pettydabbler said: A, C, M, O, and W. And congrats so much on your cheese. :)
Cheese acquisition is an occasion worthy of song and celebration.
A: What do you write? Fanfiction, original fiction, nonfiction, articles, songs, poems, essays, plays, what?
I've written fanfic, original fic, articles for both Cat Fancy and Fancy Cat (all of which had to do with hunting polar bears or preparing owl meat or the history of bucklemaking in America), there's a musical about the End of the World stuck in my head as I know nothing about music or writing music or composing music and after a while it's just a cacophony of percussion anyway, essays about when, where, and why TV shows went horribly, horribly awry, lamentations and ululations and spiteful mutterings, and a lot of real bad poetry when I was a teenager, as is required by law.
C: Who is your favorite character of your own? Who is your favorite character created by somebody else? Why?
My favorite character created by someone else...well, for female characters, it would have to be GRRM's Sansa Stark (I am so here for nuanced and sympathetic portrayals of survivors of abuse, how they survive and reclaim their agency, for strong female characters who aren't Strong Female Characters). Male character would have to be pre-S9 Castiel (I am such a sucker for Observers of Humankind character, both Enthusiastic and Caustic varieties, and the Perpetually Socially Clueless And Doesn't Care But Not In A Mean Way; Cas was such a gentle little hurricane who would fucking murder you in your fucking face, then go heal sick babies and find homes for kittens).
My favorite character of my own? Ehhheheheh ahh....
M: How do you feel when somebody gives harsh yet constructive criticism?
I'm totally cool with it, and I want people to be honest, even if it's not positive. Sometimes you can be too close to your work to see it's weaknesses, and you need an outsider to point them out.
O: What motivates you to write?
Nothing (at least with fiction), that's the problem.
(Rage, sometimes rage motives me to write. Someone being Wrong on the Internet will often spurn an essay or two out of me, carefully mapping their wrongness.)
W: What’s your biggest pet peeve in writing?
LOL, you can't expect me to name just one.
Telling not showing. Especially when the telling doesn't match up with what they actually show (this is especially prevalent in TV shows and film). This goes for everything, plot and characters. Don't tell me how great a guy is, don't have the narrative and other characters treat this guy like he's great, but only ever show him lying, hurting people, being a douchebag.
Fridging the women/PoC/queers: just don't. No, not even if you make the hetero white dude protagonist real sad about it.
Doing things for shock value (which is only ever appropriate in horror movies); shocking your audience with a Thing is fine, doing a Thing primarily for shock value is not. You gotta do it Ned Stark style; Ned Stark's death was shocking, but it was not done for shock value (in fact, the whole series depends on his death, the series is built around it). Be Ned Stark, not Kevin Tran.
Doing things for shock value; the Demon!Dean clause: if that shocking twist you think is so shocking that it's a shocktacular shocktacular of shocking proportions is literally predicted by most of the audience months in advance, it's probably not that shocking. Take a moment to reconsider, M.Night Shyamalan.
Is doing Thing A worth sacrificing the potential of B, C, D: Just because you can come up with a justification for why you did Thing A, take a moment to think whether Thing A is worth losing B, C, and D.
Consistent Characterization Means Nobody Gets the Idiot Ball: stop completely fucking with characterization just to manhandle them into the story you want to tell. Chill, relax, treat the characters like actual characters, and not puppets on a string.
There's more, of course, but I'll stop for now.
