30 Day Writing Meme! MY ICON IS APT
Mar. 6th, 2010 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kol1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?
8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?
13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What's the most interesting way you've killed someone?
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?
30. Final question! Tag someone! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!
Answers for the first 6 days because I am always behind X0!
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
Kingdom is definitely my favorite writing project, but I wanted to talk about something BESIDES Kingdom for a change, so I'm going to bring up my third favorite writing project, Catching Magic/Spellbrooke.
Spellbrooke was my 2007 Nanowrimo project, and was by far my most successful experience. I hit 50,000 words on the 11th, and actually had a surprisingly sound first draft under my feet... right up until wisdom teeth and road rash agonies totally detracted me from further progress. I renamed the project to Catching Magic soon after nano ended, and I've been tinkering with the worldbuilding and actual draft ever since. I think if I can figure out what direction I want to take the project and actually get a finished draft, I could have a viable novel. The characters are flawed but engaging, and a lot of my experience living in backwater Oregon went into the worldbuilding, so I think it feels pretty fresh and real compared to a lot of the YA fantasies that are out there. A lot of them take place in cities and have an urban fantasy slant, whereas Catching Magic reinvents the idea of a modern rural fantasy, the idea of the pastoral narrative from a teenage slant. Unlike YA novels such as Twilight, the rural environment is almost a secondary character in the piece. I'm pretty proud of how that turned out ^.^;;
I think my favorite thing about Catching Magic is how the magic actually works. It involves the 5th and 6th Dimension and physics, and it really reminds me of the sort of relatable science that you'd see in Madeline L'Engle's works. I think people underestimate kids these days, and I know when I was growing up I was really looking for YA that had that science background. Sam, one of the four protags, had to parse his abilities through science jargon to figure out how to actually use his abilities, so I got to bust out my science mojo for him and it really satisfied a writing need ^.^;;
And I really liked how the project uses parallels, foils, and shifting allies, because teenagers don't always hang with the same groups of people, and even if you have the same goals, a lot of times you aren't going to be friends with those people, just using each other for your own benefits. Sam and Ava don't like each other, but they are okay with using each other to get what they want. And I loved how the novel shows how Ava is her own worst enemy, and how she really falls into antagonist territory because she's so desperate to be the best, to have those powers she feels so strongly should be hers, that she's willing to go and do some pretty nasty things to do them. You don't see a lot of female protagonists actually get to be nasty and get called out on it, much less see the character go through the fallout of her own actions and actually want and work towards her own redemption.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
Active? I have 3 girls and one boy. Reed, Loni, Mara, and Neve. I've never had very many male role playing characters; I have a hard time diving into the male POV and really don't feel comfortable unless it is borrowing someone else's character for a drabble. For some reason, I have more fun borrowing Deon (yay the jerk XD) than I do playing Reed. I have been addressing this weakness by actively trying to throw Reed into more plots (though I haven't started working on most of them, I really do have a lot planned for the guy in the next campaign :D) and creating more male characters. I have two in the works for Sage's game, although only one of them has a name, much less a set appearance. But the female POV tends to be more comfortable to work within, because by and large I am more interested in the ladies. The concerns and dynamics of the female experience are fascinating to me, and I've always loved playing with similar characters and really showing how different the characters really are.
This is especially true in fandom. Female characters, by and large, do not concern the majority in fandom, and I am really bothered by how the ladies always get shafted. I hate watching these awesome female characters being pushed aside so the male characters can shine. Our culture is so saturated with the male experience, I really have very little interest in dabbling with it and exploring what it means to be a guy. I hate that in series like Naruto, women are relegated to being cries, fangirls, and healers and are never equal to a man. While on paper some of the Kunoichi actually have stronger skillsets than most of the men, they are never allowed to be as strong as the databook entries say they are. And it bothers me, and it is why although I don't roleplay in that fandom, I do dabble with the occasional fic and read quite a bit of fanfiction and essays on the Kunoichi in the series. Because their experience is a million times more interesting to me than reading about two guys banging. And again, I don't RP in fandom, but when I do play with a fandom's characters, by and large it will be the women. See Matsumoto, Karin, Tatsuki, Orihime, Toph, Miss Parker, Buffy, Fred (Angel), Faith, Donna (Doctor Who) ...
