Writing Mechanics

[awanderingbard]

I was inspired by donutsweeper's anatomy of a drabble post and it got me thinking.

Name any story I've written or character I've written about and I'll tell you 3 OOC things about it/him/her. What gave me the idea for the story, how it changed from the original, what I took out or couldn't get in, who the character is based on, etc. The mechanics of writing it.

Feel free to ask for a couple and also fee free to post this in your journal so I can ask you stuff too. :-)

Comments

[joyfulfeather.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm curious about Miranda. Also the kids and/or any of the mini!dresden fics, but if that's too broad, just go with Miranda. :)

I want to do this, but I've already posted four times today! *debates*

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Miranda
1. Miranda's name was chosen because of 'The Tempest' ("Oh brave new world that has such people in it") and because the nickname of Mira, is Slavic for 'peace', which I thought she would be Harry's calming element, before she died of course. She was just a name until people liked Family Dynamics so much that I ended up having to come up with more of her to know what the kids might be like.

2. Her original profession was a nurse, until Amalie pointed out that 'Her Kind of Magic' (the first fic I ever wrote, for the first challenge at flashfic) would be a great intro to her. I ended up not going with that idea because if he had helped her out, she wouldn't be a one night stand, which is how I wanted her to be. But the idea of her being a violinist stuck with me, and that's what she ended up with. I haven't been able to work that expressly into a fic yet (though she sort of mentions it in Addicted). I liked the idea of there being that element of 'magic' to what she does that Harry doesn't understand and vice versa for what he does.

3. Originally, she was going to have been killed by a drunk driver and the 'monsters' Fay was afraid of, was from overhearing her grandmother refer to the driver as one. I ended up changing it to go along with that 'history repeating' theme I was going for (Harry's mother was killed by the supernatural) and because I thought it would cause Harry to be more uncertain about his job and more guilty about having inadvertently caused her death.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

tell me about Ray's parents please

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

1. I don't think he actually has one, but in my mind, I heard Damian speaking with, like, a Polish accent. I'm not sure why. I haven't seen the episodes he appears in in awhile, so I had to go by transcripts and his accent was just there in my head.

2. Barbara's fussiness is based on a friend's mother, who is so the classic mother. She's like, 'oh, I see there's only one cookie left, I better bake you some more'. I picture her as being a big knitter and constantly sending socks to him in the mail, worried for her son in the 'big city'.

3. Barbara also struck me as someone who doesn't understand technology very well. My grandmother, who had a stroke wasn't quite all there, used to call from the nursing home and carry on conversations with the answering machine. That sort of 'oh my goodness, it's so advanced" sort of mentality.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

lol- I can totally see the socks!!!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Tell me something about writing the Christmas Quartet, and/or "The Right Shoes," please?

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Christmas Quartet
1. Started out as a response to the 'light' challenge at flashfic. I was trying to work in the candles and stuff, but I didn't feel it had enough 'light' to it, so I canned it. But, I picked it up again because I wanted to finish it and its my most popular story, I think.

2. Simple Gifts originally began with Murphy and Anna in the car, with Anna complaining about having to visit Harry and asking why she couldn't just stay in the car. I scrapped that to get the story happening more quickly. Also, the gift exchange originally happened at the table during hot chocolate, but it stopped the story in its tracks, so I moved it more towards the end. There's a line left in from that part that one of these days I'm going to take the time to fix. It has someone standing up who wasn't sitting down, I think.

3. In Nostalgia, the concept of Murphy parading the Matroyshka dolls around comes from my love of ordering around chess pieces when I was little. We have a chess board that nobody plays, with magnetic pieces and I used to organize them and have the two sides talk to each other and stuff.

Right Shoes

1. Born out of my loathing for shoe shopping. I have rather wide feet with a screwed up arch and a weird muscle on the side of them that I got from pointing my toes so much with all the dance lessons I took. I hate shoe shopping. Also comes from my habit of crying/fussing/complaining about something completely unrelated as a kid while my mother patiently peeled back the layers until she got to the real reason I was upset.

