BRING FORTH THE DAWN

i won't lie my process is weird and lowk hell on earth. i like to script the entire chap/almost the entire chap in advance before i start writing (i.e. i write ALL the dialogue first, then when it's time to write i'm only filling in prose, descriptions, etc) i usually script on either 1. notes on my phone, i brainstorm a lot while driving so i do talk to text (and have all the bnha characters as contacts on my phone so it doesn't get their names wrong LMFAO) and i also like to hand-write dialogue on my ipad, idk for some reason that just gets the brain juices flowing (pictured: some scripting from shouto's song!) i SWEAR i have good handwriting haha but when i'm scripting i just want to get ideas flowing so it's true chicken scratch lmao. i usually spend about 1-2 weeks doing this depending on how much time i have. then when it's time to fully write, i write best in the mornings, so i'll usually get up anywhere between 4-6am and write until i need to go do smth else (work, going to the barn, etc) which is anywhere from 4-8 hours. so. weird and hellish and awful and miserable but it WORKS so i'm not gonna change it until i need to for some reason haha. i use music to brainstorm a lot -- usually the music will have nothing to do with the scene itself, my brain chemicals are weird man. been listening to a lot of vocaloid lately so miku will be singing about being cheerful and having fun meanwhile shouto is talking about how he wanted to khs to be with his dead brother touya. i tend to think of BIG big ideas on long trips, such as flights, long drives, and long train rides. can't remember the last time i took a 5+ hour trip and tbtd didn't have some crazy new development added lol. hope this helps!!

hilarious contacts pic & chicken scratch scripting notes:

yeah this question's fine! i dont rlly consider it much of a spoiler since tbtd isn't tagged as MCD on ao3 -- no, none of the league members die in tbtd. some other characters do die, but no one i'd consider a protagonist (which includes the league, since they're major characters actively being saved/helped!) the only deaths are characters i'd consider actual antagonists, i.e. characters who are actively working against the goals of dawn trio + the themes of the fic. hope this helps ease ur soul!! lol

yo!! honestly, solo shouto was my plan all along. i never considered the idea of tokoyami working alongside them in this fic. as much as i like him, i LOVE shouto, and i really wanted to focus on the dynamic and development of just shouto and hawks without splitting the focus between hawks and another student, especially since shouto and hawks had SO much potential in canon but it never got explored. thanks for the question!!

SDFGHJK this is so fucking funny. it wasn't something i'd thought about before but i'd consider adding it just for you, anon. it's very them lol

oooh this is a fun one!! i LOVEEE aizawa to bits and he definitely has a key supporting role in the fic. shouto at this point suspects aizawa Knows about his past, so i'll confirm here that he does in fact Know. not the details ofc since no one has ever explicitly told him, but he's VERY observant and has worked with kids for many years so he's got an eye for these sorts of things. i think he'd empathize with hawks too, but since hawks has done some....unsavory things, there would for sure be more complexity in that relationship. i will say that the scene in ch9 between shouto and aizawa where shouto asks aizawa to stop him at all costs if things get BAD bad was definitely there for a reason. aizawa is shouto's emergency contact, after all. <3 

ooh this is another good one!! i do have a lot of it planned chapter-by-chapter, but for things in the distant future (like symbol of fear arc and beyond) it's more rough bullet points of things that will happen without being neatly sorted into chapter numbers. regarding my writing schedule, i try to post a chapter every 2-4 weeks! i think the most common time frame has been every ~3 weeks for now, which is like....half a week break, 1.5weeks scripting, then 1 week writing, though there has been some wiggle room for when life gets really busy, and some 2-week turnarounds have been for when smth POSSESSED me and i couldn't stop myself lmao. as for my writing process, this question got asked already and the answer is the first one under the cut! hope it helps :))

KJHGFDSDFG IM SORRYYYYYY. yeahh the past few chapters have been kinda suffering-heavy (and ch11 is…..not any better at ALL) but there will be some lighter moments in infiltration arc as part of dabi's "plan" to be nice to shouto, as well as shouto bonding with the league (which is sweet if you ignore his deep nauseating guilt at starting to genuinely like and empathize with them…) as for my favorite chapter, ohhh thats a tough one!! if i had to pick chapters as a whole, it would probably be between 4 and 10. as for favorite moments so far, it would be the fight & hospital scene in ch4, touya reveal #1 in ch6, the dabihawks scene in the hpsc archive in ch7, the dabi & miruko moment during the hpsc incident in ch8, the soba brothers hug in ch9, and shouto's song + the soba brothers argument in ch10. :) OH AND the scene at UA in ch1 has an extremely special place in my heart. it's also the first scene i ever wrote in the whole fic -- specifically when endvr shows up & scares shouto. so yeah that one is also v precious to me. i'd love to hear my readers' favorite chapters and moments too honestly, it's always so cool hearing what resonated with people individually!!

