kalliel

elwarre

1. What are some writing tics that persist in your work but that you dislike?

I'm not sure I can answer this. I mean, if I dislike something, and it persistently shows up in my writing, I should be able to recognize it and stop it, right? This feels more like something I should ask the reader - what tics do I have, that I don't realize I have, and I need to stop?

Well, okay, here's one that I do recognize and can't seem to stop. I seem to find it hard to write Sam. This makes no sense. I'm a devout Sam!Girl. But for some reason, every time I start a Sam story, Dean takes over. Is it because the show usually only gives us Sam as seen through Dean's eyes? Take Coda, for example. Coda started out as a story about Sam - the whole thing sprang from one sentence, "Sam hasn't eaten a steak since he got out of Hell." And it turned into a tale of Dean's trauma and angst, and by the time it got to Sam and his steak, I'm not sure how many readers even got that Dean wasn't reacting to the steak, but to his realization of what he'd done to Sam by trying to get him to eat it. Oddly enough, once I wrote the story from Dean's POV, I was able to go back and write it from Sam's. But Dean's story insisted on being told first.

(I mean, I wrote a Mystery Spot story from Dean's POV. I took one of the few really good pro-Sam, Sam-centric episodes and made it all about Dean. Who does this? What kind of Sam!Girl does this?)

2. What does your id want? Do you ever give in?

My id wants to do things I can't do. My id wants to write beautiful, surreal, dark, dreamy things. But my superego says "Sorry, dear, we're simply incapable of that. Don't even try."

3. You have to erase one of your fics from existence forever. Which one and why?

Probably my first one. It's not bad, per se. I just think it could have been a lot better.

4. How much do you trust the reader?

Either too much or not enough. I worry that I'm leaving things unclear. I worry that I'm explaining too much, to the point that it's boring or insulting. For example, in Til the sandman he comes, I really wanted to have Sam explicitly say that this must really be Dean, because Dean knows the words to the song that Sam doesn't know. But that felt like overkill. Until I posted it, and then I was all, damn, this is too subtle. No one's going to get it.

So, I guess the answer to that question is "I have no idea."

5. Have you ever written anything you would’ve backclicked if it’d been written by anyone else?

No. I stay in my comfort zone; I don't write my squicks.

(And yet I have this Wincest drabble bunny in my head that will not go away, dammit, and I may have to exorcise it by writing it. Possibly under an assumed name.)

(As if Caranfindel wasn't an assumed name.)

6. What’s your guilty pleasure as a writer?

Writing itself is a guilty pleasure for me.

7. Be honest: are you mean to your faves, or do you go easy on them?

That depends on what you mean by "go easy" on them. Am I a cruel, capricious god who unleashes whump and despair onto characters I love? Absolutely. Do I say mean things about them? Do I blame Sam Winchester for anything, ever? No. (But I do let him blame himself. Hence the despair.)

8. What parts of writing a fic do you think are a chore?

The mechanics. Formatting, putting it online. Writing a summary. God, I hate summaries. I tend to make mine vague because I don't want to give away too much of the story (and once or twice I have seen a rec to one of my fics that completely gives it away, and I'm torn between being absolutely thrilled that someone would care enough to rec it, and distraught that they also spoiled the ending) but then I think too-vague summaries are annoying, so, yeah. Summaries. Hate 'em.

9. Are there any unintentional trends in your writing?

Run on sentences, sentences that just go on and on, barely giving the reader a chance to take a breath, with something repeated at the end, repeated because it's important, because the character really feels it.

And fragments.

"And clunky dialog," she said.

"Clunky? What do you mean?" he replied.

"Like this," she said softly. "Lots of said."

"Well, if you know that's bad," he smiled, "why don't you do something about it?"

She sighed. "It's not that easy."

(Nothing is that easy. Ever.)

(Did I mention internal monologue? In parentheses, or italics, or both? Is it a trend? A habit? A crutch? An affectation? A useful device?)

And the language, jesus fuck, the language. It's goddamn inappropriate, is what it is. Although, to be fair, I think this what the characters would sound like if they weren't on the CW, you know? There's no way Dean would yell at someone about their "freaking" apple pie, for fuck's sake.

(Also, that one's not actually unintentional. But it's definitely a trend.)

10. Have you ever intentionally written a character as OOC to fit with a kink/prompt/story idea?

Does Evil!Sam count? Because Sam Winchester is sweetness and light and everything that is good and beautiful, so obviously Evil!Sam is OOC. No matter how hot he may be.