White Secrets: Miscellaneous

- 10 Year Q&A

Here this goes! Happy 10 years. I want to thank everyone who is along this journey with me, whether you have only read a chapter of my books, rather you've read several of them, or whether we mostly just chat and haven't really interacted! I want to give a special thanks to daksilkokulum, golden-rebel, and elleroses for submitting questions, as well as Max for sending me a question through discord!

I can't express my gratitude enough. Hopefully this will do something fun, at the very least. Now I won't be tempted to do something like this when I hit 1K, because this was a lot of fun but a lot of work haha.

What's your process for planning a fic?

Ahh, okay, this is actually so exciting to get! Because I actually have a pretty solid process that I swear by through and through. I'm going to walk you through it with two case studies: Lowborn and Senseless. The former is an Edmund Pevensie from Narnia fic, and the later is a Jacob Black from Twilight fic. And I think it makes sense to go from there.

This is more or less the same for apply fics, which I will actually answer at the bottom.

Step 1: Premise

So, usually I start with a premise, often something I don't see a lot in the fanfiction space. Lately, I've been reading less and less fic, so it will start with an idea that interests me. I think Lowborn and Senseless kind of both prove that point. Often, Jacob Black fics will have him fall in love with a vampire, or a werewolf. Often it'll be someone that goes to school with him. I know that textually, Jacob does not want to imprint, he's terrified of the idea. So, I thought, wouldn't it be fun if, to avoid imprinting, he blinded himself? Where would that go from there? Then in the case of Edmund Pevensie, I really like the Golden Age of Narnia fics, and I haven't read a lot of them, but I was interested in seeing a fic where Edmund fell in love with someone he shouldn't. He's kind of always been the redeemed sibling, and the trouble-maker in my eyes. So, I thought it would be fun to get a story where he fell in love with the servant of someone he was betrothed to, and for extra stakes, wouldn't it be fun if that wasn't just his servant, but his would-be assassin? So, kind of similar. At this point, I usually have an end conflict or climax in mind. Like, ends with them together or not, and I envision the scene where this choice happens, but usually nothing really in the middle.

Step 2: Character

So, here I actually develop the character first. There backstory and their character development. I make a chart like the one below for Lowborn (I can't find the one I made for Senseless tragically). So for Theodosia, I knew she would be a lady-in-waiting, which is very odd for someone of her station. Her mother was dead, her father unknown (so she was a bastard). I knew she would have all the traits below, which I categorize into physical, mental, social, and moral traits.