redfiona99

Many years ago st_aurafina posted this link about writers being plotters or pantsers (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1125856091261136896.html) specifically talking about George R. R. Martin vs the Game of Thrones show runners.

Obviously no one, not even GRRM, falls all into one category.

I am more a plotter than a pantser. I can't just sit down and go "okay, that's how this goes." I have to have a solid idea.

On the other hand, my initial idea is often an image, and then I work out how everyone got there, and where they go from there. I have to have a road map then I can sit down and write the damn thing.

But I know that if, while I'm writing, there is suddenly a castle in the road map that wasn't originally supposed to be there, I should probably include it, because that's the story telling me that character, concept or action needs to be there.

Probably the best example is The Time Between, which was written for the XMM ficathon to this great prompt "Erik and Charles or Erik/Charles. Anything about them both living at the school, daily life or mutant heroics. Any era or AU is fine; feel free to mix and match any canon you like, including comics."

So I read that prompt and go, "what sort of thing would make those two get back together? It's going to have to be something serious, something that threatens mutants."

That already tells me I'm writing something action/thrillery, feeling a bit like the middle section of First Class (which was the only nu-trilogy/quadrilogy film at that point).

Next point, why isn't Magneto just going to stop the problem himself? He's got a telepath, a teleporter, a shapeshifter and someone who can fly, plus him and Riptide. They can handle most things. There needs to be a reason they reach out. It's Magneto, it's going to have to be a damn good reason. Man doesn't seek help, unless something dire is threatening mutantkind.

The only person on Magneto's side he can't replace, in the sense of someone else in the team's powers can do something similar or the use of a power would lead to a similar effect is Emma Frost, which is why Emma Frost is the one who is injured. So it had to be the type of mission where a telepath was needed.

The first image I got was Alex thwapping the solid, really good quality paper that Magneto and Mystique sent their missive on.

So I write from the arrival of the letter, then there's the explanation of the why, and all the characters interacting (one reviewer did spot that this is a series of character vignettes held together by plot).

In the initial thought, Magneto had been given the info on the government's plan by an undetected mutant FBI agent who happened to have had the file cross his desk. Completely inconspicuous character, looks a bit like a less sinister Victor Freeze from Batman: The Animated Series.

And I'm writing the scene where they go to visit the informant, and it has to be a bar so no one knows that they all know each other, and he's really scared, and I realise that there's already an FBI character, who knew about mutants, and might see this sort of file, who could remember Magneto, but couldn't remember where Charles was now, and was very resourceful and would somehow attract Magneto's attention if she needed it. And Magneto would trust Moira not to be lying, not about this (because I don't think he liked her, but I think he at least accepted she was more on their side than not, and that's the most he hopes for from non-mutants, and that he'd trust her if she came to him with this information) in a way he wouldn't about any given FBI agent.

And Moira coming back, and why she couldn't take the file to Charles, is a far more interesting story than random FBI dude who happens to be a mutant.

Moira was not in this fic originally, but she made it a better fic.

Apparently, when I write, I like to make things difficult for myself, because I have having to write a sex scene where no word can be explicit. Because argh! (actually because historical fiction and two characters who are both, for plot reasons, trying to ignore that they are having sex with each other).

For horrifying related reasons, I now need to know

1) did Belle Epoque Europe have lollipops?
2) What they called them, if they did?

Wikipedia is not being helpful.

One of the knock-on (but obvs. less minor) effects of the job was that I had either no time to write, or when I did have time, I didn't have the mental energy. Which was annoying. I don't think I would have written all that much more fic last year even without that because most of the things I'm working on are being tricky. But it was also the case for my non-fandom writing and that's annoying. I didn't even have the energy to edit the novel (I am aware that civilisations have risen and fallen in the time it has taken me to write one very short novel). So that is on the to-do list, but it will be a lot more enjoyable that tidying the flat.

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With regard to fic, I was wondering if any of the North American wrestling fans on my flist would mind reading over a ~4000 word fic that I hope to have finished in ~ 6 weeks. (I have two more scene to write and some set dressing to do.)

Normally I would be so specific but the fic features CM Punk being ... himself and a few more very wrestling specific things.

Science:

Good news: I may have interesting results
Bad news: I can't interpret them because work computer is, to quote the Linux dude, "shafted".

Good news: The project students are gone at the end of the week
Bad news: Leaving me with a mess of data because they did not listen and didn't add DTT or TCEP to buffers when I told them to.

