Ugh, why are you so good at writing? HOW DID YOU GET THIS TALENT? Also how do you keep your stories going for so long? Where do you get your ideas?
Okay⌠this is my third fandom. I got most of my Mary Sue stories and PWP out of my system with Remington Steele.  In that fandom, I had two AWESOME betas. One was a retired copy editor out of New Jersey who took zero shit and my documents were COVERED in red ink.  I still drop commas and leave words out when I go too fast.  I have a new beta who is good at catching those things and Iâm getting back on track.  My second beta was a librarian who only edited a few stories for me, but she was amazing at helping me tighten the prose. My story âRegency Steeleâ on my steeleholtingon website is still one of my two favorite stories and was the last one I wrote in that fandom. I took all of season five, broke out all the dialogue, and then rewrote a story from the dialogue alone. It was a ton of fun.Â
As for my ideas ⌠my muse, my dearest friend robot-rainstorm, lets me bean ideas off her at all hours. Sheâs amazing at motivation and characterization. Sheâs fantastic at not letting me get away with crap or cliches. When I write, I keep her in mind so that I stay true to my characters.Â
Most of my stories start with a dreamâI do a lot of lucid dreaming, which is awesome for storytelling and sucks for actual rest. But the dream will usually be only the tipping point.  Everything else springs from playing the âwhat ifâ game.Â
In the case of Ice and Fire, I wonderedâgiven the idea that Steve and Bucky had a decade-long loving relationshipâwhat would happen if Bucky came back, and Steve was in a solid, loving relationship with Darcy? Â The first scene in my head was the one where Steve was listening to Bucky rescue Darcy in the tunnels. Â
As far as length, I think itâs about telling the story. Â Iâve written plenty of short stories â my last one was 300 words or so. Â Ice and Fire has such a huge cast of characters, and there is a whole family involved, so it goes beyond just our trio. Â All that has to be addressed if Iâm going to do it justice. Â
Two best pieces of advice, one I received years ago and one from this past week:
1) Show, donât tell. Â It ALWAYS takes longer to write out the scene, tags, and dialogue than it does to do an info dump about how the character did this, this, and this. Â I donât need to tell you how a character feels, because sheâs showing you in her actions and words.Â
2) Write from Deep POV.  When you are in Deep POV, everything is perceived only with the characterâs five senses (six+ if youâre using magic) and personal thoughts. If you can (theoreticallyâI donât like first person POV) replace every âsheâ in the chapter with âI,â and the chapter still makes sense, youâve succeeded.  This is FANTASTIC for keeping you from musing about the bar being in the middle of nowhere USA and that itâs raining outside, because your character doesnât give a crap about that. She already knows that. Sheâs wondering WTF this asshole is doing walking into her bar at three in the afternoon carrying a spear, a tiny dragon, and a wad of cash.Â