Hi! Thank you for reading my ask. I really admire your work and your style of writing. I had a few questions to ask about the same:
1. How long have you been writing for? How do you think your writing style has improved?
2. I really love your style of examining a minor detail in the main story, and elaborating it into a whole fic- for example, the mentions of Orion Black, or the dynamic in the Black family. I want to write a fic for a different fandom, but I'm not sure as to what conflict I should centre it on/ how to explore further into the fandom (even though I have a lot of information- as it is a historical fiction movie). How do you pick the conflict(s) your story revolves around?
3. Do you have any tips on writing characters who have multi-layered levels of thinking (Ex: Voldemort) which you don't want to keep narrating to the audience, but you also want to show them the depth of their internal thoughts? This gets difficult when I'm writing from the perspective of the character (as I want to overexpose all their thinking) and from the perspective of the other character (where they just seem to look 2 dimensional, broody and make sudden decisions).
4. You write both short and long fics with so much depth. Is there a difference in your method of outlining each? How do you manage to sustain your motivation to write a long fic? Do you not get exhausted / disinterested?
Thanks for your time! I apologise if this was a long ask
I've been writing all my life, I suppose. Of course, I didn't publish back then, and it was in my native language at first, and then slowly I would do my best to write in languages I was learning, as an exercise in improving my vocabulary. I would say my writing style has improved since I was 10 haha, but it's not necessarily very different at its core. I learned more words, I learned how to pace better, I grew up and learned more about life and people and that is a huge help, but looking back, my style has always been the same, as in I like character driven stories and don't really care about my prose as long as it gets the point across. I don't really care about describing how my characters look, how their clothes or homes look, I like to focus on how they feel and relate to others and I always disliked using convoluted sentences or paragraphs so I avoid those. I just like/do best with brevity, I guess. I love using fewer words to express very large ideas.
How do I pick the conflicts? That's a good question, since I rarely think about that when starting a story. The first thing I think about it's the characters I want to write about, and knowing who they are usually will lead me to the conflict of the story. I never thought about Orion Black or Black family drama when I started It runs in the blood. I thought: oh, Voldemort and Sirius would be very hot and possibly amazing drama and angst, so I started writing. (first thing I wrote for It runs was a sex scene lol, and it only took me 200k words to get to it as I started actually publishing. Keep in mind, when I first started the story I thought it will have 100k AT MOST. boy was I wrong)And, of course, because I was writing Sirius, his family dynamic made itself known, because it's a part of his life, so obviously I had to write his family into the story. And then, for his family to make sense, I needed to expand on their society at large, and how his family would from in that medium. And there you go, 600k and going lol. Life (and fiction) is made by 'minor' details. But I would say Orion or the Black family are not at all minor details when you write Sirius Black. They are quite major things in his life that formed him as a person, regardless of what flavour of Sirius one wants to write (good, evil, neutral blah blah).
All characters should 'have multi-layered levels of thinking'! At least in my view. All humans have that, hence all characters in a story should also have it. So my tip, as always, would be: write a human being. "the depth of internal thought" as you put it, should be present without having to overexpose it; imagine when you tell a story to your friends about someone else you know; you don't have to narrate to them the depth of internal thoughts of that person. That's how you should also write any character, as if you're just speaking about them to a friend of yours. As for when you're writing from that character's POV, it's the same thing; they would think in the same manner you think (I do NOT mean political opinions or preferences, I simply mean the thought process itself is very similar to all human beings.) You don't narrate to yourself what YOU think, you just think. So does your POV character. It's also important to remember that when you are using the character as a POV, their perspective will always be limited, and thus, often, unreliable. YOU, the writer, are omniscient about the story, but your POV character is definitely not. Unless of course you use omniscient perspective as a narration method, but I have no experience with that, so I can't give any tips. So I guess best tip for writing POV characters is...know your character very well. Know everything about them. That will of course help you write the thinking process. Know what they want to achieve, what their personality is like, what they fear the most- and so, their internal thoughts should be easy to grasp in all manner of situation you place that character in. Don't think 'but will the reader understand this, will it make sense to the reader?''; think, instead 'does this make sense for my character?' For example, I know (hope) that Voldemort, since you used him as an example, makes no sense to my readers or to me, but he makes sense to himself. And because the reader and me are omniscient, as opposed to Voldemort, it will still makes sense to us, in the grand scheme of things, because we also know the rest of the story, even if Voldemort doesn't. When Voldemort kept asking Sirius about Harry before that Halloween, WE knew why he was asking, and the prophecy was coming, but Sirius had no way of knowing that, so he very easily dismissed those questions as simply oddities or fears that Voldemort might think Sirius would want kids now that he's around baby Harry. It has to make sense for your POV character, not for anyone else.
I don't outline my stories (that's how I end up with monster chapters and monster stories, because I just let them take me places). The only difference between a long story or a one shot is what moment I want to capture. For a one-shot, it's one specific thing, that wouldn't require a lot of set up. For example, one night of forest sex between Greyback and Sirius doesn't require much set up other then : have them in the woods and make them have sexy sex. For a Voldemort and Sirius fall in love, you obviously need a LOT of set up. As for the depth (and I am very happy to hear you consider my short one shots also have depth â¤ď¸) I believe it always comes from the fact that even if I don't write it all in that fic, I still know my characters; Greyback in my short fic has no written backstory, but it is in my head, so even if he only has like 5 lines of dialogue, they do come from a coherent place, because I have his whole backstory and personality in my head, so he acts in a consistent manner, even if it is only for a couple paragraphs.
All in all, I know it's a very cliche saying, but no less true for me: 'the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself' (William Faulkner). So that's how I pick my conflicts. I'm not interested in external conflicts so much, I only use them as a prop for what I am most interested in: the internal conflict of the heart. That's also why I write character driven stories, and I am less interested in general, epic conflicts like wars, or politics or whatever (though, of course, you need to include those as well, to set the scene in which your character can flourish/wilt).
How do I sustain my motivation? It's probably due to the lovely feedback I receive. Some of my fics have amazing engagement, and it makes me want to share more of my story since it seems it brings so much joy to people.
I do get exhausted, hence why I take longer breaks now between writing.
