Oh, look, I get to use my new icon already!

[lady_songsmith]

The last meme clearly didn't teach me a lesson about think-y memes.

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any or all of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, and possibly a short excerpt as well.

Comments

[wingedflight21.livejournal.com]

Encoded Stars.
The worldbuilding in this is absolutely fantastic. Every setting was so clear in my mind, with unique characteristics and fascinating cultures. By the end of the story, I was all set to pack my bags and move into this world.

[lady_songsmith]

I'm so glad this worked for you and for this reason! I've always felt that Doctor Who succeeds or fails on its settings, whether historical or alien. Without that immersion, it's just a show about a madman with a blue box. I really struggled in "Stars" to find a balance between description and casual
references, because I didn't want it to turn into a travelogue, as it might have done, and that would seriously have detracted from the entire point of writing it, and the focus on Jack and his struggles to make sense of what's happened to him, with the interweaving of fate and the Doctor's views on whether or not time is actually stable. It seemed to me that the Doctor was always far too adamant that a 'fixed point' could never exist, when he's gone on at length about things that can't be changed, and of course the entire Time War is locked. That tension between them pretty much informed the whole story, for all that we never got to see them confront it -- I tried, actually; y'know how they go deeper into the TARDIS to fix her quantum circuits and come back wearing half her wiring and the bright blue oil? Well, there's about six quarter-drafts of the 'repairing' scene, but my god, those men are stubborn! The Doctor just wants to run away -- physically or via babble -- and Jack just wants to lock it up or subsume it to sex. Which, y'know, I don't OBJECT to a good Doctor/Jack sex scene, but that wasn't the story I was writing and it didn't solve anything. So I figure, they're both intensely private people, really, and apparently even having an author 'watching' them was getting in the way, so I had to let them resolve it off-screen. Of course, my favorite scene is the one with all the banana puns, which... well, Jack insisted. Would have worked a little better with Nine, but of course we can't have an immortal Jack AND Nine.

[wingedflight21.livejournal.com]

Oh, it definitely did not have the travelogue feel! I was wondering why we never got to see that one scene in the deep TARDIS - I thought it could have been very interesting to hear this conversation between the Doctor and Jack exactly because it would be fascinating to watch the Doctor use up places to run to until he has to finally have his talk with Jack. All the same, you did an amazing job of covering that up and making it seem as though you'd always intended to skip the scene.

Oh, and you can never, ever, EVER go wrong with banana puns. Never. ;)

[gramarye1971]

I don't know how I never managed to give you feedback on 'Cry for Quarter', but I thought you did an amazing job with the battle scenes and the whole aspect of the fighting taking place on two levels, with Arthur locked in very real physical combat and Merriman handling the supernatural aspect. It's always good to see Dark Is Rising fic that can show how the mortal and magical worlds rub up against each other too closely for comfort at times. ^_^

[lady_songsmith]

Oh god, I think I want to write this for real now. Not that I have plot, you understand...

I'm so very pleased - and relieved - to read you saying that! The magic was, far and away, the worst part of writing 'Cry'. Part of it was just my own neurosis about wanting to get it right and the way my DiR fics always, always stall on the magic; two of them currently mocking me from that point - but part of it was that I wanted to craft a balance that would not detract from Arthur's abilities. He has to be a competent warrior in his own right, after all, and not dependent on his wizard to fight his battles.
I went back and forth over which battle to site this at - I knew I was looking for a victory, so of course not Camlann, but Badon seemed to be overused. Nennius is vague, but good ol' Geoffrey finally decided me - the description of the way Arthur used the trees in Celidon Wood offered too many Cooper-magic opportunities to pass up. And of course Leland's account of that battle is when the title began to evolve ('were constrayned to yeeld themselves: and pledges being taken for tribute yearely to be paied, he gave them leave').

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

Every Inch of Sky We Seek was utterly gorgeous - you could feel Amy's impatience seeping through every minute of her entrapment on the world, and how she channeled it into usefulness. Lovely.