Fic ask meme from tumblr

[kawuli]

I officially fail at productivity today, so let's try this instead:

Pic a fic/series/thing and some numbers:

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?
2: What scene did you first put down?
3: What's your favorite line of narration?
4: What's your favorite line of dialogue?
5: What part was hardest to write?
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
7: Where did the title come from?
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
12: What do you like least about this fic?
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn't listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

Comments

[penfold-x.livejournal.com]

Tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land (if I can have two): 1, 3, 8, 11, 15

[kawuli.livejournal.com]

Sure, you can have two :)

1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?
Oh man... I mean the D9 stuff was generally percolating for a while, the agrarian cyberpunk dystopia themes and the idea of the D9 combine driver out on the plains and what have you, but I didn't have any actual idea what the story was. And then randomly in Holland I had the idea about the Grapes of Wrath connection and went !!!! and wrote the first 200 words or so. No idea where the connection came from beyond "my brain flings stuff at me and sometimes it sticks" but I like it.

3. What's your favorite line of narration?
The beginning, probably:

Wheat country, west of the river, long past even the summer sunset. It's been raining, they're behind in cutting, supposed to head north last week, the schedule's all blown to hell because somehow they still can't control the clouds.
It's tricky land out here, rocky outcrops hiding beneath the tall grass field margins--soon they'll be up and out onto the real plains, but just Zea's luck she's assigned this strip, on the western edge of the Flint Hills, wild grass stretching east till the land smooths back out near the City.

I did a thing once that asked for first lines of fic and I noticed I usually start with characters. This one starts with setting, which I don't usually do beyond maybe a sentence of context. Saying it's because the land is a character sounds pretentious and douchey but it's kind of true. Or at least setting is way more important to this one than most stuff I write.

8. Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
A lot of the names come from family of mine who come from out that way, and I tried to model the way the characters talk and some of the mannerisms on the midwestern farmers and rural folks I know. The Ag stuff is mostly picked up from various real life situations but most of that's background and nonspecific.

Unfortunately I don't know anyone actively trying to overthrow the government, that part is made up.

11. What do you like best about this fic?
I really like how the tone worked out. It's fairly slow-paced and thoughtful I think? This means that Zea POV is absolutely the slowest for me to write, but it's worth it because I think it ends up being a pretty distinctive voice. I like to think there's also a pretty strong sense of place running through the whole thing, too. That's something I don't think the sequel(s) do quite as well, but part of that is because they're more plot-driven, there's more stuff happening so they speed up in a way.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?
I learned a lot about crop distributions! And Sonja helped me with getting the Ag tech stuff right, which was super helpful. And just a lot of worldbuilding type stuff went into it, in terms of how the crews would work, where they'd be when, what materials they'd be able to get their hands on, how their world runs, really. Some of that you see directly but most of it is not really visible in the fic itself. Which I think is how it should be, I'm not writing a textbook, but i want it to have a sense that there's something coherent behind it.