Tag Archives: Sam talks Writing

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sarashouldbestudying:

still-searching47:

Random writing observation.

I’ve read books about writing to market but I’ve never experienced that phenomenon myself. It’s actually really interesting, or at least I find it interesting.

I started posting The War Within, my alternate season six fic on June 21st. It’s got 6 chapters, it’s 26k so far and will be approaching novel length by the time it’s done. I have 18 kudos on it, I usually get a couple of comments and 6-9 notes on tumblr per chapter.

I posted the first chapter of Painting Layers of Love last night. The first chapter is about 5k, I have no clue what the final length will be as I haven’t planned it out. I have 21 kudos on it, 2 comments and 14 notes on tumblr.

So it’s like 18 kudos in a month vs 21 kudos over night – writing to market at work perhaps? Now this is just a random observation, not a complaint or a criticism. I thought it was interesting, it sort of ‘proves’ (as much as anything can be proven with such a tiny sample size) that what you write, has an affect on the response.

Although this isn’t really much of a revelation. I mean there is a reason that the romance section of the market is so huge, romance sells. If that is true generally, then it is likely to be true in a a microcosm as well. However, I don’t think I could ever write to market on purpose. So this observation isn’t going to affect what I write because I write what I love. Obviously, I hope other people will enjoy it but I can’t control that. I learnt a long time ago to write for me first and foremost, there’s less disappointment that way.

Anyway, that’s my random observation for the day. You know I think I will have to try writing a variety of fics and compare the response. Ok, I admit it, I find this slightly fascinating. Well, that’s kinda why I wrote this post because it’s so interesting. You know it’s too bad AO3 doesn’t have a genre filter because I would totally put my statistics hat on and analyse that.

I think that the “market” for fanfictions is really different from the market for printed books. Of course romance always sells, but personally I’ve read very few strictly romantic books, while 95% of fics I’ve ever read were centered on one of my OTPs. I think many read fics because of shipping, so they may be more focused on strictly romantic ones than whole season rewritings. 

Length is also a factor. As much as we might despise it, we can’t spend the whole day reading fics. Personally, I find it very frustrating when I’m reading a really good fic but I have to stop because it’s too long and I don’t have time. That’s why I only read long fics when I discover them early on, because I don’t want to find myself with 100K words to read. Knowing that a fic is a season rewriting gurantees that it will be a long thing; maybe someone doesn’t want to get invested in a really long fic, and would rather read something shorter and/or less complicated, like a story that starts off a prompt. 

I hope I made at least some sense XD

Ooooooh yes! You made perfect sense 🙂 I hadn’t thought of those points. That is so true!

I want to reiterate I wasn’t complaining, I’m just fascinated by the difference. I might also be procrastinating. I’m supposed to be working and randomly wondering about stuff was a lot more interesting /hides.

You see your points are actually one of the reasons why I don’t attempt to write to market. It’s so complex, there are so many reasons why people do things that trying to puzzle them out and do things “right” is a bit like trying to hit a bullseye on a moving target.

Yeah, I only start reading a long fic if I know I have time to read a chunk. There are so many RCIJ fics I haven’t got to yet because I read some of the shorter ones first, and then I haven’t gone back for the longer ones yet. I will do eventually but I feel vaguely guilty. I didn’t read the shorter ones first because I liked them better, I just haven’t had time. It is no reflection on the authors I haven’t read – promise!

Painting Layers of Love (Chapter One)

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betsypaige22:

still-searching47:

Synopsis: Belle French lives alone and she likes it that way. She’s lived alone ever since the terrible car accident which killed her mother and claimed her eyesight. Belle spends her days painting, in complete solitude, until one day she wakes up and hears movement outside. Somebody has moved into the cottage next door. She had grown comfortable in her solitary existence until Mr Gold crashes into her life. Now her future is uncertain, like a blank canvas, waiting for her to apply the paint and decide what kind of story she is creating.

Note: I wrote a ficlet for this inspiration picture and it seemed to strike a chord. I was asked what happened next so I decided to turn it into a real fic. Well it’s turned into something rather longer than I intended. This first chapter goes no further than the ficlet but it’s been significantly expanded as well as cleaned up.

