Hey Look, a Survey!

This meme has been making the rounds on LiveJournal but I figured it was a perfect post for this blog. 29 questions, all about writing? Hell yes!


1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

In terms of fanfic, I think the Harper's Island universe has been the most fun to work with, just because there are so many things to explore. You can go back to the past and write the characters as they're coming of age, you can go beyond the show and deal with the survivors and the aftermath. You can do a character study of the killer, you can explore "missing" scenes, or you can write the last thoughts of the victims.

In terms of original work, I do have to say that I love my November, Maine. It's an idyllic, tiny seaside town (think Cabot Cove from Murder, She Wrote) where everyone knows everyone else, where the lady who owns the deli gives away food to the kids, where all the businesses are family-run. I think I took to the story so much because I'm giving the main characters the kind of adventure I'd always wanted to have at that age (not the ghost-busting, per se, but the whole finding old diaries and secret hiding places and trying to solve a decades-old mystery thing).

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

Original characters? Cripes, I've lost count. Even in my fanfic, I inserted original characters for the established characters to meet and help. These characters were mostly children because for some reason, I'm the most comfortable writing children.

In The Witch of November, I have Allie and her parents, Charlie and his parents and little sister Lynn, Lillian Blackstone (the ghost), and various one-off characters that show up for a scene or two. I seem to prefer females ... I find writing for males kind of difficult.

3. How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you’re writing about fictional places)?

Oh boy. First names for my main characters kind of just come to me. Sometimes I simply like the name, and sometimes I envision the character first and choose a name that I think fits him or her. Last names are harder. I have a tendency to go through our client database at work and co-opt a last name that works well with the first name I've already chosen.

And then sometimes I run into a situation where I need to name a character's relative and have to fit a first name with the already-chosen last name. For example, I had named Charlie's mom (Marissa) but never named his dad and didn't realize it until I wrote him into a chapter and remembered the poor guy had no first name. So then I had to think of a name that not only sounded nice with the surname Davis but also sounded like something a baby boy born in the mid-1970s would have been named. (I wound up naming him Adam.)

This section of the US Social Security website has proved an invaluable resource for me. You can choose any year from 1880 to the present and see what the most popular baby names of that year were. One of my pet peeves as a reader is an author naming a character something that is trendy now, regardless of how old the character is. I'd buy a five-year-old named, say, Logan but not necessarily a forty-year-old.

The only place I believe I've ever named myself was November, and that came to me from a line in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," as I've mentioned before.

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Honestly, I don't remember much about it, because I was six years old. I know it was about a haunted house, but whether it was an actual haunted house or a Halloween haunted house, I can't tell you. I do remember having to ask my mom how to spell about every other word, though!

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

Okay, this is kind of tricky. I have two five-year-olds: Charlie Davis's sister Lynn, and a little girl ghost by the name of Lucy Saybrooke from a Supernatural fanfic called "Child's Play." I want to say Lynn is younger, though, since poor Lucy was a ghost for eleven years.

Allie and Charlie are probably my "youngest" in terms of creation, which frightens me a little because I first thought of them about two years ago. My oldest? I can't even tell you. I've been writing so long that I honestly don't remember.

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol’ pen and paper?

I usually write sitting on my sofa or my bed with my laptop. I do enjoy bringing the laptop outside and sitting on my balcony when I can, though. I don't have any particular time of day when I'm more comfortable but I have discovered that I can't write after about 10 pm. Nothing comes out the way I want when I try to write much later than that.

I write mostly on the computer, just because I type faster than I handwrite. I'll write with a pen and paper if I don't have access to a computer and I do kind of miss it, but I just don't have the patience for it anymore.

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

Oh yes. I actually prefer music to the television because I find myself paying attention to the television instead of what I'm working on. The music I listen to while writing is pretty much what I listen to anyway: Vertical Horizon, the Goo Goo Dolls, The Calling, Lifehouse ... you know, mellow, mid-tempo stuff. Vertical Horizon works the best for me, though, in terms of helping me focus.

I don't usually relate music to the story or the characters. Certain songs have given me a plotbunny (more than one of my SVU stories has been inspired by one song or another) but it's not like I've ever heard a song and thought, "Oh, that is so Allie!"