Outside of fandom or rp, it is curious to note that every single novel I have written is split between male and female POV. I don't know if it is just me thinking that a female POV focus cannot sell in todays market or if I'm just interested in providing a balance that you do not see in the world. And my eternal WIP, IPOM, has roughly 10 male POV's to 4 women POVs; that number is deceptive, however, because one of the the Khim guys is actually biologically and sexually a woman, but culturally a male, so she's in the male POV camp because her viewpoint really is closer to the male POV than it is the woman's. Oh Khim and your first born male plague, how I can't wait to explore the cultural ramifications XD.
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
It largely depends on the characters and which project I'm working on.
For most of my rp characters, writer-brain links a particular sound to a character and I struggle my way through namelists to find the right name with the right heritage and the right meaning to suit the character. This can be frustrating for my stable of asian characters, because I frequently screw up on how to set up the name. See Ikiro, who should really be Ikiru. I think Loni's the best example of my usual method- I knew Loni had to be an "L" name, for example, but I had to find one that worked with her Hawaiian heritage as well as reveal something about her character (and then senshi element) in some way. Loni is an alternative spelling of Lani, Hawaiian for Heavenly Air, so you can see how well that works with her ^.^;;. Mara is a character who represents another thing I do, put in little geekspams. Her original name was going to be Mary (Bloody Mary), but I realized I could sneak in a Mara Jade reference into a then-Sailor Moon game, and imagine my surprise when it worked! I still giggle about the sneak years later ^.^;;
Most of my novels get their character names in dreams or from namelists based on sounds (I knew one of my male characters was going to have the surname Hunt, for example, and then spent two months finding the right first name that I think I used in the novel twice). Catching Magic/Spellbrooke, however? 50% of the characters names came to me in dreams (which is why Grwendolen is always going to be Gwendolen)., and the others, especially the surnames, were attempts to create the same ethnic diversity I remember growing up with in Southern Oregon. There's a lot of Polish and German descendants running around OR, and that really does add to the flavor of the community, especially with all the crazy unpronounceable K surnames. Just look at the list of governors *__*
IPOM 6.0? A surprising amount of the names have been derived from my own typos. Whist's name came about because I couldn't spell Wistful to save my life, and I realized the "WH" worked perfectly for the Ohasa. ^.^;;. Ceraja/Cerrah's name is still undergoing metamorphosis, but I have a feeling it will stay with the Cer sound, because I latched onto that for the character (her original name was Mariliu, back when this was a Space Opera piece XD). The soon to be renamedWurics all have faintly Medieval Florence/Venice names, depending on which section of Wurica they are from.
And then there are the projects where I get to create my own names and dork out over creating sound pairs...
In conclusion, I spend too much time coming up with names XD.
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
The first story I ever remember writing was about my cats. It was for a fourth grade paper and had horrible, traced images from garfield comics. Very sad. In the story the cats took over the school because they were upset the female protagonist (ME) was never around to pay attention to them. It is clear I ran out of time, because suddenly there was a pirate ship (horribly drawn) and the cats were making up ridiculous orders, including everyone had to eat mice burgers in the cafeteria. The day was saved when the female protagonist (ME) gave them squeeky toys and promised to pay more attention to them. XD
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
For the RP characters:
Jaime, Momo, and Loni are my youngest characters. Momo is 15, Jaime 16, and Loni 17. I don't think I'll be playing much in the way of younger characters, anymore-- it is harder for me to relate to them, and I struggle with plotting characters who are that young. No fun! And my oldest characters are Ikiro (22), Chimi (23), and Neve (24). I need more older characters *__*
For Nano books:
I've only written two YA novels, so the majority of my nano characters have been late twenties, early thirties.
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
It really depends on my mood and the time of the year.
