#wendyfic

My fic writing process basically goes like this:

First draft. Usually in dot points, tho not always. Very messy. Like think of the average first draft -- it's way worse lmao. Wendyfic's first draft is actually surprisingly neat!

Pretend it doesn't exist for at least 3 months. I went 6.

First read! This is where I take notes on themes, structure, make notes of where to insert foreshadowing, etc.

I make a summary of the story afterwards, and a summary of character arcs, themes, etc, based on these notes.

Then after that read I go through and read again, this time making a summary for each scene.

Overhaul time. I fix up the summaries I made before and make them summaries of what I want the story to be, noting which scenes have to be chopped, which have to be combined, etc etc.

Second draft. It's basically an entire rewrite, especially if the first draft was just dot points. Especially because my first drafts are usually in present tense and I need to switch everything to past -- it's just easier to completely rewrite.

Let it sit, but not for as long this time.

Polish draft.

At minimum the draft I publish is the 3rd draft, but usually it's the 4th. For really difficult chapters it's the 5th. The bolded step is where Wendyfic is right now.

And like. I know I write fic for free but I've always prided myself on trying to be as professional with my fics as I can be, making them the best they can be. I've submitted one shots that I half assed and I wasn't really proud of them even if people loved them (the Roger fic where he touches Hvare for the first time -- don't really like how I did it).

It does mean tho that I take forever to actually publish the damn thing, but I swore to myself years ago I'd never be one of those writers that half assed a long form fic and abandoned it partway through because "well shut up and be grateful you're getting it FOR FREE." I think part of dismantling capitalism means dismantling the idea that money is the only thing worth making an effort for.

But yeah!

Wendyfic's first draft is a bigger mess than the first draft of the last fic was, so she's going to need an even bigger overhaul. There's too much of her running around ordering people to do things for her, and not enough of her actually doing things and overcoming challenges.

I am nervous about publishing this one though. Wendy was a very moral person in Radio Silence, but in the sequel she's essentially discovered just how hard it is to do the right thing and it's really chipped away at her morale and her ability to stick to her principles and that's going to disappoint a lot of people who were proud of her for her "Fuck you, do the right thing" attitude in RS. She does falter in ways that are pretty big that she wouldn't have during 2004. She makes one pretty big decision I would never make in a million years, and I just know people are going to accuse me of sanctioning that decision just because I wrote about it, but I'm going to write it anyway because I like to write fucked up things and people making fucked up choices. I'm going to slap a pretty big disclaimer on the fic because of it though -- people are going to find it genuinely triggering.

I have personal experience with something similar (someone else made the same choice Wendy did) and I guess it was my way of working out how people can make the decisions they (and Wendy) do, but I'm not going to say more than that because fuck anyone who thinks I should dig up my trauma publicly to justify writing about fictional trauma in a fucked up way.

Sorry, that was vague.

As to headcanons and so on -- really hard to comment at this point lol because anything can change. I'm thinking of dividing one character into two, but then I realised that that character actually does well enough staying the way they are so I might not go through with it after all.

I will say tho:

I stopped the final draft just before the climax because I genuinely had no idea how it was going to play out, and figured I should reread and edit before I get that far. So I still have no idea how it's going to end. Hell, I didn't fully know how RS was going to end until a couple of weeks before I published it.

The Baltimore Nosferatu Primogen is a swan because the Baltimore nossies thought it was funny. Alas, he's not my invention, he is @orodrethsgeek's, but they let me borrow him!

The Vykosoviches show up and so does Sullivan, but I don't know how much of that will stay in.

Cieszmir showed up as well but he'll probably be cut out because he was pure self indulgence. Unless he shows up and does something in the climax-I-don't-know-about, because I'm quite sure his uncle will and he hasn't been in any scenes his uncle hasn't been in. If enough people yell at em to keep him lol I might

At one point Wendy gets chased by a serial killer with a chainsaw.

The Washington DC Warren is SO COOL but I won't spoil it aaaaaa