Writing Introspection: CC + Retrospring Archive
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feversendAn archive of writing thoughts I have shared on my cc (inactive) and retrospring.
Date updated: 17th January 2025 (17/01/2025)
Order: Newest to Oldest
hi!! there's so many. gender, body, and transness are forever-thoughts i still feel not ready to write about. mother-daughter relations and selfhood within that. being gay and closeted and okay with it. exploration of an ai(?) future mixed with dreams and a dreaming world like trc but also set in idolverse. divorce not in the breakup sense but in the divorce sense. fics that aren't just atmospheric for the sake of it but are elemental in the very like...structure and flow of the story? (have a haokook water wip since 2022...) more love stories and more grief stories but in ways I've not written before!
you know i'm sure i've answered this question in the past but i cant find any of those answers and its been a long time since then, so it'll be fun answering it again. i know that i used to have definite answers for this but i think the way i approach writing has changed a fair bit since 3-4 years ago. i apologize for how long-winding this answer is about to be.
i don't really have a hard time with any pov character as such because im usually thinking of the plot/prompt/context within which im writing them. for instance, i wrote dahyun (twice) pov for the first time this year; and i also wrote yiren (everglow) pov for the first time. i don't remember struggling with either of them and that's not cause they're idols i feel like i know very well. i really don't. i just wasnt thinking of about their characterisation in absolute terms at all but more so relative to the fics i was writing. so with dahyun in the datzu piece, i was going off the job dahyun had in the fic i was remixing which was an exorcist, and her entire personality is based around her working with spirits a lot. then with yiren, i was thinking of a particular dynamic in sweet home, the show i was writing an au for, as well as the possibility of power play between someone who strives to be human vs someone who strives to be a monster, in a lawless world. whatever yiren feels and goes through in it is a result of the role she's assigned between the two. the world and the story im writing and how these characters fit into it dictate their povs rather than the other way round. even if there is no special world, its just a non-idol au where im examining a breakup, the circumstances of the breakup determine how the characters behave. (keep in mind, this is approach works for me because i write shorter fics)
so essentially, characterisation has become a much easier task for me than it used to be because i've begun to find the discourse around it, especially in rpf writing, a bit of a trap. 'will they do or not do this' is not a question that i enjoy getting into re: the idols i write about - doesn't mean i never get into it, but it's rare nowadays. it's also not an exciting question or one that comes naturally in my style or process of writing. my shorter stuff is mood or situation heavy, and my longer stuff is usually structured very specifically (drinking rounds/poetry sections/timelapses) so that i actually write the whole fic instead of giving up after a scene. and my brain runs logistics. im much more likely to be caught up on whether someone's hand or leg is placed weirdly in a scene im writing than whether they're going to push back or stay quiet in a situation because thats who they are/are not as a person.
we don't know these people, im not sure we even know their personas at times. of course im influenced by things they say and do, as well as fanon ideas of them. thats inescapable as someone on twitter and in general, fandom and rps/rpf spaces. but im equally influenced by things that have nothing to do with them - a line in a song, a hit tweet about a breakup, a drive i took last week etc.
but also...i cant deny writing idolverse/canon compliant kpop fic still has me ponder characterisation in the usual manner. its just that im not as rigid about putting people in situations that they might not seem to ever be in, in what we've seen of their lives on-cam. my compliancy is usually just very strictly to timelines of the group and idol, and rigid facts of events, comebacks, general calendered stuff. i give myself leeway to play with the personality as and how i can within the scenario.
i suppose within all these caveats if i had to pick povs i find hard to write, it would be idols who are easily emotional or (seem) open about themselves at all times, and idols who are "bright" and "fun". tapping into sadness or misery or anxiety or "i dont what im feeling" kind of ennui; or idols with a much richer inner life that we are probably not privy to is just a little easier for me - if im writing them for the first time, that is, or if im newer to a group.
i dont mind the question. which is have i seen a difference in engagement with my fics since I locked them last year, right? (as opposed to how I feel about unlocking them? i dont think that's what you're asking and if you are, well, no. i have no plans to unlock.)
and honestly no, i havent seen a great difference in engagement with my fics now versus pre 2023, not in a way that is evident to me anyway. but I do have to say, im a really small writer. engagement with my fics have always been low, when seen in the larger scope of fandom. the few times my fics have gotten crazy numbers due to fests etc the engagement has still been like. very small compared to other writers I know who write in these same fandoms. and none of this is said bitterly! i write weird pairings that overlap fandoms and consistently write painful themes primarily for myself. im always grateful to the friends and readers who do stick by me but I've had fics over 4-5 years that have next to no readers that still excite me cause i thought of something different and executed it. i hope I answered your question and that I didn't get too patronising there lol, not my intention.
thank you for that!! i am soooooo sorry to disappoint you with this but the process of writing it was arduous as hell. i am a very reluctant smut writer. every time i have done it, it has pulled my teeth out in the doing of it. i just get very technical about the logistics of it, the limbs and positions and spacing and get very caught in my own head. add to that, theee worst stretch of work in the months since may (still ongoing) and i had literally no time and no energy. i wrote this the week of posting after begging for an extension. sorry for the rant!! i suppose the only positive i can offer right now is that im very proud of myself for coming up with the link to carson's glass essay and going through with it. without that reference, i'd have been lost at sea completely. that reference is what tided me over and raised the wordcount probably, because it forced me to write multiple sex scenes instead of just the one breakup scene to actually sketch out what i was trying to say re: nahyo's relationship.
god, so many things! favourites are hard to pick, especially in the middle of a long dry spell as far as reading and writing goes. but yeah, obvious ones are grief and separation. slice of life in its most basic sense, so like, ordinary life being lived - cleaning, cooking, walking; just people doing the things they do everyday.
i feel like motifs are not hard sells to me. if fall for a writer's style and rhythm they can take me almost anywhere they want. i cant help but bring up haikyuu here. nothing, and i mean absolutely nothing about the genre, the setting, the tone, any of it, is among my preferences. i dont care for sports, let alone sports mangas. i dont care for optimistic protagonists or hopeful, almost euphoric storytelling. or so i believed until i read haikyuu. and now i beg everyone i can to read it and call it one of the defining stories i've read in my life. a volleyball manga. its unbelievable. i suppose it helps that a lot of it IS about people, very specifically sports playing high schoolers, doing their everyday things. it IS about grief, somehow, at the end of it all.
this is such roundabout way of saying idk what my favourite motifs are, i suppose. they change along with me. i grew up on fantasy fiction, cut my teeth on it and then some. but i dont gravitate towards heroic stories of that set archetype now. or if i do, its because the writer is exceptional. (im thinking iron widow here though calling it fantasy fiction is kind of a reach. what i probably mean is the broader idea of fantastical novels we had as kids i guess)
i love places. towns, cities, apartments, homes. just pockets that represent a character's desires, past history and everything. on a similar note, i love liminal spaces. cars, bikes, walks, elevators etc. love them even more when instead of showing movement or change in character they show the lack of it. instead show routine.
i love nature ie the natural setting but also atmosphere, climate, weather everything being important to scenes. and not just because they give a context/background to action.
i love friendship. thats an important one, actually. it doesnt have to be overt and articulated but even just the sense of knowing and belonging between people.
thats mostly all i can think of. and pain, of course!! especially in poetry and music, pain and repression are my best buddies that i love to see out. lmfao. hope i somewhat answered your question!
hi!! im my case, its almost always music or poetry. and i always link my inspiration on the starting or end notes of my fics! its never just one thing, you know? i need the media to fully converse with each other before i get the push to write around it. most often what im drawing from a song or a poem or anything else, isnt simply the lyrics or the direct meaning of whatever it is but the vibe...and the vibe is a really subjective thing, imo.
the most recent example where you can very obviously see the many things im drawing from is again we begin this blue and soggy song. there's poetry, there's music, there's an art piece, there's an installation in a museum, there is SO much going on.
sometimes i get inspired by the structure rather than the content of a piece which was the case in night flight.
with one for the laugh, two for the show, i was inspired by the side pairing in a kdrama and their particular meet-ugly/cute as well as just the shared alienation from and at their workplaces. i have previously also been inspired by bollywood films, which are a staple in my life.
the fic that comes to mind a lot when i think of works inspired by art, or rather, a whole bunch of it, is empty cup..
again, 99 percent of the things i write are songfics in one way or the other, thats how my brain operates! im not a very visual person, in that pinterest boards etc wont do a lot for me but my gdocs will have like. lyrics, poem, lyrics, random quote, relationship vlog with a killer line...just a completely random bunch of words jammed in that my brain kind of uses as a jigsaw puzzle to solve but in terms of Feel rather than Plot. i hope im making some sense to you?
