To the Sixes

So my NaNoWriMo efforts imploded (again) but I've finally gotten past the plotting problems that derailed my work on Chapter 3 of Full Metal Bitch for so long. The solution was actually pretty simple in retrospect, amounting to reversing a single line of dialogue between Aang and Zuko. The chapter currently stands at 4 completed scenes (of 10) and 3200 words. Chapter 4 is currently at 1900 words and will cover events between Bitter Work and The Library. Also, I'm thinking there will now be eight chapters total instead of just five. 


If you have some free time, be sure to check out a new AtLA fic called Lost a Long Time Ago by clockworkchaos. It's pretty great.

Forewarning on this chapter: you can start to see the fic creaking under the weight of the exposition I was in love with. Also, any scene with the children was pretty much written on the fly and never beta'd. I had no idea what to do with the kids' plotline, which is what eventually killed the fic...

( Part 3 )

A bit of history:  The Broken Masquerade was a story I started writing when I had first been overcome with writer's block on Taking Sights. I never finished this fic for a number of reasons: I didn't know enough about HP canon to write anything without doing a lot of research first, I discovered Avatar: The Last Airbender and got sucked into that fandom, and I started writing Facing Fearful Odds. But mostly? I stopped writing it because I realized I had no story to tell. I had a lot of fun doing the worldbuilding for a post-revelation world with wizards and muggles living together, but I didn't have any sort of unified character plot to tell.

So here's what I wrote of The Broken Masquerade, alongside occasional comments {in brackets} to elaborate things.

Summary: In 1981, Peter Pettigrew framed Sirius Black for a crime he did not commit by blowing up twelve people on a Muggle street. It was a cunning plan, and it would have worked perfectly if Peter hadn't unknowingly done it in front of a television news crew broadcasting live on the BBC. The year is now 1991. Harry Potter has just received his Hogwarts letter. What sort of world does he live in?

( Prologue + Chapter 1 )

Stolen from strawberryburst , via avocado_love


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.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to do working.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions! (Or use this to ask your flist to ask you 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.

I'll be alternating between two projects this month, finishing Chapters 3 + 4 of Full Metal Bitch and putting 50,000 words into Her Smoke Rises Up Forever.

You can follow my daily word in NaNoWriMo count on this linked page.

 So after about a month's worth of writer's block, I seem to have found my mojo again. The other day, I posted a new fic, A Pocket Guide to Ba Sing Se, which is some fictional in-universe propaganda for AtLA. It's been received pretty positively, so that's nice. I also wrote up a TV Tropes page for Another Brother. (Beware: link contains memetic hazards!)

I've fallen behind in the reading and reviewing, especially for all the AtLA Big Bang fics. I've been saving them as a reward for finishing FFO. If you're looking for some good fics, I recommend checking it out. Also of interest is sylvacoer's new Mai-centric fanfic project -- Danger, Deceit (alt link to ff.net). I did some beta work for her early on and it's got a really amazing story in store, international intrigue and mannerpunk. There is far too little mannerpunk in the Fire Nation wing of AtLA fanfic, so check it out!

I've been doing some tinkering on "Praise Be to Nero's Neptune", fleshing out the pre-story background of the Fire Nation Civil War. I'm still on the fence of how I want to unload some of the exposition -- a one-shot prequel, fictional historical documents at the head of each chapter, flashback interlude chapters, or not at all. I'm hedging towards only touching lightly on most of it. Last Firebender does awesome fake history documents in its header, and I don't think I could top it. Also, Last Firebender has the benefit of having a future to set its fictional documents in, and part of the point of "Praise Be" is that the world may be somewhat lacking in that regarding.

I may be using "Praise Be" as my kinda-sorta-NaNaWriMo project. Dunno yet. Gotta see what my RL situation is like in November first. Also, I might do FFO Book 2 or my new Evangelion AU instead.

Currently alternating on two primary projects -- finishing FFO and writing out Chapter 3 of FMB. It's been hard to return to FFO because I got really blocked up on it and sick of it being a money on my back. I only have four chapter remaining, though. FMB's third chapter had a big plot tumor in the form of the Iroh/Toph confrontation, so I split that chapter into two parts. Chapter 4 will focus on the AU rendition of "Bitter Work". Chapter 3 will consist primarily of flashbacks leading into the Iroh/Toph fight. In order to maintain audience sympathy for her character, I've decided to consciously avoid showing much of Toph's life before the Siege of Ba Sing Se. 

I'll start posting FFO's chapters on a weekly basis, starting alongside Chapter 3 of FMB whenever I post that.

 Fics I am working to get done this week, before the new school year begins:

* Mini-meme fic: Dangerous Ladies (for Omoni) -- one-shot sequel to Siege of the South.
* Mini-meme fic: Maiden's Moon (for Rianax) -- one-shot starring Aang and Yue.
* Apology fic: The Natural Beneficiaries Fund (for ferrrox, my Big Bang artist) -- one-shot starring Zuko, Mai, and Iroh.

* Avatar Shipping Month: a few drabbles, but we'll have to wait and see which I manage to finish. I've had a poor showing for ASM so far.  

So His and Her Circumstances has been fairly well received. I didn't expect more than six or seven reviews, so I'm happy it's scored twelve as of this posting, including a very long one featuring constructive criticism of my use of description and details about some missed character opportunities I could have developed better. I'm content when an ff.net review has more than four words to it and doesn't include a "please update 'X' story pleazz" in it, so this made me happy.

The other Maiko fic that I was writing before I had to switch over to H&HC due to time constraints, Matched Set, is on the back-burner for now. I need to get work done on my current fanfic projects before I can do something else.

But to decompress from the large volume of AtLA fanfic I've been writing in recent months, I've started developing a new Evangelion AU project. I have 6175 words in on the first chapter (of 26 planned) and it's working title is Her Smoke Rises Up Forever, I can't talk about specific plot details, but I'm intending it as a remedy to the issues I've experienced with Taking Sights, a fanfic that was badly handicapped by my lack of foresight and writerly experience when I started it. Her Smoke Rises Up Forever is also being written in response to a lot of Evangelion fanfic I've been reading lately, such as the excellent Nobody Dies but particularly those posted to the Spacebattles forums. I want to tell a story that strips out the Gurren Lagann feel that contemporary Evangelion fics seem to have taken on, that avoids crossovers or fusions, and goes back to the TV canon's original flavor.

Don't worry. I'll be getting back to work on the next chapter of Full Metal Bitch soon. I've also scaled back my plans for Avatar Shipping Month, as I need a break from AtLA stuff. I'm only going to write an entry for Kacest now. 

So I've dropped out of the AtLA Big Bang.

It wasn't a decision I made lightly, but my entry simply wasn't working. I've had a bad run of luck with the AtLA Big Bang, with both my Sokka!genderswap and my "Yue lives" AU imploding. In retrospect, the obvious solution would have been not to publish the first chapter of Full Metal Bitch and to have used that fic as my Big Bang entry.