#plot vs characters

Not vague at all — you definitely got me thinking. ☺️

I tend to always have a goal in mind when I start writing — a certain skill I’d like to hone or something I’d like to say I’ve accomplished by the end of a fic. At first, my goals were really vague (wanting to finish writing a fic, any fic) and now they’ve gotten a lot more specific (wanting to develop world-building skills, wanting to write multiple purposeful smut scenes, etc.), and now that they’re more specific, I tend to pick my projects based on what plots/prompts suit the skill I want to develop.

I’m also the kind of person that always has prompts swirling around in her head (some that I’m really attached to and tell myself I’ll end up writing later, and some that I just make a mood board for and then put to bed), so I’m definitely a plot-first writer. In fact, I think the thing I enjoy most about writing fic is how fic authors get to heighten and augment certain well-known attribtutes of their characters’ personalities so that the same two people fit the tone of every single plot while still being recognizable.

I’m not sure if you were looking for that much detail, but maybe you were only really looking for this: I have a foot-long list of notes in my phone just with random prompts I’ve thought up over the last five years, and whatever haunts me the most is the thing I end up writing next. 😂😅

PS. The list gets much, much, much longer whenever I want to read a very specific trope that I then realize doesn’t yet exist. (Damnit.)

Thank you for asking! ♥️

like I mean. the idea of the heat haze and the snakes and everything, those were always kinda the weakest parts of the story this entire time imo. but what really hooks people in is the fact that jin had created this fascinating cast of characters, all with enormous amounts of potential to be explored. the reason we care about the plot is because we care about the characters, because we've seen them explored in other mediums like the novels and manga.