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My friend and yours Honey asked me some freeform questions and the thought of trying to constrain my answers to tweets was laughable so here I am talking more about writing!!
1. what does your revision process look like + is there anything u typically look at/for in revision? like diction or continuity?
Revision looks really different for different fics. For anything over 10k, I think I tend to take it more seriously and think more deeply about the choices I've made across the story. Under 10k is more about diction, flow, redundancy (I can fall back on the same words/phrases/actions), etc. For longer works, I think more about theme & what I want the reader to get out of it. Are they getting that thing? A lot of is about instinct. I trust that if something feels off to me, even if I can't explain why to myself yet, that that part of the story needs more attention. Having another pair of eyes or two on a story is also invaluable and has taught me a lot about the story I was trying to tell and the ways I could get there. Also just about myself as a writer!
In terms of continuity also yes lmao I am SO bad with timelines. So bad. Beta readers save me all the time. What's a reasonable amount of things to happen in a week? How long did this conversation take? Oh god, the seasons are changing and holidays are coming SOS. Nightmare.
2. what kinds of images/metaphors do u find urself returning to in ur writing, if any?
Lots! I grew up near the ocean and will often use bodies of water as a metaphor. I think and write a lot about light, it's one of my favorite ways to set the tone of a scene. Is a lamp flickering? Someone's phone lighting their face cool blue? Hot, stark sun? If a fic can be set in LA (which is obv less common in this fandom for me lol), I love writing about the city. I love writing about cities in general. I came of age in Los Angeles and it was hard and painful and I wouldn't give it up for anything. Otherwise, the set of someone's shoulders or jaw. Little lines of tension that you have to really be paying attention for to be able to notice in other people. I think details are an opportunity to highlight what a character cares about and I'm often drawn to bodily ones, including tone of voice, gaze, etc.
3. how do you feel about capslock? are there any ~formatting quirks~ that would make u close a fic?
I will read an all-lowercase fic, but only if I'm really committed and trust the author. I struggle to get through them because they slow me down a lot. Same for text in screenshots people will post... if it's hard to read, I almost always bail unless I really trust the author and have the patience for it that day. I think readability is important and I encourage people to consider it carefully when posting things. As far as works on AO3, though, if sentences are capitalized then I can't think of other instances formatting has made me click out unless it's like, all one paragraph or something. If I can follow the storyline I'm generally happy.
4. b/w titles and summaries, does one come more easily to u?
Titles, but it's a slim margin. I find both generally easy unless I get to the end of the fic and haven't made a decision, in which case they both become extremely difficult. If my heart knows my heart knows! I often will title things just based off of what I think sounds good or works for the story rather than always pulling a song lyric or reference, and summaries sometimes come to me as I've typed them. I summarize with lines from the fic maybe 90% of the time, and the other 10% I just straight up summarize the fic. That only happens when I don't have a good bite-sized handful of lines to copy or alter for the summary. I really like those parts of fic, though! I find tagging harder lol, I so rarely write a pure trope that's easy to categorize so I have to do weird gymnastics to get the point across with tags.
1. what does your revision process look like + is there anything u typically look at/for in revision? like diction or continuity?
Revision looks really different for different fics. For anything over 10k, I think I tend to take it more seriously and think more deeply about the choices I've made across the story. Under 10k is more about diction, flow, redundancy (I can fall back on the same words/phrases/actions), etc. For longer works, I think more about theme & what I want the reader to get out of it. Are they getting that thing? A lot of is about instinct. I trust that if something feels off to me, even if I can't explain why to myself yet, that that part of the story needs more attention. Having another pair of eyes or two on a story is also invaluable and has taught me a lot about the story I was trying to tell and the ways I could get there. Also just about myself as a writer!
In terms of continuity also yes lmao I am SO bad with timelines. So bad. Beta readers save me all the time. What's a reasonable amount of things to happen in a week? How long did this conversation take? Oh god, the seasons are changing and holidays are coming SOS. Nightmare.
2. what kinds of images/metaphors do u find urself returning to in ur writing, if any?
Lots! I grew up near the ocean and will often use bodies of water as a metaphor. I think and write a lot about light, it's one of my favorite ways to set the tone of a scene. Is a lamp flickering? Someone's phone lighting their face cool blue? Hot, stark sun? If a fic can be set in LA (which is obv less common in this fandom for me lol), I love writing about the city. I love writing about cities in general. I came of age in Los Angeles and it was hard and painful and I wouldn't give it up for anything. Otherwise, the set of someone's shoulders or jaw. Little lines of tension that you have to really be paying attention for to be able to notice in other people. I think details are an opportunity to highlight what a character cares about and I'm often drawn to bodily ones, including tone of voice, gaze, etc.
3. how do you feel about capslock? are there any ~formatting quirks~ that would make u close a fic?
I will read an all-lowercase fic, but only if I'm really committed and trust the author. I struggle to get through them because they slow me down a lot. Same for text in screenshots people will post... if it's hard to read, I almost always bail unless I really trust the author and have the patience for it that day. I think readability is important and I encourage people to consider it carefully when posting things. As far as works on AO3, though, if sentences are capitalized then I can't think of other instances formatting has made me click out unless it's like, all one paragraph or something. If I can follow the storyline I'm generally happy.
4. b/w titles and summaries, does one come more easily to u?
Titles, but it's a slim margin. I find both generally easy unless I get to the end of the fic and haven't made a decision, in which case they both become extremely difficult. If my heart knows my heart knows! I often will title things just based off of what I think sounds good or works for the story rather than always pulling a song lyric or reference, and summaries sometimes come to me as I've typed them. I summarize with lines from the fic maybe 90% of the time, and the other 10% I just straight up summarize the fic. That only happens when I don't have a good bite-sized handful of lines to copy or alter for the summary. I really like those parts of fic, though! I find tagging harder lol, I so rarely write a pure trope that's easy to categorize so I have to do weird gymnastics to get the point across with tags.
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