oh i have been waiting for this question my whole life. thank you. hi. by grand revelation i will take it to mean a fic that made me feel something big, and not a fic about a 'grand' kind of love. but yess. i do have a really good list for you:
-> it was a love story after all by younglegends
-> once again, love by hwarium
-> where your song sounds by batman
-> handle with care by almostsophie1
-> my bones into your bones by deathlessaphrodite
-> palette by ggoyeobb
-> give me a tempest by Klavier
-> fig. 25 by pagdiwa
-> captains and crows by softlyblue
-> Cheapskate by salines
-> we got history by linearity
-> don't know what we craved, it remains unspoken by jublis
-> it's hard, but when you're having fun there's a world outside your window. by warfare
-> what useless tools ourselves by shinealightonme
-> convergence by curvatures
-> Northern Downpour by hatsuna
-> A Lesson in Adolescence by aijee
-> some songs that aren't about love by jan
-> circles by miuyi
-> love in the time of social media by abillionstars
-> A Song of Birth (A Song of Newer Things) by jumpthisship
-> my youth is yours
-> Friends We Keep by pinkhorizon
....in my defence i had no idea it would get this long??? but i hope you find something revelatory here (tell me if you do <3) and oh! thank you so much for reading my fics!!! and this question! i can't explain exactly what was incredible about the way these fics treat love, in some of them it is quite obvious and in some quite subtle. all i know is that i remembered them enough to go back and remember that they made something in me move.
i dont think i have?? and if i have, i cant remember. my process for the most part is just opening an endless number of google tabs as and when the need strikes for me to insert a specific detail. since i like the little details a lot, this usually means having a bunch of tabs open all the time while writing. i have to admit, if you asked me this question years ago i would probably have a much more thorough answer, especially if you're asking this re: kpop fic. there's a certain level of comfort i have in writing kpop rpf, set in idolverse particularly, because i have written so much of it, and because research for this has involved mostly just watching behind the scenes content for groups. since i started with bts fic, there was a vast amount of footage like that to rely on.
if you're asking about setting, food, culture specifically, again, 90 percent of my fic is set in korea and there is knowhow i have accrued simply by virtuing of writing fic and researching fic over the years. there is also the fact that i have been watching korean dramas, and variety shows since 2016, have been following korean asmrtists and food vloggers since 2018 and then there are kpop groups of course (also from 2015-16). you pick up on a loooot of information when so much of what you watch is from the same larger geographical context.
with haikyuu fics, though i did have to look up many things specific to japan, the manga + extra projects like the light novels and special episodes are a huge resource in themselves.
but yeah with thai bl fic, with animanga/japan setting fic or with korean drama or kpop fic, i invariably find myself looking at 1. food blogs or food review sites 2. blogs about flowering seasons, cultural festivals related to seasons, and how food and the weather+seasonal cycles are linked 3. maps. so many maps. it doesnt have to show in the fic, but if im talking about characters walking or cycling or whatver - i'd like for it to be a real route between two real places.
as for helpful resources, these are two threads by twt user @/tteokminnie i used to swear by early on:
https://x.com/tteokminnie/status/1164308106114998272?s=20
https://x.com/tteokminnie/status/1240064274975858688?s=20
ao3 infrequency also answered a similar question a while back and has a list that more or less coincides with my list of resources:
- https://retrospring.net/@infrequency/a/111473522642222371
also! the only times i can remember discussing the research process:
https://feversend.dreamwidth.org/6043.html
https://feversend.dreamwidth.org/1572.html
deadwine not sunbaenim: how would you decide your writing style, from the point of view of you constructing it? what aspects of the prose do you like to emphasize and what stylistic choices do you make on purpose?
[cutting short the looong backstory explainer on Why it is how it is] i think my style is straightforward and simple. i dont deliberate on style a lot because when i do find myself slipping into either self-flagellation or a tendency to make my prose more purple and pretentious.
im a much more instinctive writer as far as style goes. i like sounding out my sentences in my head, especially dialogues. if they sound 'written' its an instant no. i want them to sound broken and weird and real. im kind of obsessed with the need for people speaking to seem realistic, now that i think about it. thats why my current writing is riddled with ellipses and em dashes. its the only way i can think of showing proper pauses or stutters and hesitation in speech.
stylistic choices...hmm. i know i like my repetitions a lot. both words and sentences. i like metaphors related to nature. but i dont force them if they dont come. i suppose brevity is the real stylistic choice i make in my prose. the more runaway a sentence in my wip, the less likely i am to be sold on it. (mind you, i have a lot of runaway sentences so its not like im an expert or whatever). i like when i can make a point in few words and make it hit home, still.
yeah tldr i dont deliberate on style a lot because i get caught up in my own head and wouldnt know where to start/stop because of, among other things, long boring backstory, but! im always open to suggestions on things to read/watch that discuss style. or opinions you may have on prose, your own style or mine!
not sunbaenim.....but umm there's no one process i think. [edit: forgive me for dropping a whole essay after saying this welp] it differs based on a lot of things. what and who i'm writing for, what the length of the fic is likely to be etc?
so anything below 1-2k, where i know im just writing for vibes or to expel my brainworms, i just write as things come to me, i don't plot it out at all. which is why sometimes it takes me a whole year to write something 1k simply because i didn't know how to move the scene forward.
for fest fics and anything with a prompt, i usually just put the prompt into my doc and stare at it until the deadline is a day away and then i scramble for the woods. jk. in seriousness, if i don't have an idea where i Know the fic length is gonna go beyond 2k or so, or where i know i can't wrap up my thoughts in a single scene or two, then i sit with it.
i look for music and poetry. which i invariably do for anything i write anyway. im not much of a visual inspiration guy. i could do extensive collection of images on pinterest and reach nowhere but a singular line in a poem or a sing clicking for me could take me miles ahead. in fact, sometimes its not even a line. its just the feel of a song. for example, the taehao i wrote at the end of last year was entirely driven by the feel of choi yuree's forest.
in fics where i know i want to tell a story that shows movement re:character, like my everglow fic for kolymfics last year or the minkey strangers to lovers au, im almost incapable of writing anything until i have a breakthrough idea for the structure. words and scenes mean less to me than does the structure of a fic. why and how a scene break happens and is there a way for me to do it interestingly? so in the everglow fic, this becomes 1. the recurring spinning motif. 2. the "social media feed" comments, some of which are real and picked up from reddit, quora etc.
in the minkey fic, it became drinking rounds an using that as a clutch to go from total formality to informality by the end of round 4/5.
a lot of my writing process is in the air. lines, particularly dialogue, will come to me when im just hanging out. possibly not with the doc open. it all ends up in my notes app, and later i have to hunt for possible gems left lying around. sometimes its a half-asleep thought, sometimes a shower thought. a good portion of them suck. but some dont. so for the minkey fic saathiya, i had the conversation from the last scene "we haven't fucked yet today.." onwards in my notes app. very rough version but most of the words remained.
and then sometimes its not even dialogue. for the nahyo breakup fic last year, my notes app had this whole para only a gist of which made it into the fic. it went something like "brian has two passports, finished his service, same industry, of course for nayeon's parents its a done deal.'
i listen to a lot of music while writing. sometimes playlists, sometimes just the same song on loop so my brain doesnt stray from where it needs to be (it still does). sometimes i need total silence.
the rare few times ive hit 10k and beyond has need a herculean amount of note making, plotting and just writing and editing. obviously. with the haokook last year, even more so because i cared about it and them so much and i was very much writing for me and wanted no part of it to be half hearted. and because i was hell-bent on the structure of using 26 alphabets and keep it canon verse and the filling up of 26 parts was an arduos thing.
i think the most fun i have while writing is when im writing gift fics for friends. i read their tweets, i mine our dms, i steal anything and everything i can steal to make sure my fic knees them in the gut. its a personal delight. plus writing for a friend allows u to zoom into really specific syntax within the larger vocabulary of fandom and ships that lets u do whatever the fuck u want. its for one singular reader: them. anybody else who doesnt get what uve tried, doesnt matter. my speciality is of course, targetting ao3 user klavier but they make it very easy for me. there are times i have put pieces of them into fics that werent even written for them. (eg: empty cup, my verhao breakup fic)
regardless of length and fandom and anything else, the thing most common in my process is research. mainly, places and food. i need my stories to be rooted in a place and i need them to feel real. im not saying stories cant feel real otherwise, and im not saying i myself havent gone the other way ever. but by and large, this is what i rely on. a lot of what i write are short momentary glimpses into the lives of people. there is no movement in the story or even in the arc of the character. the only way i know how to enrich a single moment is by making it feel lived in. by giving names to places and things and rituals and habits. whether i succeed or not, i dont know. but i enjoy doing it and will probably continue to do the same.
