Your Author quirks

[I3uster]

Because I found the simillar thread in the RP forum to be a real goldmine and interesting (and because we already have a thread for the point of view of a reader, the annoyance thread):

Basically, tell us how you approach writing your stories, what your specialities and little quirks are, what kind of stories you prefer to write, are you a planner or do you improvise heavily, or even banal stuff like what music you listen to while writing.

Stuff like that gets thrown around in story threads or the idea threads (since those are pretty much Fanfic general discussion, lol), so why not have a dedicated thread for it?

[mAc Chaos]

What's the link to this RP thread.

I tend to plan out the broad strokes of the story, but improvise the details.

[I3uster]

http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...playing-biases

[ZidanReign]

What's the link to this RP thread.

I tend to plan out the broad strokes of the story, but improvise the details.

Same as well.

I plan out things greatly before I write. But its the small details at times that I know people want that give my brain aneurysms. (not literally that would be horrible)

And my short-attention span doesn't help me with writing.

[Laith]

http://blogs.nrvnqsr.com/blog.php/1162?blogcategoryid=2

This is why blogging saves time =V

[crystalwatcher]

I mostly specialize in high-fast paced pitched battles. My writing style varies randomly depending on stories I'm reading at the time, the music I'm listening to, and whatever show/game/ect I'm hung up on during the period of writing. For example if I'm listening to music I don't really like then my writing suffers more than it might with other writers.

But if I can step into a proper rhythm then I can churn out text like a bad habit. Stepping into line with good mood music that can synch with my current addiction then there's very little I can't pour out, such as fight scenes with everything form the supernatural to sci-fi. At my best rhythm I was able to record at around 4k words in something like an hour. I find that my best writing is when used in conjunction with someone who's better at things other than fighting, such as character interaction, romance, the like. Those are the areas I suffer leaving me more of a collab styled writer than a lone wolf.

I'm also extrodinarily with info-building and backstorying. Give me an idea and I could build a base structure for damn near anything as long as I know about it, but I truely eccel in areas that deal with creature types and technology, such as finding out how their bodies would work, their mannerisms, or how exactly to make an impossible-sounding weapon sound realistic. I just need the base and I can go from there.

[Thanos]

I have barely started writing, but I find that I have a tendency to write in the now. That is, once a general idea of what I am about to write finishes percolating in my head, I just set the characters loose in my head and relay the events that occur.

They often surprise me.

I also struggle to write in an active voice.

EDIT:I hopefully fixed the formatting. Stupid Wii.

[mangafreak7793]

I procrastinate a lot and look at my work with disgust due to grammar.

[Nacho the Doritosedge]

All right, I think I covered everything.

If I plan things: I usually like planning out an entire fic before I start writing, but then SOMETHING SOMEWHERE bumps with canon and the entire thing farts into making shit up as I go. It's worked so far.

How I approach my stories: I think of an idea, plan the later segments, and then I have to write the first part. The first part is always the hardest. I have like, six prologues to this one idea I had a while back (For any who remember DRAGONSHIROU, that's what I'm talking about) but they all sucked ass and I hated them all. Eventually though I settle on something.

Stories I prefer writing: Stuff that does things we haven't seen before. Like All from a Hospital Bed, where it was from a not related person's POV (Ayako's). Granted, a lot's been done, but if I see an opportunity to do something which hasn't been done, I'll jump on it.

Music I listen to while I write: Metal all day erry day. I usually don't need something fitting to write a scene.

Specialties: Grimdark, retarded crack, mindfucking with people's heads, using canon and not breaking it while keeping things interesting, suffering and hardship.

Quirks: I tend to prefer writing in my underwear.

[Petrikow]

Sparse dialogue in otherwise extensively lengthy texts. I call it the anti-Homer style.

[Speckled Burd]

I'm new to this whole writing thing but when I attempt to do so I usually start with the broad details of the whole and improvise the finer details. I also have a tendency to reread what I've written 8-9 times and revise it repeatedly.
I have an innate preference towards third person, most of my attempts to do first person end up being kind of bad.
As far as music goes I find something from the original series that matches the mood of the scene I'm trying to write.
I feel like I'm pretty good at battle scenes and hot blooded dialogue.

