May Writing Meme: Day 6
May. 6th, 2011 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagas_isa6. How do you come up with names and story titles?
Names. For fanfic, OC names are chosen that fit the patterns of character names already existing. For my increasingly rare original stories, it's a matter of choosing the first one that comes to my head. (Though renaming would probably help some of them)
Titles. My criteria for titles is thus: It should tie with the theme and tone of a story. Difficulty-wise, it's either really easy and the title is in mind before I've even finished the story; or super difficult and I need to juggle three or four possibilities all with slightly different effects before finding the title that best does what it needs to.
I steal a lot of titles from song titles or lyrics, but not as much as I thought I did, tbh. I try not to go for 'Untitled #' or single word titles, unless those happen to be the ones that best suit the story.
1. Why do you write?
2. What piece of writing are you most proud of?
3. How often do you write? Do you have any writing rituals? Say, certain locations, beverages, background music, times of day, target word counts, etc.?
4. How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
5. What tools do you use to write? Audio recordings, pen and paper, computer software, other methods, some mixture thereof?
6. How do you come up with names and story titles?
7. Do you use beta reader(s)? If so, what do you look for in a beta reader? What specialties would your ideal beta have?
8. What kind of support, if any, do you get for your writing?
9. Do you share your writing publicly or keep it private? Have you or would you like to be published?
10. What's your biggest source of writer's envy?
11. How much detail do you usually leave out of a story?
12. Where do you turn when your research is coming up with nothing of value to the story?
13. Optimally, how many times does your work go through the revising process?
14. Do you make literary or cultural references in your work? If so, what sources do you usually draw on? How do you decide whether to make (or keep, when editing) a particular reference?
15. What repeated themes do you see running through your work?
16. How do you support your themes? How do you make sure your language reflects them, and how do you decide whether something belongs in the plot or the theme category?
17. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
18. What genres have you written in?
19. Do you write long stories, short stories, or both? What's challenging about writing a particular story length?
20. Is your writing generally plot- or character-driven? Why?
21. Do you ever participate in writing challenges? Which ones?
22. Out of all the characters you've ever written, which one is your favorite? Which one has surprised you the most?
23. Do you use unreliable narrators? Why or why not?
24. What do you like most about writing? What do you dislike?
25. Give some examples of how various story ideas have come to you. What forms did they come in?
26. What stories haven't you written that you would like to write?
27. Do you have any works in progress?
28. Do you visualize scenes when/before you write them? Or do you go by how the words sound in your head? Both? Something else entirely?
29. What do you do when the words just aren't coming?
30. Do you like to tell stories orally as well as writing them down?
Names. For fanfic, OC names are chosen that fit the patterns of character names already existing. For my increasingly rare original stories, it's a matter of choosing the first one that comes to my head. (Though renaming would probably help some of them)
Titles. My criteria for titles is thus: It should tie with the theme and tone of a story. Difficulty-wise, it's either really easy and the title is in mind before I've even finished the story; or super difficult and I need to juggle three or four possibilities all with slightly different effects before finding the title that best does what it needs to.
I steal a lot of titles from song titles or lyrics, but not as much as I thought I did, tbh. I try not to go for 'Untitled #' or single word titles, unless those happen to be the ones that best suit the story.
1. Why do you write?
2. What piece of writing are you most proud of?
3. How often do you write? Do you have any writing rituals? Say, certain locations, beverages, background music, times of day, target word counts, etc.?
4. How much of the story do you know before you start writing it? Do you use outlines?
5. What tools do you use to write? Audio recordings, pen and paper, computer software, other methods, some mixture thereof?
6. How do you come up with names and story titles?
7. Do you use beta reader(s)? If so, what do you look for in a beta reader? What specialties would your ideal beta have?
8. What kind of support, if any, do you get for your writing?
9. Do you share your writing publicly or keep it private? Have you or would you like to be published?
10. What's your biggest source of writer's envy?
11. How much detail do you usually leave out of a story?
12. Where do you turn when your research is coming up with nothing of value to the story?
13. Optimally, how many times does your work go through the revising process?
14. Do you make literary or cultural references in your work? If so, what sources do you usually draw on? How do you decide whether to make (or keep, when editing) a particular reference?
15. What repeated themes do you see running through your work?
16. How do you support your themes? How do you make sure your language reflects them, and how do you decide whether something belongs in the plot or the theme category?
17. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
18. What genres have you written in?
19. Do you write long stories, short stories, or both? What's challenging about writing a particular story length?
20. Is your writing generally plot- or character-driven? Why?
21. Do you ever participate in writing challenges? Which ones?
22. Out of all the characters you've ever written, which one is your favorite? Which one has surprised you the most?
23. Do you use unreliable narrators? Why or why not?
24. What do you like most about writing? What do you dislike?
25. Give some examples of how various story ideas have come to you. What forms did they come in?
26. What stories haven't you written that you would like to write?
27. Do you have any works in progress?
28. Do you visualize scenes when/before you write them? Or do you go by how the words sound in your head? Both? Something else entirely?
29. What do you do when the words just aren't coming?
30. Do you like to tell stories orally as well as writing them down?
