Jim and Bones Author Spotlight
Posting for my own records as much as anything...
What motivates you to write fanfic in general, and to write in the Trek fandom in particular?
Maybe this is odd, but I had no idea fanfic existed. I discovered gay fantasy in my head in my early 30s, then found m/m erotica on the 'net, then found the same for free but with more emotional content in HP fanfic (I only ever read the first 3 HP books, thereafter I followed what happened in the series through the fanfic it produced!)
Bored after the release of book 7, I followed an author I liked across to Trek, (florahart, I think), read all the TOS recs from syredronning's lists and then paddled around in nuTrek. By then I was feeling guilty about the amount of time I was spending reading fanfic but also desperately in need of an escape from my failing marriage. So I thought that if I wrote for real, instead of just in my head, that at least would count as a creative activity, right?
The plot that became Honorable Enemies was actually my first idea but I got sidetracked by Pike/McCoy (thanks to skybluereverie) and wrote We'll have words later as my first fic.
The writing - and frankly the validation I got from the comments - were a crucial distraction though the long months of gathering the courage to end my marriage and then deal with all the consequences of that. And now that I'm in a happier place, I'm having too much fun to give it up. The fact that this fandom in general and this comm in particular is so diverse, friendly and wank-free is a big part of my enjoyment of the experience. This comm was recced to me very early on (by lindmere I think) and I've been happy here ever since.
What attracts to you to the epic love of Jim and Bones?
I'd best whisper it softly but I'm not really an OTP writer. Looking through the 42 fics I've written in Trek, they cover 10 main pairings, plus some gen, and not counting threesomes and foursomes. I tend to like characters and then wonder what it would take to get two (or more) of my favourite characters to like each other. The very first characters I liked and empathised with enough to believe I could think my way into their heads were McCoy and Pike. Kirk I just didn't get. He was young and cocky and an ass and everything that would put me off in a man if I met him in the flesh. I had no idea how to create a voice for him in my fiction.
But Jim being Jim, he snuck in there anyway, at first a comic bit-part character with a frat-boy voice and slowly as a more serious player. Reading other great fic gave me insights into what that kind of cocky behaviour might be covering up, until he had squirmed his way into the pantheon of characters I like playing with. He doesn't like being left out!
Where do you get your ideas from? Do you brainstorm ideas? Pick up prompts from friends or memes? Get inspired by other people’s fic or art? They just appear in your head?
Looking back through my fics, images seem to be my most common source of inspiration. A photo of Bruce Greenwood playing chess inspired It's your move, a lovely piece of art from kilala10 of Kirk/Pike/McCoy inspired Operation Get-Jim-Kirk-to-shut-the-fuck-up , an advert for Kirk cologne resulted in Set phasers to stunning!, a jim-and-photo daily of what is CLEARLY bodyguard Bones and spoilt trust-fund kid Jimmy led to The Bodyguard. However most of the jim-and-bones dailies don't give enough context to trigger ideas for me. A television programme on synesthesia prompted my Spock/McCoy mind-meld Perfectly Logical. A recipe for grits I found on the internet (while looking for southernisms for Bones) inspired Kirk/McCoy The 10 Commandments of Grits.
I sometimes get ideas from prompts, although it very random whether anything gets triggered. And I like remixing things in the mirror universe. So much so that I did a sort-of MU remix of the entire movie for this year's big bang, with the Romulans as the good guys!
But most of my ideas just sidle into my head for no good reason at all.
What's the oddest thing that's ever inspired you to write?
Hmmmm..... maybe imachar commenting in a Bruce Greenwood picspam that her youngster calls Bruce the nice doggie man. Which inspired. Joanna&PIke doggie man fic. Or maybe writing a long, serious, complex story in my head (Kirk goes space-mad and develops a god-complex, McCoy calls on Pike to get the Enterprise back), realising I was never going to actually write it, and then writing a parody of my own idea instead.
Do you think through your stories beforehand or just start writing? How much does the initial idea change in the process of writing?
The stories are always at least three-quarters written in my head before they ever reach a screen. The process of writing may result in extra scenes being needed or some details changing but the overall concept seldom changes. (I'm the daughter of a man who wrote economics books in his head, and then wrote them down in longhand, first word with last word, without any further editing. And got them published. I don't have a fraction of his ability but I have an echo of that in that I don't do a huge amount of rearranging of written text.)
When/where do you write? How do you write - longhand, onto a computer, in your head, etc?
I do a lot of sport - rock-climbing, trail-running, ski-mountaineering - that leaves me with considerable time to think. I write detailed stories in my head. And then some of those stories get put down on the laptop. I don't write notes or long-hand at all. I'm self-employed, which gives me both freedom and time, and I write at home, in a local cafe, or while travelling for work, which I do frequently. I wrote the entire climatic sex scene of my first big bang A Mighty Fine Man while in economy class on a day-time Bejing-London flight and if the man seated next to me realised what I was writing, he was far too much of a gentlemen to comment.
