FanFic Ask Me Anything ~*~ Version 3.0 Daily Questions (See list on pg 164 or 1)

What do you want to see in Episode VII?

 

How did you become an expert on Yodaspeak?

Seriously now, your latest fic has amazing characterisation. Can you describe a bit your process to get a canon character "right"?

 

Who do you consider the best dressed male in SW?

Who do you consider the best dressed female in SW? ​

 

Taking the flip side of canon characters, what is your process for developing OCs?

 

What's your favourite era and why?

 

If you could choose to have one Force ability (telekinesis, mind trick, etc), what would it be?

 

I generally prefer to keep universes separate. That being said, I've seen a couple crossovers really well done, and I've read (and written) stories that were basically Star Wars characters placed in the plot of another universe (Mamma Mia, RENT, etc.).

Return of the Jedi! I love the Ewoks No particular favorite EU novel, but anything with a large (and good) Jaina plot works for me.



Katara, how did you find your way to the JC?

 

Okay, just a couple weeks and I can give you an itemized list. Just kidding! Over the long run, definitely Luke Skywalker. Luke's journey in the original trilogy was captivating -- and still is. I love that we see him discover that the world can be dark, confusing, and unfair, and that he's not so perfect himself -- and instead of giving up, he does this brave, impossible thing that was never in the textbook. Luke really makes his own destiny -- he walks out of that fire stronger than the Sith and more compassionate than the Jedi. And yet, there's still the tragedy of losing his father just as he found him. It does seem like the fandoms that really keep a hold on my heart have a bittersweet thread.

Something wonderful. Unexpected things -- things we've never seen before, stories that aren't stale and recycled from the last fourteen blockbusters. I won't say not old stories, because any decent Star Wars movie probably has to have something older than print. It would be lovely if they picked some of the best of the EU and integrated it in an interesting way, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll settle for totally different but extraordinary. Easy, right?

The Yodaspeak in Long Gone was done mostly by trial and error and I was worried that it would mess things up beyond all readability -- which is why I sought out a beta for the fic (thanks, Nyota's Heart.) So if I have expertise, it's just the learned-by-doing kind.

Basically, I went through my memories (and the quotes section of Wookieepedia) to get a general sense for the way that Yoda uses language. I tried to incorporate a variety of quirks and different sentence types, since a closer look showed that there was more to it than inverted grammar. Certain kinds of incomplete sentences and ways of phrasing also seem to be part of his pattern, and he has a tendency to use some filler words like "hmm" -- not the way most of us do to cover gaps, but in a way that feels more precise. He's actually become easier to write in dialogue than the other characters, because his habits are so distinctive.

Thank you for complimenting the characterization. My process for writing canon characters goes something like this (well, in the one story I have ever completed):

1) Have an idea for a story that includes the characters. Daydream about it (always somewhere where you can't get to a computer or pen and paper -- the gym is great for this.) Later, try to write down some of the details and scenes that you can remember. If you're unlucky and have my tendency to list-make to infinity, you may be trapped here until well after midnight, creating an elaborate outline that will vanish into smoke once the actual writing starts. At this stage, everything is possible and all of your ideas seem so brilliant that they could not possibly be hard to write. Go to bed and dream of your masterpiece.

2) Actually try to write the stang thing. Discover that you're not as sure as you thought you were about how the characters act and think. Worry that everything is wooden and blah and that every method used to get them to move through the plot, talk to each other and generally behave themselves feels forced. Try to research all the things that you can't quite remember about the canon sources without having to go read several 300-page books. Wookieepedia is often good for this, though the information you need most may be drowned in a thousand-page article. Try to find quotes and such that give a sense of how the characters speak.

3) Go off to either A) read/watch the canon sources or B) refresh your mind by getting lost in a book, TV series, or someone else's fanfic. If there seems to be a need, try some nonfiction research on things that are relevant to the characters.

