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

[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.