It's been twenty pages, so we are due for a question recap thread!
The Questions:1. While writing, if you had to give up snacks and drinks or music, which would be harder to give up and why?
2. Which is your favorite season to write in and why?
3. If you had the opportunity to live anywhere in the world for a full year while writing a book, but your book had to take place there, where would you choose?
4. What is your favorite word and why?
5. What book from your childhood has shaped you most as a writer?
6. Do you believe in the concept of a muse? What is yours like?
7. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
8. Do you guys tend to read or watch things that are similar to what you're writing (in terms of genre or subject matter) to inspire you, or do you stay away from things that seem similar to avoid inadvertently copying ideas?
9. What has been your strangest or most unexpected source of inspiration?
10. How's everyone's day going (for writing)? or How's everyone's writing life going this week? or Anyone else trying to do some serious writing today?
11. If I were to write an AU about the Boys working in a school, what would their roles be?
12. Which is better: finishing a story you've been working on for awhile, or getting a really good piece of feedback?
13. Favorite punctuation mark?
14. Has anyone ever forced themselves to finish a story they didn't enjoy writing just to please their readers?
15. Is it "Chapter One" or "Chapter 1"?
16. If you have more than one scene in a chapter, what kind of scene break do you use to split them up?
17. If you want to designate that something is a flashback or happened in the past, how do you designate it?
18. Bold, italics, or underlining?
19. Anyone else tend to gravitate towards writing what's comfortable, even if it's not as interesting?
20. What story or chapter were you most nervous about posting?
21. For those of you who have written a series, which do you think was the strongest and weakest story? Do you think any stories were unnecessary?
22. What do we feel works to make a series strong overall even if we personally say "I guess x is the worst?" Clearly "contractually obligated to write x amount of books" is a good indicator that they may decline over time.
23. At what point you really have to decide something is a series for the whole thing to feel satisfying?
24. Do you guys define a series just more than one story/book?
25. What about creative rights for movies? Or multi-parter movies for one book?
25. To Write or Not to Write! What do you do during those times when you feel like you have motivation or inspiration, but know that you'll have to stop writing to do something else at a specific time? Do you write with the time that you do have or do you wait until the thing you have to do is over and hope the inspiration/motivation sticks?
26. What are some other odd places we all write in our homes?
From the "Characters" Discussion:1. How do you come up with character names for your stories? (Other than the obvious, "Well, Nick is "Nick.")
2. What are the essential characteristic s of a hero you can root for? Are there certain aspects of the Boys you play up if they're in the hero role?
3. What do you do to get inside your characters' heads?
4. If you could be a character from one of your stories, who would it be and why?
5. What's the trickiest thing about writing characters of the opposite gender?
6. Does one of your characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?
7. Now describe that character in three words.
8. Which of your characters do you relate to the most?
9. Do you often put aspects of yourself into your characters?
10. And just for fun: Go back to that character you said holds a special place in your heart and think about the other characters in their story. They can only use each character once, so which character from their story would they pick to:
a. be trapped in the wilderness with? (can be frigid or tropical wilderness) Why?
b. spend the night in a haunted house with? Why?
c. have for a boss? Why?
d. pull off a heist with? Why?
e. be on the Amazing Race with? Why?
11. And because these are fun anyway, just answer for yourself with the Boys. You can only use each one once.
Which Boy would you pick to:
a. be trapped in the wilderness with? (can be frigid or tropical wilderness) Why?
b. spend the night in a haunted house with? Why?
c. have for a boss? Why?
d. pull off a heist with? Why?
e. be on the Amazing Race with? Why?
From the "Beginnings, Middles, and Endings" Discussion:1. Beginnings, Middles, or Endings: What is your favorite part to write in a story and why?
2. Same question, but least favorite?
3. When you're writing a beginning, how much time do you like to devote to backstory or do you intersperse it throughout the story?
4. What are backstory elements you know, but don't include? Are these conscious choices or more along the lines of "We're BSB fans reading BSB fanfics"?
5. Do you always know your main character's (or characters') motivation when you start a story or does it come up later?
6. "I won't start the beginning of the story until I know: ____________."
7. What's the easiest thing about beginnings and the most challenging?
8. "In the middle of the story, I often: ______________ ."
9. What's something overrated about middles? What's something underrated about middles?
11. What's the easiest thing about middles and the most challenging?
12. What's the easiest thing about endings and the most challenging?
13. "I won't end the story until I know: ____________."
14. Do you always know the end of a story when you start it? If not, when's the last possible point you must decide the ending?
15. Do your stories always have an ending or do you leave them open-ended just in case?
16. What types of endings leave you feeling most satisfied with your story? (Interpret that as you will.)
17. Do you ever leave noodle incidents in your story without a resolution for fun?
Questions Posed in the Context of a Conversation:1. To Tracy (re: Boxcar Children and Goosebumps): Do you remember your favorite book from each series?
2. To Dee (re: Babysitters Club): Which girl did you most identify with?
3. What is it you enjoy about writing parodies?
4. Do you find that having parodied something makes you see the original a little differently?
5. To Julie: How does it feel officially starting a new thing?
6. re: the Boys being teachers in an AU: Is this a high school, an elementary school, or a middle school?
7. To Julie (re: fanfic dreams): What don't you like about fanfic related dreams? Is it that yours are less "interesting plot elements" and more "I forgot table 34's ranch!!"?
8. To Dee (re: word choice): What word did you go with?
9. Do you often find you project your stronger characteristic
s onto your characters or do you tend to give them characteristic
s you wish you had?
10. re: characters with a soft spot in our hearts: It is like they take up residence in our brains next to a nice, cozy synapse, isn't it?