When I'm cold, I find I cannot write at my desk unless I'm in a word spamming mood, or I can't write on paper fast enough to capture whatever visual or scene I have stuck in my head. The only exception to this is when I'm writing for projects that need that frosty mood, such as the Southern Water Tribe longfic, Road of a Blank Verse. I actually was able to write 40,000 words of fanfiction in a month because I was so inspired by how freezing cold it was at my desk XD. But typically during the winter months, I'm under blankets and writing in one of my journals. ^.^;;
When the weather is nice, I love taking the laptop or a notebook out and writing in the sun, or out under a tree, or out in the Rose Garden after a nice long walk. I use to take my lunches outside with a notebook, scribbling away for twenty minutes while I stuffed my face with pasta or sammiches. I actually got a lot of progress on fics, I'm wondering if I should start it up again when the weather clears up later this month ^.^;;.
When I was in college, I did the majority of my creative writing at night, beween 11pm-3am. However, retail has killed my ability to have a normal sleep cycle, so I can only write now when I'm actually awake and have enough protein shoved down my throat to support higher brain functions XD.
In college, i always wrote in the text program RoughDraft ... or on my Dana Wireless. I love that machine X0. When I got my mac, however, the majority of my writing has been done in the totally amazing writing program Scrivener. Lately I've been attracted to the formatting options I can do with google docs. Brain wants to write in times new roman *___*. I don't write on my iphone very often, but when I do, it is with a program that functions very similar to google doc's layout, so I'm wondering if that's what is triggering the change.
I'm a paper snob, so I'm attracted to how smooth the paper is, the general texture, and how small the lines are. I have ridiculously tiny hand writing for the most part (unless I'm stressed, then it is OMG GIGANTIC AND MESSY), so I use to write two lines of text for every one printed line on a sheet of college ruled paper. TINY HANDWRITING YO. And I'm also a pen snob-- I use to write only with tiny Pilot 5700's, but they stopped making them, so I went to Pilot G2s, but I hate those now, so I'm now trying to find as many Uniball vision micros that I can find. LOVE THE TINY SMOOTH BLACK INK *__*
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?
8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?
12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?
13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What's the most interesting way you've killed someone?
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?
30. Final question! Tag someone! And tell us what you like about that person as a writer and/or about one of his/her characters!
Answers for the first 6 days because I am always behind X0!
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
Kingdom is definitely my favorite writing project, but I wanted to talk about something BESIDES Kingdom for a change, so I'm going to bring up my third favorite writing project, Catching Magic/Spellbrooke.
Spellbrooke was my 2007 Nanowrimo project, and was by far my most successful experience. I hit 50,000 words on the 11th, and actually had a surprisingly sound first draft under my feet... right up until wisdom teeth and road rash agonies totally detracted me from further progress. I renamed the project to Catching Magic soon after nano ended, and I've been tinkering with the worldbuilding and actual draft ever since. I think if I can figure out what direction I want to take the project and actually get a finished draft, I could have a viable novel. The characters are flawed but engaging, and a lot of my experience living in backwater Oregon went into the worldbuilding, so I think it feels pretty fresh and real compared to a lot of the YA fantasies that are out there. A lot of them take place in cities and have an urban fantasy slant, whereas Catching Magic reinvents the idea of a modern rural fantasy, the idea of the pastoral narrative from a teenage slant. Unlike YA novels such as Twilight, the rural environment is almost a secondary character in the piece. I'm pretty proud of how that turned out ^.^;;
I think my favorite thing about Catching Magic is how the magic actually works. It involves the 5th and 6th Dimension and physics, and it really reminds me of the sort of relatable science that you'd see in Madeline L'Engle's works. I think people underestimate kids these days, and I know when I was growing up I was really looking for YA that had that science background. Sam, one of the four protags, had to parse his abilities through science jargon to figure out how to actually use his abilities, so I got to bust out my science mojo for him and it really satisfied a writing need ^.^;;
And I really liked how the project uses parallels, foils, and shifting allies, because teenagers don't always hang with the same groups of people, and even if you have the same goals, a lot of times you aren't going to be friends with those people, just using each other for your own benefits. Sam and Ava don't like each other, but they are okay with using each other to get what they want. And I loved how the novel shows how Ava is her own worst enemy, and how she really falls into antagonist territory because she's so desperate to be the best, to have those powers she feels so strongly should be hers, that she's willing to go and do some pretty nasty things to do them. You don't see a lot of female protagonists actually get to be nasty and get called out on it, much less see the character go through the fallout of her own actions and actually want and work towards her own redemption.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