I seem to have accidentally created a new WIP – oops. Anyway, I have a set posting day every week for my main WIP. I’m not going to do that for this because there are only so many hours in the week. However, I will do what happened next as soon as possible.

@snitchwillow, @betsypaige22, @emeraldkissunderthemoonlight I hope you enjoy! 🙂

“There is
something beautiful about a blank canvas, the nothingness of the beginning that
is so simple and breathtakingly pure. It’s the paint that changes its meaning
and the hand that creates the story. Every piece begins the same, but in the
end they are all uniquely different.” – Piper Payne.

AO3 Link

Keep reading

Oh my god, this was so WONDERFUL – I’m crying! Thank you!

I love how Belle isn’t perfect, that she’s bitter (understandably so) and taking it out on Gold……….I love that she’s guilt-ridden and broken.  I love that Gold is irritated, but intrigued………… I sense an epic Rumbelle romance!

Wow thank you! 🙂 Yeah I hope I can do it justice.

Just as a sidenote. If you or anyone else has any prompts for this verse, they will be very gratefully received. A prompt is what started this fic, it only seems fitting that prompts help finish it.

snitchwillow:

EEEEEEEEEEEE I LOVE IT!! Thanks so much for tagging me!! 

Yay! I’m so happy you love it. I’m always a bit nervous tagging people so I’m glad you didn’t mind 🙂

I’m hoping I’ll be able to do chapter two for next Friday but next week is shaping up quite busy, it might have to get pushed to the following week. To be honest I still haven’t worked out what is happening in the next chapter, I have a few images in my mind but if anyone has any prompts, I wouldn’t say no 🙂 Anyway, I will do my best.

betsypaige22:

Don’t worry about writing chapter 2 – whenever you get to it is just fine with us !

This isn’t really a prompt, but I was thinking that down the line Rumple might want to introduce Belle to sculpting – not as a replacement for painting, just as something different. I think he’d believe she’d be good at it because she could work with her hands and feel the material (later on, I foresee sexy, Ghost-like times)….

Also, maybe Gold might bring one of his art-loving clients to see Belle’s work – with her permission, of course. The client would love her work and he’d suggest a showing …..

Thoughts?

I love both of those! They are good prompts. I will definitely use them, not in the next chapter, they have a way to go first but later on.

This verse is totally outside of my comfort zone. I’ve never written anything like it before, so the prompts are very helpful to me because it’s like points on a map. I can draw a line from A to B, but if I don’t know where B is, then it’s hard to get anywhere from A. Not sure if that makes sense.

Thank you so much! 🙂

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I have completely lost track of all the RCIJ fics. I had to work and couldn’t spend the day reading. I hope there’s going to be a masterlist that I can work through later.

In other news I finished Tuesday’s chapter of The War Within last night. Which gives me a fighting chance to have a chapter for Friday as I promised. I’m now trying to decide what to do for the rest of the evening.

– Read more awesome fics!
– start writing Chapter 7.
– start work on that Rush/Carter fic, which I have not forgotten about just haven’t managed to make time for yet.
– Cleanup and expand the ficlet I wrote this morning from that inspiration picture because I wrote more than intended, and it feels like I should do a proper job on it now.

Of course I could always just procrastinate and wind up doing nothing. I’m quite fond of doing that …

Why are some gifs not in the gif thing? How can I put them in and give proper credit if I can’t find them? I’m putting in the actual hashtags and they still aren’t coming up. I wanted to use the one with McKay talking about a “magical tool to slow down time” but it won’t let me 🙁

You know the Rush/Carter oneshot is not the only fic I haven’t forgotten about. The Rushbelle one (Ripple Effect) and the Rumbelle AU with side of Swanfire (Nightwalkers) are still happening as well.

It’s just, I’ve kinda discovered that working on more than two WIP’s at once is impossible if I want to maintain a posting schedule. So I need to get The War Within completed, or finish writing it, before I can really do another. Either that or I need to learn to write faster.