When you sit down and write, are you completely focused or frequently distracted?
I definitely get distracted. I fiddle and fritter and check email and stare out of the window. Sometimes I get a clean rush of energy and get a lot written quickly but I don't find it that easy to get into that productive place whenever I want it.
What's your favorite mood to write in? Does it matter whether you feel happy or melancholy?
I can't be too tired or stressed, but if I'm productively happy, I tend not to be writing either. I suspect I do most of my writing when overcome by a faint melancholy.
Do you write with music or in silence? Do you have specific playlists?
I write in silence. I seem to be one the few people in the world who doesn't have a soundtrack to my life. I'm just not particularly interested in music.
Do you just write without really thinking about or do you try to enhance your language by using rhetorical devices, consult a thesaurus, etc? Does it come naturally to you or do you have to work at it?
I mostly write without thinking about it, but I do use a thesaurus when I'm looking for other ways to express an idea, or a way to reinforce something without repetition. I'm aware of having a particular style - quite direct, not very descriptive. It can be quite powerful but it can also be repetitive and rather sparse, and I wish I could be more imaginative and evocative in my thoughts and my descriptions.
How do you go about writing about emotions? Do you try to figure out what a person would feel in that situation or do you just write what feels right to them?
I just go with what feels right in the moment. I may then go back to the scene and challenge myself: why are they feeling that? how would they react to finding out this? I worry about finding distinctive voices for my characters, worry that they all just sound like versions of me. But I have also noticed that I am getting better at it over the fifteen months that I've been writing fanfiction.
How do you go about writing sex scenes? Does writing explicit NC17 make you feel embarrassed/awkward?
At first I found it great fun to write NC17, and kind of liberating. (I grew up in a pretty socially repressed society.) It was less awkward to do than I'd expected. But after six months I realized I was beginning to repeat myself. I only have so many ways to describe sex. Despite being in fandom for the slash, I often skim over the sex scenes unless they are very well done (even when I reread my own stuff!) I haven't yet solved this problem...
What are your major kinks?
Well-written complex characterisation. I'll follow an author almost anywhere in those circumstances (and I'll be envying them their skill on the journey).
Do you write around facts, or find information to fit the story? How and where do you do research?
Memory Alpha, Wikipedia and Google are my very best friends in this regard. Sadly none of the things I know about in real life are much use in writing in the Trek universe. I try and mix a certain amount of hand-waving with a sprinkling of detailed fact to keep the reader convinced of the credibility of the story-line. If I'm looking for that kind of credible detail, I may rework the scene to incorporate a good piece of information that I have found. I work best by finding a template of what I have in mind and then reworking that to fit my scenario.
When I was trying to write Pike/Kirk/McCoy MU fight fic , knowing nothing about hand-to-hand fighting, I based it roughly on a fight scene from a fantasy novel I found online and then got the obliging eldritchhorror to look it over.
Do you find yourself drawn to write one particular genre over and over? Is there another you wish you could write but don't think you do well?
My very first piece of fanfic was a little bit of Pike/McCoy angst and I thought that emotion-driven angst would turn out to be my strong point. But looking at my output, a kind of dry humour is clearly my default setting. This baffles me completely as having a sense of humour is not my strong point in real life.
I would love to be able to do deeply insightful psychological portraits, or detailed world-building, or riveting action plots. All I can say is that I am getting slightly better at all of the above, although nowhere near the authors I admire. My latest work, my big bang, is 45 000 words long and yeah, I nicked the plot straight from the movie but still, when I first started, I wouldn't have thought I could hold a storyline for that long. Practise really does help!
Do you find yourself with a constant head!character always in mind, or do you like to explore/vary different aspects of a character's personality such that it can lead to very different outcomes?
I guess I fall somewhere in-between. For each of the characters I care about, I have a range of possibilities and I may explore one rather than another in a fic. So where McCoy is often seen as the reticent one (especially when written with Pike - I think it is a bit more even when he's written with Kirk), I set out to write a very self-confident, sexually aggressive McCoy in That Starfleet Debacle.
But I like all of my characters too much to manage to make any of them less than good-guys. Which can be tricky, given that I like writing Mirror Universe. So I write a bizarre genre of MU fluff where most people have some redeeming qualities. I really admire authors like severinne who can convincingly mix up good and bad aspects within a character.
How influenced are you by fanon? Or do you work strictly from pure canon? How much attention do you pay to TOS canon in writing reboot?
I cheerfully use quite a lot of fanon. So I'll write Spock with a higher body temperature or getting drunk on chocolate without bothering to check if those are canon or fanon facts. If it works for my story, then I don't care. I like using TOS though, partly because it helps me with finding both plots and facts that I can add to my stories and partly because I like putting in references that TOS fanatics will get.
