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.

I also develop traits with the character's arcs in mind. So, for Theodosia, I thought someone who is very dedicated and concerned with duty would have an interesting push and pull with Edmund, a traitor seeking redemption. Also, as someone who would later require redemption for treason, I thought they'd have a fun push and pull.

Where Fawn is concerned, that is Fawn Dubois of Senseless, I gave her a backstory that would also push and pull with Jacob's. Personality wise, I had them much more cohesive. The tension in that story is based off Jacob's unwillingness to fall in love in general, and so it made sense for them to get along well. She also has some backstory stuff involving supernatural hunting, and she's deaf, which played off his werewolf, blind self really well.

Step 3: Theme.

At this point, I'll kind of know what I want the takeaway to be. I mean, it's kind of part of the premise, but kind of not. Fawn's story is about fate and destiny, and how much control we really have over love. There is other stuff too, like individual agency, secrecy, loyalty, but that's really my main takeaway. This is where I started to decide on other characters that would appear, like Fawn's fiancé, Quil's imprint, and Fawn's relationships with other characters. It also helped me solidify why Fawn was running away and what she was looking for.

With Theodosia, I wanted the story to also be about loyalty and duty, what it means to forgive someone and how we make the choices we do. At that point, I knew that the wedding between Edmund and Princess Evangeline would have to be arranged, specifically to atone for something bad Edmund did. I decided he would kill the crown prince in a duel in defense of his sister. So, both Edmund and Theodosia would have to forgive each other for actions they committed out of loyalty and duty to someone they love. And that helped fill out the relationships between other characters and the narrative of the story.

Step 4: Write.

Now, you might think this is odd, but usualy writing gives me a chance to solidfy voice. I can't plan right from the exact get-go, because I'll write five chapters and realize half of the plot points I have coming up don't make sense for the rest of the story. For example, I initially wanted Evangeline to be anti-monarchy. But as I started writing, I realized it made more sense for the plot if she wanted to treat Theodosia as an equal, but struggled to when Theodosia started to become her equal. Evangeline as a character wanted someone loyal to them, and she would reward Theodosia's loyalty, but she hated her independence. She didn't actually want an equal. At that point, the story became less about Theodosia's betrayal to Evangeline, for falling in love with the betrothed of her best friend, and more about Theodosia's betrayal to Edmund, for attempting to kill him. The relationship between Evangeline and Theodosia is more complex, and in the actual finalized version they both have to forgive each other.

This goes for Senseless too. In the original idea in my head, I hadn't really thought about Billy. But as I started writing, I realized it didn't make sense for Jacob to live without his sick father, and so I decided Billy would need to be gone. With Jacob's sisters gone as well, I thought that would kind of make him lonely. He lived with his pack, which made sense in my head. Retrospectively, I wish Jacob's grief played into the story more, rather than kind of only appearing a few times. Also writing, I realized Fawn would be more adventurous and rebellious than I thought, because that to me was the kind of person who would run away from home, so I planned plot points like her cliff-diving, partying, wearing make-up, because she wants to experience new things. It helped put together the plot.

Step 5: Interview

I call the document an interview because in my very first book I had included all of my bonus stuff (including an interview with Charlie I had never planned to release) the interview. And after writing a bit, I finish the entire plan, chapter by chapter. I revise it as I go, but it's usually pretty solid, at most shifting the order of events or making events last more chapters. Rarely are there substantial structural changes at that point. I'll also write down things I need to remember in the interview, and have all the characters mapped out in that table above. Like, I have the ages of characters, if I mention something like their favourite colour so I don't go back and retcon it. All of that.

Apply fics: Now, this is almost entirely the same, except I develop theme before character, and make my character fit the theme. And also, the write and interview stage is more cyclical, so I'll write the first few chapters and then draft a bunch, write some more and then draft, and it's only about halfway into the book do I know how we get to the ending. Don't know why i'm like that. I just am.

And yeah! If you ever want to write a book, or you want me to read something, I love writing buddies! I am good at just being in awe, giving compliments, giving structural feedback, or getting engrossed in books. Do you do something similar or different? Holla at your girl!

How do you overcome moments of doubt while writing?

Usually, my moments of doubt stem from something. Like, when I'm writing, actually doing the mechanics of it, I am not doubting. It's in the pauses. So if I'm trying to build a new world and I think the character names are silly or the location names, it's because I've taken a break from writing and I've spent an hour googling. One thing that keeps me from getting in that rut is to write (***) whenever I don't know what word to use, or what to call something, and then I can go back to it later. It's a trick that I think I picked up from Hank Green.

More often than not, my doubt or my writer's block is caused by something. Like, writer's block itself is often caused by doubt, and what I just do is give myself ten minutes where I'm not allowed to do anything, not even listen to music, except sit and stare at my word doc. And more often then not I'll start to type something. Even if it isn't good. A blank canvas feels impossible to tackle, so just getting down some words is okay.