also (sorry for going on and on and on) a big part of my writing process arre my friends. who egg on my ideas and read my drafts and sprint with me and basically hand-hold my fic-writing process like nobody's business. i would have possibly written nothing in 2023 without ao3 user wooga or nitilia or starryhoch who did all of the above and more to get me across the line.
and i could probably ramble on forever so i'll stop now. thank you for this question!!! made me exercise my dormant brain cells lol
hello! oh this is going to be a Long Answer.
reading. i have been reading LOADS. i had my brain kickstarted by smth recently and boy have i been reading as a result. for poetry, i just gave an answer here: https://retrospring.net/@deadwine/a/110803927590279067
i also FINALLY started reading [this is how you lose the time war] on a flight recently. progress is slow but not bad. i also read a good chunk of amy bloom's [in love: a memoir of love and loss] when i was staying two nights at a friend's place where they had a hard copy and now im like?! help i need to finish this! as for audible, im slowly and steadily trudging through sylvia plath's unabridged journals. my last months' one credit buy was sayaka murata's [convenience store woman] and this month (just yesterday) i at long last succumbed to [crying at h mart] which i do not think i can read read? so maybe the audiobook will work! things that have been on my currently reading a long time but are now on the slower end of progress again: kim kyung ju's [i am season that does not exist in the world] and agha shahid ali's [the veiled suite].
i am also consuming the somewhat regular gekkan shoujo nozaki kun and semantic error updates, as far as manga goes.
i dont think my relationship with poetry has gone a dramatic change but i do think its become a much much more intimate business, part of my lifeblood and need it for sustenance kind of thing now?
funnily enough i wrote poetry years before i ever read it seriously. i must have read it in some form or fashion, there used to be kiddie columns of poetry in the newspaper etc, like. when i as very young, but i dont remember any piece very clearly from back when i first wrote one-probably in class 4/fourth grade..or third. mind you, it was nothing life changing or Good but it was definitely...poetry.
the first time i remember reading poetry and being struck by it was in eighth grade. i changed schools and curriculums and poetry was a real thing now and my teacher taught us emily dickinson (literally my wife to this day)'s [because i could not stop for death] and thomas moore's [the light of other days] and wordsworth's [the solitary reaper] and alfred noyes [the highwayman] and thomas campbell's [hohenlinden] and masefield's [laugh and be merry] and she was incredible and idk. my life was transformed. and then from 9th-12th i had HORRIBLE english teachers but i was hooked yknow. it was impossible to make me hate it now. i still have my 11-12th textbook of poetry. still LOVE poems from it like dylan thomas' [do not go gentle into that good night] and marge piercy's [breaking out] and dilip chitre's [father returning home'.
and then for a long time poetry was a little bit tangential to my life and then the pandemic happened and boom, all i was doing was reading poetry and more poetry and more poetry until i coudnt breathe without it and somehow through that found my way back to writing it too.
although i will be clear, even when it was tangential it was only english standard poetry that was tangential. music is a very central part of my and my family's life and to me there arent huge distinctions between hindi (or any of the other languages) poetry and when those verses are set to song. and like. look at gulzar?! like what is a poet if not a lyricist in some capacity and vice versa...
god. this was a really wonderful question. thank you so much!!! (and also thank you for your kind words! i am just A Guy! i hope its cooler wherever u are because it Hot As Hell here today!)
ive definitely answered this for books or should i say poetry here:
https://twitter.com/deadwines/status/1617891034754871296?s=20
https://retrospring.net/@deadwine/a/108217410333220815
but fic wow. i cant say i remember lines from a lot of fic simply because i have read so much fic. but off the top of my head, there's lines from klavier's dark pines and give me a tempest, hwarium's once again love, younglegends' it was a love story after all, infrequency's heartbeat on the highline, batman's where your song sounds, every single part of nitilia's so far away series, lightningbend's the sun and the silver lining, a looot of fics by ameliabedelias, fruitily and siderum, probably some hp fics if im being honest, blackbox series by jublis, and the lines i remember:
"hinata as always with his clementine rind smile. gimme the next one too." from convergence by curvatures.
"you will never love anyone, will you?" from foolish fragile spine by aruariandance
"how could i have loved you in a way that didnt hurt" from fig.25 by pagdiwa
and most recently, "you may be the heaviest thing i have held in my hands, the beating heart of you, but not all heavy things are burdens" from we got history by linearity
this IS hard apparently i have too many fics...
let me give u 3 according to the parameters you yourself set then.
process: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412157 (like it was terrifying cause i had never written something at that scale and my writing is...clunky in hindsight. BUT. my choices in terms of characters and match-ups and bands and world-building?10/10. would always want to write more for this universe because it was so much fun sketching out the who's who in this and then letting the connections speak.
result: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715178 (its been two years. i would not go back and change a single word here. nothing was wasted imo. one needs to know the people very well to get my references since im not being very elaborate but i didn't need to and. yes. this.)
reactions: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45790846 (its very recent but the reactions have been legitimately soooo crazy that i couldn't not pick it. crazy spike in stats aside i just. am very very veryyyy gratified people got it? cause i was simply running off a random idea i got from a side ship on a drama and a textchain with a friend going nowhere.)
again, this was super fucking hard. not just cause three is a small number but also cause. idk. the process matters for the fic im choosing here for result too and vice versa! its all connected. and i feel like. im betraying my other fics that i love. but for now, here you are!! also thank you for this question, i really enjoyed trying to figure out which fic to say for which aspect!!
im so terrible about putting down character meta all I have are cc/retrospring answers and tweets flying in the wind. but things that show up in my writing: at present the most obvious would be minghao as a lover of love, as a theme. i think I've either touched on it or on gone into heavy details on it in at least 5 fics that I can think of off the top of my head. minghao as a middle school poetry teacher is a beloved headcanon that's like an offshoot of the same idea, that minghao is obsessed with love.
another thing that comes up often is seokjin trying to run from his feelings. as much as i am afraid of falling into caricature category with that trope its one i relate to heavily and cant seem to avoid in my writing.
jungkook as a music producer is also something i seem to fall back on in a lot of my idolverse adjacent fics. actually the headcanon is that jungkook-woozi (and sometimes suga) are producer friends/work in an agency together. its not always obvious, or even written, but if either of these characters plays a music producer in my fic the chances are i Am thinking of it as a part of that larger universe.
my english teacher in 2nd and 3rd grade!! she made me love stories tbh. she used to have a really pretty voice and persona and shed make us read stories aloud in class and i used to love being called on to do it. also books tbh...i have a lot of people in my family who really encouraged me to start reading so by that time i had already devoured the basic enid blytons and all. i think it was a combination of all those things?
omg trc is an eternal one for me but i will admit i have four trc aus already, maybe i need to look at something else lol. well i love the idea of playing with format. a magazine interview style fic, a story within a story, meta within idolverse are all things i have wanted to try. personally would love to write more fic for the kdramas i keep the watching and falling in love with, this year. fandom...i am kneedeep in enha fic as we speak, and well. we will see if i go there. otherwise twice fic for sure. it's been years since nahyo have occupied my brain and Yet...
hello..hi.. im very grateful you thought you can share this with me! believe it or not i do understand! (once a law school dropout, always a law school dropout, in my culture lol nobody forgets that)and im sharing that because you shared something very vulnerable with me and also so that you know what i say next, doesn't come from this place of assuming higher moral ground and preaching at you.
i really wanted to be a writer when i was a kid. i wrote poems and stories and there was no certainty that i was good besides those general compliments from teachers but i wanted it. and then you know middle school happened, high school happened, in all the confusion of what stream to take, what degree to go for, i stopped thinking about it altogether and by the time i left school i mostly stopped writing except for one or two vent poems every year that i never shared with anyone.
fast forward to dropping out of law school, enrolling in a diff course (still not aimed at "becoming a writer") etc etc and most of my writing continued to be academic and technical. but somehow i started writing more and more again. through fic of course, which really is such a powerful joyous medium, i cannot praise it enough. i cannot express how much it means to me enough. and it took me three years of writing fic to go back to trying personal pieces again. which is all to say, if you enjoyed writing, if you think you may still find some joy in it. do it.
it will be terrible in the beginning--at least it was for me. my oldest fics on this ao3 profile is proof of it too. but it'll still be okay if you enjoyed doing it. you don't have to share it with anyone, it doesn't have to be a Thing is what i mean. becoming a published writer as a career is a Thing and a big deal. writing, just writing, never has to be. it becomes that, sure. but like. in the times that we're living in..and im thinking specifically of all the ai art discourse right now...but there's really no reason to let something that clearly brought you joy go because you think you lost the ability.
