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ratherastory ([personal profile] ratherastory) wrote2010-05-27 01:06 pm
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Two writing memes

1- From [livejournal.com profile] embroiderama: a passage less than 500 words (paragraph/excerpt/very short fic/whatever) from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

2- From [livejournal.com profile] sinnerforhire: First line of last 25 fics you wrote and try to find a pattern.

This one made me laugh, because I have exactly 27 fics written/in the works. A few weeks ago I wouldn't even have been able to do the meme in its entirety.



1- Lisa feels as though she's failing some subtle test which she never signed up to take.

2- A barista's work is never done, but sometimes there are slow days, and that's the day he comes in, complete with laptop and kicked-puppy expression.

3- This never happened...

4- A certain degree of separation was to be expected when it came to the Winchesters.

5- They stop in Toledo a couple of hours before sunset, and Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, fingerless gloves useless against the cold.

6- There are only a handful of people who have Bobby Singer's cell phone number.

7- Dean finds Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor of their motel room, clad in jeans and a soft, faded grey t-shirt, bare feet tucked under his knees.

8- Getting jumped by regular humans is bad enough, even if those humans are seasoned hunters.

9- After twenty years of dealing with it on and off, it's not a big deal anymore.

10- In her everyday life, Lindsey isn't much of a hand-wringer.

11- Dean's not exactly sure how he and Sam have ended up here, but he's learned to roll with the punches after fifteen or so years of being on the job.

12- “You going to eat that or keep turning it into a valuable work of abstract art?” Dean waggles his fork in the general direction of Sam's plate.

13- Sam is getting really tired of waking up in pain, alone and in the dark.

14- He's blind.

15- Sam hasn't screamed in days.

16- There is water dripping slowly onto the Devil's Trap, and Dean doesn't care.

17- Sam is sick to death of angels.

18- The first thing that Dean ever steals is a sandwich.

19- “I got it,” Sam is pulling their duffel bags out of the trunk of the Impala, not waiting for Dean to help or even come close.

20- Castiel is a bad angel.

21- Sam peered through the window of the dingy motel room, staring as roiling clouds slowly obscured the moon, plunging the parking lot into shadows, flickering orange in the light from the vacancy sign.

22- There's nothing on television except for Christmas specials.

23- “Cas! Castiel! We need some help over here!”

24- Sam is sulking.

25- “Sam, any day now!”


Patterns? I apparently like short, declarative sentences. Sometimes I change it up by starting with dialogue, and occasionally I add in some description about the weather or the time of day. I write primarily in the present tense, which is something I never did before writing fanfic.

[identity profile] ratherastory.livejournal.com 2010-05-27 05:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, this one was fun —if a bitch to write.

I decided to set this one in a post-apocalyptic AU, and as such this section is all about the exposition. Exposition is hard without getting into the "As you know, Bob," trope of having one character explain things to another.

So I did it mostly by establishing the weather and by re-introducing one of my favourite secondary characters from season 1, making her grown up and dressing her in a way that would make it obvious that things are no longer the way they were in the show (fatigues and multi-layered clothing).

I also had fun with the "alley cat" metaphor, as you can see. Lily's seen too much for someone her age. I have a strange fascination with the "Bloody Mary" episode (this is the second time I've used it in a fic), and I always wondered what became of Lily after her fears of killing her father proved to be true.

And the most obvious clue that it's set post-apocalypse is Dean's parenthetical, very annoyed thoughts about angels and how their plan didn't go well.

[identity profile] chiiyo86.livejournal.com 2010-05-28 09:45 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, exposition in a bitch, especially in a post-apocalyptic AU setting. My big bang has a setting like that, you'll tell me how good I did with the exposition if you read it! I don't think I managed as good as you, your beginning really gives the informations in a way that feels natural - which is all we ask from exposition! Thanks for the commentary!