4) Come back and take another look. You've had a while to think about what is and isn't working, and maybe you even did research (good work -- you are already more disciplined than I am 90% of the time.) Personally, I tend to weed out a lot of stories at this stage. If there is a fundamental flaw, such as a major plot point that you now think of as out of character behavior, it might be time to either overhaul your plans or let go and work on other writing instead. There's no rule that says you can't come back in ten years, or in ten months.

5)Anyway, let's assume that the thing seems salvageable and you have some ideas about what needs to be done. Spend some time fiddling with the story, adding and deleting things. It's often useful to cut-and-paste the extra things to somewhere you can access them later, just in case they're needed again.

This is the part that I've discovered eventually gets weird-but-useful, if you're persistent. Some things will just work better and seem right. To me, it sometimes feels like dealing with a database of sorts -- you input data (the stuff that you write down) and get a response from your memory of that character that says "getting warmer" or "getting colder." It's not a very precise method and I don't necessarily trust my particular "database" to be accurate. But it does tend to start working, once I've prodded and directed the story enough to have a sense of both what people are doing and why.

The more you work with a character (or a relationship, which is probably at least as unique), the more complicated those responses get, until it's not just warmer/colder, but "no -- I would do this instead", "yes -- but not like that, now watch and see how I actually do this", and "hey, remember this thing that you never thought to connect to a Star Wars story -- this is something you need to look at." This is all really more vague than it sounds and not at all like having voices in your head (she said -- but really, it's not ), but it does make me a little more sympathetic to the writers who spend three pages talking to their muses.

By now, there are probably some different possibilities bouncing around for what the characters "would really do." Decide which of all those interesting trails you want to follow. In my case, I tend to let the characters grab the reins and bolt after anything that looks especially shiny. I'm pretty sure that's not how more skilled writers manage.

6) Finish writing the Sithly story. (This is not a stage that I see very often.)

7) Look back at everything you've written. Worry about what on Earth it says about your twisted psyche that you interpreted the characters that way. Look at your favorite stories and think that those writers have it all figured out and this is just going to be embarrassing.

8) Post it, already. Cross your fingers and remind yourself that everyone else is going to look at it and see Other People's Writing . Other People's Writing is marvelous stuff and the characterization is almost always better than your own work. If nothing else, your audience has not stared at the Word document in a daze as many times as you have.

So, that's my particular process for writing canon characters. I don't know if it's helpful, since it mostly consists of research and planning + writing and deleting + leaving things up to my instincts + stubbornly telling myself that I know what I'm doing. For those less insecure, it's probably a shorter process.

 

Having no question to ask at the moment, I may be speaking out of turn. Please forgive me if I am.

But as a nervous novice writer reading your 8-step Process for Writing Canon Characters, and finding it to be both a relief (hey! those Other People actually go through this too!) and an encouragement, I would like to say—

Dear Kahara: I love you.

Thank you for sharing all of that. It's so very good to know.

 

Any non-SW fandoms you like or might write for?

 

What are your fanfic pet peeves?

 

Kahara, what is your hands-down favorite fanfiction of all time? The most influential on your own writing?

 

Cuisine and/or entree you could eat most days of the week? And favorite decadent snack?

 

Let's see -- the best dressed man is definitely Lando Calrissian. I think Leia has the best wardrobe of the women whose clothes I can actually remember. Well, excluding that metal bikini (seriously -- the chafing, and I bet it wouldn't be very sand-proof either), seeing as she didn't pick it out for herself. Amidala had a lot of beautiful outfits, but some of them look so impossible to walk around in that they bring down the overall score. The face painting and huge headdress in TPM looks like the most uncomfortable thing ever invented.

Is there a way to stop developing OC's? I can't really say that there's one specific process that I use for the first stage. They often spring up overnight, kind of like toadstools. It's hard to properly remember how those happen, but for me it often has to do with some kind of unfinished business from canon -- a character who disappeared and was never heard from, a planet that had issues during the Clone Wars and apparently never made the news since then, something somewhere that didn't have as much development or resolution as I wanted. Sometimes they start out as a way to explore canon characters who are related to or involved in their lives.

