Fanfic Meme, pt 6

[pensnest]

These are for turlough.

30. What inspires you to write?

These days, mostly deadlines… and there aren't enough of them, so I don't write. Hmm.

I think my best answer would have to be, Other Fans. Not quite all of my stories were inspired by other fans, but the vast, vast majority were, in one way or another.

The biggest category: Challenges. DWNOGA and MTYG, various big bang comms, song challenges, one-offs like the Reunion Challenge and Sparklyglee; sky_pie writing challenges (Backstage is my favourite to come out of that one); my own Dragon Challenge—oh, so very many. Remix. Trickyfish Day (and Lambs Day, etc). I think all my long (ie 30,000+ words) Adam Lambert/Lance Bass stories were done for a big bang challenge of one kind or another. I haven't completed the fanfic_100 challenge, though I know what the last three will be (assuming I actually write them). So many.

I am so glad of the challenges, most particularly the SeSa ones, which have pushed me to write so many things I would not have contemplated writing without those particular requests. I'd classify both for this world to be unbroken and Thriller as 'wouldn't have been written without the challenge' stories, as I'm not generally interested in post-apocalyptic scenarios (or vampires), or in zombies. And I'm really happy with both stories. I even wrote JuC (still traumatised)!

Inspired by a request at fic_requests: so, so many. In my first year as a popslasher, nine; ten the next year, then eight… plus the entirety of the Chronicles, because the very first one was inspired at this comm.

Things other fans ask for, or mention, or that I know they'd like. A Hogwarts Christmas was done because I knew you wouldn't be participating in DWNOGA and I thought you deserved a story! Or the occasional meme, like the one that spawned Free Range.

Things I've seen other fans do, and wanted to try myself—Fettered, for example, and Round Dance, my bodyswap story. Shade, written backwards.

Other people's stories—Merchandising, for instance, was inspired… actually, I think it was inspired by a discussion in the comments to nopseud's Pornutopia. An Empty Cardboard Box was the bastard child of Calvin and Hobbes and a sweet little popslash story I found on angelfire.com.

Things I've read about in fannish discussions, which I've sometimes taken as a challenge (eg Shade). Or semi-fannish discussions… I think Dragon Country was actually sparked off by a discussion in the comments on a pro author's journal, somebody said "How do you rape a telepath?" and I thought, hmm, and thence the story grew. The White Room and The Tale of the Wealthy Young Man and the Slave who Gained his Freedom both came out of fannish discussions of consent issues.

Lava Lamps

I mean, yes, once in a while I've just had an idea for a story, and presented it—The Swan (after I went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake again, actually I think I wrote it in the theatre during the interval); most of my versifications (because really, The Song of Hiawatha *deserves* to be a popslash epic poem); The First Step practically wrote itself. But essentially, I get my inspiration from other fans.


36. What’s your favorite genre to write?

Er. Hmm. I guess… plot with romance? Fairly underplayed, down-to-earth romance? I'm honestly not sure how to answer this, but I think what I do mostly write is something with some actual plot to it, and I try to keep things feeling fairly 'real' - essentially I'm writing romances, so there is a limit to the 'real', but I think that probably covers it.


The list of questions is in this post.

Comments

[turlough]

I haven't read A Hogwarts Christmas in forever. I must remember to do it soon. It's so much fun.

I've always liked how much fanfic can be a part of the general fannish dialogue. It's so very different from the classic Western paradigm of the lone writing genius.

And yes, lava lamps can be great inspirations ;-D

Plot with romance is the best sort of romance!