I'm not too fussed about being 'in character' either. What I mean is that if an author (me or someone I'm reading) creates a convincing and internally-consistent characterisation then I'm on board to follow along. Honestly, the movie gives us very little to go on, even for the key characters. There are a dozen different ways the characters can be spun and it can still be called true to canon.
Given that our corner of fandom is all about two young handsome talented white boys, how much attention - if any - do you pay to social justice issues in writing your fic? (Eg. writing female characters - Jim’s mother, Bones’ ex-wife, or introducing OCs.)
I didn't pay any attention at first. I was in it for the slash and didn't have the confidence to write more than tightly focused pairing fics to start with. I'm still in it for the slash, I will read other types of stories but I'm not interested in reading explicit sex in those contexts. But since I've started to write stories with wider settings and backing characters, I've started thinking more about who those backing characters are.
It first occurred to me in writing my first big bang, A Mighty Fine Man, where the Surgeon-General is a fairly important OC. In the first draft he was male, and on re-reading I realised I had this world that I'd created that only men seemed to live in. And I didn't like that. So he turned into a kick-arse British female, Victoria Turnbull. (Because the Ameri-centricness of Trek also gets on my nerves and I wanted to be able to use bloody and bollocks.) In retrospect there was no reason why she should have been white either, and now my OCs - when they occur - are female, PoC and not Western, unless there is a cogent reason otherwise.
And this year's Happy Trekmas fic is going to have Pike in a BAMF hover-chair instead of that monstrosity of a wheelchair from the movie.
If you use a beta: Why do you use one? Do you use one or several? Why? Where/how did you find him/her? Do you chat outside of betaing? If you don't use a beta: Why not?
I found my first beta, who is now my perma-beta, by asking in the Pike/McCoy comm. I didn't realise how lucky I'd been until I tried finding more betas later on. She's become my best friend in fandom and is entirely to blame for my Pike/Boyce fics. She is of course the inimitable imachar. She was betaing for me before she started posting her own fic, and it was a bit of shock to find out just how good a writer she is! The fact that she is my generation and background also helped to make me more comfortable about playing around with scifi porn. (Not that I am saying that I thought the rest of you were teenage cellar-dwelling video-game comic junkies, but I might have sort of thought that.... The wide range of people in the Trek fandom is another reason I like it here.)
Very short fics (up to 1500 words) I normally post unbetaed, and also the occasional fic that just flows out of my head onto the screen. Anything I've worked over will probably go to beta. It is partly for Ameri-picking, but more importantly, I get stuck eventually and run out of fresh ideas. Beta comments (when done well) don't so much tell me what to do as give me a fresh impetus of inspiration. (And point out the plot and character weaknesses that I've been studiously avoiding for lack of ideas.) Very long fics (10 000+) will go to more than one beta, if I can manage it, just because different people pick up on very different things.
I have backed away from a few betas when their style just didn't mesh with mine. It is hard to find a good fit! I've betaed for other people too and found it hard going both ways.
Editing for yourself: do you do separate first/second/third drafts, or is it just one file that gets edited multiple times? Do you edit on the go, or come back after everything's written?
For long fics (over 10 000 words) I do separate drafts, I think as much as a back-up process as anything else. Long fics tend to go out to beta twice, which give me three drafts.
How many of the stories that you start do you finish and post? Why do you end up abandoning stories?
Maybe half the stories I write in my head make it onto the screen. A handful of those will just flow, start to finish. I wish I could find more that just worked that way. Most of the rest will need to be worked on, with beta input. Maybe 30% will die, the muse lost before the fic can be called complete. Getting my laptop stolen earlier this year did have the side effect of liberating me from a couple of fics that were stranded on the computer. The world will never know of my attempt to write a serious McCoy / tentacle monster romance. The world is probably grateful for this fact.
Have you ever collaborated with anyone else to write a story? How did you do it? Did you enjoy the experience?
No, and I can't imagine doing it. I'd battle to get over the need to do it my way all the time. However, I am inspired to do MU remixes of other authors' stories every so often, of which the most successful is probably See you in the morning, a remix of a story by skybluereverie.
Have you ever written a sequel to a fic you wrote? If so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
I am very wary of sequels. The few times I have written them - or tried to - in response to readers comments demanding MOAR I've almost never felt that they lived up to the original. I've now learnt to say (politely) no. Some stories end where they end and it has to be up to the imagination of the reader to carry them on. I almost always have further canon in my head for that story universe, but not in a form that will make a good story in its own right.
The only time reader prompting has led to better sequels IMO were Simply the Best as a sequel to The Morning After and the whole Fuck My Life Series.
What sort of themes do you see recurring in your work?
They are often sex first times and tend to be focused on emotional interaction between characters rather than be plot-driven. There will always be some kind of problem/conflict-resolution arc, I don't often do day-in-the-life things. Older characters often feature, I hate the TOS trope that the Admirals are good for nothing, I like making older characters normal, loving, teasing people. Like when Jim, Bones and Pavel come across the Admirals smoking weed. Sex is normally so brilliantly perfect in fanfic that I like writing awkward, not totally satisfactory but eventually happy sex scenes (like An early Christmas present). Texting often appears in my fics, as a way to get a third voice into a pairing scene. Everyone is chatty during sex. I dislike major power imbalances and am always trying to find ways to even things out for my characters. I like my characters and want them to be happy (which is ultimately why writing Pike/McCoy will always be a downer. Canon is a bitch.)
Have you ever participated in a fest, challenge or a Big Bang? If yes, what do you like about doing it. And if not, why do you avoid them?
I've done Star Trek Big Bang and Happy Trekmas. And am doing both again this year. I like them because the prompts are either self-created or are very vague and they are multi-pairing. I definitely have a thing for minor pairings. ( McCoy/Barnett anyone?) I enjoy BB because of the support community that exists during the writing process and I like the exchange aspect of HT.
I don't do well with very specific prompts, as I found out when I really battled to complete the two prompts I got out of the Help Pakistan auction. That being said, I think they produced some pretty good stories because I was forced to write outside my comfort zone, notably Who you belong to (cutthroat razor genital shaving kink!).
When you post, where do you post to? Your journal? Cross-post to comms? A03? FFnet?
My journal, then cross-post to relevant comms (two, max three) and then every few months spend an evening putting everything across to A03. I enjoy the steady trickle of kudos that I get from A03, especially for older fics.
Warnings - What do you feel it is most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
I have mixed feelings about warnings. I've been put off reading fic because the warnings were so harsh and then finally tried them to find them 'tame' by my standards. I do warn for the things that seem to be the fandom standard as a courtesy to readers. Sometimes I will put warnings in a highlight block so as not to spoil what I consider moments of impact in the story.
I read by following recs and by following authors I like. If a character is convincingly complex and has a glimmer of decency buried somewhere in their make-up, I'll follow to some pretty dark places. But pain / grief / evil without depth doesn't work for me.
How important is it to you to receive comments on your story?
I love comments. After I post I often hang around and watch for the first comment to come in. If I got no comments at all I'd stop posting fics, and probably go back to just writing them in my head. But that being said, how many comments I get relates pretty directly to which pairing I am writing. And that doesn't stop me writing some very obscure pairings (for example young Pike/Boyce in Pretty Boy) knowing I'll be lucky to get comments into double figures. So the process is driven primarily by the story that I want to write but is then heavily reinforced by getting comments.
How old were you when you wrote your first story?
Fiction? And not just in my head? Aged 41 with my first Trek fic!
Are you still brimming with ideas or are you running dry / losing interest in the absence of new canon? Do you expect to write more once the new movie is released?
I still have ideas. Maybe I don't have as many of 'easy' ideas - by which I mean the stories that just write themselves start to end. So I'm posting less as the stories take longer (45 000 words of BB, I'm looking at you!) And as fandom gets quieter there is less inspirational input coming from other peoples' fic, picspams, comments. But I expect to still be puttering along here when the next movie comes surfing through. I haven't found any other fandoms I feel inspired to write for.
What is your current project or projects?
Final edit on my big bang when it comes back from my betas.
An MU remix of imachar's Pike/tentacle monster fic.
Write my Happy Trekmas fic, Pike/McCoy post-Narada angst.
Oh yes, and then there is that Pike/Kirk/McCoy angst-wallow-fest inspired by severinne....
And that JIm/Bones AU with Jim as worst kind of peppy motivational speaker giving the keynote at the dinner in honour of uber-cynical doctor Bones....
And that half-written Pike/Boyce with father figure Archer... etc, etc....
Of what you’ve written, rec for us: your favourite Kirk/McCoy (Chris/Karl) story. Your favourite Trek story with another pairing / key characters.
Kirk/McCoy: do I have to chose?
The Fuck My Life Series (and The Bodyguard, and Set phasers to stunning!)
Another Trek pairing: this is even worse!
Short fic: The tentacle monster that didn't MU McCoy/tentacle monster fluff! (and Perfectly Logical Spock/McCoy)
Long fic: Honorable Enemies Spock/McCoy (and A Mighty Fine Man Pike/McCoy)
Anything else you want to add?
I didn't grow up with Trek, although the references were part of my cultural environment. We only got TVs in my country in 1975 and didn't have one in my house until 1981 (and that was black-and-white! I developed a mild crush on the Battlestar Galactica boys.) But the first time I went to the US, when I was about 24, I arrived, exhausted and jetlagged at the Hilton in St Petersburg, Florida, to find a Star Trek convention in full swing. I'd never seen anything like it and it largely simply confirmed my stereotype of Americans as very odd.
It amuses me that nearly twenty years later - while I'm not about to pop on Spock ears and attend a con - I'm paddling very happily in the Trek pool.
What motivates you to write fanfic in general, and to write in the Trek fandom in particular?
Maybe this is odd, but I had no idea fanfic existed. I discovered gay fantasy in my head in my early 30s, then found m/m erotica on the 'net, then found the same for free but with more emotional content in HP fanfic (I only ever read the first 3 HP books, thereafter I followed what happened in the series through the fanfic it produced!)
Bored after the release of book 7, I followed an author I liked across to Trek, (florahart, I think), read all the TOS recs from syredronning's lists and then paddled around in nuTrek. By then I was feeling guilty about the amount of time I was spending reading fanfic but also desperately in need of an escape from my failing marriage. So I thought that if I wrote for real, instead of just in my head, that at least would count as a creative activity, right?
The plot that became Honorable Enemies was actually my first idea but I got sidetracked by Pike/McCoy (thanks to skybluereverie) and wrote We'll have words later as my first fic.
The writing - and frankly the validation I got from the comments - were a crucial distraction though the long months of gathering the courage to end my marriage and then deal with all the consequences of that. And now that I'm in a happier place, I'm having too much fun to give it up. The fact that this fandom in general and this comm in particular is so diverse, friendly and wank-free is a big part of my enjoyment of the experience. This comm was recced to me very early on (by lindmere I think) and I've been happy here ever since.
What attracts to you to the epic love of Jim and Bones?
I'd best whisper it softly but I'm not really an OTP writer. Looking through the 42 fics I've written in Trek, they cover 10 main pairings, plus some gen, and not counting threesomes and foursomes. I tend to like characters and then wonder what it would take to get two (or more) of my favourite characters to like each other. The very first characters I liked and empathised with enough to believe I could think my way into their heads were McCoy and Pike. Kirk I just didn't get. He was young and cocky and an ass and everything that would put me off in a man if I met him in the flesh. I had no idea how to create a voice for him in my fiction.
But Jim being Jim, he snuck in there anyway, at first a comic bit-part character with a frat-boy voice and slowly as a more serious player. Reading other great fic gave me insights into what that kind of cocky behaviour might be covering up, until he had squirmed his way into the pantheon of characters I like playing with. He doesn't like being left out!
Where do you get your ideas from? Do you brainstorm ideas? Pick up prompts from friends or memes? Get inspired by other people’s fic or art? They just appear in your head?
Looking back through my fics, images seem to be my most common source of inspiration. A photo of Bruce Greenwood playing chess inspired It's your move, a lovely piece of art from kilala10 of Kirk/Pike/McCoy inspired Operation Get-Jim-Kirk-to-shut-the-fuck-up , an advert for Kirk cologne resulted in Set phasers to stunning!, a jim-and-photo daily of what is CLEARLY bodyguard Bones and spoilt trust-fund kid Jimmy led to The Bodyguard. However most of the jim-and-bones dailies don't give enough context to trigger ideas for me. A television programme on synesthesia prompted my Spock/McCoy mind-meld Perfectly Logical. A recipe for grits I found on the internet (while looking for southernisms for Bones) inspired Kirk/McCoy The 10 Commandments of Grits.
I sometimes get ideas from prompts, although it very random whether anything gets triggered. And I like remixing things in the mirror universe. So much so that I did a sort-of MU remix of the entire movie for this year's big bang, with the Romulans as the good guys!
But most of my ideas just sidle into my head for no good reason at all.
What's the oddest thing that's ever inspired you to write?
Hmmmm..... maybe imachar commenting in a Bruce Greenwood picspam that her youngster calls Bruce the nice doggie man. Which inspired. Joanna&PIke doggie man fic. Or maybe writing a long, serious, complex story in my head (Kirk goes space-mad and develops a god-complex, McCoy calls on Pike to get the Enterprise back), realising I was never going to actually write it, and then writing a parody of my own idea instead.
Do you think through your stories beforehand or just start writing? How much does the initial idea change in the process of writing?
The stories are always at least three-quarters written in my head before they ever reach a screen. The process of writing may result in extra scenes being needed or some details changing but the overall concept seldom changes. (I'm the daughter of a man who wrote economics books in his head, and then wrote them down in longhand, first word with last word, without any further editing. And got them published. I don't have a fraction of his ability but I have an echo of that in that I don't do a huge amount of rearranging of written text.)
When/where do you write? How do you write - longhand, onto a computer, in your head, etc?
I do a lot of sport - rock-climbing, trail-running, ski-mountaineering - that leaves me with considerable time to think. I write detailed stories in my head. And then some of those stories get put down on the laptop. I don't write notes or long-hand at all. I'm self-employed, which gives me both freedom and time, and I write at home, in a local cafe, or while travelling for work, which I do frequently. I wrote the entire climatic sex scene of my first big bang A Mighty Fine Man while in economy class on a day-time Bejing-London flight and if the man seated next to me realised what I was writing, he was far too much of a gentlemen to comment.
When you sit down and write, are you completely focused or frequently distracted?
I definitely get distracted. I fiddle and fritter and check email and stare out of the window. Sometimes I get a clean rush of energy and get a lot written quickly but I don't find it that easy to get into that productive place whenever I want it.
What's your favorite mood to write in? Does it matter whether you feel happy or melancholy?
I can't be too tired or stressed, but if I'm productively happy, I tend not to be writing either. I suspect I do most of my writing when overcome by a faint melancholy.
Do you write with music or in silence? Do you have specific playlists?
I write in silence. I seem to be one the few people in the world who doesn't have a soundtrack to my life. I'm just not particularly interested in music.
Do you just write without really thinking about or do you try to enhance your language by using rhetorical devices, consult a thesaurus, etc? Does it come naturally to you or do you have to work at it?
I mostly write without thinking about it, but I do use a thesaurus when I'm looking for other ways to express an idea, or a way to reinforce something without repetition. I'm aware of having a particular style - quite direct, not very descriptive. It can be quite powerful but it can also be repetitive and rather sparse, and I wish I could be more imaginative and evocative in my thoughts and my descriptions.
How do you go about writing about emotions? Do you try to figure out what a person would feel in that situation or do you just write what feels right to them?
I just go with what feels right in the moment. I may then go back to the scene and challenge myself: why are they feeling that? how would they react to finding out this? I worry about finding distinctive voices for my characters, worry that they all just sound like versions of me. But I have also noticed that I am getting better at it over the fifteen months that I've been writing fanfiction.
How do you go about writing sex scenes? Does writing explicit NC17 make you feel embarrassed/awkward?
At first I found it great fun to write NC17, and kind of liberating. (I grew up in a pretty socially repressed society.) It was less awkward to do than I'd expected. But after six months I realized I was beginning to repeat myself. I only have so many ways to describe sex. Despite being in fandom for the slash, I often skim over the sex scenes unless they are very well done (even when I reread my own stuff!) I haven't yet solved this problem...
What are your major kinks?
Well-written complex characterisation. I'll follow an author almost anywhere in those circumstances (and I'll be envying them their skill on the journey).
Do you write around facts, or find information to fit the story? How and where do you do research?
Memory Alpha, Wikipedia and Google are my very best friends in this regard. Sadly none of the things I know about in real life are much use in writing in the Trek universe. I try and mix a certain amount of hand-waving with a sprinkling of detailed fact to keep the reader convinced of the credibility of the story-line. If I'm looking for that kind of credible detail, I may rework the scene to incorporate a good piece of information that I have found. I work best by finding a template of what I have in mind and then reworking that to fit my scenario.
When I was trying to write Pike/Kirk/McCoy MU fight fic , knowing nothing about hand-to-hand fighting, I based it roughly on a fight scene from a fantasy novel I found online and then got the obliging eldritchhorror to look it over.
Do you find yourself drawn to write one particular genre over and over? Is there another you wish you could write but don't think you do well?
My very first piece of fanfic was a little bit of Pike/McCoy angst and I thought that emotion-driven angst would turn out to be my strong point. But looking at my output, a kind of dry humour is clearly my default setting. This baffles me completely as having a sense of humour is not my strong point in real life.
I would love to be able to do deeply insightful psychological portraits, or detailed world-building, or riveting action plots. All I can say is that I am getting slightly better at all of the above, although nowhere near the authors I admire. My latest work, my big bang, is 45 000 words long and yeah, I nicked the plot straight from the movie but still, when I first started, I wouldn't have thought I could hold a storyline for that long. Practise really does help!
Do you find yourself with a constant head!character always in mind, or do you like to explore/vary different aspects of a character's personality such that it can lead to very different outcomes?
I guess I fall somewhere in-between. For each of the characters I care about, I have a range of possibilities and I may explore one rather than another in a fic. So where McCoy is often seen as the reticent one (especially when written with Pike - I think it is a bit more even when he's written with Kirk), I set out to write a very self-confident, sexually aggressive McCoy in That Starfleet Debacle.
But I like all of my characters too much to manage to make any of them less than good-guys. Which can be tricky, given that I like writing Mirror Universe. So I write a bizarre genre of MU fluff where most people have some redeeming qualities. I really admire authors like severinne who can convincingly mix up good and bad aspects within a character.
How influenced are you by fanon? Or do you work strictly from pure canon? How much attention do you pay to TOS canon in writing reboot?
I cheerfully use quite a lot of fanon. So I'll write Spock with a higher body temperature or getting drunk on chocolate without bothering to check if those are canon or fanon facts. If it works for my story, then I don't care. I like using TOS though, partly because it helps me with finding both plots and facts that I can add to my stories and partly because I like putting in references that TOS fanatics will get.
I'm not too fussed about being 'in character' either. What I mean is that if an author (me or someone I'm reading) creates a convincing and internally-consistent characterisation then I'm on board to follow along. Honestly, the movie gives us very little to go on, even for the key characters. There are a dozen different ways the characters can be spun and it can still be called true to canon.
Given that our corner of fandom is all about two young handsome talented white boys, how much attention - if any - do you pay to social justice issues in writing your fic? (Eg. writing female characters - Jim’s mother, Bones’ ex-wife, or introducing OCs.)
I didn't pay any attention at first. I was in it for the slash and didn't have the confidence to write more than tightly focused pairing fics to start with. I'm still in it for the slash, I will read other types of stories but I'm not interested in reading explicit sex in those contexts. But since I've started to write stories with wider settings and backing characters, I've started thinking more about who those backing characters are.
It first occurred to me in writing my first big bang, A Mighty Fine Man, where the Surgeon-General is a fairly important OC. In the first draft he was male, and on re-reading I realised I had this world that I'd created that only men seemed to live in. And I didn't like that. So he turned into a kick-arse British female, Victoria Turnbull. (Because the Ameri-centricness of Trek also gets on my nerves and I wanted to be able to use bloody and bollocks.) In retrospect there was no reason why she should have been white either, and now my OCs - when they occur - are female, PoC and not Western, unless there is a cogent reason otherwise.
And this year's Happy Trekmas fic is going to have Pike in a BAMF hover-chair instead of that monstrosity of a wheelchair from the movie.
If you use a beta: Why do you use one? Do you use one or several? Why? Where/how did you find him/her? Do you chat outside of betaing? If you don't use a beta: Why not?
I found my first beta, who is now my perma-beta, by asking in the Pike/McCoy comm. I didn't realise how lucky I'd been until I tried finding more betas later on. She's become my best friend in fandom and is entirely to blame for my Pike/Boyce fics. She is of course the inimitable imachar. She was betaing for me before she started posting her own fic, and it was a bit of shock to find out just how good a writer she is! The fact that she is my generation and background also helped to make me more comfortable about playing around with scifi porn. (Not that I am saying that I thought the rest of you were teenage cellar-dwelling video-game comic junkies, but I might have sort of thought that.... The wide range of people in the Trek fandom is another reason I like it here.)
Very short fics (up to 1500 words) I normally post unbetaed, and also the occasional fic that just flows out of my head onto the screen. Anything I've worked over will probably go to beta. It is partly for Ameri-picking, but more importantly, I get stuck eventually and run out of fresh ideas. Beta comments (when done well) don't so much tell me what to do as give me a fresh impetus of inspiration. (And point out the plot and character weaknesses that I've been studiously avoiding for lack of ideas.) Very long fics (10 000+) will go to more than one beta, if I can manage it, just because different people pick up on very different things.
I have backed away from a few betas when their style just didn't mesh with mine. It is hard to find a good fit! I've betaed for other people too and found it hard going both ways.
Editing for yourself: do you do separate first/second/third drafts, or is it just one file that gets edited multiple times? Do you edit on the go, or come back after everything's written?
For long fics (over 10 000 words) I do separate drafts, I think as much as a back-up process as anything else. Long fics tend to go out to beta twice, which give me three drafts.
How many of the stories that you start do you finish and post? Why do you end up abandoning stories?
Maybe half the stories I write in my head make it onto the screen. A handful of those will just flow, start to finish. I wish I could find more that just worked that way. Most of the rest will need to be worked on, with beta input. Maybe 30% will die, the muse lost before the fic can be called complete. Getting my laptop stolen earlier this year did have the side effect of liberating me from a couple of fics that were stranded on the computer. The world will never know of my attempt to write a serious McCoy / tentacle monster romance. The world is probably grateful for this fact.
Have you ever collaborated with anyone else to write a story? How did you do it? Did you enjoy the experience?
No, and I can't imagine doing it. I'd battle to get over the need to do it my way all the time. However, I am inspired to do MU remixes of other authors' stories every so often, of which the most successful is probably See you in the morning, a remix of a story by skybluereverie.
Have you ever written a sequel to a fic you wrote? If so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
I am very wary of sequels. The few times I have written them - or tried to - in response to readers comments demanding MOAR I've almost never felt that they lived up to the original. I've now learnt to say (politely) no. Some stories end where they end and it has to be up to the imagination of the reader to carry them on. I almost always have further canon in my head for that story universe, but not in a form that will make a good story in its own right.
The only time reader prompting has led to better sequels IMO were Simply the Best as a sequel to The Morning After and the whole Fuck My Life Series.
What sort of themes do you see recurring in your work?