kjhgfd this is a good question that has perhaps an odd answer. i...don't edit much. this isn't something i share often, but i don't particularly like the act of writing itself; but i love having written something i'm proud of, so the suffering is well worth it. because of that, when i write something, i want to be DONE with it haha so i rarely go back and change things significantly. in my entire 6-year writing career, i've rewritten a grand total of two scenes. don't get me wrong -- i truly believe in the advice "you can't edit a blank page" where writing *something* you can edit later on is better than never writing at all. however, it's important to remember that not even the best of advice is universal!! while i think it's great advice, it simply doesn't work for me. that said, i do have an editor!! the amazing @ukingk24 <3 i won't post anything without it being beta'd first. he looks for copy edits (typos, etc), general flow, awkward sentences, anything that doesn't make perfect sense etc. he's also very helpful when it comes to piecing chapters together and being a phenomenal sounding board for all my deranged rambling -- he's the person who knows the most about this story by far, our calls are always spoiler city lmfao. i met him in the discord server for my jjk fic and he always had the best fic theories: we slowly became close friends, and he's literally flown to visit me before and crashed on my couch lmao. he's truly invaluable to me and idk what i'd do without him <3 so even though i don't do huge edits, his help is still extremely important to me!! as for what a line should have -- i kinda go by vibes for this, which is something that came with years of practice. emotional conversations tend to have more emotional prose too, but i also like peppering in colorful descriptions during less intense moments too. things like varying sentence structure, general lyrical flow, are also good to vary throughout a chapter to make it more engaging to read :) i never really watched tutorials on writing or read guides or anything, but i did read a LOT in the past and it helped me discover what i like and don't like. after that, practice practice practice made my writing style what it is today! 

yo!! ahh so glad to hear tbtd is your fave <3 this might be a bit too big of a question for me to share spoilers about, but i will say this: soba brothers do find out about hawks' past eventually, through one way or another haha. how could i the evil writer pass up something as devastating as THIS reveal….i simply couldnt

lmaooo omg ur in luck pal. dabi is THEE possessive character to me, that man violently clings onto ANYTHING that he sees as anything remotely "his." he's about to seriously brain chemical himself with the repeated my brother my student my soldier my perfect revenge plan my dsdfghjk [crashes out] i'm literally living for the fact that NO ONE has any faith in dabi to not getting attached during his new Super Evil "i'm gonna make him care about me and then rip it all away!!" plan. the fakest idgafer there ever was. he's about to cosmically play himself my friends

RUMIIIII MY BELOVED!!! that's a great comparison actually, she does have a role similar to aizawa! she's a very important supporting character and her part is absolutely vital starting fairly soon actually, lol. so she'll definitely be interacting lots more with all members of dawn trio in the future, at some point or another :) the whole squad of Dawn Trio Is Sus Knowers (rumi, aizawa, bkg) have some of the most crucial supporting roles in the fic, with especially bkg being what i'd consider a secondary main character, along with tomura in the future. hope this helps!!

awww thank u!! i'm honored you've been following my work for so long!! i think a lot of the writing volume stuff is the power of sheer brainrot haha, i just get SUPER excited and impatient to put certain scenes out in the world so i have a lot of motivation. having an amazing fanbase of dedicated readers helps, too!! knowing others are excited and eager to read more makes me eager to provide and share and discuss it with everyone :) as for keeping all the plot threads strung together, that's largely another product of brainrot haha and brainstorming scenes in the DISTANT future and piecing backwards what needs to happen/where characters need to be emotionally in order for those scenes to occur. i think that reverse engineering helps a lot with plot consistency, because then everything fits together nicely by design :) as for my writing process, that's already been answered in other asks above!

ooh this is a good question!! and perhaps not one i've given as much thought to as i'd like, despite being a huge shouto stan. i feel like other people probably have way better theories and ideas than i do. i'll give it my best shot though! i mean, by shouto's own admission, he admits he could've turned out similar to dabi if he never met izuku. while he's a more reliable narrator than most, i think it's more complicated than just saying "oh, so he definitely would've turned into a mass-murdering villain." i'm not sure if he would've gone that far, seeing as he did want to be a hero and went to UA, but you can definitely see how he was teetering on the edge in some early moments (why does NO ONE talk about his threats to the villains at usj??? hello???) overall, i could see him becoming extremely disillusioned and doing something to shake up hero society for sure. i'd have to look into more analyses of this myself before getting more detailed than that though! thanks for the interesting question :)