and im sorry if after saying i wont preach i ended up sounding like im doing just that but. i swear i didnt think i could be in a position to say this--five years ago. even three years ago. and you know. you can always be like welp that's not for me, and ignore this all. but. but. you could also not ignore it and give it a try someday when it doesn't feel like too much to do it. if not well that's okay too. thank you, truly, for sharing that with me. i see you! also thank you for reading my words!!!! sorry bout this essay, but not really <3
you know i'll have to ask my folks about this cause i cant remember! i recall like essay/composition writing section on english grammar exams that i used to keep "for the last" so i could write my little mystery/fantasy whatever short stories id always get marked down for there. but that's much later like in middle school. earlier ones...damn i only remember my first couple poems! from when i was in 3rd and 4th grade! thank you for this question i need to investigate lol
by reading fic! really as simple as that. been writing 'stories' and 'poems' (very rough use of that word lol) since i was in the 3rd/4th standard so like...didnt take anything beyond realising fic existed to want to write it too.
hello! i think it changes a lot from time to time, mood to mood...as also according to fandoms and ships my preferences change.
as far as ships go i have a fair few beloved ones collected over the years- minho/kibum, yoongi/jin/jk and all its combos, namjoon/hoseok, chanyeol/kyungsoo, 97s gc combinations but mostly haokook right now, nayeon/jihyo, seulgi/wendy, mingyu/wonwoo, seokmin/jihoon...and all the many interesting crossover ships within kpop are so good to read! oikagehina (AND kagehina) and hualian (and fenglian) are probably my favourite non kpop ships at the moment, though i do enjoy reading kdrama/bl and other media fics as well..
tropes! i love a good divorce fic. i love established messy relationship stories far more than a slow burn/angst buildup to a relationship. love a good band fic. character study through relationship study is the niche i have grown to love in past two years (ao3 tonyang(kurusui)'s wonhan 'OBSESSION' really explains that genre)
i love themes exploring travel and self-discovery and i don't know like slice of life fics which distill so much into singular moments? i also love a good trope fake dating au or a bed-sharing fic. love magical realism when its incorporated all seamlessly. love dream exploration! think im forgetting many of my favourites because im put on the spot rn lol.
some of these themes also translate to my non fic reading but tbh prose has been steadily eclipsed by poetry in my general reading and that is a whole other question i guess.
this question stumped me for a good four days because I've never really thought about it? but i think...all emotions? depends on what I'm writing, depends on my mental state. the emotion doesn't have to be positive for the writing to be good in my experience. and i dont just mean this in terms of writing as a vent for trauma or repressed emotion. i mean even something as inane as pettiness or spite can sometimes be really good motivators. while i cant say there is one specific emotion im always writing with, there is definitely a sense of relief when i finish a project which is what I'm always chasing, one way or the other...hope that answers your question?
Hiii thank you so much for saying that, and for reading my writing! It's always a thrill to be told that my writing is read, always! And oh my god, you're really preaching to the choir here, I'm obsessed with stories of relationships that don't work (something that might be obvious from my own stuff lol) and divorcefics as I like to call them and I think right person wrong time is at the heart of most of those stories. I love the acknowledgement of the things that go into making a relationship work--hell I love acknowledging that relationships are work. That there are no perfect people for perfect people and you could meet the person of your ideals and still be in a place in your life where they do not meet your principles/needs/whatever the heart of your life is at the time. And I also think that this can happen while you are in a relationship you know that the right person right time changes to wrong person/wrong time and you simply grow out of each other or your relationship together..god im rambling on and on but like this is one of my favourite genre of fic to write and read, im even really into divorce poetry lately! just so much to unoack you know?
😳😳😳 I'm-- wow. Thank you? I have no clue? Most of the things I put out here are not long-term pre-planned projects or anything so if you're looking for some guidelines that I follow I'm sorry to disappoint. And like. Good writing is relative, you may like what I write but someone else might not. I didn't work at becoming a 'good' writer or anything of that sort. Especially with fic, I just write whatever I feel like/ want to read myself.
But I will say, I used to read a lot of fiction growing up and read a lot of poetry and fic and whatever shorter media I can find now. I also listen to a lot of music, all the time. I do believe the media we consume impacts our creative choices/outlets a whole lot more than we realise! My choice of major also requires me to write A Lot though I sure hope my writing doesn't read like my boring academic essays. And oh most importantly, I listen in on all the conversations happening on my tl, among all the really really talented and inspiring writers I follow and pray something rubs off on me. Even when I'm too tired to read fic just scrolling through the tl teaches me a lot about the ways to tell a story everyday.
Thank you so much for compliment, anon, I hope my answer was somewhat helpful!
anon hiii im so sorry for leaving you hanging for a month there! tbh i havent been able to write for a while now and every time i tried to answer this i'd get stuck on the negative feelings...so im doing a sort of cop out by giving you half an answer, hope you don't mind. it's not my favourite part per se, but one of the things I love about writing is being able to connect media I love be it poetry or music or fiction to each other and to other tid bits of trivia about food or places or something else that I know or care about in the same /place/, if one can call a piece of writing that? it's a little selfish in that the specific codes to which these inclusions correspond only truly mean something to me- for instance, for writing (heart song) I read almost fifteen diff pieces of poetry and things about grief that I myself have written or read in the past but how those show up, or dont, in the actual fic is only really visible to me. that being said, when someone reading catches on to even one or two of these connections it makes me that much happier!
thank you for this question anon, I'll be thinking about it and maybe I'll give a fuller answer someday :))
this is interesting but tough because everything i can say about books applies to at least three years ago. my wavering mental state has kept me from doing any kind of consistent book reading so what i have read in these years, that i can remember as of now: han kang's vegetarian (psychological fiction), i have human acts waiting to be read but brain :/, shyam selvadurai's funny boy (coming of age gay fiction, set in 1980s sri lanka), ocean vuong's on earth we're briefly gorgeous (epistolary, coming of age prose that reads like poetry) and mdzs/cql and tgcf by mxtx (danmei). i used to be majorly into fantasy fiction, still am even if im not actively reading much. i do not enjoy most of the classics of english literature. i will pretty much read any piece of fiction that grabs my attention, but i have a soft spot for coming of age stories and crime/historical/space fiction. nowadays, i find it much easier to read poetry, pieces from a collection or just poems scattered across the internet.
with fic, im open to almost every genre but I have been unable to read longfic more recently unless it's really got me hooked. a specific trope that i find myself to have really grown into, over time, is established relationship. with writing, i think so far everything i've written has felt experimental to me, on some level. maybe i'll always feel that way, like i dont have my own style. while there's so many ideas i have for stories set in a fantasy setting, all of them require time and commitment i dont find myself capable of giving anything right now.
blue side, the birthday fic I wrote for jungkook last year. it took the least amount of time for me to write and it is much shorter than a couple of my recent stuff but honestly dont see this answer changing for a long time because its the only fic I can go back to without heavy critiques or retrospective regret. even when im questioning or hating my stuff during a bad spiral, i dont Entirely hate this one.
Date updated: 17th January 2025 (17/01/2025)
Order: Newest to Oldest
hiiii lovely. what's one trope/genre/plot you want to write but haven't yet? (14/12/2024)
hi!! there's so many. gender, body, and transness are forever-thoughts i still feel not ready to write about. mother-daughter relations and selfhood within that. being gay and closeted and okay with it. exploration of an ai(?) future mixed with dreams and a dreaming world like trc but also set in idolverse. divorce not in the breakup sense but in the divorce sense. fics that aren't just atmospheric for the sake of it but are elemental in the very like...structure and flow of the story? (have a haokook water wip since 2022...) more love stories and more grief stories but in ways I've not written before!
from each of your groups, who do you find easiest and hardest to use as a pov character? (30/11/2024)
you know i'm sure i've answered this question in the past but i cant find any of those answers and its been a long time since then, so it'll be fun answering it again. i know that i used to have definite answers for this but i think the way i approach writing has changed a fair bit since 3-4 years ago. i apologize for how long-winding this answer is about to be.
