#author rambles

I understand it might seem jarring, it’s a big chunk of time. But it’s also not necessary to include it. In both of my IFs, every chapter and every scene MUST have a point. Nothing happens to MC in those 8 years that would affect the narrative to such a degree that it needs to be shown.

I want to preface this by saying the following is entirely my opinion on my own writing and not a commentary on other authors… I’m a BIG fan of “trimming the fat”. It is very easy for a story to get bloated because authors love what we write. We love our characters. We love our worlds. We love words. And we want to share every aspect of our beautiful creation with our readers. But we have to be willing to cut for the sake of the narrative. Again, that’s the kind of author I am. I want to move the story along. I don’t want it to stagnate. I want to get to the “meat” of it, the parts that will resonate with my readers. The parts worth remembering.

Is it a big time skip? Most definitely. Is anything in that 8 year time span necessary to move the story along? I don’t think so. Anything that happens can be later referenced with a quick sentence or paragraph, not an entire chapter or scene. It’s like that corporate joke “this meeting could have been an email”. Believe me, I’ve suffered through many such meetings, lol. 😉

And it’s not a matter of reworking ages. The MC and RO ages aren’t arbitrary numbers—they speak to the characters’ maturity levels and experiences. Significant things DO happen off screen in those 8 years, like Calliope’s rescue, the years Tellus spent in solitude, the time it took for Vicente to finally break from their father, the war with Tinebaille dragging on so long it affects the empire’s economy. Those 8 years are necessary for things to have happened in story, but what isn’t necessary is me writing what would essentially be fluff just to fill the time gap.

I can't with this guy...

Guess who appeared on the island first?

Hello, everyone! So the last time I posted, I mentioned going for the hospital and all. Figure I'd give an update.

If it disinterests you, feel free to skip this post!

I have good plot ideas but that’s all they ever amount to 😔 and I never get it done because I’m too busy overplotting. Anything would help :) I love your works! Can’t wait to create my own alongside yall!!

Hi!! Thank you for the ask, and thank you so much for reading my fics, I’m so happy you enjoy them🥰 this is such a good question and I’m absolutely going to ramble in response, but first off all you gotta remember to take everything I say with a grain of salt because everyone is different and there’s no right or wrong way to write a story, especially when it comes to fanworks!

Just for some context about me—I started writing and publishing fanfiction when I was 13, but I’ve actually been writing long form fiction since I was probably about 11. I’ve always been an avid reader and I have a very vivid imagination, so creating my own stories came naturally to me, I guess. And for me personally, the ideas are the hardest part. There are a lot of people who express the same sentiment you’ve just described—you have lots of plot ideas but can’t turn it into a story. And actually as I’m typing this… I’m wondering if maybe we actually have the same struggle, only worded differently…

Maybe it’s not all that hard to come up with or find a new fic idea. There are prompts everywhere, tons of other media to inspire us, folks who don’t want to write who share their ideas and make suggestions. But it isn’t just an idea that makes a story, right?

In my experience, the idea we’re talking about is either the main conflict of the story, or some setting or character traits/circumstances that directly inform the conflict of the story. And of course, building out the arc of that conflict, from the inciting incident through the climax and all the way to the resolution, is a very necessary part of building a story. You need the main plot, the romance plot if it’s separate, and probably at least one B plot if you’re wanting to write a longer story.

For me, I like to do as little planning of the plot as possible while still having enough that I feel fairly confident the idea will stick. I’ll give some examples and then I’ll explain why I do it this way.

You’re The Risk (I’m Gonna Take It) - very little prior plotting was done lol. Basically I had: Cait is a stripper and Vi is a criminal. Vi needs to pull off a heist against Caitlyn’s parents. They team up to pull off the heist.

The City of Dreams - this is a case where I planned a lot more than usual. I determined exactly what had happened to Mayor Heimerdinger and planned the major points of the gig, as well as where in the gig storyline Caitvi’s big moments would happen.

The Queen’s Woman - Caitlyn is Vi’s concubine because she was sent in lieu of gold as tribute from Piltover. Caitlyn is going to struggle with her autonomy due to her trauma, she understands being useful is being safe. Vi is going to fall in love with her and nurture her through her healing. Probably some kind of war will break out with Piltover.

