The 'ask me' meme (aka 'give me something to write about' meme)

[snorkackcatcher]

From everybody and their pet okapi:

Ask me anything you want about any of my stories: how I thought of the idea, what I did to write it, what I was thinking when I wrote it, what I feel about it now, what I wish I'd done differently, etc. Or ask any of the characters from particular stories something you want to know, and get an answer from them. Or both.

Because I need to get back into the habit of posting stuff more often. :) (Stories are at snorkfics.)

Comments

[magnetic-pole.livejournal.com]

Hm. This is specifically about any of your fics, but how did you start writing fic in the first place? I don't think I know that story. M.

[snorkackcatcher]

The usual fairly mundane way, really ... When I got into the HP fandom (as opposed to merely being a big fan of the books) around the time OotP came out, I spent quite a lot of time speculating about characters, clues, plotlines and suchlike matters on the Mugglenet forums ('Chamber of Secrets'). After a few months it dawned on me that it might be another couple of years before there was more HP, and I needed a fix, dammit. :)

I'd seen some postings on a CoS 'Snape POV' thread that were really basically fanfic, including some excellent ones by a notably sensible and perceptive poster on the forums named Lady deMimsy. So I wandered over to the small fanfic section of CoS, which I'd previously dismissed without much thought as silly and banal, and after a few duff stories was lucky enough to stumble upon more Lady deMimsy stuff which was excellent. (We all know her now by the later pen-name a_t_rain.) So I began to get interested in reading fanfic.

As for writing it -- well, I'd always rather fancied myself as someone who could swing a mean keyboard if they tried (despite not having actually done much writing, let alone fiction writing), and thought vaguely about trying it out as it looked fun. A contest CoS held provided the excuse to actually do it (with passable results), then I started drafting some ideas for a longer story (everyone on CoS seemed to be writing sagas). A throwaway remark in a fic I read led to what I thought was a good idea for a short 'Remus mourns Sirius' story (hey, how was I to know how clichéd that would be?) which was received well at CoS, and eventually I started posting the aforementioned longer fic Nymphadora Tonks and the Liquor of Jacmel, selling the idea of expending all this effort to myself with the excuse that it would constitute a free creative writing course with feedback thrown in. NTLJ was quite vaguely plotted to start with and dragged on a long time before it was finished -- but in the meantime I'd started to write a few other ideas, and post elsewhere, and think of myself as a Proper Fanfic Writer -- until eventually the thing just carried on under its own momentum!

[magnetic-pole.livejournal.com]

I forgot to reply to mention just how much I'd enjoyed reading this. I always love this stories--you're one of those folks who's always seemed (to me, at least!) to be such a veteran, so it's especially interesting to hear how you started. Thanks! M.

[snorkackcatcher]

Say, lady, you callin' me old? :)

Thanks for wading through it though! :D

[plaid-slytherin.livejournal.com]

The Open Sea and the Sky was the first thing of yours I read and I've always wondered how you arrived at that idea. I love extrapolating on little canon details and this is a great example of that.

[snorkackcatcher]

Ah yes, that one. It kind of shows what happens when you get into the habit of thinking about fanfic plots in random circumstances!

As I think I've mentioned occasionally, I collect stamps (well, mostly postal history now actually -- old letters etc telling the history of the posts). At one point I was attending a society meeting at which a speaker was showing her collection of Australian airmails, and during her talk she supplemented the 'first flight covers' by going into quite a lot of interesting detail about the Australian pioneer aviator Charles Kingsford Smith, including photos, tales of the flights themselves and so on. Sadly, that only reminded me that there was a throwaway line about the 'first transatlantic broom flight' in QTTA, and set me thinking that drawing on the experiences of the aviation pioneers for background colour might make an interesting fic.

It was just one of the many odd ideas that I'd vaguely sketched mentally but never done anything with, until I was struggling for a springtime_gen story -- this was a mental sketch reasonably near the request, if you squinted. I'd used the idea of wizards being alarmed and impressed by the development of aircraft flight before, as a throwaway line, and it gave me a good peg to hang the story on.

The general form of the thing came about because when I looked up QTTA for background and did a few calculations based on the details of speed etc mentioned, I realised that such a flight would perforce be quite a lengthy one -- a few days' duration -- and that let me bring in the 'feel' of a pioneer effort. The competing broom companies in QTTA also fit in neatly as a subplot -- one of the nice things about writing this fic was that the bits I needed to include from canon and RL actually did fit together neatly. The back-and-forth between the flight itself and the background, poetic and prosaic as it were, wasn't planned as such -- it just felt like the 'natural' way to tell the story.

[malinbe.livejournal.com]

Anything you want to tell about The Liquor of Jacmel will make me happy.

[snorkackcatcher]

Ha! You've just reminded me that I had a longish 'DVD commentary' for that story part-written a while ago. I'll get it finished and post it separately, is that OK?

[malinbe.livejournal.com]

Sure! I look forward to it.