Active? I have 3 girls and one boy. Reed, Loni, Mara, and Neve. I've never had very many male role playing characters; I have a hard time diving into the male POV and really don't feel comfortable unless it is borrowing someone else's character for a drabble. For some reason, I have more fun borrowing Deon (yay the jerk XD) than I do playing Reed. I have been addressing this weakness by actively trying to throw Reed into more plots (though I haven't started working on most of them, I really do have a lot planned for the guy in the next campaign :D) and creating more male characters. I have two in the works for Sage's game, although only one of them has a name, much less a set appearance. But the female POV tends to be more comfortable to work within, because by and large I am more interested in the ladies. The concerns and dynamics of the female experience are fascinating to me, and I've always loved playing with similar characters and really showing how different the characters really are.
This is especially true in fandom. Female characters, by and large, do not concern the majority in fandom, and I am really bothered by how the ladies always get shafted. I hate watching these awesome female characters being pushed aside so the male characters can shine. Our culture is so saturated with the male experience, I really have very little interest in dabbling with it and exploring what it means to be a guy. I hate that in series like Naruto, women are relegated to being cries, fangirls, and healers and are never equal to a man. While on paper some of the Kunoichi actually have stronger skillsets than most of the men, they are never allowed to be as strong as the databook entries say they are. And it bothers me, and it is why although I don't roleplay in that fandom, I do dabble with the occasional fic and read quite a bit of fanfiction and essays on the Kunoichi in the series. Because their experience is a million times more interesting to me than reading about two guys banging. And again, I don't RP in fandom, but when I do play with a fandom's characters, by and large it will be the women. See Matsumoto, Karin, Tatsuki, Orihime, Toph, Miss Parker, Buffy, Fred (Angel), Faith, Donna (Doctor Who) ...
Outside of fandom or rp, it is curious to note that every single novel I have written is split between male and female POV. I don't know if it is just me thinking that a female POV focus cannot sell in todays market or if I'm just interested in providing a balance that you do not see in the world. And my eternal WIP, IPOM, has roughly 10 male POV's to 4 women POVs; that number is deceptive, however, because one of the the Khim guys is actually biologically and sexually a woman, but culturally a male, so she's in the male POV camp because her viewpoint really is closer to the male POV than it is the woman's. Oh Khim and your first born male plague, how I can't wait to explore the cultural ramifications XD.
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
It largely depends on the characters and which project I'm working on.
For most of my rp characters, writer-brain links a particular sound to a character and I struggle my way through namelists to find the right name with the right heritage and the right meaning to suit the character. This can be frustrating for my stable of asian characters, because I frequently screw up on how to set up the name. See Ikiro, who should really be Ikiru. I think Loni's the best example of my usual method- I knew Loni had to be an "L" name, for example, but I had to find one that worked with her Hawaiian heritage as well as reveal something about her character (and then senshi element) in some way. Loni is an alternative spelling of Lani, Hawaiian for Heavenly Air, so you can see how well that works with her ^.^;;. Mara is a character who represents another thing I do, put in little geekspams. Her original name was going to be Mary (Bloody Mary), but I realized I could sneak in a Mara Jade reference into a then-Sailor Moon game, and imagine my surprise when it worked! I still giggle about the sneak years later ^.^;;
Most of my novels get their character names in dreams or from namelists based on sounds (I knew one of my male characters was going to have the surname Hunt, for example, and then spent two months finding the right first name that I think I used in the novel twice). Catching Magic/Spellbrooke, however? 50% of the characters names came to me in dreams (which is why Grwendolen is always going to be Gwendolen)., and the others, especially the surnames, were attempts to create the same ethnic diversity I remember growing up with in Southern Oregon. There's a lot of Polish and German descendants running around OR, and that really does add to the flavor of the community, especially with all the crazy unpronounceable K surnames. Just look at the list of governors *__*
IPOM 6.0? A surprising amount of the names have been derived from my own typos. Whist's name came about because I couldn't spell Wistful to save my life, and I realized the "WH" worked perfectly for the Ohasa. ^.^;;. Ceraja/Cerrah's name is still undergoing metamorphosis, but I have a feeling it will stay with the Cer sound, because I latched onto that for the character (her original name was Mariliu, back when this was a Space Opera piece XD). The soon to be renamedWurics all have faintly Medieval Florence/Venice names, depending on which section of Wurica they are from.