i don't really have a hard time with any pov character as such because im usually thinking of the plot/prompt/context within which im writing them. for instance, i wrote dahyun (twice) pov for the first time this year; and i also wrote yiren (everglow) pov for the first time. i don't remember struggling with either of them and that's not cause they're idols i feel like i know very well. i really don't. i just wasnt thinking of about their characterisation in absolute terms at all but more so relative to the fics i was writing. so with dahyun in the datzu piece, i was going off the job dahyun had in the fic i was remixing which was an exorcist, and her entire personality is based around her working with spirits a lot. then with yiren, i was thinking of a particular dynamic in sweet home, the show i was writing an au for, as well as the possibility of power play between someone who strives to be human vs someone who strives to be a monster, in a lawless world. whatever yiren feels and goes through in it is a result of the role she's assigned between the two. the world and the story im writing and how these characters fit into it dictate their povs rather than the other way round. even if there is no special world, its just a non-idol au where im examining a breakup, the circumstances of the breakup determine how the characters behave. (keep in mind, this is approach works for me because i write shorter fics)
so essentially, characterisation has become a much easier task for me than it used to be because i've begun to find the discourse around it, especially in rpf writing, a bit of a trap. 'will they do or not do this' is not a question that i enjoy getting into re: the idols i write about - doesn't mean i never get into it, but it's rare nowadays. it's also not an exciting question or one that comes naturally in my style or process of writing. my shorter stuff is mood or situation heavy, and my longer stuff is usually structured very specifically (drinking rounds/poetry sections/timelapses) so that i actually write the whole fic instead of giving up after a scene. and my brain runs logistics. im much more likely to be caught up on whether someone's hand or leg is placed weirdly in a scene im writing than whether they're going to push back or stay quiet in a situation because thats who they are/are not as a person.
we don't know these people, im not sure we even know their personas at times. of course im influenced by things they say and do, as well as fanon ideas of them. thats inescapable as someone on twitter and in general, fandom and rps/rpf spaces. but im equally influenced by things that have nothing to do with them - a line in a song, a hit tweet about a breakup, a drive i took last week etc.
but also...i cant deny writing idolverse/canon compliant kpop fic still has me ponder characterisation in the usual manner. its just that im not as rigid about putting people in situations that they might not seem to ever be in, in what we've seen of their lives on-cam. my compliancy is usually just very strictly to timelines of the group and idol, and rigid facts of events, comebacks, general calendered stuff. i give myself leeway to play with the personality as and how i can within the scenario.
i suppose within all these caveats if i had to pick povs i find hard to write, it would be idols who are easily emotional or (seem) open about themselves at all times, and idols who are "bright" and "fun". tapping into sadness or misery or anxiety or "i dont what im feeling" kind of ennui; or idols with a much richer inner life that we are probably not privy to is just a little easier for me - if im writing them for the first time, that is, or if im newer to a group.
hi, hope this isn't strange to ask but i was wondering how you felt about locking your fics these days, did engagement with your fics change significantly since? (asking as a fellow writer with unlocked fics, really just curious about your experience with it!) (07/09/2024)
i dont mind the question. which is have i seen a difference in engagement with my fics since I locked them last year, right? (as opposed to how I feel about unlocking them? i dont think that's what you're asking and if you are, well, no. i have no plans to unlock.)
and honestly no, i havent seen a great difference in engagement with my fics now versus pre 2023, not in a way that is evident to me anyway. but I do have to say, im a really small writer. engagement with my fics have always been low, when seen in the larger scope of fandom. the few times my fics have gotten crazy numbers due to fests etc the engagement has still been like. very small compared to other writers I know who write in these same fandoms. and none of this is said bitterly! i write weird pairings that overlap fandoms and consistently write painful themes primarily for myself. im always grateful to the friends and readers who do stick by me but I've had fics over 4-5 years that have next to no readers that still excite me cause i thought of something different and executed it. i hope I answered your question and that I didn't get too patronising there lol, not my intention.
what was your favourite part about writing your elegies to the exit wound? it’s one of your longer ones, congrats!! (14/08/2024)
thank you for that!! i am soooooo sorry to disappoint you with this but the process of writing it was arduous as hell. i am a very reluctant smut writer. every time i have done it, it has pulled my teeth out in the doing of it. i just get very technical about the logistics of it, the limbs and positions and spacing and get very caught in my own head. add to that, theee worst stretch of work in the months since may (still ongoing) and i had literally no time and no energy. i wrote this the week of posting after begging for an extension. sorry for the rant!! i suppose the only positive i can offer right now is that im very proud of myself for coming up with the link to carson's glass essay and going through with it. without that reference, i'd have been lost at sea completely. that reference is what tided me over and raised the wordcount probably, because it forced me to write multiple sex scenes instead of just the one breakup scene to actually sketch out what i was trying to say re: nahyo's relationship.
what is your favorite motif to read (in novels, poetry, fic, or otherwise)!! i feel like u have such a unique view of things, what inspires u/speaks to u when u read (24/06/2024)
god, so many things! favourites are hard to pick, especially in the middle of a long dry spell as far as reading and writing goes. but yeah, obvious ones are grief and separation. slice of life in its most basic sense, so like, ordinary life being lived - cleaning, cooking, walking; just people doing the things they do everyday.
i feel like motifs are not hard sells to me. if fall for a writer's style and rhythm they can take me almost anywhere they want. i cant help but bring up haikyuu here. nothing, and i mean absolutely nothing about the genre, the setting, the tone, any of it, is among my preferences. i dont care for sports, let alone sports mangas. i dont care for optimistic protagonists or hopeful, almost euphoric storytelling. or so i believed until i read haikyuu. and now i beg everyone i can to read it and call it one of the defining stories i've read in my life. a volleyball manga. its unbelievable. i suppose it helps that a lot of it IS about people, very specifically sports playing high schoolers, doing their everyday things. it IS about grief, somehow, at the end of it all.
this is such roundabout way of saying idk what my favourite motifs are, i suppose. they change along with me. i grew up on fantasy fiction, cut my teeth on it and then some. but i dont gravitate towards heroic stories of that set archetype now. or if i do, its because the writer is exceptional. (im thinking iron widow here though calling it fantasy fiction is kind of a reach. what i probably mean is the broader idea of fantastical novels we had as kids i guess)
i love places. towns, cities, apartments, homes. just pockets that represent a character's desires, past history and everything. on a similar note, i love liminal spaces. cars, bikes, walks, elevators etc. love them even more when instead of showing movement or change in character they show the lack of it. instead show routine.
i love nature ie the natural setting but also atmosphere, climate, weather everything being important to scenes. and not just because they give a context/background to action.
i love friendship. thats an important one, actually. it doesnt have to be overt and articulated but even just the sense of knowing and belonging between people.
thats mostly all i can think of. and pain, of course!! especially in poetry and music, pain and repression are my best buddies that i love to see out. lmfao. hope i somewhat answered your question!
hi! im back with another important quiestion :D i want to know the direct inspiration of some of the fics you've written (be it from another fic that you've read, a song?, picture/painting, a poem!, or something you've experienced in real life) im just really curious of how people get inspired, like for me it would simply be a line from a song, or a scene from a movie, or eavesdropping strangers' conversations!! (13/03/2024)
hi!! im my case, its almost always music or poetry. and i always link my inspiration on the starting or end notes of my fics! its never just one thing, you know? i need the media to fully converse with each other before i get the push to write around it. most often what im drawing from a song or a poem or anything else, isnt simply the lyrics or the direct meaning of whatever it is but the vibe...and the vibe is a really subjective thing, imo.
the most recent example where you can very obviously see the many things im drawing from is again we begin this blue and soggy song. there's poetry, there's music, there's an art piece, there's an installation in a museum, there is SO much going on.
sometimes i get inspired by the structure rather than the content of a piece which was the case in night flight.
with one for the laugh, two for the show, i was inspired by the side pairing in a kdrama and their particular meet-ugly/cute as well as just the shared alienation from and at their workplaces. i have previously also been inspired by bollywood films, which are a staple in my life.
the fic that comes to mind a lot when i think of works inspired by art, or rather, a whole bunch of it, is empty cup..
again, 99 percent of the things i write are songfics in one way or the other, thats how my brain operates! im not a very visual person, in that pinterest boards etc wont do a lot for me but my gdocs will have like. lyrics, poem, lyrics, random quote, relationship vlog with a killer line...just a completely random bunch of words jammed in that my brain kind of uses as a jigsaw puzzle to solve but in terms of Feel rather than Plot. i hope im making some sense to you?
hii!! i have a very important question and that is, what fics have given you like this... grand revelation about love? alsoo ive read mostly everything that you've written and im a fan<33 (06/03/2024)
oh i have been waiting for this question my whole life. thank you. hi. by grand revelation i will take it to mean a fic that made me feel something big, and not a fic about a 'grand' kind of love. but yess. i do have a really good list for you:
-> it was a love story after all by younglegends
-> once again, love by hwarium
-> where your song sounds by batman
-> handle with care by almostsophie1
-> my bones into your bones by deathlessaphrodite
-> palette by ggoyeobb
-> give me a tempest by Klavier
-> fig. 25 by pagdiwa
-> captains and crows by softlyblue
-> Cheapskate by salines
-> we got history by linearity
-> don't know what we craved, it remains unspoken by jublis
-> it's hard, but when you're having fun there's a world outside your window. by warfare
-> what useless tools ourselves by shinealightonme
-> convergence by curvatures
-> Northern Downpour by hatsuna
-> A Lesson in Adolescence by aijee
-> some songs that aren't about love by jan
-> circles by miuyi
-> love in the time of social media by abillionstars
-> A Song of Birth (A Song of Newer Things) by jumpthisship
-> my youth is yours
-> Friends We Keep by pinkhorizon
....in my defence i had no idea it would get this long??? but i hope you find something revelatory here (tell me if you do <3) and oh! thank you so much for reading my fics!!! and this question! i can't explain exactly what was incredible about the way these fics treat love, in some of them it is quite obvious and in some quite subtle. all i know is that i remembered them enough to go back and remember that they made something in me move.