Finally, and this is more of a fic thing since fics don't follow the same structure as proper books, I'll be sitting there and if I don't want to write, I usually realize that I'm bored. And if it's boring for me to write, it's going to be boring to read. So, I'll go and switch things up. Like, the most recent arch in Condemned (which I won't spoil since I only just released like the second chapter of it) was because I was bored with the plot. Clandestine was only supposed to be one book, every sequel since was only decided upon when I was nearing the end of the last book, realizing I needed more space to tie things up. But like, I think a big cure to writing is to be like, I'm bored. How can I be not bored? I don't know if that makes sense.

How much personal experiences can be found in your characters and stories?

Much more than I care to admit, especially early on.

Sometimes, characters work through things I've been through (which is more a feature of my earlier writing than my current writing). Usually, my characters aren't much like me, or if they are, it's like a wildly distorted version of me. For example, Charlie from Volatile is probably the most similar to who I thought I was at the time. She's headstrong, unflinching, and unwilling to compromise. Later characters kind of pull a bit of aspects from that. Like, Zehra (in the semi-published Accursed) kind of pulls on the idea of unwilling to compromise. Fawn in Senseless grapples with the idea of soulmates because I have also thought about soulmates in relationships, and how maybe those aren't good things.

Usually though, characters are pretty separate from me. The more frequent thing is characters confronting an idea I've confronted. Like the Fawn soulmate thing. Or like, Cole in Clandestine dealing with the difficulties of being the oldest sister specifically, and trying to find adult relationships with your siblings. I like to explore themes that are in my life through characters, rather than recreating specific events, or specific character traits than me. Most of my characters lean more aggressive and snarky and broody and realistic, but in real life I'm told I have a tendency for hyperbole (I'm not a realist. I have simultaneous tendencies towards optimism and pessimism, so long as it's overblown), I'm friendly and outgoing. Maybe it's a Canadian thing, haha.

Beyond characters, my personal experiences can definitely be found in books. In general, I try to write what I know. For example, my bilingual characters tend to speak French, because I do. Not perfectly, I mean, I am bilingual but I'm not fluent in French. In Pâro, my main character Darcy spoke some Spanish and Portuguese, but I really struggled with that kind of stuff since I don't know the language that well. I ultimately don't really like Pâro for that reason; I think I didn't do a good enough job at writing the story of a young Latina woman. I also often write stories that take place in Canada, because I am kind of fatigued by how American centric everything is. But like, my life isn't a tragedy like so many of my books. Most of them can't be classified as romances because they don't have HEA. But yeah, I write about things I know about, but there are also a lot of things I know that I don't have any desire to incorporate into work, if that makes sense. Like, politics, for example. Or I don't write about writers. Idk why, it doesn't interest me.

So for apply fics, these actually started out as scenarios I would imagine before bed, haha. I often was like, what would happen if this happened to me, and then imagine stuff? So I had these story ideas but couldn't really figure out how to populate them with chatacters. In apply fics, the OCs aren't usually about me, but the themes are. This whole section feels embarassing haha.

What's been your favourite fic to write?

I've got to say, my pride and joy are Banality and Precedent which are my Draco Malfoy fics. I'm not even really a Draco girlie, but I had such a good time with them. For starters, and entirely spoiler reasons, it was a really tight plot that was self-referential and easily laid out. Like, Precedent as a prequel specifically often had the same lines as Banality. Also, I really liked writing from the perspective of the main character, Jane. She's really socially clever in a way a lot of my other OCs aren't. Jane is kind of Machiavellian though she has little power. She manipulates and deceives the others around her, never maliciously, but to get more freedom. And finally, I think the themes of the series are really resonant. It's dark. They are war fics, looking at the morality of violence and all of that. I explore a lot of themes about power and abuse of power. Information as control, memory and history, prejudice, the forbidden, love and manipulation. I want to give some examples of lines that have really stuck with me since I finished writing it.

"I'd be surprised if you weren't into me," he says. He pauses, possibly thinking though he is hard to read. Finally, he speaks. "You are always attracted to mean men."

"I wish you had. Truly, I wish I had been there for you. We hadn't talked in so long. . . .The historical record is the most important thing. Memory is really all we haveanymore. I was into history back then too, I promise. I'm not lying about this."

"Sometimes I wish you had just died!" he spits, stepping closer to me. He puts down both his wand and the booze on the coffee table and grabs my wrists. "It would be better to think that you are dead than to see you like this."

"You want to know what's wrong?" I continue. "You should ask my friends. Then, they might notice that it was me who was attacked in Hogsmeade. Or better yet, you should ask your friends. You wouldn't need to, because you heard the vile things coming out of their mouths. You did nothing. Nothing!"

It's terrible. I don't think of myself as particularly flammable, yet I burn beneath him. Above him. On all sides of him. I want him. I lied when I said I don't want to be warm if he is the pyre. If he ignites me, even at the cost of his life, I will let him. I tremble as he rolls us over, as he lifts my chin up and looks me in the eye. I will burn all of him up. A fire will die without fuel. Once he's gone, I'll be gone too. He'll live without me, but I can't live without him. I never have. I never will.

Pansy shrugs. She approaches the window, staring out at the same people as me. "You can pick two of the three. You can be smart, good, or alive."

"[Love] has to be [enough]," Draco's voice breaks. "It's everything. I love you, Marty. If you'd like, I could say it over and over until we die, but I think I'd rather make sure we live. So, it has to be enough."

He furrows his brow, and I know what he's thinking. It's the same thought in my head; I'm more upset that he didn't tell me about his plan to kill Dumbledore than that he had a plan at all. It is a rotten truth. Weeks ago, I promised myself that I would not be his any longer if he tortured or killed anyone. I had him sign a contract to protect certain people. And yet, the betrayal stems more from his withholding than his actions. I always knew who Draco's family had meant for him to be. It shouldn't surprise me that is who he became. I just cannot fathom how it could happen under my nose, why he wouldn't tell me, how he would think I would betray him to death.

Now I'm forcibly closing the document because I could go on forever, and I won't. But genuinely, I love this story. They can be read in either order, but I recommend reading Banality first. Chapter 38 is really where things get crazy, but that's a big dip in, so after like five or so chapters you can't get into it, switch to Precedent. I promise it will ruin you. (Honestly, I think both of them spoil aspects of each other so I guess whichever order you prefer is fine).

Do you have a favourite character you've created?

I spent so long going about my day panicking about this question, because I misread it and for some reason thought it was asking who my favourite character is. No, I absolutely do not. Some characters speak more to me now than others do. Like, Charlie from Volatile is something I feel like I definitely wrote at the age where I wrote it, haha, if that makes sense. She doesn't really feel like a full person, but she definitely feels the most like a teenager. Which, for a Lost Girl in Neverland, kind of suits her anyway. I think all of my characters are underrated heroes. A lot of my characters are kind of representative of ideas, and some of those ideas feel more present to me. I definitely have characters I feel like are underrated. Like, Blythe in Depravity. But yeah, no favourites.

If you could have dinner with a character from any of your books, who would it be and why?

I kind of want to say Cole from Clandestine because I feel like she could talk to me for hours, but I also am still so neck-deep in her story that I don't know that I'd want to? Cole is so smart, and our personalities are quite different so I'd be interested in things she has to say. Yet, she doesn't feel quite separate enough since her story is ongoing. It's Criminal Minds world, so not that different from mine, but still it would be fun to learn about, I guess haha. Overall, I kind of think this question is hard for my OCs, since they wouldn't have anything to share with me that I hadn't already come up with.

For that reason, I think if I get to pick from characters that appear in my apply fics, I'd rather pick a character that wasn't mine. Like Darlington, or Ajay, or Clara are kind of stand outs in my head. Way way back, I'd love to have dinner with Hope or Eden from Arcane. Those characters are such wonderful romantics. I'd really love to hear Hope wax on poetry, or just listen to Eden talk about how much he loves Cara haha. I almost said Mickey instead of Clara, because I find Clara's backstory so wonderful. Maybe I just find men who love women wonderful? Men who would give everything for their women? Maybe that's why I wouldn't pick any of my OCs even, because not a single man that I've written (aside from Benji who I deeply considered) would remotely be women first.

If you could be friends with any character, who would it be?

Hands down, Leo from Asunder. I think necessarily, my characters are a bit self-involved. There is often a lot of relationships and conversations happening in the background that none of them are aware of. I think it makes novels more interesting, especially since the most interesting character in your novel should be the protagonist. I mean, I do think Theodosia from Lowborn would be a good friend too, but she's pretty withdrawn and uptight, so i have trouble imagining myself relaxing in front of her. Darcy from Pâro is also a ride-or-die friend, but again she suffers from a bit self-involved, but I could see myself having so much fun spending time with her. Fawn from Senseless is very much the same, but she's someone more involved than Darcy. It was actually so much fun writing from Blythe's perspective in the next book, because she thinks Fawn is a messy, sloppy drunk. Fawn is always a good friend, but realistically, no one can top Leo.

So yeah, Leo. Leo is one of the four main OCs in Asunder, where her love interest is Newt from The Maze Runner (and maybe Thomas, but we'll see). Leo is smart but quiet. She is firm in her power and her leadership capabilities, kind of elected to be the keeper of the girl Gladers because everyone else is a bit unstable (Michelle is violent, Ella is clearly ill, and Dawn may be more popular but she doesn't really have any desire to look out for the others). Leo is caring and kind, and self-sacrificing to a fault. I chose the specific ending for her because I knew she needed to find happiness in self-care. She'd be a great friend to me, we'd have a blast, and I'd be there for her with her major anxiety problems haha.