Other times, I'll need an OC for some sort of role in an already-existing story. These often start out as name, age, gender, species, affiliation, job, relationship to canon characters or your already-more-developed OC's. It actually doesn't take much to start the ball rolling on this. Once you have even a few details, a lot of other associations will come along for the ride. Sometimes I also use a modified form of a worksheet that I found a long time ago. It has a nice list of details and traits that you can fill in (wish I could remember where the original came from, so I could share it.)

In a lot of ways, the rest is pretty similar to what I do for the canon characters. The major difference is that once the actual writing starts, canon characters ought to adhere to (some version of) their established personality, while OC's remain more changeable. That makes them easier in a way, since you only have to worry about contradicting your own story. On the other hand, you also have to build a lot from scratch.

My favorite era falls under The Saga on these boards, particularly the intertrilogy and OT. While I've read and liked a lot of things set in other times, the original trilogy is something special and its era will always seem the most "Star Wars" to me. I read and write in Beyond the Saga as well. Before the Saga stories are sometimes very interesting, but I don't seek them out as often as the rest.

 

If you were stranded on a jungle planet in the GFFA, what are the three things you'd like to have with you?

 

Favourite non-human species and why?

 

Not sure how I discovered fanfic-in-general (I'd imagined fanfic in my head since well before I had any Internet access and I think that's not uncommon), but I had been reading the TFN forums and the fanfic section especially for a couple of years before deciding to write something of my own. That story went up in 2004. It was a bit of a train wreck, written with all the best intentions. Some of it wasn't that bad, but those parts were tainted by the weird, weird characterization of everyone and everything. I really wanted to be good at angst right out of the starting gate. Anyway, I became discouraged with that story after a while and didn't write much for a few years. I did scribble down a lot of planning for things during that time, but not the stories themselves. Then in 2012, I decided to take one of those things-in-planning and use it for the Diary Challenge. I've been around here pretty regularly ever since, except for the long break when the boards moved.

Early influences and inspirations -- wow, that would take weeks but I'll try to pare it down. Since you said early, this is mostly the stuff that I was reading in my elementary to high school years.

The published authors whose books were -- and sometimes still are -- on constant rotation between the library shelves and my bookbag include: Bruce Coville, Katherine Applegate, Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, Brian Jacques, J. K. Rowling, Madeleine L'Engle, Gerald Morris, O. R. Melling, Michael Stackpole, Aaron Allston (yes, I was reading the X-wing books early and often), Susan Cooper, Jane Yolen, and Emma Bull. Possibly Terry Pratchett as well, though those books might have been a later discovery.

Whatever I was reading on the forums probably shaped my Star Wars muse. A scan of the old favorites I remembered to back up on a flash drive before the move gives some clues. Plenty of intricate OC-based epics (Jane Jinn, Mcily_Nochi, SECRETSISTER, Alli-Wan, Mistress Renata), AU stories (Marnie, PaddyJuan, Luke_and_Mara_4ever, Tycalibur, EmilieDarklighter, bek, padawan lunetta, Clarus), and tales that highlight EU characters (JediSmurf, obi_ew, several of padawan lunetta's stories -- including I, Rebel, which I unfortunately forgot to back up.) Mainly, I seem to be drawn to anything that combines an adventure or other driving plot with lots and lots of great character moments. That does sound like what I aim for -- and usually end up cursing the name of my Word documents.

Oh, the chaos. I would really want telekinesis, but I hope I could talk myself into healing abilities instead. After all, fetching the remote gets old after a while. Being able to help people would be more satisfying in the long run -- and less likely to get you chased down by Mulder and Scully.

Somebody left the door open and by the time they noticed there was a galoomp (see the icon) curled up on the sofa eating chips it was too late! More seriously, I discovered the TFN forums at the age of 12 or so, and have been hooked ever since.