2. Mal, as I think I've told you, is based on my Scottie, Shilling. Shilling sort of wanders around randomly, looking happy and being random. I wanted that feeling of Mal just sort of wandering by with a box on his head, doing his own thing while Harry is trying to sort out Fay's problems.

3. Probably one of the easiest fics I've written. I think I wrote it in one sitting and only changed two lines to before posting: added 'probably very boyish of me' and added 'she let him keep his box helmet too' to get the idea that Mal still had it on his head.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Hee! My dad had a fancy chess set I used to play with--the knights were these incredibly detailed Roman soldiers on horseback. I'd forgotten about that!

Also comes from my habit of crying/fussing/complaining about something completely unrelated as a kid while my mother patiently peeled back the layers until she got to the real reason I was upset.

Oh, yeah, my mom was good at that, too!

Hee--I love Mal with his box helmet.

[gusthemoose.livejournal.com]

Why does Harry hold so much appeal to you? And Harry in general for your fics.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

I don't know why Harry appeals to me so much. I think its because I love someone who is sort of bumbling and awkward, who often doesn't say or do the right thing, but always ends up saving the day in the end. In the books, I loved that Harry isn't infallible by any means - he's always hurt pretty badly by the end of the books. I liked that, even though he has super powers, he really struggles with the mundane parts of life and isn't devilishly handsome and strong. He's just a regular guy, who has a great sense of humour and can do magic.

Harry

1. Harry is by far the easiest character for me to write. Writing from his POV is never hard, his voice just makes sense to me for whatever reason.

2. His voice is very similar to another character whom I love, Archie Goodwin from the Nero Wolfe novels and TV show. In fact, most of Archie's lines I could give to Harry and vice versa and they wouldn't sound odd. I sometimes pull stuff out of old Nero Wolfe fanfic that I wrote when I was 14 or so that never got published because I cannot write a good mystery, to use for Harry since it works so well.

3. I don't think I would love Harry so much were Paul Blackthorne not so adorable in his mannerisms. I always try to include some of Paul's Harry's movements, like the pointing or those boyish smiles or whatever.

[gusthemoose.livejournal.com]

All reasons I can agree with and understand completely. Especially Paul Blackthorne being adorable. So adorable.

[joonscribble.livejournal.com]

How did Somnus come to be?

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

Somnus

1. The idea came after reading Grave Peril, about dreams and how Harry could almost control and get inside his and talk to the people. I thought it would be cool if he had to go into someone else's dream in order to save them.

2. The first chapter I wrote was the Murphy dream sequence, in one sitting. I wrote the rest of the story around that and then went back and tweaked that chapter to fit the rest of the story. It was never supposed to be as epic as it got, lol.

3. Changes and tweaks made:
- started out in my mind as being a very Harry/Murphy fic and then Susan suddenly appeared and it went very Harry/Susan for awhile, until I decided to send Susan to New York and got the Harry/Murphy back on track.

- Harry was originally going to do more dream diving after Murphy woke up, to wake the others and Jake was going to be able to help. Scrapped the idea because the flow of the story stopped completely with it, I didn't want to have to deal with the 'if Jake can do it, maybe Bob can do it to and that would be weird' issue, and it seemed more reasonable for Harry to be let off by the Council for just going into one dream instead of three or four. The universal consciousness idea to wake them up came as I was falling asleep one night. I was very pleased since I was horrendously stuck. I still have half a chapter with him in Catalina's dream.

- Gave Mrs. Forrester a bit of a bigger role after Ama liked her and Forrester interacting, as well as bringing Jake back for a lot more than he was originally going to do. Diego and Rosario Hernandez got a bigger part too and Nick Myers got a reprieve at the end, he was originally going to be a bad guy.

[joonscribble.livejournal.com]

Oooh....I really like the changes/tweaks section. It's so interesting to see where the story COULD have gone.