Answers to the fanfic meme

[scripsi]

wendelah asked: What made you start writing fanfic?
I’ve always made up stories about books I’ve read, first and foremost Tolkien, but I never wrote anything down apart from synopsizes. I first encountered the term fanfic around 2000 and for a couple of years, I read a lot without ever considering writing any myself.

But then, some time during the winter 2003/2004 I came upon this promo shot from Peter Pan featuring Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook and suddenly it triggered something in me and I started to write. It was like opening a floodgate and for about a year all I could think of was writing, spending every free moment on it. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise I was actually working out quite a few issues with the help of writing fanfic. And when those were thoroughly worked, I had got into the habit of writing.

thisbluespirit and paynesgrey asked: Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
I don’t know. It’s not like a put a mark down when I do. I re-read current WIP’s several times when I work on them. But it feels like I have read Ghosts, The Mummy, A Place In the Shadows, Penny Dreadful, and Professor Keller, Doctor Who, the most. Probably because they are all fics I felt almost turned out as I wanted them.

navaan asked: Name three stories you found difficult to write. And why
Solace and All That You Love Will Be Lost, both written for Doctor Who, were about loss and grief. I wrote them after the loss of a family member and writing was very cathartic, but also difficult as a lot of feelings kept bubbling up as I wrote. I cried a lot when I wrote these.

Professor Keller, was difficult for other reasons. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted, and I worked hard to convey it. It’s a horror story and I both wanted it to be really scary while still not too explicit. It’s the only fic I went back to after a few months and re-wrote every single chapter as well as adding a few things and an epilogue. I’m rather pleased with the result, but it’s definitely the fic which has the most energy and time spent on it.

verdande_mi asked: What's a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
As a whole my fics are driven by my emotions, not plots. My fics, even multi-chapters, are generally quite short and with only two or three significant characters, concerning a certain emotional arc. I’m full of envy for those who can imagine up a sustainable plot for a long work.

The strongest theme is definitely the protagonist saving her/himself, emotionally and/or physically, or they don’t get saved at all. There is never a hero swooping in and saving the day, though he sometimes turns up at the end to give support. In my current WIP, it’s the heroine who saves her love interest though. It strongly reflects my own view that even if family and friends are very important, you are always the one who has to do the job and saving yourself. Emotionally, that is- most people don’t get captured by villains.

Rape/non-com is a recurrent theme. As I mentioned in the first answer I started to write to deal with issues, and a date-rape when I was 18 was one of them. At first, those stories were darkfics with unhappy endings, now they mostly end with the protagonist dealing with it. It’s also something I write about less and less; I don’t have the need to write it anymore.

verdande_mi and frelling_tralk asked: What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
Love, or at least sexual M/F relationships (69 fics), followed by Gen (29 fics). M/M and F/F gets a handful each and Multi only three. I often read slash, I just don’t feel I’m very good at writing it; several of my M/F and Gen stories in the Doctor Who Fandom have the undertext “The Master is obsessed with/love the Doctor”, but it is rarely stated in an explicit way.