Posted on by

betsypaige22:

still-searching47:

“It’s a dark road and a dark way that leads to my house ..”

“I’m not mad, I’m not mad,” Belle muttered to herself repeatedly.

She sat hunched over in the corner of her room, eyeing the door fearfully. Her father had locked her in here because of her delusions but she wasn’t mad. There was a whole world out there beyond their own and she had seen it.

…

Belle had been reading in the garden, her back up against the old oak tree when a flash of light had caught her attention. It came from just inside the tree line to the nearby forest. Curious, Belle had wandered over.

The light had grown brighter, flickering ominously. It was a sickly green, swirling in a pattern reflecting on the leaves of the trees. Belle pushed the branch back and gasped. The ground was swirling like a tornado. She turned to run but her feet were frozen to the floor. It was like an invisible hand had reached out and grabbed her ankles.

With a tug she tumbled to the ground. She grabbed desperately at the dirt as she was dragged, pulled ever closer to the apex of the portal. It was no use, nothing could save her now. She reached the portal and tumbled down, and down and down, until she hit the ground with a heavy thud.

Belle looked up and screamed. In front of her was a ten foot tall being, humanoid like a man but definitely not human. It smelled horrible and carried a club. She scooted back, eyes wide, she had no breath left to scream. The being swung it’s club and Belle whimpered, clenching her eyes tightly shut, certain she was about to be killed.

Keep reading

Oh, I LOVE this ! Oh my god, it’s so perfect!!!!! Thank you!!!

Thanks 🙂 I’m actually considering cleaning this one up, expanding it and making it a proper fic. I wrote more than I intended on it this morning, I got rather carried away.

The War Within (Chapter Four)

Posted on by

woodelf68:

still-searching47:

Synopsis: Alternate Season Six. Storybrooke is visibly under threat once more from Hyde and the Evil Queen. However, not all threats are visible as an old forgotten foe has been manipulating events from behind the scenes. The very nature of darkness is revealed as everyone struggles with the most difficult beast of all – acceptance.

Note: Another Tuesday, another chapter. I just checked and there are 10 more Tuesday’s before the premiere. I want this finished before then, so I think I might have to increase the posting schedule. After RCIJ is over, I will try for twice a week, or twice a week on alternate weeks or something. I have other WIP’s I want to write as well 🙂

On Tumblr: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three

AO3 Link

When Belle
jabbed the needle into her finger, she had expected that the next time she was
consciously aware, would be when her father woke her. She hadn’t done any
research into sleeping curses, there had always been something more pressing,
and she already knew the most important fact. While she was under the curse,
her body was effectively in suspended animation – Hades would not be able to
take her baby.

That was all
she cared about, protecting her child. Finding herself in a room full of
mirrors hadn’t been what she expected. This didn’t feel like a dream, it felt
like she was really here, wherever here was.

Belle swallowed
hard and placed a hand protectively on her stomach. The baby was nothing more
than a collection of cells right now but she loved it fiercely already. The
nearest mirror flashed, and Belle took a wary step back, but it was too late.

Keep reading

“


She really hadn’t thought this one through.
“
YOU DON’T SAY, BELLE. I’m glad that she realised that, and not to sound horrible, I’m glad she’s paying for her rashness and seeing all those painful moments of her past. It would have been different if Hades had actually threatened the baby, but she put herself under the damn sleeping curse simply based on a comment by ZELENA of what EMMA had done to her. Which was because Emma wanted the baby safe so she could kill Zelena. Nothing about that situation applied to Belle. Hades wanted to control Rumpel, not kill Belle. There was no reason for him to want the baby to come more quickly. *Sigh* The way you’ve written what is happening to Belle is perfect;  I bet the show writers won’t even address it. 

Oh wow thank you, such a nice comment to wake up to this morning 🙂

I’ve no idea what will happen in the real season 6. I know spoilers are starting to filter through now but I have my plan for this story and I’m going to stick to it. I won’t be changing it to bring in anything ‘official’. That’s why I want to get this fic completed before the premiere. It’s going to be wildly AU I’m sure but hopefully still enjoyable.

