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[yuuago]

Today I received a doujinshi package I've been waiting ages for, which is awesome. Two Den/Nor, a Ned/Bel, and the second of the Sweden/Norway djs by that one artist. By far the favourite is the longish Den/Nor book by Risheehat titled "I also think so"; it has tons of things I like (Prickliness and references to history and awkward kisses and

Comments

[dhampyresa]

Oh, man, I hear you about plot. I can never seem to have any (coherent) idea of what I want to do/where I want the story to go.

The thing that's helped me most with that is a bit of advice I read in idk what magazine that went something like: "Writing a story is like putting your characters on a train to Moscow. Maybe they'll get off the train in Bavaria and buy a farm or maybe they get attacked by ninjas, but it wouldn't have happened without them going on the train." Whic why I usually start writing as soon as I know where I want to go, journey be damned.

Sometimes thinking about themes helps me out. Or a feeling or a specific sensation. I find having a color in mind to be a fun and useful thing.

In short: write. Plot'll come later.

Also ninjas. Ninjas are really useful to debug plot problems.

(I'm sorry if this makes no sense, I've jsut spent hours coding a stupid program that doesn't work.)

[yuuago]

Heh. The problem is, I often find myself not even at the "Okay, they're going to get on a train with the intent of going to Moscow (whether they actually get there or not, and what happens along the way, is yet to be determined)". After I decide on that, then I can just write and figure out everything that'll happen in between. But usually I'm at the point where it's this: "Okay, I have two characters. What are they going to do? Uh... I don't know...."

I just have trouble figuring out what I'm going to start with.

But I think with Hetalia fic specifically, a problem I run into is that there's this dumb feeling in the back of my mind that historical fic has to be Big And Deep And Intelligent And Significant. But lately I've thought about it, and -- well, why can't I just write some silly romance story, or some slice-of-life thing? Who says? ... Nobody, so I shouldn't be afraid of writing something like that and sticking it in a historical setting