Workshop: Writing casefile stories.

[hansbekhart]

How to Build a Casefile

Hi there! I’m Hans, and I’m here to talk about casefile!fics.

Comments

[rei_c]

What about you? What method do you usually start with? And how do you build your casefiles?

Oh, egads. Tough question, because I don't really ever consider my fics casefiles, per se? But thinking back retroactively, most of my fics start by a random idea that I do a hell of a lot of research on before I ever start thinking about myth or religion or lore. (Except the challenge fics, like Mixing Light to Light or L'Oiseau de feu, because those were given to me.) For instance, I had the idea for the first sentence of Men Enough and then had to figure out what was going on. I wanted apocalypse and silence and a sick, creeping, twisted sense of wrongwrongwrong, and so after all the research I settled on a Kabbalistic frame, then did more research to see how everything else would fit.

I sort of relate my process to quilting -- first I find individual pieces I like, then I try to figure out what pattern suits them, then as I start putting them together I figure out what stitch goes best and which panels get embroidered, etc. -- but I can't really put a finger on which aspect of the writing process correlates to which specific quilting step.