of Wrath. Otherwise, I'm just writing for fun, there usually aren't deep hidden meanings for things :-P

SNIPPET, from the 71st Tour, which I started writing in Finnick POV before switching to Johanna. It works much better from her POV but I like this bit, so now it can see the light of day:

Finnick will never admit it, least of all to Johanna, but he is profoundly relieved to see her in the Capitol at the end of the Tour.

It’s pretty much the only good thing about the day. She puts in an appearance at the President’s Gala, laughing and only half-drunk with one of the Capitol kids she parties with, and they leave pretty much right after the President welcomes the new Victor girl. Rokia -- Finnick pulls himself back from the distance he’s falling into, she’s Rokia. She looks different here, of course, from how she looked in Four, carefully crafted the way everything is in the Capitol. And you have to know what you’re looking for to see the fear in her eyes.

Her mentor looks worse, tense and furious and radiating guilt and rage from his position at the edge of the room. Phillips would hate this party even if it had nothing to do with his miracle girl getting turned out for the Capitol sharks to catch her scent. The one persistently sober mentor from Six isn’t exactly friendly, he’s gruff and standoffish and disapproving by default, but word has it he broke down and cried when his girl won.

Finnick wonders how he’s reacting to everything that comes with Victory. Gets a drink, because he doesn’t want to fucking think about it, works the room with his mind far away.

[xanify.livejournal.com]

Hahhh Finnick /o\

Poor non-Two Victors and the way the Capitol uses them.

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Break them in or break them down. SO GROSS.

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Oh also details: all the little Mali/West Africa things I use for D6. They're fun :)

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

Tell us about favorite headcanon, pls? Also, what headcanon details haven't made it into your stories yet?

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

I am quite fond of my agrarian cyberpunk dystopia D9 headcanon in general--just because it's so different from the "non-Capitol Panem is technologically backward" stuff that seems to be typical (for the like....very few people who have written ANYTHING about D9).

Hmmmmm, random headcanons not yet in stories:
D7 is gigantic, "11 is the biggest" is just dumb and therefore wrong (the author has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've decided to ignore it). Lots of lumber camps all through the north, in an arc from Northern Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest, with a few larger towns for things like sawmills, paper mills, IKEA type furniture for the districts and nice stuff for the Capitol, etc.

Haymitch's mentor was a washed up addict from D1 whose job was to make sure he behaved at the truly unreasonable number of parties he had to go to celebrating the Quarter Quell. He went back to One after the Victory Tour and died of a suspicious overdose not long after. Relatedly, Haymitch was not prostituted, because Snow didn't want a kid clever enough to figure out the Arena as well as Haymitch did to be in private rooms all over the Capitol. He did want to make sure Haymitch was co-opted so the Districts wouldn't see him as a rebel, hence many fancy parties, endorsements, TV appearances, etc. Haymitch of course hated all of this, and hated his mentor constantly telling him what to do. So when he has Katniss and Peeta, he figures they'll be fine, they don't need him, whatever. Until D11 on the Tour, when he's like OH MY GOD HOW DUMB ARE YOU, and starts having to care. Caring about people is dumb and only causes pain and uuuuugh but oops, turns out it happens anyway.

OK now I wrote a novel, oops.

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Oh, another headcanon thing (this is what I do on long car rides on bad roads) :

How Finnick ended up in the Arena at 14:
A 16ish year old gets Reaped, and he has some training, and nobody in the 17s and 18s really wants it. Finnick, being cocky and young and strong, thinks "man, that guy isn't going to make it, I could beat him, I'm better than he is.... Oh hey, I AM better than he is, I should volunteer!"

And the rest of the 4s are like /facepalm "You DUMB KID" but they manage to pull him. And then he realizes what he really volunteered for, and well. Shit.

Provides interesting character beats for me to play with, makes at least as much sense as any other explanation I've heard, so I'm going with it.

[seta-suzume.livejournal.com]

...I think I just want to say I am so enjoying reading your responses to these in general! ^^