I’m scrambling a bit today as I only have half of tomorrow’s chapter written. I was finishing up my RCIJ and then I’ve got a cold, which destroyed my weekend. I doubt tomorrow’s chapter will be that popular, it’s quite plot focused. Last weeks chapter was mainly Rumple and Belle and this weeks will pay for it. I don’t think Belle will appear and I think Rumple will only appear in flashback as the dark one. However, the following weeks chapter should have them both again.

Thanks again!

Home stretch!

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rumbellechristmasinjuly:

Now is the time to panic! There is one week until your gifts are due! How is everyone doing? Mortal terror or piece of cake?

(answering in gif form is highly encouraged)

image

By that I mean I’m done but I’m terrified my person won’t like it/they’ll be disappointed. I did my best but this is my first gift exchange and it’s a scary business. I can’t wait till posting date because then the uncertainty will be over.

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I’m sick, it’s NaNo so I will laughingly call it the NaNo plague but right now it’s just a really nasty sore/swollen throat. I’m procrastinating on writing so I figured I would ask myself some of those questions from earlier because why not? It’s all good fun.

Feel free to ask me any others if you are curious 🙂

H: How would you describe your style?
I write third person and I’m most at home with an ensemble cast. I like to be able to move between plot and subplot, and have a few different POV characters, so that I can tell the story from multiple angles.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?
Warning Major Character Death!

Basically Rumple wakes Belle with true loves kiss and that breaks the curse of the dark one, rendering him powerless. A short time later Hook finds out, perhaps from Henry as the author, that Rumple threw Milah into the river of lost souls. Rumple is just crossing the street when Hook kills him. Emma and the rest of the ‘heroes’ say that Rumple had it coming, no matter that he was powerless now and vulnerable, it was justice not murder.

Anyway, Belle has their child and when it’s just a few months old Storybrooke is hit by disaster – again! Belle goes to help the ‘heroes’ defend the town because it’s the right thing to do and she gets killed. That kid is now an orphan and only a few months old, nobody wants it because it’s the ‘spawn of the dark one’ but they do at least take it far enough over the townline to ensure that it’s found.

The kid grows up in the system and when they are 18 Henry finds them, because he thinks that the kid should know where they came from. However, that is some legacy. From the kids point of view, their dad was murdered before they were even born, and their mother cared more about playing hero than about them. They ask if their parents left them anything, that might sound mercenary but they have nothing right now. Henry admits that there was quite a sizable estate (Rumple had owned most of the town) but that there was now nothing left. No-one paid rent to a dead man and everything else had been ‘seized’.

I never know quite how to end this. I’m quite partial to time travel. With Wicked Witch 2.0 (Zelena’s daughter) kidnapping the kid to use as leverage against Rumple in the past (it’s a spare kid, could be an easy way out of that pesky second child contract) and takes the kids heart so if Rumple doesn’t play ball, can kill them at anytime. This also means that the town gets to see how screwed up the future could be and fix it and make for a happier ending (see I suck at angst, I like my happy endings) but to be honest, it could just end with Henry leaving the kid with knowledge of their origins.

That would be sad – no more happy endings.

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?
Characters – always! Characters drive plot. I mean there is obviously a certain amount of ‘both’ with this question because it’s “Put Character into Plot = see what happens” but it’s about the characters journey, it’s about their actions, their emotions.

If the plot doesn’t start and end with characters then I personally feel it’s quite shallow, there’s not much depth to it. Like watching a movie and it’s all special effects, there would be nothing memorable about it. When I watch something, for me to be a real fan, a character has to grab me.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
I do full scene by scene outlines of any long story. For a short oneshot, I just write and do scenes as I think of them, one after the other until the end. However, if something’s complex, I would write myself into a corner if I don’t plan it out.

That doesn’t mean I’m completely married to the outline. I can add in extra scenes if I realize that I need to do that when I start writing. Sometimes I combine scenes and of course for any serious work I do multiple drafts. That means after I’ve gone through and found all the problems, brainstormed all the fixes, I write up a new outline. That would have the new, changed, moved scenes in the right places.

