what the hell, have a meme

[meretricula]

lol no1curr but whatever, could be fun!

I think it would be fun to talk about stories, but the usual memes are like, "What happens next?" "Tell me about Character A?" Which isn't so much talking about stories as it is writing more of a story. But you know how sometimes you read something and you're like, "I got ___ out of this story, I wonder if I have that right?" or "What on earth was ____ supposed to be?" and it's too awkward to ask the author? Now you could totally ask!

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions!

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? Why did you decide to do this? And so on.

ganked from a bunch of different people. ficlist is here if you're curious. :)

Comments

[aramley.livejournal.com]

This is probably something I should already know, but where were you on the whle Rafa/Nole ship when you wrote i think I heard that line once in a beatles song? Because to me that's a seriously adorably Rafa/Nole fic, but the romantic ship is fedal. If that makes sense?

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

haha excellent question! um, I think I jumped ships while writing it, to be honest. because I really did intend it to be a fedal fic, and then I got to the end and I was like, fuck this, Novak would be a way better boyfriend. XD which is good because I like writing Novak way better than I like writing Roger! I think I had noticed that Novak was not actually the bastard he is in fic by that point, because hello Rome trophy ceremony, but Rafa/Nole had not yet supplanted Rafa/Roger as my main tennis 'ship.

[the-curlyone.livejournal.com]

Hey! I was just reading we both go down together again and it got me thinking. Your female characters are so well defined, they're actually real people as opposed to the 2-D characters that you see a lot in this fandom. Do you write them with this intention in mind? Your Xisca in particular is wonderful.

Also I was just curious, as someone in the middle of ship jumping from fedal to rafa/nole, was there a particular moment that made you think of them as an otp?

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

oh, wow, that is a really awesome compliment, thank you! I really try with female characters, because it does piss me off how often they get ignored or turned into hellbitches or ridiculous angelic ciphers for the author's "awww how cute!" feelings in this fandom. but, I mean, there's no guarantee that trying to write "real" female characters is going to work, so I'm glad you liked them! Xisca and Jelena (and Maribel) are harder than Ana and Maria in the sense that there's less canon to work with, but I guess that also makes it easier to justify making stuff up, haha. it's not like I don't have a lifetime's worth of experience of being a woman to draw on! :)

basically when I got to the end of writing i think i heard that line once in a beatles song and was disappointed that Rafa wanted reassurance from Roger instead of Novak, lol. but that whole spring was a hell of a Rafa/Nole campaign with all the epic matches they played (and Rome! trophy ceremony of epic and awesome!!!) and when I read that Novak actually stayed to keep Rafa company the day he had to announce he wasn't going to play Wimbledon, man, I was so beyond sold. OTP of OTPs.

[the-curlyone.livejournal.com]

Well it definitely shows, your treatment of female characters is one of my favourite things about your writing. I feel sometimes in fandom writers are almost forced to make their female characters either mother teresa or female Hitler, very few peole seem to tolerate them as real people with flaws and grey areas.

I think when I got into fedal in the first place, Rafa/Nole was there on the periphery of my vision and I was doing my best to ignore it but then I read your fic damned lies and statistics mostly out of curiousty and I was like "this makes much better sense than fedal". Their dynamic is just better than the one that Roger and Rafa have (because with Rafa's hero worship and Roger's occasional self worship it is pretty tenuous grounds for a relationship). Rome was just about the best thing ever except for the teeny tiny hug Rafa gave Nole after the US open when Nole was sitting in his chair. That turned me into a mushy puddle of goo :)