Is It Business Casual Now? - Vi is Caitlyn’s mentor at her internship, and Caitlyn is going to crush so hard on her and they’re probably gonna end up in a secret relationship that gets exposed or something - also oh how about if Jinx is Cait’s peer!

Critical Success - Vi is joining Powder’s D&D group because she “has no friends and needs a hobby.” Caitlyn is the DM. Vi is going to have to learn D&D from her, and since she doesn’t know much, she’s probably going to make a character based on what she knows, and she will unknowingly work through some of her own trauma with that character.

There’s a lot of unknown in those summaries, and of course I usually have a handful of scenes I’m looking ahead at writing. In TQW it was Caitlyn and Vi’s confrontation after Powder’s wedding feast—except I didn’t have the wedding even in my mind at all when I imagined that conversation. In IIBCN, I didn’t know for sure when CaitVi would get together, when they would tell people, who would out them.

So… why don’t I plan those things ahead of time? Because I love to read, and I write the stories I’d want to read, and I think for me, I like to write the same way I would read something brand new to me. With a vague idea of how it goes, how it’ll end, but with so much to discover along the way.

And here’s the thing. Most writers have seen and heard the memes about how writers love to do everything BUT write. Everyone dreads sitting down and looking at the blank page.

Not me. I love to write. There’s a reason everyone’s always making fun of me for saying every other chapter is my favorite lol! I have so much fun putting the words on the page. I see the action and hear the dialogue in my mind and it spills out onto the page and in that moment I am so thrilled! It’s the story unfolding as if I were reading it, except I’m writing it!

There’s a quote from Michelangelo that, very loosely summarized, is about how he didn’t carve marble into people, he freed the people from the marble. Like he could see that they were there, and he just chipped away the excess. That’s how it feels when I’m writing a story—pieces fall into place unexpectedly.

Realistically, I think this has come from practice, because I didn’t always think that way about my writing. There are definitely times that I think something just feels right, but if I think a bit harder, I can figure out why.

That is how I personally turn those ideas into a full story, by sitting down and writing almost by the seat of my pants.

Obviously, that’s not how it is for everyone. But I think it does lend itself to one piece of advice: when you’re writing your story, look for a way to do it that you love. If it’s fun for you to write all the big scenes and then figure out how to connect them, do that. If you’re like me and almost always have to write chronologically through the story, because it thrills you as if you’re your own reader, do that! Write it as flowery as you want or don’t, focus on dialogue or internal monologue or whatever makes your heart sing when you’re putting words on the page.

And honestly, just try. It doesn’t have to be perfect right away—there’s no such thing, anyway. And the beauty of fanfic is that it doesn’t have to be flawless grammatically or even story-wise for you to share it. The more you write, the more you’ll start to learn what makes sense and how the pieces fit together. You can know it in theory but experiencing it in practice is what really makes you know it.

So, my main tip here for turning your ideas into long fics is to write them in a way that brings YOU joy and to just go for it, but my additional tips are:

Reread, reread, reread! (I could do a whole post about the benefits of constantly rereading your own writing honestly)

Pace your stories by adding not “filler” scenes but secondary and tertiary plots and storylines, and do this by fleshing out your side characters and using their experiences to also impact and expand on your main characters and their personal growth etc.

Cliche as it is, always ask the who, what, when, where, why, and how about the things happening in your plot, and determine which of those need to see the page.

Okay I’m really done now lmao! Thank you again so much for the ask, I loved working through my thoughts on this tonight and I hope it’s any amount helpful or at least encouraging haha!

I planned to have him colder than humans normally, although his body temperature isn't controlled, he can sometimes get too hot if he's flustered or under the sun for much too long, it's like touching hot leather.

You Could Set Fire to the World

As promised, here’s a short, mostly spoiler-free post about my current WIP.

Since I haven’t shared much about There Is One I Could Call King or my OC Leiya/Kaleiya before, I thought I’d take the chance to offer some insights that might help explain the origins of You Could Set Fire to the World.

@importantdestinydefender: I already thought about it – let’s settle on FttW!

