In which kol blathers on again
Mar. 28th, 2010 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kol13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
I really am unsatisfied with this question because I think it is impossible to ever truly escape the influences of your own culture, even when you are working within a fictional culture. No matter how amazing an editor you are and how thorough you believe yourself at finding such influences, I firmly believe everything you touch leaves behind an imprint of the culture you belong to. I think people who have been exposed to multiple cultures can do a better job at tackling another culture's view, but there's always something that gives them away. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing as long as people are honest about that cultural bias and don't assume that they can write another culture perfectly just because they've read a couple books. You are going to get things wrong no matter how hard you try-- the important thing is to be respectful and try and learn as much as you can so you don't write your foot into your mouth.
Now if this was about SUBCULTURES, I'd be all over that, because my life is fandom. It colors how I view and interact with show/manga canon, but more importantly it fundamentally changes how I actually go about writing within the world. I am fascinated by the shinigami and the ninjas in Bleach and Naruto, and I can't help but wonder how much of this fascination is my own cultural background coloring in where my non-Japanese culture drops a lot of meaning. There's quite a bit of cultural cues in both manga that I miss, but quite a lot of things fandom gives me that may not be a correct reading of the text, but is the one that works for me.
And honestly, reading Naruto from a fandom perspective makes the whole thing that much more hilarious and the sexism a little easier to swallow. One day I will make a Naruto drinking game, you guys, and it shall be EPIC.
I'm going to stop blathering on about this question because dude seriously enough about cultures. XD
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
I am addicted to making maps. Unfortunately I suck at making maps. This translates directly to my trouble with outlining projects. I have an end target in mind and I have a beginning, but hell if I know what goes on in the middle. I always screw up the middle of maps, skipping over vital areas or just skewing the distances so that the edges couldn't possibly ever meet. I blame the horrible depth perception for some of it, but I think I just have a hard time thinking about middles and it translates directly into my maps.
To demonstrate this, here is one of the maps I did for the apartment remodel: Click! I... totally forgot about the middle of the apartment. And guess what? THERE CONTINUES TO BE NOTHING THERE.
15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
I really admire Jennifer Cruise. She's just kick ass in every single way. I think she's a fabulous writer transitioning beyond her original genre and really writing what her brain tells her to instead of what sells, and I love that she's willing to take the risk, to write with other people, to do what her inspirations tell her to do. I think she has the right amount of contact with her readers on both her blog and her forums. There's a professional distance, so you don't get too much information or have to worry about her saying something that would ruin her books forever. Yet she's incredibly open at the same time, creating a wonderful community for writers to really work together to better their craft. I love everything she writes about the craft because they are a glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite writers, and I really feel like I learn something new about writing with each of her posts. They may not apply to me, but sometimes I can push the knowledge to people it just might. It doesn't hurt that I adore nearly every book she's written ^.^;;.
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
Confession time: I hate writing stereotypical romantic relationships. They bore me to death and I feel like they kill my ability to relate with the characters involved. I'm not talented enough to figure out how to keep a romance going-- I'm too fond of conflict, so a typical "perfect romance" just doesn't satisfy me at all. I like reading about them, and I like it when other people tackle them, but for me? BORING.
If you look at my favorite movies you will begin to see a pattern. I love Raiders of the Lost Arc because Marion and Indy fight all the time and love each other just as hard. I love Cutting Edge because of the foreplay and how stupid they are about feelings (And yes, that movie is Mara and Deon in disguise). I love Pretender partially because Miss Parker and Jarod are my epic UST couple, wrapped up in a cycle they just can't give up because if they ever did get better, it would probably mean disappearing from each others lives, and I don't think either one of them is quite ready for it.
So I guess I just love romances where people have to work hard at it, where there is growth and steps forward and backwards and always a real risk that you know? If you screw this up, it would be over, and over pretty spectacularly. Adding something dangerous and powerful and explosive and super hot to the mix. High stakes romances are totally my thing X0.