11. Can anyone remember alternate names they considered for original characters?
12. I wonder if all the "Mary Sue" characteristic
s are the same or if they've changed over the years?
13. I never stumbled on any, but now I'm wondering if there were ever any "sixth Backstreet Boy" Gary Stu stories?
14. Does [fanfic writing and posting] still get busier when the guys get busier or is it just increasingly quiet?
15. I wonder if [decline of fanfic writing] happens more in the RPF fanfic circles than the fictional ones? Like are NKOTB fans still writing fanfic? What about NSYNC fans? Also now I want to know how many NSYNC fanfics have BSB as villains? I assume so many. Was it more or less than the ones where Lou Perlman was the villain?
16. How did the ER fans feel about the BSB crossover? (Or, in equal weight crossovers, how did the other fandom feel about the Boys being crossed over with their fandom?)
17. To Tracy (re: naming characters): How does it feel writing the story with characters named after people you know? Do you put aspects of those people into them or is it just a name for the sake of a name?
18: To Tracy (re: characters connected with): I noticed that you said your Nicks end up most like you. Why would you say that is over other characters?
19. You wanna talk burn out? I am an expert in burn out!
20. How is it working on two stories at once?
21. To Tracy: How close are you to finishing?
22. To Julie: How's that feel, starting a new novel during a busy time?
23. Do people really have demanding readers like that?
24. To Julie: How do your regular readers react when you go from weekly to nothing?
25. To Mare: How was updating multiple stories at a time with specific days? Did that make it easier to keep up with writing? More difficult?
26. To Tracy: Did you feel like the multiple developing drafts were helpful in your planning process and do you find them preferable to an outline? Or do you consider the timeline to be your outline? Did you have the Finding Carter outline from the beginning or just once you got to the point where you figured it out?
27. Is [not designating a thought with formatting] bad? Should I start doing that?
28. To Julie: So do middles lean more toward like or dislike for you?
29. How many times could we all read about Nick talking about the first time he met Brian [if every fanfic had to start with BSB backstory information]?
30. To Julie: Would you say, in general, you write more plot-driven stories or more character-driven stories? Or different types at different periods in your body of work?
31. To Julie: Do you set writing goals for yourself once you've reached an ending or does it just kind of happen that you're writing all the time? (You mean once I've reached the beginning of the ending? LOL)
32. Deciding on an end for a story at the last chapter sounds stressful! How would you properly build up to it?
33. Would you be opposed to a sequel if you ever had an idea for a story that did seem like it had more story than the current arc your were working on? Or do you try to avoid those ideas?
34. To Dee: So with PBox, do you remember what your original idea was? My ideas tend to come about like, "I want to write a survival story," or "Maybe the Boys quarantine together in some remote location to work on the Christmas album, and something bad happens." What does that sound like for a character-driven idea?
35. Does everyone feel [like they would rather someone else was writing their stories that they really like so they could reread them and be surprised]?
36. To Julie (re: being 1/4 of the way through BMS): How did you stay so motivated?
37: To Dee: What about the stuff that isn't interesting, but necessary? Do you ever find yourself stuck on the scenes that are needed to fill in the gaps between what you've already written?
38: To Dee: Have you ever had that happen, where you want to change your ending before you write it but feel like you can't?
39. To Dee: Do you ever find that when you're busy and have no time to write or other obligations you need to fulfill before you can write, all you want to do is write... but then when you finally find yourself with free time to write, you waste it?
40. To Tracy (re: writing in odd places): I would be so paranoid about coworkers reading over my shoulder. Do yours know what you're doing?
41. What's the payscale for [getting paid to read fanfics]? Is it salary? Hourly? Is it like freelancing where you're paid by the fanfic? Or is it chapter to chapter? Maybe a flat rate based on the word count?
42. To Julie: Any ideas for what 2021's April Fool's joke will be? What haven't you done yet over twenty years, basically?
43. To Tracy: Are there any other titles you're considering?
44. Back on our sex topic: what's the least stupid way to write "If you keep looking at me like you want me, I'll have sex with you again right now."?
Off-Topic Questions:1. Did you watch the new Netflix series that came out last summer?
2. You're offered $10million today. Catch is you now have a killer snail out to get you -- if it touches you, you die. It always knows your location, cannot die, and its sole mission in life is to find you and kill you. Do you take the money? Why?
3. I wonder if that happens to other fandoms? Like, do Harry Potter fanfic writers just stop writing fanfic now that it's been finished for however many years?
4. To Julie (re: characters ER fans write about): I would think it would be the original cast, but I'm guessing it's not?
5. OMG!
How many people are actually reading it and how many are clicking on it just for the tags?!?!
6. Oh noes, where did the nostalgia thread go??
7. Also, can we play Binog again?
8. When was cancer discovered and when did it start getting widely treated?
9. Didn't Nick originally want to be the creature from the black lagoon in the Everybody video?
Back to the Joke Fanfic Challenge:1. Mare writes a story about Leighanne or any of the Backstreet wives.
2. But why did Nick ask so anxiously? Unless... he killed her?!? It's "How To Get Away With Murder" Backstreet style! Fanfic Nick: It's easy because Mare wrote the story and doesn't write about wives. No one would suspect a thing...
3. Nick totally killed her cause he wants Brian to himself. Obviously. Nick has never liked Leighanne because she stole Brian away from him. That's motive.
4. However, I also noticed that "Took the money, stalked by snail intent on killing him" was not listed as a death Nick has experienced yet. So maybe instead of telling you all what I think, I should save it and add it to 1,000 Ways instead? [A note from me, Dee: I am planning on writing/adding this, but it felt wrong to not include it in a comprehensive list of joke ideas.)
5. The Shape of Water, but every character is Nick.
