5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours?
Yes, not to be facetious, but that’s the point of stories. Human behavior and all that. Now personally, I can’t say any single life-changing one in particular, no pithy anecdote, but a cripplingly shy introverted girl constantly moving around, difficult to make friends, with family that to call them stressful would be an understatement and some undiagnosed mental something or other of my own – the escape and distraction that well-loved stories have saved my life and my sanity time and again. Example- waiting to hear the whereabouts of my suicidal sister (she had checked herself into a clinic without telling anyone, this story has a happy ending) in the middle of the night, so I turned to my Kindle to re-read one of the Ring of Fire books to take my mind off my powerlessness.
6: What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing?
When I’m reading fics, spelling and grammar typos- especially the homophones- if they get too numerous to the point that I can’t ignore them, then that’s a pet peeve. And not indenting a new paragraph for a new speaker of dialogue. That’s a definite pet peeve, to have two direct quotations spoken dialogue from two characters and having them in the same paragraph. Bad characterization or plot is more fundamentally structural than the word ‘peeve’ suggests.
Referring to a character solely by hair color and a suffux like -ette. The blonde. brunette, pinkette, greenette. I hate that. If they include a noun and thus the hair color is just an adjective, it doesn’t bug me, but any time someone is addressed in noun form via hair color, I hate it.
18: Are you a ‘neatly designed outline’ writer or a ‘fuck it i’ll figure it out as i go’ writer?
…a little of both but more the second? For some of my original stories, especially back in high school and college, the outlines would be plotted to each individual interlude. I often write scenes out of order, or plan ahead some key points and thus have to improvise how the plot and characters get from point a to point c or point f. Writing shorter one-shots means I’m often writing as I go.
heget's WordPress 