When I first read or watched ArSen in 2015 (can’t remember which, tbh), my younger self was fascinated by the aspects the series mostly left untouched – medical care during wartime, how soldiers/characters spent their freetime, what foods they liked to eat, how families managed, and so on.

Back then, whenever I wrote fanfiction, I created my own characters out of fear that people might dislike my interpretation of the canon cast. That way, even if the canon characters felt out of character to them, no one could complain about my OCs.  It gave me a strange sense of security. (A fear I believe I’ve conquered – but creating OCs now just comes naturally and might have become my preferred way of writing fanfiction, though I'm open to almost anything.)

So when I got hooked on ArSen and started writing fanfiction for it – almost ten years ago now – Kaleiya was born.  

I absolutely love writing romance (as some of you may have noticed, often with an (un)healthy dose of angst, grief, and healing), so of course I needed a love interest. Shapur appealed to me immediately. I still have no words for how infuriating it was to see him introduced as what felt like a major, high-impact character, only to be killed literal seconds later. Since I wasn’t comfortable exploring that route back then, the idea was shelved. So yes — Daryun was only a second choice (sorry, Daryun!).

When I first envisioned Kaleiya, I wanted her to experience and represent all the aspects which would have interested me but weren’t explored enough. It wasn’t part of the original plan, but after I grew fond of Arslan and his camp, the story evolved so that she became part of it and eventually accompanied him on his journey, while writing/claiming her own.

I won’t go into detail about her backstory here – but it was clear she had one when she joined the camp. Exploring that background created far too many ‘deleted scenes’ that never made it into There Is One I Could Call King. There simply wasn’t room to include that many memories in a forward-moving story focused on character development and a growing romance. Once I admitted to myself that the story couldn’t move forward if I stayed in the past, those memories became another Word document in a folder never meant to be opened again.

Until very recently.

After persuading my printer to do his job, I sat on the kitchen floor (enduring the occasional side-eye of my partner, who seems convinced I was performing some kind of summoning ritual for whatever demons might heed the call) and organised the scenes into a coherent pre-canon timeline.

I don’t need to point out that Shapur was very much alive at that time.

Since I couldn’t integrate his POV in There Is One I Could Call King I wanted to write from his perspective for once. But having him tell someone else’s story felt like underselling him, like using him as a tool rather than truly exploring him.

So I decided to do the craziest thing I’ve done so far in fanfiction: a mirrored story told from two POVs.

And when I say mirrored, I mean two timelines — one moving forward, the other moving backward — with one scene of each per chapter. Not every scene mirrors perfectly; sometimes a moment mattered more to one than the other, or circumstances kept them apart. But I genuinely believe the story is stronger for it.

And because that still wasn’t enough “mirror” for me, the non-explicit mirrors now echo each other thematically through motifs. It helps the story feel like a living timeline, even though it’s chronological already. More on that another time. Or you see for yourself once it's online.

This mirrored structure is also why I planned the chapters beat-by-beat — something I usually avoid because it limits flexibility and the organic direction a story sometimes wants to take (later amendments to the final chapter number / macro-outline arcs; breathing space for the writing to decide on its own which path it wants to take).

You’ll find almost all the “deleted scenes,” plus some entirely new ones created just for this project.

The first draft had 39 chapters (and let me tell you, adding more was a pain), but after getting feedback and inspiration from a friend, it’s grown to 44. That wasn’t intentional, but I find the number oddly satisfying for a mirrored story.

Chapter length will vary depending on the weight of each moment. I’ve completed about seven chapters so far, going steady. The hardest part was definitely the demon summoning.

Unfortunately, this one won’t be beta-read (my friend called me crazy in her own loving way), so I’m counting on your feedback if anything doesn’t land as intended — and of course also if it does.

I’ve decided against a strict posting schedule to avoid extra pressure (a full-time job and an upcoming master’s thesis are already enough). Best case, it’ll be finished by the end of March and posted in one big update. More realistically, I’ll start posting chapters by the end of February whenever I need a break from scientific writing.

The AO3 post will include all applicable reading instructions, but for now, please accept the below poetic small teaser: