Cats and Coffee

I received an incredibly lovely anonymous message on Tumblr today, which I'll reproduce here with my response, in case anyone finds this rambling about my writing process useful or interesting!

I'm always so impressed at how fast (and how well!) you can write for different fandoms, it's something I truly aspire to be on the level of. I wanted to know if you have any kind of writing routine or tips, especially for perfectionists who worry about canon details and "getting it right"?

I was so honoured to get this ask! Thank you so, so much! I don't know what specific areas you're struggling with, other than perfectionism, but I'll talk a little about my personal writing approach in the hope that it will be helpful and/or coherent.

As a caveat, I mainly write short one-shots; 90% of the fics on my AO3 account are between 1,000 and 5,000 words. I don't know what sort of thing you personally write, but I doubt my 'dive in, zero planning, work it out as you go' approach would be much good for anything long.

Anyway! Here's how writing works for me.

Step one: get a fic idea! This part, unfortunately, is up to the whims of fate. There are ways I can try to inspire a fic idea, e.g. by revisiting the canon or looking through other people's prompts, but mostly it just happens when it happens.

As a one-shot writer, I find it helpful to have a single core concept that I can structure a story around, something straightforward enough to be expressed in a sentence or two. For example, the fic concepts I've noted down include 'Ace Attorney/Death Note: Phoenix Wright defends Light Yagami' (which became Always Believe) and 'Death Note: L abducts and imprisons Light to see if the killings stop' (which I never actually wrote, but someone should).

Step two: quick, write the idea down before it escapes! A lot of my ideas never get past this stage, but at least I have them written down, so I can pull inspiration from them in the future if necessary.

Step three: start writing the fic. This one's tough; I can't just sit in front of a blank page and decide to get started. I'll mentally toy with my fic concept as I go about my day, and hopefully a potential passage from the fic itself will eventually form in my head: an exchange of dialogue, for example. As soon as I have something, I'll write it down. Once I have a starting point, it's a lot easier to build on it.

I have friends who write in order, but I can't do it myself! I'll just write whatever scenes come to me in the order they come. The first thing I write will usually be partway through the fic, and I usually end up writing the end before the beginning. Speaking of which...

Step four: find the fic's direction. This is crucial; this is the thing that will actually enable me to finish a fic.

While I write, I'm always asking myself where this fic is going. What goal am I working towards; what would be a satisfying conclusion to the story I'm telling? Is there a theme developing as I write it, and, if so, what sort of ending would fit that theme?

Basically, from the moment I start writing a fic, I'm trying to work out how it ends. Once I've established an ending, everything else is easy.

Step five: use the ending as a guidepost to finish the fic. Everything moves a lot faster once I've found the ending. If I know what goal I'm working towards, the question 'what needs to happen after this scene?' will usually have a clear answer. I'm no longer writing whatever scenes pop into my head; I'm looking at what I've written and going 'okay, what do I need to add or change in order to reach the ending I want and make sure this story feels thematically consistent?'

Step six: great, you've written all the required story bits! But you've forgotten to write a beginning, and, because you've written things out of order, you now have to write the boring bits linking all of your disconnected scenes together. sigh, fiiiiiiiine.

Step seven: read through the finished fic in full to make sure everything holds together, make final tweaks.

Step eight: post!

(Step nine: refresh AO3 obsessively for three days straight to see whether anyone liked it, don't look at me.)

Perfectionism can be a tricky issue! I mainly write in videogame fandoms, which helps when I'm obsessing over getting canon details right; it's usually easy to find a Let's Play online and track down exactly the moment I need. It's always a nasty shock when I need to check a detail in a canon where those details aren't as readily available!

If I'm having trouble confirming a canon detail, to be honest, my usual strategy is to rework things so that the detail is no longer required in the fic. For example, if I'm unable to establish the layout of the room a scene is set in, I'll either make my descriptions vague enough to bypass the issue or set the scene in a different location. It's not always doable - sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and do the research - but you can save yourself a lot of time by being willing to go, 'Wait, if I just cut this line about the Doonsword of Gongolblath, I won't have to look up how it was forged.'

For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

The latest addition to the stable is a little weird!


Fanganronpas

The Danganronpa games have a very distinct formula: a group of people, each with a specialised talent, find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar location together. They're told that the only way to escape is to kill one of their fellow captives and get away with it; if they succeed, the murderer will go free, but everyone else will be executed. Every chapter is its own little murder mystery: someone turns up dead, and the survivors have to escape execution by working out which of their friends is responsible.

It's a great formula! The murder mysteries are fun, and the fact that you get to know all the potential victims and killers in advance really heightens the emotional impact of the cases. If a beloved character is killed or, worse, turns out to be the murderer, it's genuinely devastating, both to the characters solving the mystery and to you as the player.

Because the Danganronpa formula is so distinctive, some ambitious people have taken it upon themselves to create Danganronpa-style stories of their own: fan Danganronpas, or Fanganronpas. And then I got into these fan projects, and then I started writing fanfiction for these fan projects, and here we are now!

I didn't originally plan to check out any Fanganronpa projects; I love the original games, but I wasn't sure fan replicas would scratch the same itch. But I became vaguely aware of one Fanganronpa in particular, the YouTube series Danganronpa: Despair Time, because I follow someone on Tumblr who's very passionate about Ace, a character from it. I was a little surprised to learn via his blog that this fanmade character had won a Danganronpa character poll on Tumblr, beating multiple well-liked canonical Danganronpa characters; was this fan project really that popular?