8. What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

As is probably obvious, I adore writing ghost stories. When I was younger, I loved reading them, too. Nowadays, I mostly read mysteries. The "cozy" mysteries, the more procedural mysteries, and the suspense mysteries.

I think this is because I need for what I read to have an actual beginning, middle, and end. I can't do slice-of-life type books because, no matter how well it's written, I find myself asking, "What was the point?" when I finish.

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

It really depends on what I need the character to do. For instance, Lucy Saybrooke from "Child's Play" was a tragic character (she was kidnapped and accidentally killed; the kidnapper wasn't supposed to kill her), so I wrote her as fun-loving and innocent. I wanted the reader to feel for this little girl who'd done nothing wrong and had her life stolen from her.

With Allie and Charlie, Allie is honestly a more extreme version of me. She's shy and a compulsive worrier, and while I'm not as afraid of everything as she is, a lot of her personality is mine, just taken up a couple of notches.

Charlie, though not based on anyone I know, is Allie's complete opposite. She's timid and reserved, he's boisterous and impulsive. She's scared, he's gung-ho. They eventually learn to balance out their personalities, with Charlie taking a lesson from Allie's sense of caution, and Allie learning from Charlie how to live a little more in the moment.

10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts.

Dude, when you write ghost stories and supernatural fiction, everything is a weird situation.

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

The established characters that come most easily to me are Prue Halliwell from Charmed and Casey Novak from SVU. Abby Mills from Harper's Island comes rather easily to me, too. I always like writing anything from their POVs because it just flows.

An established character I dislike writing is John Winchester from Supernatural. He's freakin' hard, mostly because there's such a wide spectrum of views on him within the fandom. Some people adore him, some people hate him. Some people think he truly loved his kids and tried his best, some people think he was borderline abusive towards the boys. Trying to write that mix of tough-as-nails demon hunter and loving father all while presenting a character that a good chunk of the fandom would agree is truly John Winchester is a very delicate thing and doesn't come easily at all.

OC-wise, Allie and Charlie and even little Lynn come very easily to me. I find the parents harder but I don't necessarily dislike writing them. It's just difficult trying to find the balance between these adults knowing the kids are up to something but at the same time wanting to allow them their freedom to go off on a summer adventure.

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of world building? Any side-notes on it you’d like to share?

I think The Witch of November is probably my most complete world. I mention the geography a bit (for instance, we visit a deli, an ice cream shop, a sit-down restaurant, a hospital, both Charlie's and Allie's houses, the haunted house, the playground, the boardwalk and sea wall, and the woods behind the elementary school) and I mention how long it takes to get from one place to another. I actually have a picture of everything in my head, which doesn't always happen.

Part of that reason is because in fanfic, the setting is already established. But even the settings in my older original stories didn't have the same sense of "I can see this place" that November does.

13. What’s your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?

You know, I don't think I've ever written a different culture. I tend to write mostly what I know so my characters are definitely coming from a "my worldview" kind of place.

14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?

I don't actually sit down and draw anything out, no, but I do have a notion of where things are in relation to each other. For instance, Charlie lives on Longwater Avenue, which is a 5-10 minute bike ride to Allie's house on Hargrove Street. The Witch's house is on Lancaster Road, which is twenty minutes from Allie's.

Like I said, I can see November, so I probably could draw it out if I had to.

15. Midway question! Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!

Kathryn Reiss wrote my favorite book ever, Time Windows. I love what she did with that book. It's a young adult novel (I read it for the first time the summer before eighth grade) but there are so many elements in it I didn't even understand until I was older. For example, one of the characters leaves her family for another man. I understood, at 13, that the woman was leaving her husband for someone else but I didn't put two and two together that the woman was having an affair until I was older.

In her stories, she plays a lot with the idea that the past informs and shapes the present, which is something I adore. And in Time Windows, she toys with the idea that the present can also help shape the past.

16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing?

Not really, mostly because I don't think I'm good at it. I've written cute flirtation and the moments where the characters start thinking they're falling for each other and even an occasional kiss or two, but I don't think I could ever write a love scene. Ever.