I need my outline. It means when I sit down to work I always know what is coming next. I’m never sat there thinking “I don’t know what I’m writing.” because if I have questions about the plot and I don’t know them when I’m planning, I’m sure as hell not going to know them when I’m writing. Planning it all out, lets me solve problems before they become issues in the draft.

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven’t tried yet.
Swanfire! I love Neal and so it seems like a natural thing. I am hoping to include Swanfire as a side pairing in Nightwalkers. I haven’t planned that fic yet, though I’m itching to do so. I hope I can include it, if I can’t then I might need to think of a Swanfire oneshot or something.

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still-searching47:

still-searching47:

still-searching47:

RCIJ I am writing you – today – no excuses!

I have coffee, I have water, I have headphones. Let’s do this.

2300 words later and yeah I’m still nowhere near done. I’m thinking I got four scenes left which puts me at just slightly over the halfway point. This fic is probably going to come out about 10k in the end, which is hopefully good enough. This is my first event and I’m slightly scared of disappointing people.

I got to write 700 more words today to be caught up to where I should be for my Camp NaNo goal. So I’m going to swap to The War Within. I have most of next weeks chapter still to write.

RCIJ I am writing you – today – no excuses!

I should probably stop giving updates on this because it’s not all that interesting. However, got to be honest, I find the accountability quite helpful. If I don’t report back this evening that I’ve done a chunk, then ooops that’s embarrassing.

That’s one of the benefits of fanfic generally in my opinion. If people are reading, and I promise a new chapter every week, then whether I feel like writing that story or not, I have to get that chapter done.

RCIJ has taught me other lessons too. It’s the first time I’ve written off a prompt, so learning to write from a brief is a skill, one I will obviously need to continue to practice. The story is also out of my comfort zone, which is helping teach me discipline. Fanfic is a good creative exercise actually. Can try out new genres, new writing techniques etc. It’s very helpful.

I’m going to stop procrastinating. RCIJ – no excuses!

I started off slow, and then I got distracted by the tennis but it’s Sunday, I had all day. 3500 words and .. still not quite done. Thank you accountability (I so didn’t feel like doing this today). I need two more scenes to finish it off and then that is the first draft done. I’ll need to read through it and check I haven’t been an idiot. Otherwise …

image

I wish I could find that without the text overlay.

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Tuesday’s chapter of The War Within is done! Nobody is going to mind that it’s almost entirely Rumple and Belle, right? It’s also about 1k longer than normal, I kinda got carried away.

My brain is stupid though. I told myself this morning I needed to finish next weeks chapter. I finished early and still had some time left, so I thought to myself “why don’t I do some more?” and my brain said “I don’t want to” and basically decided it was break time.

So not helpful.

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Oh dear, I was just .. procrastinating (ok I admit it) and I opened up He’s Behind You and ooops.

There’s this section:

Regina had never got the full story of what had happened in the land of untold stories. Several months after Henry’s ill-advised attempt to destroy magic Rumplestiltskin and Belle had returned to Storybrooke.

They hadn’t been forthcoming about how Belle had been woken from her sleeping curse, or how their reconciliation had occurred. Regina begrudgingly had to accept that they were entitled to their privacy. It didn’t matter, by far the biggest question on everyone’s lips had been what on Earth had happened to Rumplestiltskin’s hair. That was another story that had gone untold, and thankfully for the towns collective sanity, it had soon grown back and he looked the same as he always had.

and I said that He’s Behind You happened in the same verse as The War Within, about five years after the end of that. Only, I wrote this oneshot before I planned The War Within and I’ve just realized what I wrote here does not match what I have planned for the fic.

It’s just a small reference and I could go back and change it. That would probably make more sense than leaving it. Although it is funny. When I wrote this I didn’t want to have to think about how the events were resolved but clearly I thought it would be amusing to write in the haircut.

Ok I will fix this later. See procrastination has benefits. I can discover I’ve been an idiot and fix it before anyone else notices.