If you could live in the world of your books for a week, which one and what would you do?

I'm going to exclude all of my fics from this, since they aren't my world. God, the thing is, none of my books are really super cool and awesome places to live. Like, you could not pay me to join the Uprise gang LMAO. Deterrent is cool, but it definitely is a dystopia and I don't think I'd have fun playing it that world. I basically grew up in Perverse lol. So I think, I might say Gentry? They go to an elite school in the northeast, and the book takes place over several months, so I could maybe avoid shennigans. I'd basically do my uni experience, go to classes, talk big game, all of that stuff. But, I'm not exactly sold on it.

You know, I think I'd also pick Plight. Go back in time to 1650s French Canada? I speak French, so I could probably blend in better. The island is so cool, and I could make friends with people connected across time. Mickey would be mine, step aside Clara, haha.

Favourite season of criminal minds?

Okay, so I'm currently on season 6, which I started specifically because I was worried Clandestine might push into the front of it. I think season 4 is my favourite? But I also love some season 2 and 3.Can you tell why I set Clandestine then? I love Sex, Birth, Death, Profiler Profiled, Revelations, Open Season, Penelope, Memorium, 52 Pick-Up, Bloodline, Amplification, and Mosley Lane (s5). My favourites of all time are Seven Seconds and Minimal Loss. I actually won't watch the last two episodes of season 4 though, because they are based on a serial killer from Canada that make me feel a little icky, so I don't know if that disqualifies it.

Would you consider write an another Spencer Reid fic regarding criminal minds evolution?

how would you describe the aesthetic of your most recent MC?

I'm actually going to give an answer that is a bit cheeky, since I've been working on a secret project that isn't going to go anywhere. So, I'm just going to talk about Cole, the MC in Clandestine.

So, I think Cole is kind of clean girl. I pictured her as almost exclusively business casual, simple make-up, light blue and green blouses. Occasionally, I have her in a dark blue or teal colour. Overall, colour is actually really important in the series. Cole sees herself as the odd one out because of her vibrant ginger hair and freckles, in her family of decently tan, dirty blond siblings. Cole's personal style is reflective of her approach to life; professional without flair, subdued, perhaps even a touch impersonal and cold. A fun little fact is that in the most recent book, she is described as more relaxed, sometimes with wet hair, sometimes in pajamas, where in previous books she wears her work clothes even on weekends, and only changes for parties (where she still wears formal party outfits rather than something more playful or sexy). 

Also, her aesthetics for each book get darker. I like this choice, because I think it's kind of reflective of her world. Cole's personality in each book gets brighter. She's still rough and bristled, but she is trying her best to be a better person. But that is hard work. Her life starts out bright and clean, but this brightness is superficial. She feels bad still, but looks fine. As the book goes on she has to confront the things that bother her, which in turn makes her darker and dirtier, but this is all in service of eventually doing that hard work. She isn't feeling better. Confronting hard things is difficult and messy, but it's kind of her only hope for making an actually bright future, where things both look and feel good, rather than just looking good.

would you consider write an another Spencer Reid fic regarding criminal minds evolution?

Unfortunately, I don't think that's in my future. I don't write more than one OC per character, mostly because I try to give it my best shot that one go. I could definitely see other good characters for Spencer, and sometimes I wish I had not made Cole his coworker. I tried to do the best of both worlds by having her be someone in his office, but not a field agent. I wish maybe she had fully worked in a different department, since I didn't ever really want her to be close to members of the BAU. They are his family, not hers. I'm also partial to other more cozy stories for Spencer, like a coffee shop AU or something, but I don't really like telling cozy stories. Plus, as much as Reid deserves softness, I struggle to imagine him in a romance that isn't epic. He's kind of an epic character.

I would be interested in doing flashforwards years down the line. I have considered doing that for Banality (there's a final book I come and go from called Residual which deals with what lingers from their lives). I'm also interested in a Purify sequel, but that would require me to finish Obfuscate and that feels lofty. Really, I would do flash forwards for any book if like, basically even one person requested it haha. With I guess some exceptions (my apply fics, for example, where I actually like when other people do flash forwards more. -venusvintage and cryptidminds did amazing flashforwards for Plight and Arcane respectively. I technically did a flashforward for Gentry, and it was good, but everyone is so much better at making up what happens next than me. I'd love to see more, especially for Defeatism, and Deterrent when I finally finish that (it's emotional for me okay!)

ANYWAY

Thank you all so much! I'm so grateful for the stories and community I've gained since being on Wattpad for ten years! God, I don't even have anything else to say, because I feel like I've said everything that could possibly be said. Well, not everything. I still have chapters to deliver for at least three books haha.