Now on the racy side? If I'm writing anonymously I appear to suffer no qualms about going for that high rating ^.^;;. I don't feel comfortable writing such things WITH people, but if I'm writing alone, watch that rating climb into NC-17 territory. I use to be really embarrassed about the whole thing, but I got myself over it with ALIAS fanfic and the realization that most of my racy stuff is just emotional exploration with sexy touching. XD. I've been getting some good practice doing some kink memes in a few fandoms. I don't think I could have gotten the courage to write something in the Kingdom meme if I hadn't tackled a Naruto meme first.
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
Jarod from The Pretender. I love his progression in the series, from childlike wonder to almost cruel vindictiveness at the end. Jarod could have been a superficial, dudly-do-right boring character, but Weiss really injected this wonderful wicked charm into the role, really making you feel for this guy who has been separated from that human contact for so long, who isn't about to let the big guy get away with screwing normal people over, but at the same time takes this fiendish pleasure in letting the guilty squirm. Jarod has his flaws, and they are pretty powerful flaws, flaws that could have made him into a cruel monster-- yet he's still a fundamentally good person, still out there trying to fight the good fight. I think Jarod definitely went off the rails in the last season, but it fit the character and it fit the hopelessness of the cycle he was trapped in. I loved how Jarod could Pretend to be anyone... but he never became unrecognizable in a pretend, and sometimes you were left wondering if Jarod really had gone crazy. I really miss Michael T. Weiss on my tv-- he's dreamy, yes, but he put so much into his characters. Just a fantastic blending of good writing, good acting, and a fantastic story arc.
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Dude. DUDE. How could you not love Maleficent? She's the HBIC! She turns into a mother fucking dragon of supreme badassery! Maleficent was so bad ass it took a prince, a horse, an enchanted shield and sword, the magic of three fairies, true love, some rotten luck, and mother fucking gravity to bring her down. I'm just amazed by Maleficent. Dude, for the era she was drawn/written for? AMAZING. She's got layers beyond just being a crazy megavillain-- she's portrayed as having a heart (that crow!), being supremely cynical about true life (where is the story of Maleficent as a young girl guys I need this like yesterday X0), but being really smart about the world she lives in. Sure she underestimated the fairies, but come on, if it hadn't been for their interfering Philip would have been toast X0. And she was so sneaky about how she got Aurora, too! Gah, you guys, I can't tell you how much I love Maleficent, and how horrified I am that Tim Burton is thinking about screwing her up with a movie. HELENA BONHAM CARTER IS NOT MALEFICENT. AND JOHNNY DEPP IS NOT THE CROW :P.
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!
Well, prime example: Monica was actually killed off in the first chapter of Constant Peril, but I liked her so much I not only brought her back to life, I also went on to write a novel about her the following Nanowrimo and still have in my head about three or four potential novels about her. Sadly, although Suspense/Thrillers come easy to me in terms of writing, I can't handle the essential grisly bits and really don't want to research the FBI enough to actually follow Monica more. But yeah, probably my favorite example of this ^.^;;.
(Monica is kind of a weird blend of Mara, Loni, and Jaime, all wrapped up in mostly awesome but occasionally a fundamentally huge fuckup FBI agent)
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
Conflict! I love characters arguing and characters snarking about other characters. I just love having characters talking back and forth-- I think it can really carry a scene much more than description.
This is probably because I suck so hard at description, it isn't even funny. X3.
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
In my WIP IPOM a few of the characters do. I enjoy occasionally writing my characters as children (it can be fun peeling back the layers and seeing what the core person was before life started fussing around the edges). And Kingdom appears to be the place where I invent fake kids for baby herd and amuse myself with the thought that Deon and Mara could have produced a mini!Jane. XD I think children can cut through the bullshit and zero in on things much easier than adults, so sometimes they can be a powerful emotional cheat. ^.^;;
22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.