RL:

Good news: The students being gone means I can start fencing again
Bad news: I haven't fenced in months. I am going to die. And so is my wallet (need to resub to the national body and pay my club membership).

Writing:

Good news: I am getting somewhere with the novel I'm working on (hat-tip to idleleaves for some of her suggestions).
Bad news: I'm not sure I'm getting anywhere useful.

Good news: I think I know how I'm ending part 2 of the never ending Mystique fic
Bad news: Part of the solution is to add about 2 more long paragraphs of thinking and a bit more speaking. Part 5 is already 6 people sitting around a table with no action. I wanted there to be less of that in part 2. (Part 4 is two people sitting round a table but fun stuff happens, and part 6 is two people sitting round a table but interesting stuff happens)

Fanfiction Meme - Day 27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

Not sure it's my favourite place, but I do most of my writing on my sofa. I wish I had a desk (like I used to) but there is no room in my flat. I used to write in bed but there's only one easily accessible socket in my bedroom and my alarm clock now uses that.

I write using my laptop and, 99/100ths of the time, using Notepad. I have no idea why I prefer it to writing in Word, I just do. I always send my fics through Word before I post. It's amazing the number of times doing that catches those little details I've forgotten to put in, or those tiny mistakes I have left in.

For some unknown reason, I find it easier to write Harry Potter fic by hand.

( Other Days )

I'm on to the penultimate episode of Revenge, and they're doing interesting things. ( Spoilers )

Also ( spoilers for Revenge and the Count of Monte Cristo )

At some point I really need to write a proper post about Revenge which I enjoy immensely.

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Politics:

Could the US-ians, or anyone else who might happen to know, answer me a couple of questions? They're both very simple.

1 - The early voting - is it like postal voting or something else? How is it regulated? Do you think it increases overall turnout?

2 - Is there a reason why the Dems are targeting young voters? Or to rephrase it, in my experience, and the experience of my mother, when we were young voters, people our age were no more likely to vote for the less right wing candidate that people older than us. Is there any reason to expect this to be different in the US?

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Translations:

While I was over at a friend's, she let me read her copy of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", which I liked. However, I now want to track it down in either the original Swedish, or since I can't read Swedish, German, because there's one particular point where the translator translates something into a word, which while it is fine and upstanding, is highly unlikely to have been the original, and it's a dashed odd choice of word given what I think he could have used, so I want to know what the original said.

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Writing:

So I'm writing something set in a pseudo-medieval society, sort of middle medieval (moving away from feudalism, but before muskets and canon), and I needed to know how fast horses travel. So I googled, and the average answer is ~ 30 miles per day. So in a day and a half that'd be 45 miles, maybe 60 if I use exceptional horses. The problem is that I could do with it being ~70 miles. So how far is it reasonable to bend reality on a small point like that?

nwhyte linked to a kerfuffle over a review of a book, and some interesting comments were made about it in his post here - http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1880791.html

The part that I'm interested in goes like this - an author makes an absolute hash of early modern English in his book. Reviewer points it out. Defenders of the author say 'so what, it's not like it really is early modern English, it's an archaic language that the author is choosing to represent as early modern English'.

The original reviewer made the point that having chosen to do this, the author (or his editors) ought to at least make it accurate. nwhyte then illustrates the point with an analogy, saying that it'd be the same as having an astronaut walk on the surface of a Jupiter-esque planet. Anyone who knew anything about Jupiter or gas giants would find it hard to continue to suspend their disbelief.

One of the commentators on the post says that it's an unfair analogy as the writer of the review happens to be history specialist and a specialist is bound to pick up on things more than a lay-person.

I find it interesting because I've been complaining about the science in the last Sherlock ( Spoilers )

but I'll give it a pass because it's not actually wrong. It's the same with CSI and it's spin-offs, I'm more tolerant than my friend whose Dad is a SOCO (scene of crime officer), because I see it as merely over-stating the powers of the science rather than being flat-out wrong, but when it's actively wrong, such as getting AMF the wrong way round, I'll complain.

To me, it makes more sense to be as accurate as possible, where it is possible, because it won't harm your work, and then fudge the details that you absolutely need to because you can't know what your audience knows more about than you. It's probably better to assume that they know more about it than you do.

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Entertainment or sports. Sports for preference because all of life is there, art, politics, society.

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Help, I've had coffee for the first time in weeks, and I'm so jittery you can probably run the national grid off me. And I have to sit through a staff induction, three and a half hours of, like this. So stuffed.