 

Kahara -- I think you missed a couple of my questions above. You can take either or both LOL about non-SW fandoms and the food-centric one about favorite cuisine etc.

~!

I'll pose another one meanwhile: What was your favorite subject in school, including any college focus, and does that relate to your current career path?

 

Nyota's Heart -- Don't worry, I think I see all your questions. I'm just working my way through the comments a few at a time. But please let me know if there's something still missing at the end!

Thank you very much, yourself! After posting that list, I'd worried that it seemed a bit long-winded. I'm not all that experienced in writing so it feels a little odd to give out advice. If it's any use, then yay!

Lots and lots! I've actually discovered some of my fandoms through fanfic (X-Men, for example, wouldn't have ever occurred to me) and will read pretty much anything that looks intriguing. There are very few fandoms that I know as extensively as Star Wars, however. So I'm often intimidated about writing for other worlds -- especially ones that require a lot of historical or other research to do them justice. That doesn't mean I'll never try, and I do keep threatening to write Highlander: The Animated Series fanfic in spite of all reason and good taste (for those not warped by the same experiences, that's a bizarre 90's cartoon -- I used to love it and still find it addictive in a Cheetos kind of way.)

Things that I am interested in (that actually have a fandom to speak of) include: Doctor Who (seen a few older episodes and like the new series even though it scares the bejabbers out of me and I've never finished season 2), The Dark is Rising sequence (wonderful fantasy series that I love beyond all reason to this day), Highlander, various DC and Marvel comics and the movie/TV/cartoon universes that spin off from them (for some reason, the Flash comics from around the 90's particularly appeal to me), Chronicles of Narnia, Phantom of the Opera, Rivers of London (urban fantasy set in London which has a fantastic audiobook series, though I should probably warn that they range from high PG-13 to R and are fairly gory), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra (both great, complicated and fun cartoon series set in the same universe), Blakes 7 (British science fiction show from the 70's that was introduced to me by fanfic), Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe, Middle-earth, Harry Potter, Labyrinth, Forever Knight (vampire cop show from Canada -- again, one I would never know existed without the fandom), Discworld, and Spirited Away (Japanese animated film, hard to describe and wonderful.)

Ron the Death Eater annoys me -- making a character suddenly evil-all-along without sufficient explanation. It especially bothers me when it's blatantly an easy way out because the character is "in the way" of a relationship or is one of the less favored characters. I have read and enjoyed stories with Ron the Death Eater, but it still irritates me on some level.

Favorite fanfiction out everything and every fandom? Probably Into the West, which is a Narnia fanfic by elecktrum (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3076343/1/Into-the-West). For Star Wars, KittandChips' Force Bond series is the one that I keep coming back to read and re-read (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/347383/1/Force-Bond-1-Orphan.)

When it comes to influence on my own writing, I honestly don't know. But padawan lunetta's I, Rebel (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2319229/1/I-Rebel) is the kind of work that I'd love to be able to do with EU characters someday.

Could eat lasagna most days, but shouldn't. As for decadent snacks, sometimes I'll heat up peanut butter until it's soft and pour it over ice cream like a sauce. It's less gross than it sounds, but horribly calorie-heavy.

Water in a container, something that goes "boom" to scare off animals, and something/anything that can call outside help. Because without some sort of rescue, I'd be up a creek very quickly. They do serious jungle in the GFFA.

Now, if it were for a visit and not being stranded, I'd want water, some kind of camera, and a guidebook (datapad or whatever) to identify all the local plants and wildlife. I'd love to see Felucia. Felucia wouldn't love me, and might manage to eat me even in the company of other travelers, but it would be an awfully beautiful place. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Felucia?file=Felucia_dawn.jpg

Arcona, because they look cool! Even if that one is clearly an addict because of the golden eyes (don't do salt, hatchlings.) And it's nice to see a reptilian species that doesn't resemble any of our own Earth species too directly.

 

What role does music play in the writing process, if any?

 

Favourite SW culture and why?