I have a file of shame no one will never see, filled with little scene sketches I have to write to get certain impulses out of my system. There are a lot of Mara and Deon bits, unsurprisingly. Then there's the trash file for Road of a Blank Verse, my epic Avatar AU in which Aang goes back in time and defeats Sozin, and AU!Sokka/Katara/Toph have to find the next Avatar and discover what their connection to Aang and each other once was. One of my favorite scenes involved Sokka meeting Toph; she defeats him soundly in battle and sits on his chest, waiting for reinforcements, while he blathers on about weird things that call back to the buddy!ship they had in Avatar!canon. It was a very telling scene, especially as I didn't want it to be that clear that Ishi was really Toph, so I ended up cutting it out even though I really adored it. Because Sokka is really fun to let blather on about things ^.^;;
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
I have a big problem with completing things, so I'll have to answer this once I actually finish something. Most of the time my projects die about 40,000 words in because I hate middles, and they hate me twice as much. I don't even understand HOW one finish things. I usually just make other people finish logs X3.
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?
I actually like killing my characters off. Um, in IPOM I kill a main character off (and then have them continue on as a ghost until they possess a body, so that's kind of a cheat). I think Dee's spiral of stabby death shows I'm not afraid to kill my characters in gory and painful ways. I could see Mara, Neve, Jaime, and Reed going out in blazes of glory. A part of me actually wants to kill Neve off, only because she's just so ridiculously broken I couldn't see her ever settling down once the conflict ends. My best death scene was in IPOM-the-2003-nano-version-- there was an unfortunate armor incident, where in the thick of a battle, a rider fell off his horse and was trampled to death while trying in vain to save the sacred artifact everyone was trying to get a hold of to save the world. Oops XD.
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
.... does Terrie from VR count as William's pet? XD
I never realized it before, but all of my book characters have pets (ranging from magical ferrets to goldfish named Jesus) and I don't think any of the rpg characters have pets. I have no idea why *__*.
I really am unsatisfied with this question because I think it is impossible to ever truly escape the influences of your own culture, even when you are working within a fictional culture. No matter how amazing an editor you are and how thorough you believe yourself at finding such influences, I firmly believe everything you touch leaves behind an imprint of the culture you belong to. I think people who have been exposed to multiple cultures can do a better job at tackling another culture's view, but there's always something that gives them away. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing as long as people are honest about that cultural bias and don't assume that they can write another culture perfectly just because they've read a couple books. You are going to get things wrong no matter how hard you try-- the important thing is to be respectful and try and learn as much as you can so you don't write your foot into your mouth.
Now if this was about SUBCULTURES, I'd be all over that, because my life is fandom. It colors how I view and interact with show/manga canon, but more importantly it fundamentally changes how I actually go about writing within the world. I am fascinated by the shinigami and the ninjas in Bleach and Naruto, and I can't help but wonder how much of this fascination is my own cultural background coloring in where my non-Japanese culture drops a lot of meaning. There's quite a bit of cultural cues in both manga that I miss, but quite a lot of things fandom gives me that may not be a correct reading of the text, but is the one that works for me.
And honestly, reading Naruto from a fandom perspective makes the whole thing that much more hilarious and the sexism a little easier to swallow. One day I will make a Naruto drinking game, you guys, and it shall be EPIC.
I'm going to stop blathering on about this question because dude seriously enough about cultures. XD
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
I am addicted to making maps. Unfortunately I suck at making maps. This translates directly to my trouble with outlining projects. I have an end target in mind and I have a beginning, but hell if I know what goes on in the middle. I always screw up the middle of maps, skipping over vital areas or just skewing the distances so that the edges couldn't possibly ever meet. I blame the horrible depth perception for some of it, but I think I just have a hard time thinking about middles and it translates directly into my maps.
To demonstrate this, here is one of the maps I did for the apartment remodel: Click! I... totally forgot about the middle of the apartment. And guess what? THERE CONTINUES TO BE NOTHING THERE.