[Seika]

Depends. I have my Homer-style, which is a close pastiche of the Iliad, for when I ... just want to do something like that (see: my Servant profiles, my Fuyukiad snippets). In an actual long bit of writing, I tend to try and perfect everything, which ends up with me starting and stopping a lot. People haven't noticed, or at least mentioned it, but I'm always afraid that it screws up my flow. So the pastiche is easier than my 'natural' flow of writing. -_-

Otherwise, I guess another quirk is that I always end up elaborating things. Apparently I can never be content with one statement if I can deepen and elaborate it. 'deny that I've ever felt what I felt, deny that I've ever been who I've been.' My sentences are long and have lots of commas and clauses.

Oh, and I italic bomb for narratively emphasised words, which I suspect I picked up from Planescape or BG - probably not a good thing. 'It seethes and bubbles below the surface, this constant, omnipresent, dislike.'


To add to all that, something I threw up on Arashi's blog whilst he was musing about this:

I can sympathise on the whole 'poetry-style' front. I have other models, which incline me to think about different things, but there's a certain similarity. If you've ended up thinking about sentence length and the rhythm of paragraphs and so on, I'm thinking about word placement all the time. Most commonly, that a question of what the best word to lead this sentence might be, and what's best to end it? Should this descriptive pair expand into a tricolon, and should it ascend, descend or be flat? Can I fit in a chiasmus, or balance the sentence in some other particular way?

... I think it's probably a bad thing. Whilst some things carry over, and have been used by orators ever since Greece and Rome, trying to imitate the fluid sentence structure of Greek or Roman poetry is just asking for trouble. When word order is already loose, and then you let a poet at it, everything gets messed around for effect. Doesn't work in English, especially since it's much more an unconscious process for us - we don't think about why a phrase might be balanced, because it's so rare for words to move like that in prose or for word order to be a remarkable point. On the other hand, I get so immersed in texts which use such techniques, and it's so powerful in the original, that the habit becomes hard to break.

[Bloble]

I... I'm very... sporadic? At my best, I'd put my level of writing as very high, but on a bad day I have trouble telling the difference between my work and that one Naruto/FSN guy's. I tend to get stuck for months on end and then suddenly churn out several thousand words once I'm sufficiently motivated or when my creativity juices have recharged.

I also don't know how to prune my writing, so it's very messy and overgrown.

[Aiden]

I have a ridiculous updating 'schedule' (meaning I just write whatever the fuck comes to mind at the time and throw it up here, and it means my output is just insane most of the time. This week is an odd exception so far).

I write almost entirely from a third person limited perspective of each character's inner thoughts and perceptions, strictly adhering to a sort of pseudo-past tense.

Hm, what else...?

I tend to write wearing headphones with OST music playing to drown out the television from the other room, since this place has no soundproofing worth speaking of.

I enjoy filling in background details, even if I tend to be sparse on describing actual environments. I mean background details for characters.

Oddly enough, I seem prone to using relatively minor characters in a lot of stuff.

[mangafreak7793]

My grammar is horrible.

[Fafnir]

I don't always write, but when I do, it's about inanimate objects.

[Aiden]

I don't always write, but when I do, it's about inanimate objects.

Oh, apron-chan~

[RadiantBeam]

Lesbians. Lesbians everywhere.

That aside, I tend to dabble in the realm of romance and hurt/comfort stuff, with the occasional dip into tragedy and angst. I can't seem to write unless I'm listening to some form of music, and more often than not the music is instrumental (lots and lots of Disney tracks involved).

I'm a loose planner. I tend to get a general idea for something, and then I try to think out specifics before I write so I don't run into any blocks; at the same time, though, I'm not opposed to changing things up if something changes the direction of a story and I like that better than what I was originally planning to do. A bit of a change, since when I first started writing at around thirteen or fourteen I was quite the little improviser, and I didn't fully kick the habit until I was sixteen or seventeen.

My work tends to be very character focused and character driven, usually on bonds of family or romance.

I'm an incredibly slow, picky writer. I'm the type who prefers having the ability to sit down and write for hours, which probably explains why my update speed sucks, because for some reason I feel wrong doing it any other way. I once spent a whole day working on the chapter of a story.

[Fafnir]

Oh, apron-chan~

Wrapped strongly around me, falling silkily on my thighs~
I carry her where she cannot go, she protects me from the dirt of the world~



We complete each other!

[Aiden]

Lesbians. Lesbians everywhere.

I honestly think I write less het than you do, oddly enough.