And Another Thing...
Dec. 27th, 2010 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesObligatory Disclaimer. I write things in a way that works for me. It may work for you. It may not. Writing is funny like that.
![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
yuuo once asked me how I could stay in the Slayers fandom and keep writing. My first Slayers fic on ff.net is from May 2002, meaning I've been writing in the fandom for eight and a half years. Seriously, that's a third of my life, and maybe 75% of my fanfiction-writing career. And it's been roughly constant, or at least happening -- there's nothing in my ff.net account from '05 and '06, but if I head over to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
invoking_urania, I can find fic I never crossposted (or delayed).
So, I got to thinking, 'how do I come up with ideas'? Just... in general. And I realized it was from reading a boatload of things.
A lot of my fics seem to come as responses to fandom.
Some of them directly. Things like exchanges and answering prompts is easy. But also things like responding to the fandom itself. In the Shadows of the Flames came from a response to OC Dragonslayer fics. For that matter, Monster Slayer came from the resurrect-Dilandau trope. Both of these are kind of taking the piss out of fandom. Or, if you want to be more charitable, me trying to do a fandom cliche in a different way. And, hell, there's a lot of fantasy cliches that make great jumping off points for Slayers fic: Wrath of the Volcano Goddess! was kind of this. [Bad username or site: Earthstar Chan @ livejournal] gave the prompt of islanders worshiping Lina Inverse as a goddess after she blows something up, but then I kind of decided to not play it straight but poke at it a bit.
But part of that is being in the fandom to know what to respond to. Sites like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants and bad_rpers_suck really helps me here, since a lot of times I like to think 'Could anyone do that terrible idea well? Could it be me?'.
And some of it is positive things. Like talking about the nature of a world, or a character will give me an idea that I can explore through fic. Or seeing a prompt might get my brain spiraling into odd corners and suddenly I want to write genderswap of the main character.
(It doesn't have to be fandom. Reading stories about Tibetan Buddhism's interactions with China or the Cherokee writing system has given me plot bunnies for fanfiction.)
It's kind of why I view writing as a social thing. Because I might put the words down on paper alone, but the steps before and after really take some type of interaction.
yuuo once asked me how I could stay in the Slayers fandom and keep writing. My first Slayers fic on ff.net is from May 2002, meaning I've been writing in the fandom for eight and a half years. Seriously, that's a third of my life, and maybe 75% of my fanfiction-writing career. And it's been roughly constant, or at least happening -- there's nothing in my ff.net account from '05 and '06, but if I head over to invoking_urania, I can find fic I never crossposted (or delayed). So, I got to thinking, 'how do I come up with ideas'? Just... in general. And I realized it was from reading a boatload of things.
A lot of my fics seem to come as responses to fandom.
Some of them directly. Things like exchanges and answering prompts is easy. But also things like responding to the fandom itself. In the Shadows of the Flames came from a response to OC Dragonslayer fics. For that matter, Monster Slayer came from the resurrect-Dilandau trope. Both of these are kind of taking the piss out of fandom. Or, if you want to be more charitable, me trying to do a fandom cliche in a different way. And, hell, there's a lot of fantasy cliches that make great jumping off points for Slayers fic: Wrath of the Volcano Goddess! was kind of this. [Bad username or site: Earthstar Chan @ livejournal] gave the prompt of islanders worshiping Lina Inverse as a goddess after she blows something up, but then I kind of decided to not play it straight but poke at it a bit.
But part of that is being in the fandom to know what to respond to. Sites like
fanficrants and bad_rpers_suck really helps me here, since a lot of times I like to think 'Could anyone do that terrible idea well? Could it be me?'. And some of it is positive things. Like talking about the nature of a world, or a character will give me an idea that I can explore through fic. Or seeing a prompt might get my brain spiraling into odd corners and suddenly I want to write genderswap of the main character.
(It doesn't have to be fandom. Reading stories about Tibetan Buddhism's interactions with China or the Cherokee writing system has given me plot bunnies for fanfiction.)
It's kind of why I view writing as a social thing. Because I might put the words down on paper alone, but the steps before and after really take some type of interaction.