15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!
I really admire Jennifer Cruise. She's just kick ass in every single way. I think she's a fabulous writer transitioning beyond her original genre and really writing what her brain tells her to instead of what sells, and I love that she's willing to take the risk, to write with other people, to do what her inspirations tell her to do. I think she has the right amount of contact with her readers on both her blog and her forums. There's a professional distance, so you don't get too much information or have to worry about her saying something that would ruin her books forever. Yet she's incredibly open at the same time, creating a wonderful community for writers to really work together to better their craft. I love everything she writes about the craft because they are a glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite writers, and I really feel like I learn something new about writing with each of her posts. They may not apply to me, but sometimes I can push the knowledge to people it just might. It doesn't hurt that I adore nearly every book she's written ^.^;;.
16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)
Confession time: I hate writing stereotypical romantic relationships. They bore me to death and I feel like they kill my ability to relate with the characters involved. I'm not talented enough to figure out how to keep a romance going-- I'm too fond of conflict, so a typical "perfect romance" just doesn't satisfy me at all. I like reading about them, and I like it when other people tackle them, but for me? BORING.
If you look at my favorite movies you will begin to see a pattern. I love Raiders of the Lost Arc because Marion and Indy fight all the time and love each other just as hard. I love Cutting Edge because of the foreplay and how stupid they are about feelings (And yes, that movie is Mara and Deon in disguise). I love Pretender partially because Miss Parker and Jarod are my epic UST couple, wrapped up in a cycle they just can't give up because if they ever did get better, it would probably mean disappearing from each others lives, and I don't think either one of them is quite ready for it.
So I guess I just love romances where people have to work hard at it, where there is growth and steps forward and backwards and always a real risk that you know? If you screw this up, it would be over, and over pretty spectacularly. Adding something dangerous and powerful and explosive and super hot to the mix. High stakes romances are totally my thing X0.
Now on the racy side? If I'm writing anonymously I appear to suffer no qualms about going for that high rating ^.^;;. I don't feel comfortable writing such things WITH people, but if I'm writing alone, watch that rating climb into NC-17 territory. I use to be really embarrassed about the whole thing, but I got myself over it with ALIAS fanfic and the realization that most of my racy stuff is just emotional exploration with sexy touching. XD. I've been getting some good practice doing some kink memes in a few fandoms. I don't think I could have gotten the courage to write something in the Kingdom meme if I hadn't tackled a Naruto meme first.
17. Favorite protagonist and why!
Jarod from The Pretender. I love his progression in the series, from childlike wonder to almost cruel vindictiveness at the end. Jarod could have been a superficial, dudly-do-right boring character, but Weiss really injected this wonderful wicked charm into the role, really making you feel for this guy who has been separated from that human contact for so long, who isn't about to let the big guy get away with screwing normal people over, but at the same time takes this fiendish pleasure in letting the guilty squirm. Jarod has his flaws, and they are pretty powerful flaws, flaws that could have made him into a cruel monster-- yet he's still a fundamentally good person, still out there trying to fight the good fight. I think Jarod definitely went off the rails in the last season, but it fit the character and it fit the hopelessness of the cycle he was trapped in. I loved how Jarod could Pretend to be anyone... but he never became unrecognizable in a pretend, and sometimes you were left wondering if Jarod really had gone crazy. I really miss Michael T. Weiss on my tv-- he's dreamy, yes, but he put so much into his characters. Just a fantastic blending of good writing, good acting, and a fantastic story arc.