not a 🐸 question but i was wondering if you've spoken about your research process in detail somewhere (and if not, if you'd like to), and also if you had any helpful resources you'd recommend? hope you're having a good day!! (04/03/2024)
i dont think i have?? and if i have, i cant remember. my process for the most part is just opening an endless number of google tabs as and when the need strikes for me to insert a specific detail. since i like the little details a lot, this usually means having a bunch of tabs open all the time while writing. i have to admit, if you asked me this question years ago i would probably have a much more thorough answer, especially if you're asking this re: kpop fic. there's a certain level of comfort i have in writing kpop rpf, set in idolverse particularly, because i have written so much of it, and because research for this has involved mostly just watching behind the scenes content for groups. since i started with bts fic, there was a vast amount of footage like that to rely on.
if you're asking about setting, food, culture specifically, again, 90 percent of my fic is set in korea and there is knowhow i have accrued simply by virtuing of writing fic and researching fic over the years. there is also the fact that i have been watching korean dramas, and variety shows since 2016, have been following korean asmrtists and food vloggers since 2018 and then there are kpop groups of course (also from 2015-16). you pick up on a loooot of information when so much of what you watch is from the same larger geographical context.
with haikyuu fics, though i did have to look up many things specific to japan, the manga + extra projects like the light novels and special episodes are a huge resource in themselves.
but yeah with thai bl fic, with animanga/japan setting fic or with korean drama or kpop fic, i invariably find myself looking at 1. food blogs or food review sites 2. blogs about flowering seasons, cultural festivals related to seasons, and how food and the weather+seasonal cycles are linked 3. maps. so many maps. it doesnt have to show in the fic, but if im talking about characters walking or cycling or whatver - i'd like for it to be a real route between two real places.
as for helpful resources, these are two threads by twt user @/tteokminnie i used to swear by early on:
https://x.com/tteokminnie/status/1164308106114998272?s=20
https://x.com/tteokminnie/status/1240064274975858688?s=20
ao3 infrequency also answered a similar question a while back and has a list that more or less coincides with my list of resources:
- https://retrospring.net/@infrequency/a/111473522642222371
also! the only times i can remember discussing the research process:
https://feversend.dreamwidth.org/6043.html
https://feversend.dreamwidth.org/1572.html
deadwine not sunbaenim: how would you decide your writing style, from the point of view of you constructing it? what aspects of the prose do you like to emphasize and what stylistic choices do you make on purpose? (01/02/24)
deadwine not sunbaenim: how would you decide your writing style, from the point of view of you constructing it? what aspects of the prose do you like to emphasize and what stylistic choices do you make on purpose?
[cutting short the looong backstory explainer on Why it is how it is] i think my style is straightforward and simple. i dont deliberate on style a lot because when i do find myself slipping into either self-flagellation or a tendency to make my prose more purple and pretentious.
im a much more instinctive writer as far as style goes. i like sounding out my sentences in my head, especially dialogues. if they sound 'written' its an instant no. i want them to sound broken and weird and real. im kind of obsessed with the need for people speaking to seem realistic, now that i think about it. thats why my current writing is riddled with ellipses and em dashes. its the only way i can think of showing proper pauses or stutters and hesitation in speech.
stylistic choices...hmm. i know i like my repetitions a lot. both words and sentences. i like metaphors related to nature. but i dont force them if they dont come. i suppose brevity is the real stylistic choice i make in my prose. the more runaway a sentence in my wip, the less likely i am to be sold on it. (mind you, i have a lot of runaway sentences so its not like im an expert or whatever). i like when i can make a point in few words and make it hit home, still.
yeah tldr i dont deliberate on style a lot because i get caught up in my own head and wouldnt know where to start/stop because of, among other things, long boring backstory, but! im always open to suggestions on things to read/watch that discuss style. or opinions you may have on prose, your own style or mine!
deadwines sunbaenim what is your writing process like! (01/02/24)
not sunbaenim.....but umm there's no one process i think. [edit: forgive me for dropping a whole essay after saying this welp] it differs based on a lot of things. what and who i'm writing for, what the length of the fic is likely to be etc?
so anything below 1-2k, where i know im just writing for vibes or to expel my brainworms, i just write as things come to me, i don't plot it out at all. which is why sometimes it takes me a whole year to write something 1k simply because i didn't know how to move the scene forward.
for fest fics and anything with a prompt, i usually just put the prompt into my doc and stare at it until the deadline is a day away and then i scramble for the woods. jk. in seriousness, if i don't have an idea where i Know the fic length is gonna go beyond 2k or so, or where i know i can't wrap up my thoughts in a single scene or two, then i sit with it.
i look for music and poetry. which i invariably do for anything i write anyway. im not much of a visual inspiration guy. i could do extensive collection of images on pinterest and reach nowhere but a singular line in a poem or a sing clicking for me could take me miles ahead. in fact, sometimes its not even a line. its just the feel of a song. for example, the taehao i wrote at the end of last year was entirely driven by the feel of choi yuree's forest.
in fics where i know i want to tell a story that shows movement re:character, like my everglow fic for kolymfics last year or the minkey strangers to lovers au, im almost incapable of writing anything until i have a breakthrough idea for the structure. words and scenes mean less to me than does the structure of a fic. why and how a scene break happens and is there a way for me to do it interestingly? so in the everglow fic, this becomes 1. the recurring spinning motif. 2. the "social media feed" comments, some of which are real and picked up from reddit, quora etc.
in the minkey fic, it became drinking rounds an using that as a clutch to go from total formality to informality by the end of round 4/5.
a lot of my writing process is in the air. lines, particularly dialogue, will come to me when im just hanging out. possibly not with the doc open. it all ends up in my notes app, and later i have to hunt for possible gems left lying around. sometimes its a half-asleep thought, sometimes a shower thought. a good portion of them suck. but some dont. so for the minkey fic saathiya, i had the conversation from the last scene "we haven't fucked yet today.." onwards in my notes app. very rough version but most of the words remained.
and then sometimes its not even dialogue. for the nahyo breakup fic last year, my notes app had this whole para only a gist of which made it into the fic. it went something like "brian has two passports, finished his service, same industry, of course for nayeon's parents its a done deal.'
i listen to a lot of music while writing. sometimes playlists, sometimes just the same song on loop so my brain doesnt stray from where it needs to be (it still does). sometimes i need total silence.
the rare few times ive hit 10k and beyond has need a herculean amount of note making, plotting and just writing and editing. obviously. with the haokook last year, even more so because i cared about it and them so much and i was very much writing for me and wanted no part of it to be half hearted. and because i was hell-bent on the structure of using 26 alphabets and keep it canon verse and the filling up of 26 parts was an arduos thing.
i think the most fun i have while writing is when im writing gift fics for friends. i read their tweets, i mine our dms, i steal anything and everything i can steal to make sure my fic knees them in the gut. its a personal delight. plus writing for a friend allows u to zoom into really specific syntax within the larger vocabulary of fandom and ships that lets u do whatever the fuck u want. its for one singular reader: them. anybody else who doesnt get what uve tried, doesnt matter. my speciality is of course, targetting ao3 user klavier but they make it very easy for me. there are times i have put pieces of them into fics that werent even written for them. (eg: empty cup, my verhao breakup fic)
regardless of length and fandom and anything else, the thing most common in my process is research. mainly, places and food. i need my stories to be rooted in a place and i need them to feel real. im not saying stories cant feel real otherwise, and im not saying i myself havent gone the other way ever. but by and large, this is what i rely on. a lot of what i write are short momentary glimpses into the lives of people. there is no movement in the story or even in the arc of the character. the only way i know how to enrich a single moment is by making it feel lived in. by giving names to places and things and rituals and habits. whether i succeed or not, i dont know. but i enjoy doing it and will probably continue to do the same.
also (sorry for going on and on and on) a big part of my writing process arre my friends. who egg on my ideas and read my drafts and sprint with me and basically hand-hold my fic-writing process like nobody's business. i would have possibly written nothing in 2023 without ao3 user wooga or nitilia or starryhoch who did all of the above and more to get me across the line.