They are often sex first times and tend to be focused on emotional interaction between characters rather than be plot-driven. There will always be some kind of problem/conflict-resolution arc, I don't often do day-in-the-life things. Older characters often feature, I hate the TOS trope that the Admirals are good for nothing, I like making older characters normal, loving, teasing people. Like when Jim, Bones and Pavel come across the Admirals smoking weed. Sex is normally so brilliantly perfect in fanfic that I like writing awkward, not totally satisfactory but eventually happy sex scenes (like An early Christmas present). Texting often appears in my fics, as a way to get a third voice into a pairing scene. Everyone is chatty during sex. I dislike major power imbalances and am always trying to find ways to even things out for my characters. I like my characters and want them to be happy (which is ultimately why writing Pike/McCoy will always be a downer. Canon is a bitch.)
Have you ever participated in a fest, challenge or a Big Bang? If yes, what do you like about doing it. And if not, why do you avoid them?
I've done Star Trek Big Bang and Happy Trekmas. And am doing both again this year. I like them because the prompts are either self-created or are very vague and they are multi-pairing. I definitely have a thing for minor pairings. ( McCoy/Barnett anyone?) I enjoy BB because of the support community that exists during the writing process and I like the exchange aspect of HT.
I don't do well with very specific prompts, as I found out when I really battled to complete the two prompts I got out of the Help Pakistan auction. That being said, I think they produced some pretty good stories because I was forced to write outside my comfort zone, notably Who you belong to (cutthroat razor genital shaving kink!).
When you post, where do you post to? Your journal? Cross-post to comms? A03? FFnet?
My journal, then cross-post to relevant comms (two, max three) and then every few months spend an evening putting everything across to A03. I enjoy the steady trickle of kudos that I get from A03, especially for older fics.
Warnings - What do you feel it is most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
I have mixed feelings about warnings. I've been put off reading fic because the warnings were so harsh and then finally tried them to find them 'tame' by my standards. I do warn for the things that seem to be the fandom standard as a courtesy to readers. Sometimes I will put warnings in a highlight block so as not to spoil what I consider moments of impact in the story.
I read by following recs and by following authors I like. If a character is convincingly complex and has a glimmer of decency buried somewhere in their make-up, I'll follow to some pretty dark places. But pain / grief / evil without depth doesn't work for me.
How important is it to you to receive comments on your story?
I love comments. After I post I often hang around and watch for the first comment to come in. If I got no comments at all I'd stop posting fics, and probably go back to just writing them in my head. But that being said, how many comments I get relates pretty directly to which pairing I am writing. And that doesn't stop me writing some very obscure pairings (for example young Pike/Boyce in Pretty Boy) knowing I'll be lucky to get comments into double figures. So the process is driven primarily by the story that I want to write but is then heavily reinforced by getting comments.
How old were you when you wrote your first story?
Fiction? And not just in my head? Aged 41 with my first Trek fic!
Are you still brimming with ideas or are you running dry / losing interest in the absence of new canon? Do you expect to write more once the new movie is released?
I still have ideas. Maybe I don't have as many of 'easy' ideas - by which I mean the stories that just write themselves start to end. So I'm posting less as the stories take longer (45 000 words of BB, I'm looking at you!) And as fandom gets quieter there is less inspirational input coming from other peoples' fic, picspams, comments. But I expect to still be puttering along here when the next movie comes surfing through. I haven't found any other fandoms I feel inspired to write for.
What is your current project or projects?
Final edit on my big bang when it comes back from my betas.
An MU remix of imachar's Pike/tentacle monster fic.
Write my Happy Trekmas fic, Pike/McCoy post-Narada angst.
Oh yes, and then there is that Pike/Kirk/McCoy angst-wallow-fest inspired by severinne....
And that JIm/Bones AU with Jim as worst kind of peppy motivational speaker giving the keynote at the dinner in honour of uber-cynical doctor Bones....
And that half-written Pike/Boyce with father figure Archer... etc, etc....
Of what you’ve written, rec for us: your favourite Kirk/McCoy (Chris/Karl) story. Your favourite Trek story with another pairing / key characters.
Kirk/McCoy: do I have to chose?
The Fuck My Life Series (and The Bodyguard, and Set phasers to stunning!)
Another Trek pairing: this is even worse!
Short fic: The tentacle monster that didn't MU McCoy/tentacle monster fluff! (and Perfectly Logical Spock/McCoy)
Long fic: Honorable Enemies Spock/McCoy (and A Mighty Fine Man Pike/McCoy)
Anything else you want to add?
I didn't grow up with Trek, although the references were part of my cultural environment. We only got TVs in my country in 1975 and didn't have one in my house until 1981 (and that was black-and-white! I developed a mild crush on the Battlestar Galactica boys.) But the first time I went to the US, when I was about 24, I arrived, exhausted and jetlagged at the Hilton in St Petersburg, Florida, to find a Star Trek convention in full swing. I'd never seen anything like it and it largely simply confirmed my stereotype of Americans as very odd.
It amuses me that nearly twenty years later - while I'm not about to pop on Spock ears and attend a con - I'm paddling very happily in the Trek pool.