18. Favorite antagonist and why!
Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Dude. DUDE. How could you not love Maleficent? She's the HBIC! She turns into a mother fucking dragon of supreme badassery! Maleficent was so bad ass it took a prince, a horse, an enchanted shield and sword, the magic of three fairies, true love, some rotten luck, and mother fucking gravity to bring her down. I'm just amazed by Maleficent. Dude, for the era she was drawn/written for? AMAZING. She's got layers beyond just being a crazy megavillain-- she's portrayed as having a heart (that crow!), being supremely cynical about true life (where is the story of Maleficent as a young girl guys I need this like yesterday X0), but being really smart about the world she lives in. Sure she underestimated the fairies, but come on, if it hadn't been for their interfering Philip would have been toast X0. And she was so sneaky about how she got Aurora, too! Gah, you guys, I can't tell you how much I love Maleficent, and how horrified I am that Tim Burton is thinking about screwing her up with a movie. HELENA BONHAM CARTER IS NOT MALEFICENT. AND JOHNNY DEPP IS NOT THE CROW :P.
19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!
Well, prime example: Monica was actually killed off in the first chapter of Constant Peril, but I liked her so much I not only brought her back to life, I also went on to write a novel about her the following Nanowrimo and still have in my head about three or four potential novels about her. Sadly, although Suspense/Thrillers come easy to me in terms of writing, I can't handle the essential grisly bits and really don't want to research the FBI enough to actually follow Monica more. But yeah, probably my favorite example of this ^.^;;.
(Monica is kind of a weird blend of Mara, Loni, and Jaime, all wrapped up in mostly awesome but occasionally a fundamentally huge fuckup FBI agent)
20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?
Conflict! I love characters arguing and characters snarking about other characters. I just love having characters talking back and forth-- I think it can really carry a scene much more than description.
This is probably because I suck so hard at description, it isn't even funny. X3.
21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
In my WIP IPOM a few of the characters do. I enjoy occasionally writing my characters as children (it can be fun peeling back the layers and seeing what the core person was before life started fussing around the edges). And Kingdom appears to be the place where I invent fake kids for baby herd and amuse myself with the thought that Deon and Mara could have produced a mini!Jane. XD I think children can cut through the bullshit and zero in on things much easier than adults, so sometimes they can be a powerful emotional cheat. ^.^;;
22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.
I have a file of shame no one will never see, filled with little scene sketches I have to write to get certain impulses out of my system. There are a lot of Mara and Deon bits, unsurprisingly. Then there's the trash file for Road of a Blank Verse, my epic Avatar AU in which Aang goes back in time and defeats Sozin, and AU!Sokka/Katara/Toph have to find the next Avatar and discover what their connection to Aang and each other once was. One of my favorite scenes involved Sokka meeting Toph; she defeats him soundly in battle and sits on his chest, waiting for reinforcements, while he blathers on about weird things that call back to the buddy!ship they had in Avatar!canon. It was a very telling scene, especially as I didn't want it to be that clear that Ishi was really Toph, so I ended up cutting it out even though I really adored it. Because Sokka is really fun to let blather on about things ^.^;;
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
I have a big problem with completing things, so I'll have to answer this once I actually finish something. Most of the time my projects die about 40,000 words in because I hate middles, and they hate me twice as much. I don't even understand HOW one finish things. I usually just make other people finish logs X3.
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?
I actually like killing my characters off. Um, in IPOM I kill a main character off (and then have them continue on as a ghost until they possess a body, so that's kind of a cheat). I think Dee's spiral of stabby death shows I'm not afraid to kill my characters in gory and painful ways. I could see Mara, Neve, Jaime, and Reed going out in blazes of glory. A part of me actually wants to kill Neve off, only because she's just so ridiculously broken I couldn't see her ever settling down once the conflict ends. My best death scene was in IPOM-the-2003-nano-version-- there was an unfortunate armor incident, where in the thick of a battle, a rider fell off his horse and was trampled to death while trying in vain to save the sacred artifact everyone was trying to get a hold of to save the world. Oops XD.
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
.... does Terrie from VR count as William's pet? XD
I never realized it before, but all of my book characters have pets (ranging from magical ferrets to goldfish named Jesus) and I don't think any of the rpg characters have pets. I have no idea why *__*.