And then there are the projects where I get to create my own names and dork out over creating sound pairs...
In conclusion, I spend too much time coming up with names XD.
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
The first story I ever remember writing was about my cats. It was for a fourth grade paper and had horrible, traced images from garfield comics. Very sad. In the story the cats took over the school because they were upset the female protagonist (ME) was never around to pay attention to them. It is clear I ran out of time, because suddenly there was a pirate ship (horribly drawn) and the cats were making up ridiculous orders, including everyone had to eat mice burgers in the cafeteria. The day was saved when the female protagonist (ME) gave them squeeky toys and promised to pay more attention to them. XD
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
For the RP characters:
Jaime, Momo, and Loni are my youngest characters. Momo is 15, Jaime 16, and Loni 17. I don't think I'll be playing much in the way of younger characters, anymore-- it is harder for me to relate to them, and I struggle with plotting characters who are that young. No fun! And my oldest characters are Ikiro (22), Chimi (23), and Neve (24). I need more older characters *__*
For Nano books:
I've only written two YA novels, so the majority of my nano characters have been late twenties, early thirties.
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
It really depends on my mood and the time of the year.
When I'm cold, I find I cannot write at my desk unless I'm in a word spamming mood, or I can't write on paper fast enough to capture whatever visual or scene I have stuck in my head. The only exception to this is when I'm writing for projects that need that frosty mood, such as the Southern Water Tribe longfic, Road of a Blank Verse. I actually was able to write 40,000 words of fanfiction in a month because I was so inspired by how freezing cold it was at my desk XD. But typically during the winter months, I'm under blankets and writing in one of my journals. ^.^;;
When the weather is nice, I love taking the laptop or a notebook out and writing in the sun, or out under a tree, or out in the Rose Garden after a nice long walk. I use to take my lunches outside with a notebook, scribbling away for twenty minutes while I stuffed my face with pasta or sammiches. I actually got a lot of progress on fics, I'm wondering if I should start it up again when the weather clears up later this month ^.^;;.
When I was in college, I did the majority of my creative writing at night, beween 11pm-3am. However, retail has killed my ability to have a normal sleep cycle, so I can only write now when I'm actually awake and have enough protein shoved down my throat to support higher brain functions XD.
In college, i always wrote in the text program RoughDraft ... or on my Dana Wireless. I love that machine X0. When I got my mac, however, the majority of my writing has been done in the totally amazing writing program Scrivener. Lately I've been attracted to the formatting options I can do with google docs. Brain wants to write in times new roman *___*. I don't write on my iphone very often, but when I do, it is with a program that functions very similar to google doc's layout, so I'm wondering if that's what is triggering the change.
I'm a paper snob, so I'm attracted to how smooth the paper is, the general texture, and how small the lines are. I have ridiculously tiny hand writing for the most part (unless I'm stressed, then it is OMG GIGANTIC AND MESSY), so I use to write two lines of text for every one printed line on a sheet of college ruled paper. TINY HANDWRITING YO. And I'm also a pen snob-- I use to write only with tiny Pilot 5700's, but they stopped making them, so I went to Pilot G2s, but I hate those now, so I'm now trying to find as many Uniball vision micros that I can find. LOVE THE TINY SMOOTH BLACK INK *__*