When AO3 created a new canonical tag for Danganronpa: Despair Time, meaning Despair Time fics were no longer folded into the general Danganronpa tag, I messaged the aforementioned Ace enthusiast to let him know. I was very surprised to learn, in the process, that Despair Time had over 1,400 works on AO3. Apparently people really liked this thing! Given my love of Danganronpa, and the fact that at the time I thought we'd probably never see another official Danganronpa release, maybe I should at least give it a try.

I watched Danganronpa: Despair Time at the age of thirty-seven and went insane about it. It had its rough edges here and there, but it absolutely nailed Danganronpa's tone and emotion, it had a lot of fun plot developments and twists, and I really enjoyed the characters. One character in particular is up there with my absolute favourites from the official Danganronpa games.

The other Fanganronpas I've investigated since then are Project: Eden's Garden and Danganronpa Another, the latter of which I'm still working through. I really enjoyed Eden's Garden; I don't think it gets the tone as well as Despair Time, but it's a stunningly polished achievement - it honestly looks better than the official Danganronpa games do - and I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going. I'm struggling more with Danganronpa Another, largely because of translation issues, but I'm finding it interesting as a historical curiosity - it's an early Fanganronpa project that had a big impact on the overall Fanganronpa scene - and it does have a terrible boy I'm really enjoying.

As a side note, the large Despair Time AO3 work numbers that originally provoked my curiosity are actually a little misleading! It turns out there are four specific incredibly prolific authors who have, between them, written approximately 750 works for Danganronpa: Despair Time; the most prolific of the four has personally written 285 Despair Time fics. I have to admire the dedication that leads people to write literally hundreds of fics for a niche fan project, especially when there's not much of a readership to be found; half of the 1,600 fics in the Despair Time AO3 tag have under ten kudos.

Favourite character: David Chiem of Danganronpa: Despair Time, by a long way; I was not expecting to lose my mind this hard over a character in a fan project, but it turns out he's absolute catnip for me. My favourite character in Eden's Garden is Wolfgang; my favourite character in Danganronpa Another is Kinjo. Come to think of it, all three of them share the quality 'this seems like a pleasant young man - oh, no, something is very wrong with this boy', meaning they appeal to the same part of me that adores Light Yagami.
Favourite pairing: I really like David/Arei from Danganronpa: Despair Time; they have some very cute moments, and I was surprised by how invested I became in their dynamic. I'm also absolutely here for horrible David/David selfcest.
Number of words written: 9,645 across five fics: four for Danganronpa: Despair Time, and one for Project: Eden's Garden.


Absolutely historic development: if my Fanganronpa fics are counted, my latest fic means the overall amount of fanfiction I've written for Danganronpa (92,000 words) beats the amount I've written for Top Gear (90,000 words), making Danganronpa my most-written-for fandom by wordcount.

...apart from Assassin's Creed (128,000 words). Assassin's Creed is kind of a special case because I wrote about 120,000 words for a single project, which is very unusual for me; I almost exclusively write short one-shots. Let's discount that project for a moment, because 'another fandom has finally dethroned Top Gear after eighteen years' sounds a lot more impressive than 'another fandom has finally de-second-placed Top Gear after Top Gear got knocked into second place nine years ago'.

David/Teruko did not occur to me at all the first time I watched Danganronpa: Despair Time, but then I saw assorted fun fanart and went 'actually, you know, I could get behind this.'

In this fic, I get behind it in the form of writing a bunch of hatesex. (Also including a touch of... consensual voyeurism for practical reasons?)


Title: Mutually Regrettable
Fandom: Danganronpa: Despair Time
Rating: 16
Pairing: David/Teruko
Wordcount: 2,200
Summary: David wakes with a blade to his throat.


( Mutually Regrettable )

I've gone down with COVID, alas, so I'm self-isolating in my bedroom and a bit physically uncomfortable. In search of distractions, I put out a call on Tumblr for people to ask me questions about my writing from this list, and here are the results!


What is your fave fic to receive comments on?

With These Signs Upon Our Souls, my decade-old Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover, in which the FFVIII characters become l'Cie! 27,000 words may not be a huge amount, but it’s by far the longest continuous story I’ve ever written, and it’s about two different divisive Final Fantasy games, so it’s not something that was ever likely to draw much interest. I’m always thrilled when someone actually reads it!

What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing?

I’ve been getting a little braver about including on-page sex! It’s never especially explicit, but I’ve been more willing lately to give at least a little idea of what’s going on, rather than always fading to black or being as vague as possible.

If one of your fics was going to get you arrested, which one and why?

hey wait I’m not falling for this

I’m going to say it’s my unfinished fic for The Quarry in which Laura and Travis swap bodies, which gave me, as a British person, the following research experience:

Me: Hey, Internet, fic research question: could a woman in her early twenties just go into a shop and buy a shotgun in New York state without any sort of licence?
Internet: Yep, that is absolutely something you can do.
Me: …
Me: …
Me: But surely that won’t seem right? That doesn’t feel right.
Me: If she just goes and buys a gun, surely the readers will go ‘obviously she wouldn’t just be able to buy a gun’. Surely I’ll look like I haven’t done my research and have lazily assumed that you can just buy a gun in America.
Me: You can’t just buy guns, right???


( Various other questions and answers about fanfiction! )


If I had to get ill, I’m glad it’s at least happening after my visit to Devon, rather than before. I got to stroke five different owls, and my body can’t take that from me.

Fun fact about my recent holiday in Devon: we were staying with my ex-aunt (my uncle's ex-wife). She likes Clarkson's Farm and David Mitchell, and when they came up in conversation I just had to go 'ah, yes, I am aware of the work of these men, I am completely normal about them and always have been.'

If there are any questions you'd like to ask me about my writing in the comments (whether from the original list or not), please do!