face the strange

I received an incredibly lovely anonymous message on Tumblr today, which I'll reproduce here with my response, in case anyone finds this rambling about my writing process useful or interesting!

I'm always so impressed at how fast (and how well!) you can write for different fandoms, it's something I truly aspire to be on the level of. I wanted to know if you have any kind of writing routine or tips, especially for perfectionists who worry about canon details and "getting it right"?

I was so honoured to get this ask! Thank you so, so much! I don't know what specific areas you're struggling with, other than perfectionism, but I'll talk a little about my personal writing approach in the hope that it will be helpful and/or coherent.

As a caveat, I mainly write short one-shots; 90% of the fics on my AO3 account are between 1,000 and 5,000 words. I don't know what sort of thing you personally write, but I doubt my 'dive in, zero planning, work it out as you go' approach would be much good for anything long.

Anyway! Here's how writing works for me.

Step one: get a fic idea! This part, unfortunately, is up to the whims of fate. There are ways I can try to inspire a fic idea, e.g. by revisiting the canon or looking through other people's prompts, but mostly it just happens when it happens.

As a one-shot writer, I find it helpful to have a single core concept that I can structure a story around, something straightforward enough to be expressed in a sentence or two. For example, the fic concepts I've noted down include 'Ace Attorney/Death Note: Phoenix Wright defends Light Yagami' (which became Always Believe) and 'Death Note: L abducts and imprisons Light to see if the killings stop' (which I never actually wrote, but someone should).

Step two: quick, write the idea down before it escapes! A lot of my ideas never get past this stage, but at least I have them written down, so I can pull inspiration from them in the future if necessary.

Step three: start writing the fic. This one's tough; I can't just sit in front of a blank page and decide to get started. I'll mentally toy with my fic concept as I go about my day, and hopefully a potential passage from the fic itself will eventually form in my head: an exchange of dialogue, for example. As soon as I have something, I'll write it down. Once I have a starting point, it's a lot easier to build on it.

I have friends who write in order, but I can't do it myself! I'll just write whatever scenes come to me in the order they come. The first thing I write will usually be partway through the fic, and I usually end up writing the end before the beginning. Speaking of which...

Step four: find the fic's direction. This is crucial; this is the thing that will actually enable me to finish a fic.

While I write, I'm always asking myself where this fic is going. What goal am I working towards; what would be a satisfying conclusion to the story I'm telling? Is there a theme developing as I write it, and, if so, what sort of ending would fit that theme?

Basically, from the moment I start writing a fic, I'm trying to work out how it ends. Once I've established an ending, everything else is easy.

Step five: use the ending as a guidepost to finish the fic. Everything moves a lot faster once I've found the ending. If I know what goal I'm working towards, the question 'what needs to happen after this scene?' will usually have a clear answer. I'm no longer writing whatever scenes pop into my head; I'm looking at what I've written and going 'okay, what do I need to add or change in order to reach the ending I want and make sure this story feels thematically consistent?'

Step six: great, you've written all the required story bits! But you've forgotten to write a beginning, and, because you've written things out of order, you now have to write the boring bits linking all of your disconnected scenes together. sigh, fiiiiiiiine.

Step seven: read through the finished fic in full to make sure everything holds together, make final tweaks.

Step eight: post!

(Step nine: refresh AO3 obsessively for three days straight to see whether anyone liked it, don't look at me.)

Perfectionism can be a tricky issue! I mainly write in videogame fandoms, which helps when I'm obsessing over getting canon details right; it's usually easy to find a Let's Play online and track down exactly the moment I need. It's always a nasty shock when I need to check a detail in a canon where those details aren't as readily available!

If I'm having trouble confirming a canon detail, to be honest, my usual strategy is to rework things so that the detail is no longer required in the fic. For example, if I'm unable to establish the layout of the room a scene is set in, I'll either make my descriptions vague enough to bypass the issue or set the scene in a different location. It's not always doable - sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and do the research - but you can save yourself a lot of time by being willing to go, 'Wait, if I just cut this line about the Doonsword of Gongolblath, I won't have to look up how it was forged.'