#anon33

-anon33

LMAO it's deeeefinitely premature!! i'd think about it? it gets a little awkward legality speaking for printing & ordering fics bc of ownership and stuff.

I've been asked about physical copies of Eve Undone and Borrowed Boots in the past and the ways that I've looked into it getting printed would need to be either 1. i take orders for quantity 2. i order the printed copies to my house 3. i mail them out, or publishing a formatted document of sorts that you essentially pay to print out yourself. i personally think the first option is more fun, especially since id be able to write little notes or do little doodles in the copies before sending them out.

another cool thing that's a weird obstacle is that Eve Undone is something like 820 pages give or take and the highest page count of a service that i found (of either potential printing method) was 800 pages, so they'd have to be compressed and/or sold in portions- and Eve Undone is going to be the shortest of my 100k+ works.

All of that makes a lot of sense, especially the show don’t tell. Now that you’ve pointed it out, that’s a big part of why I love reading your works so much - I can clearly picture everything without the character telling me something.

It seems like so, SO much work goes into your stories (like 2 full time jobs worth of work) and that’s incredible. Your process is really interesting. The way you outline is fascinating. Have you ever made a huge change like halfway through? Or had an event that you wish you included?

I’ve never thought of writing future scenes and kind of going back to where the characters are at now and making sure they get to said place in the future - that’s so brilliant!! Okay, last question for now, I promise. Do you ever get writer’s block or lack motivation to write?

Thank you so much for letting me pick your brain. - anon33 ❤️

You're very welcome, I appreciate the curiosity! And ngl I think until you'd asked, I hadn't fully realized how much I put into my stuff, so... thank you also for that!

I'm really trying to rack my brain in terms of if there have been huge narrative changes and I really can't think of any!

I think because of how my writing process kind of fluctuates between 1. rigid scenes (often canon scenes from the media I'm pulling from- Black Swan, Bound, etc- that I can't change a lot) that are just malleable enough for me to add my own stuff to, 2. scenes that are entirely my own, always driven by a necessary beat of some sort, and 3. how to tie those together, I kind of end up almost having like. a mental map of sorts? Aside from moving some stuff around to better fit the beats ('this makes more sense in ch6 instead of ch5, then it feels less drastic when this other thing happens in ch7' kind of thing), I'm usually pretty on the path I've set out on.

I feel like I might be overcomplicating this a lil bit BUT you're the one asking questions so I'm assuming you're okay with extra answers: aside from whatever beats I'm working on, I don't really plan out my original scenes, especially when it comes to dialogue. I don't go into it with a plan that Eve will talk about X, Y, Z, and then Vil will say A, B, C, I tend to just see where the conversation takes them- even in TME's case of therapy sessions I don't have a plan beyond the character beats.

- Eve is beginning to trust Vil, but not enough to be entirely honest about anything they haven't already talked about. Her walls aren't down, but they're a little lower when it comes to certain things that (in Eve's mind) have been established as safe to talk about with Vil.

- Vil is starting to figure out how to pull at whatever darkness she perceives within Eve without accidentally getting herself shut out. She respects when Eve says 'next question' because she knows from experience that she won't get what she wants if she pushes- that pushing will do more harm than good... but she still wants to pull.

Even within BB too!

- Eve feels comfortable with Ox, but she's so unused to being asked what she wants, what feels good for her, how she thinks of things, that that's what's stressing her out. She's juggling being with a woman for the first time (something she's very new to wanting) and being truly respected for the first time.

- Ox wants to be with Eve, but she also wants nothing more than for Eve to be comfortable. She knows that Eve has some hangups about being with each other, and doesn't want her to 'go along with it' just because Ox wants it.

So when it comes to dialogue or scenes or both, that's what I end up using more than Plot Stuffs. If I know that Eve isn't ready for something, she isn't ready- and I'm not going to make Ox push her on it for the sake of speeding up her being ready because that's not how that works!

As with literally everything, TME is a lot more complicated. If I know that Eve won't talk truthfully about her addiction, and the dialogue I'm working on veers toward that topic, then I write Eve according to her current beat- she's not going to suddenly decide she's actually going to be honest just because I, the writer, have decided that it's 'time' for her to be honest for Plot reasons. That feels unearned, and also not in line with the story/Eve! And with that, I can play with some fun conversational stuff: if Vil pushes too far, that impacts Eve's level of trust down the line. If Eve opens up, that gives Vil more insight into why she opened up.

This got both long and complicated but I think what I'm rambling toward is ultimately saying that I write the plot around the characters, not the other way around- so if the plot changes at all, I see it coming because I am shaping the bones.

In terms of events I wish I'd included the only thing that really jumps to mind is in Eve Undone: Vil apologizing to Eve for being shitty about Niko/Hawaii, but that's in Meteor/ites now, so!

For the writer's block/lack of motivation question: short answer, no...? My current grammarly streak is 59 weeks, something I am not sure how to feel about ngl! I hesitate to call it writer's block since I actually can't think of a day that I've gone without opening docs (lol) but I do find that being able to bounce between all my WIPs is massively helpful for if I'm feeling stuck. Two TME documents (TME proper and the 'holding cell' of scenes from chapters I haven't written yet), BB, Meteor/ites, and Undoing are all really different headspaces, styles, etc- if I'm not feeling 50s fluff, I can hop over to the Astankohva's and see what they're up to, if that's not working then how about we check out something from TME Vil's past?