and i could probably ramble on forever so i'll stop now. thank you for this question!!! made me exercise my dormant brain cells lol
hello !!! are you reading something new these days? i was also curious about how your relationship with poetry has changed over the years.....what did you think of poetry when you first started reading/writing it and what do you think of it now? both in terms of what poetry is or just your relationship with it.....i love when you share poetry things and you're super cool !!! i hope you're having the warmest day <3 (30/07/23)
hello! oh this is going to be a Long Answer.
reading. i have been reading LOADS. i had my brain kickstarted by smth recently and boy have i been reading as a result. for poetry, i just gave an answer here: https://retrospring.net/@deadwine/a/110803927590279067
i also FINALLY started reading [this is how you lose the time war] on a flight recently. progress is slow but not bad. i also read a good chunk of amy bloom's [in love: a memoir of love and loss] when i was staying two nights at a friend's place where they had a hard copy and now im like?! help i need to finish this! as for audible, im slowly and steadily trudging through sylvia plath's unabridged journals. my last months' one credit buy was sayaka murata's [convenience store woman] and this month (just yesterday) i at long last succumbed to [crying at h mart] which i do not think i can read read? so maybe the audiobook will work! things that have been on my currently reading a long time but are now on the slower end of progress again: kim kyung ju's [i am season that does not exist in the world] and agha shahid ali's [the veiled suite].
i am also consuming the somewhat regular gekkan shoujo nozaki kun and semantic error updates, as far as manga goes.
i dont think my relationship with poetry has gone a dramatic change but i do think its become a much much more intimate business, part of my lifeblood and need it for sustenance kind of thing now?
funnily enough i wrote poetry years before i ever read it seriously. i must have read it in some form or fashion, there used to be kiddie columns of poetry in the newspaper etc, like. when i as very young, but i dont remember any piece very clearly from back when i first wrote one-probably in class 4/fourth grade..or third. mind you, it was nothing life changing or Good but it was definitely...poetry.
the first time i remember reading poetry and being struck by it was in eighth grade. i changed schools and curriculums and poetry was a real thing now and my teacher taught us emily dickinson (literally my wife to this day)'s [because i could not stop for death] and thomas moore's [the light of other days] and wordsworth's [the solitary reaper] and alfred noyes [the highwayman] and thomas campbell's [hohenlinden] and masefield's [laugh and be merry] and she was incredible and idk. my life was transformed. and then from 9th-12th i had HORRIBLE english teachers but i was hooked yknow. it was impossible to make me hate it now. i still have my 11-12th textbook of poetry. still LOVE poems from it like dylan thomas' [do not go gentle into that good night] and marge piercy's [breaking out] and dilip chitre's [father returning home'.
and then for a long time poetry was a little bit tangential to my life and then the pandemic happened and boom, all i was doing was reading poetry and more poetry and more poetry until i coudnt breathe without it and somehow through that found my way back to writing it too.
although i will be clear, even when it was tangential it was only english standard poetry that was tangential. music is a very central part of my and my family's life and to me there arent huge distinctions between hindi (or any of the other languages) poetry and when those verses are set to song. and like. look at gulzar?! like what is a poet if not a lyricist in some capacity and vice versa...
god. this was a really wonderful question. thank you so much!!! (and also thank you for your kind words! i am just A Guy! i hope its cooler wherever u are because it Hot As Hell here today!)
if you could design your own quote book/collection (be it fic or published books) what are some quotes you think you'll put in there off the top of your head? (15/06/23)
ive definitely answered this for books or should i say poetry here:
https://twitter.com/deadwines/status/1617891034754871296?s=20
https://retrospring.net/@deadwine/a/108217410333220815
but fic wow. i cant say i remember lines from a lot of fic simply because i have read so much fic. but off the top of my head, there's lines from klavier's dark pines and give me a tempest, hwarium's once again love, younglegends' it was a love story after all, infrequency's heartbeat on the highline, batman's where your song sounds, every single part of nitilia's so far away series, lightningbend's the sun and the silver lining, a looot of fics by ameliabedelias, fruitily and siderum, probably some hp fics if im being honest, blackbox series by jublis, and the lines i remember:
"hinata as always with his clementine rind smile. gimme the next one too." from convergence by curvatures.
"you will never love anyone, will you?" from foolish fragile spine by aruariandance
"how could i have loved you in a way that didnt hurt" from fig.25 by pagdiwa
and most recently, "you may be the heaviest thing i have held in my hands, the beating heart of you, but not all heavy things are burdens" from we got history by linearity
this might be hard but, if you could choose 3, what were your favourite fics to write. be it the process, the final product, reactions to it or anything (12/06/23)
this IS hard apparently i have too many fics...
let me give u 3 according to the parameters you yourself set then.
process: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412157 (like it was terrifying cause i had never written something at that scale and my writing is...clunky in hindsight. BUT. my choices in terms of characters and match-ups and bands and world-building?10/10. would always want to write more for this universe because it was so much fun sketching out the who's who in this and then letting the connections speak.
result: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715178 (its been two years. i would not go back and change a single word here. nothing was wasted imo. one needs to know the people very well to get my references since im not being very elaborate but i didn't need to and. yes. this.)
reactions: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45790846 (its very recent but the reactions have been legitimately soooo crazy that i couldn't not pick it. crazy spike in stats aside i just. am very very veryyyy gratified people got it? cause i was simply running off a random idea i got from a side ship on a drama and a textchain with a friend going nowhere.)
again, this was super fucking hard. not just cause three is a small number but also cause. idk. the process matters for the fic im choosing here for result too and vice versa! its all connected. and i feel like. im betraying my other fics that i love. but for now, here you are!! also thank you for this question, i really enjoyed trying to figure out which fic to say for which aspect!!
Do you have any character meta or headcanons or anything that you see show up in your writing a lot? (10/05/23)
im so terrible about putting down character meta all I have are cc/retrospring answers and tweets flying in the wind. but things that show up in my writing: at present the most obvious would be minghao as a lover of love, as a theme. i think I've either touched on it or on gone into heavy details on it in at least 5 fics that I can think of off the top of my head. minghao as a middle school poetry teacher is a beloved headcanon that's like an offshoot of the same idea, that minghao is obsessed with love.
another thing that comes up often is seokjin trying to run from his feelings. as much as i am afraid of falling into caricature category with that trope its one i relate to heavily and cant seem to avoid in my writing.
jungkook as a music producer is also something i seem to fall back on in a lot of my idolverse adjacent fics. actually the headcanon is that jungkook-woozi (and sometimes suga) are producer friends/work in an agency together. its not always obvious, or even written, but if either of these characters plays a music producer in my fic the chances are i Am thinking of it as a part of that larger universe.
what inspired you to start writing, however long ago that first beginning was? (08/03/2023)
my english teacher in 2nd and 3rd grade!! she made me love stories tbh. she used to have a really pretty voice and persona and shed make us read stories aloud in class and i used to love being called on to do it. also books tbh...i have a lot of people in my family who really encouraged me to start reading so by that time i had already devoured the basic enid blytons and all. i think it was a combination of all those things?
what is something in fic that you want to try? (like a writing style, a way of delivery, a new pairing, trope, au, fandom, etc). personally, i’m thinking ab trc aus or fics hehe (20/02/23)
omg trc is an eternal one for me but i will admit i have four trc aus already, maybe i need to look at something else lol. well i love the idea of playing with format. a magazine interview style fic, a story within a story, meta within idolverse are all things i have wanted to try. personally would love to write more fic for the kdramas i keep the watching and falling in love with, this year. fandom...i am kneedeep in enha fic as we speak, and well. we will see if i go there. otherwise twice fic for sure. it's been years since nahyo have occupied my brain and Yet...
pbbbbbb story time but i was kind of a writer too! in those olden days i remember i used to get called up in front of the class to recite any newest poem i'd written, my english teacher told me she used to check my answer sheets at home and her kids used to love the way i wrote. i was originally planning to be a writer butttttt unfortunately somewhere down the line as i grew up i lost that talent, that passion. i think it happened when i switched schools and the new school had mean people and i felt lost and intimidated and my creativity vanished as my self esteem plummeted. add to that the familial pressure to be an engineer rather than a english major. sad story but i felt like telling it to you because your words are really precious to me! and i may have lost my ability to write bfully but i still have immense love for bfully written words and yours are perfect and touching and lovely and i want to say thank you for existing and for listening to this little rant lol (21/12/22)
hello..hi.. im very grateful you thought you can share this with me! believe it or not i do understand! (once a law school dropout, always a law school dropout, in my culture lol nobody forgets that)and im sharing that because you shared something very vulnerable with me and also so that you know what i say next, doesn't come from this place of assuming higher moral ground and preaching at you.
i really wanted to be a writer when i was a kid. i wrote poems and stories and there was no certainty that i was good besides those general compliments from teachers but i wanted it. and then you know middle school happened, high school happened, in all the confusion of what stream to take, what degree to go for, i stopped thinking about it altogether and by the time i left school i mostly stopped writing except for one or two vent poems every year that i never shared with anyone.