With The Witch of November, clearly something too heavy would be inappropriate, since Allie and Charlie are eleven. But I do have little moments between them, little flashes of "maybe I like like him/her." I didn't intend on writing anything between them but the love one has for his or her best friend, but it kind of just happened. And really, I'm okay with it, because they are at that age when kids starting thinking about things like that.

17. Favorite protagonist and why!

Allie Sullivan, because I'm proud of her growth throughout the story. She goes from that kid who's afraid of quite literally everything to learning to face her fears and fight a ghost/evil witch.

18. Favorite antagonist and why!

Lillian Blackstone, aka the Witch of November, Maine. She's bullheaded and sarcastic and cruel and ridiculously fun to write.

19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Fanfic: Casey Novak's niece Lynn (whom I completely made up). She's quirky and cute and can get kind of annoying but she's allowed because she's eight. She's a complete blast to write.

Original: Charlie's little sister Lynn (no, the name is not a coincidence ... I based Lynn Davis on my Lynn Novak). She's essentially Lynn Novak but three years younger. She adores Allie and repeats things in threes. She's also a blast to write because I can make her super-cute (to Allie) and super-annoying (to Charlie) at the same time.

20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?

Fanfic: Olivia and Casey (SVU). Friends, more than friends, doesn't matter. They still kind of make me squeal, and I have fun with them.

Original: Allie and Charlie, definitely. I have a lot of time in the beginning where it's just Allie by herself (because Charlie's in the hospital) and I kind of couldn't wait to make Charlie better so I could get the two of them working together. They tease each other constantly and writing their bickering and their banter is fun.

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

Most of my characters are kids themselves. I think I write them relatively well, though I do have a tendency to put more adult phrases into their mouths than I think they would say. That's when I have to go back and reword things.

22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you’ve never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.

Charlie is an avid coin collector, mostly found money. Wheat pennies lying in the street, Mercury dimes being handed back in change, that kind of thing. One day, Allie got a steel penny back in change from an ice cream cone but refused to give it to Charlie until he promised to not tease her for a full twenty-fours hours. He agreed but teased her anyway, so she took the penny back. It took him a year and half to find another one.

23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?

Depends. The shorter one-shots (a couple thousand words) can take anywhere from a couple of days to a week. The longer multi-chapter short stories (10,000+ words) take a couple of months. The longest of my fanfics, an SVU story called "The Heart of the Matter," took me ... three or four months, I think. It was 31,000-and-change words.

The Witch of November is a whole different beast. I've been working on it for over a year. Current word count: 83,530.

24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?

I don't think I've ever actually killed anyone. Well, I killed Lucy Saybrooke, I suppose, but she was only alive in the prologue. For the rest of the story, she's a ghost. And I never actually wrote up her death (because I was trying to disguise the fact that she was a ghost).

The way I write, the story just evolves as I go, but in order to kill a character, I think I'd have to know ahead of time that so-and-so was going to have to die. I don't think I could ever just decide mid-way through a piece that I need a character to die and Character X is going to be it.

I'm not sure how good I would be with death scenes, to be honest. I know my "vanquish" scenes are always the hardest, when the characters prevail against whatever evil they're fighting.

25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

Sadly, I don't think any of my characters have ever had pets!

26. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!

Nooo. I don't draw well at all but I have a mental picture of what my characters look like. I could maybe do up something on one of those internet dollmakers but I'd have to be very very bored.

27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.

Not a huge role, no, but I do describe the characters so the reader can get an approximate picture of them as I envision them. Charlie and Allie, for example, look quite similar. They're both small for their age and have light brown hair with red highlights and freckles on the bridges of their noses. Charlie's eyes are bright blue. Allie's eyes are dark brown and she wears silver wireframe glasses.

I don't really know how I decided all that. It's kind of just how I pictured them when I started writing.

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

I honestly don't think I ever have. Again with the writing what I know. Unless you have direct experience with it, I think it's hard to write it with the proper sensitivity. Like, you don't want to be offensive and stereotypical, but you also don't want to be pandering or patronizing.

29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

Oh, every day. If a day goes by that I don't work on The Witch of November, I actually feel guilty. Sometimes, though, I do take a small write-break for a couple of days just to recharge.

Every time "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" comes up on my mp3s, I do think of my story but that's mostly because the song gave me the idea. Other than that, though, random things don't remind me of the story.