I've talked previously about how I do a LOT of writing on my phone (like right now!) and I think that definitely impacts the process, too. Unless I've been possessed to do so by a scene, I don't really actively Sit and Write for hours: I was in my dentist's waiting room today and wrote a few lines of dialogue while I waited for my appointment, yesterday I was struck by a character realization while I was doing some drawing and went to make a quick note before returning to it, the previous day I reworked a scene in the chapter that I just put up. In all honesty I think if I weren't writing, it'd just keep clogging up my brain. There have been more than a few times where I've been trying to articulate something that's been brewing in my skull- plot arcs, character stuff, whatever- that's turned into a massive deluge of information that I may have not entirely realized was all up there! @eveandpsyche attest to me going "i have a thought" and then two hours of rambling later, I walk out with several pages of backstory that had been apparently just living in my head.

First of all, this is a massively impactful compliment about my characterization(s) and I will be thinking about it for probably 10-12 business days so thank you for that! 

Secondly, I really wish I had a better answer for you, but I truthfully don't know! I'll give some general things I've noticed I tend to do with characters, though?

In my other response to your ask about the writing process and outlines I mentioned having a character's timeline established in order to inform their actions and I think that might be the biggest factor in consistent characterization? Although TME features by far the most complicated versions of Eve & Vil I've ever written, I still have a sense of what happens to the characters before the first chapter in every other story.

In Borrowed Boots, the way that Ox acts around Eve in terms of visibility (being careful about being caught, being mindful of safety in ways that Eve may not be) is shaped in part by her experiences with Anna and how the fallout of that impacted her life in Reno- consciously or not, she's trying to help Eve avoid that same kind of social alienation. In Eve Undone, Eve doesn't recognize her attraction to Villanelle as more than platonic because she has no frame of reference for real attraction: her parents are strict and Catholic, so it made 'sense' to follow in their footsteps and marry Niko, a strict, Christian man & pastor. Even if I don't have an outline/timeline for these renditions of their past (TME has 10+ pages, My Sweet Girl and Thin Walls have nothing because it's so straightforward), they still shape the characters and how they'll react to different events.

I think in all of my stories but especially TME (and definitely My Sweet Girl's later chapters) I take advantage of the formatting to control how the reader interacts with the story's information through the characters' perception. The obvious is simple: writing events and facts.

[Eve notices that Villanelle's hair is in an elaborate style of braids that come together at the back of her neck and wonders if she did it herself.]

This is both a description of Eve's physical actions (noticing) as well as her internal thoughts (wondering).

Most of the time I'll format explicit thoughts/inner monologue stuff with italics as a clear indicator- maybe they're asking themselves a question, or mulling something over:

[Why Alana? Why not me?]

I'll use it to also act as a memory, too:

[If you can call what she does journalism.] isn't just Villanelle's thought, it's an echo of something Eve said previously.

It can get really fun when there are a few more complexities: in Oksana's chapter, she doesn't have the perception of events that an adult might have because she's a child- but you, the reader, do. You know Vilen is dead, but Oksana doesn't fully understand that that's what happening, so she wants to wait for him to wake up. I think this makes it both more impactful and more in line with the character of Villanelle as an adult because it fleshes her out more and kind of builds on that Show, don't Tell aspect I talked about in the previous response. I'm Showing you that Oksana is a child through how I write her (not having a complex vocabulary, not understanding certain words, having a childlike innocence, etc) instead of simply Telling you that she's a child but writing her in the same way that I would write her as an adult. While Oksana and Villanelle are the same person, they're different characters that are in some ways pieces of the other. Oksana- the child who was beaten, starved, forced by desperation to eat human flesh, and watched her uncle die- has nightmares about all of that, but Villanelle- the woman who was formed around Oksana, top of her class in medical school, ultra-successful surgeon, highly sophisticated serial killer, revered and respected psychiatrist- doesn't, because they didn't happen to Her, they happened to who she isn't anymore.

Another aspect of this is character beliefs and truths! A super good example is from My Sweet Girl is when Nelle is at the peak of her psychosis. 

There's no more rigidity or consistency of formatting here! Her perception of everything is distorted because she's in psychosis, therefore everything (thoughts, internalizations, memories) is formatted as an objective truth. Pink is another character's [Helene's] dialogue from previous chapters, yellow is a previous thought, and green is something that the reader knows is impossible... but to Nelle, it's just reality. In a less extreme example from TME's Bill chapter, Eve doesn't think to herself [I should have listened to him], it's formatted as an objective truth [She should have listened to him] because in Eve's perspective it's not a thought, it's the truth. I think this has the power to massively impact characterization because it offers another Showing aspect into their thoughts and feelings without being Told about their thoughts and feelings.

And! Physicality is a huuuuge thing I rely on. I don't Tell you that Eve is uncomfortable, I Show you her fidgeting, wringing her hands, crossing her arms, pacing, avoiding eye contact. Unless it's happening through the phone or with some other obstruction in the way, conversations are so much more than dialogue! 

How do you outline / map out your story? And how do you stay so consistently true to the characters? I’ve never once read a line in your fics that seems out of character, everything is so seamlessly integrated. When you’re writing, do you stray from your outline? Or is it more like every single event / scene / action is a precursor to some other plot line?

Thank you so much for answering. I hope that makes sense. -anon33

When you’re writing, do you stray from your outline? Or is it more like every single event/scene/action is a precursor to some other plot line?

I'll get to the other part of this ask in a separate post!

there are toooons of parallels its actually sickening. also all of the cases (so far... hehe) are from hannibal, too! its genuinely such sexy television