fast forward to dropping out of law school, enrolling in a diff course (still not aimed at "becoming a writer") etc etc and most of my writing continued to be academic and technical. but somehow i started writing more and more again. through fic of course, which really is such a powerful joyous medium, i cannot praise it enough. i cannot express how much it means to me enough. and it took me three years of writing fic to go back to trying personal pieces again. which is all to say, if you enjoyed writing, if you think you may still find some joy in it. do it.
it will be terrible in the beginning--at least it was for me. my oldest fics on this ao3 profile is proof of it too. but it'll still be okay if you enjoyed doing it. you don't have to share it with anyone, it doesn't have to be a Thing is what i mean. becoming a published writer as a career is a Thing and a big deal. writing, just writing, never has to be. it becomes that, sure. but like. in the times that we're living in..and im thinking specifically of all the ai art discourse right now...but there's really no reason to let something that clearly brought you joy go because you think you lost the ability.
and im sorry if after saying i wont preach i ended up sounding like im doing just that but. i swear i didnt think i could be in a position to say this--five years ago. even three years ago. and you know. you can always be like welp that's not for me, and ignore this all. but. but. you could also not ignore it and give it a try someday when it doesn't feel like too much to do it. if not well that's okay too. thank you, truly, for sharing that with me. i see you! also thank you for reading my words!!!! sorry bout this essay, but not really <3
what was the first story you remember writing in your life (15/12/22)
you know i'll have to ask my folks about this cause i cant remember! i recall like essay/composition writing section on english grammar exams that i used to keep "for the last" so i could write my little mystery/fantasy whatever short stories id always get marked down for there. but that's much later like in middle school. earlier ones...damn i only remember my first couple poems! from when i was in 3rd and 4th grade! thank you for this question i need to investigate lol
How did you get into writing fic?(23/11/22)
by reading fic! really as simple as that. been writing 'stories' and 'poems' (very rough use of that word lol) since i was in the 3rd/4th standard so like...didnt take anything beyond realising fic existed to want to write it too.
hey! what types of things do you enjoy reading! (tropes/ships etc etc) (08/11/22)
hello! i think it changes a lot from time to time, mood to mood...as also according to fandoms and ships my preferences change.
as far as ships go i have a fair few beloved ones collected over the years- minho/kibum, yoongi/jin/jk and all its combos, namjoon/hoseok, chanyeol/kyungsoo, 97s gc combinations but mostly haokook right now, nayeon/jihyo, seulgi/wendy, mingyu/wonwoo, seokmin/jihoon...and all the many interesting crossover ships within kpop are so good to read! oikagehina (AND kagehina) and hualian (and fenglian) are probably my favourite non kpop ships at the moment, though i do enjoy reading kdrama/bl and other media fics as well..
tropes! i love a good divorce fic. i love established messy relationship stories far more than a slow burn/angst buildup to a relationship. love a good band fic. character study through relationship study is the niche i have grown to love in past two years (ao3 tonyang(kurusui)'s wonhan 'OBSESSION' really explains that genre)
i love themes exploring travel and self-discovery and i don't know like slice of life fics which distill so much into singular moments? i also love a good trope fake dating au or a bed-sharing fic. love magical realism when its incorporated all seamlessly. love dream exploration! think im forgetting many of my favourites because im put on the spot rn lol.
some of these themes also translate to my non fic reading but tbh prose has been steadily eclipsed by poetry in my general reading and that is a whole other question i guess.
what emotion do you write from? (04/10/22)
this question stumped me for a good four days because I've never really thought about it? but i think...all emotions? depends on what I'm writing, depends on my mental state. the emotion doesn't have to be positive for the writing to be good in my experience. and i dont just mean this in terms of writing as a vent for trauma or repressed emotion. i mean even something as inane as pettiness or spite can sometimes be really good motivators. while i cant say there is one specific emotion im always writing with, there is definitely a sense of relief when i finish a project which is what I'm always chasing, one way or the other...hope that answers your question?
Helloooo!!!! Firstly I just really wanted to say that I adore the way your writing brings pangs to my heart (in a really painful yet beautiful way). I was wondering what you thought of the idea of "right person wrong time" concept? (22/08/22)
Hiii thank you so much for saying that, and for reading my writing! It's always a thrill to be told that my writing is read, always! And oh my god, you're really preaching to the choir here, I'm obsessed with stories of relationships that don't work (something that might be obvious from my own stuff lol) and divorcefics as I like to call them and I think right person wrong time is at the heart of most of those stories. I love the acknowledgement of the things that go into making a relationship work--hell I love acknowledging that relationships are work. That there are no perfect people for perfect people and you could meet the person of your ideals and still be in a place in your life where they do not meet your principles/needs/whatever the heart of your life is at the time. And I also think that this can happen while you are in a relationship you know that the right person right time changes to wrong person/wrong time and you simply grow out of each other or your relationship together..god im rambling on and on but like this is one of my favourite genre of fic to write and read, im even really into divorce poetry lately! just so much to unoack you know?
How did you get so good at writing? (04/04/21)
😳😳😳 I'm-- wow. Thank you? I have no clue? Most of the things I put out here are not long-term pre-planned projects or anything so if you're looking for some guidelines that I follow I'm sorry to disappoint. And like. Good writing is relative, you may like what I write but someone else might not. I didn't work at becoming a 'good' writer or anything of that sort. Especially with fic, I just write whatever I feel like/ want to read myself.
But I will say, I used to read a lot of fiction growing up and read a lot of poetry and fic and whatever shorter media I can find now. I also listen to a lot of music, all the time. I do believe the media we consume impacts our creative choices/outlets a whole lot more than we realise! My choice of major also requires me to write A Lot though I sure hope my writing doesn't read like my boring academic essays. And oh most importantly, I listen in on all the conversations happening on my tl, among all the really really talented and inspiring writers I follow and pray something rubs off on me. Even when I'm too tired to read fic just scrolling through the tl teaches me a lot about the ways to tell a story everyday.
Thank you so much for compliment, anon, I hope my answer was somewhat helpful!
what’s your favorite part of writing? (25/03/21)
anon hiii im so sorry for leaving you hanging for a month there! tbh i havent been able to write for a while now and every time i tried to answer this i'd get stuck on the negative feelings...so im doing a sort of cop out by giving you half an answer, hope you don't mind. it's not my favourite part per se, but one of the things I love about writing is being able to connect media I love be it poetry or music or fiction to each other and to other tid bits of trivia about food or places or something else that I know or care about in the same /place/, if one can call a piece of writing that? it's a little selfish in that the specific codes to which these inclusions correspond only truly mean something to me- for instance, for writing (heart song) I read almost fifteen diff pieces of poetry and things about grief that I myself have written or read in the past but how those show up, or dont, in the actual fic is only really visible to me. that being said, when someone reading catches on to even one or two of these connections it makes me that much happier!
thank you for this question anon, I'll be thinking about it and maybe I'll give a fuller answer someday :))
what genre do you like reading most? is that also your favorite genre to write? (19/10/2020)
this is interesting but tough because everything i can say about books applies to at least three years ago. my wavering mental state has kept me from doing any kind of consistent book reading so what i have read in these years, that i can remember as of now: han kang's vegetarian (psychological fiction), i have human acts waiting to be read but brain :/, shyam selvadurai's funny boy (coming of age gay fiction, set in 1980s sri lanka), ocean vuong's on earth we're briefly gorgeous (epistolary, coming of age prose that reads like poetry) and mdzs/cql and tgcf by mxtx (danmei). i used to be majorly into fantasy fiction, still am even if im not actively reading much. i do not enjoy most of the classics of english literature. i will pretty much read any piece of fiction that grabs my attention, but i have a soft spot for coming of age stories and crime/historical/space fiction. nowadays, i find it much easier to read poetry, pieces from a collection or just poems scattered across the internet.
with fic, im open to almost every genre but I have been unable to read longfic more recently unless it's really got me hooked. a specific trope that i find myself to have really grown into, over time, is established relationship. with writing, i think so far everything i've written has felt experimental to me, on some level. maybe i'll always feel that way, like i dont have my own style. while there's so many ideas i have for stories set in a fantasy setting, all of them require time and commitment i dont find myself capable of giving anything right now.
which fic are you proudest of? (07/10/20)
blue side, the birthday fic I wrote for jungkook last year. it took the least amount of time for me to write and it is much shorter than a couple of my recent stuff but honestly dont see this answer changing for a long time because its the only fic I can go back to without heavy critiques or retrospective regret. even when im questioning or hating my stuff during a bad spiral, i dont Entirely hate this one.
