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While editing off a chapter for one of my many adventures in the creative realm of (please insert colourful metaphor here) insanity that is my writing… (...Of course, it doesn’t help that I haven’t really written anything in a week, so these are all the buffer chapters I have…)… Sorry, rambling again… Anyway, I noticed some of my quirks ‘re-emerged’ from long ago… In this case, the suspension of disbelief ‘rule’ I have. (Yes, I, the insane one, follow some strange rules that probably make no sense...) Anyway, background for it, at one point it was a three-point system wherein I would give myself leeway to do three things that would require a suspension of disbelief. (Let’s take, for example, Star Trek: Suspension of Disbelief 1 (Hereafter SoD#): Faster than light travel; SoD2: aliens exist; SoD3: Every known woman of alien/human/...shapeshifter? origin wants to get it on with a certain specific Starfleet Captain… Well, except two… So it seems… There may be a third, but… Sorry, rambling again...)… Anyway, the way this rule worked for me was, if there was too many SoDs, then it became too unbelievable and it would take me out of the story… So, my question becomes, what sort of strange things do you, as a writer, adhere to? What sort of things have you ‘grown’ out of?

That’s a pretty good rule. Forces you to get creative as long as you don’t twist yourself into knots avoiding it. I’ve heard you mention it before and ever since I’ve kinda just been half-assedly avoiding starting sentences with ‘the’ and more aware of it when I do use it.

One rule I follow is to never start a story with the word “The”, and I’ve extended to try to be a solid choice too, either a sound, or a more concrete, tangible thing. [And this rule came from a teacher of mine, who pushed us to not start a sentence with the word “the”… something I normally manage (though, on occasion, a “the” will slip to the start of a sentence)]

Most of my ‘weird rules’ are not so much weird as boring and grammar related. A lot of my writing I go by feel, so if I made any rules I’d probably break them real quick. Well I do have a rule where I never use names of people I’m close to. And on the off chance I make a female character, she needs to be absolutely nothing like me as I’m deathly allergic to self-insertion (… of the writing variety…) Even if I some day decided to write my memoirs I’d probably break out in panic hives every time the main character did something that reminded me of me I guess I’m a little weird about my physical setting when I write too. Like I like to have music playing that fits the mood – there was a whole chapter in Blackbird that I wrote to the sound of a rain from one of those sleep noise apps because it was raining in the chapter. But at the same time, I can’t focus when the music has lyrics. The words fuddle me all up. So most of the time I have to write with instrumentals or complete silence.

After Fugaku’s death (maybe from the massacre but it could be anything), Mikoto is lonely and in need of company. Maybe she needs to get married because of some obscure rule about only men being Uchiha clan heads. So she seduces and marries Naruto Uzumaki to fill that need. Her daughter, Satsuki, isn’t thrilled with her new stepdad though and this fic is basically Naruto fucking his new daughter into submission. Hoping for d/s, Satsuki struggling at first, dirty talk centering around their father-daughter relationship, etc. If Mikoto finds out then it would be great if she was supportive too.

It did fit under the “strange thing” but I find it useful for avoiding a story where every sentence starts with “the”...because a bit tiresome/boring to me if it does. Another thing I try to do is to balance my character names a bit. Tough to do in those parts of the universe where the names are already well engrained, but I do try to do it elsewhere. For instance, I have Jaimie, Joe, Josephine, Jade, Jarred, Jefferey, Joey ...etc, I noticed that I was getting a lot of “J’s” so I’ll now try to balance out the letters in a story. (However, I can’t change the well established names, so those remain.)

I don’t worry about ‘the,’ I worry more about using my lead’s first name all the time, so I make the effort for that. I checked my 13 chapter fic that is today’s project and only one chapter used ‘the,’ So I think that’s okay.

Hey. Yeah - more chapters of this story coming, but it's pretty slow going - this chapter is quite complicated and while I've got its overall shape down and a fair bit of the first draft written it's taking a lot of work to progress and I'm struggling to fit in all my ideas. However it's not that I don't do this for fun… I'm not sure about other stories in this universe - I'll have to see when it's all done, whether I've got any inspiration for it left over. But I do have a couple of half ideas for shortish, single chapter spin-offs. You'll be glad to know that there will be a bit more Kendra in the story - not sure if she'll be in this chapter or, more likely, the next. I don't know what you mean about betting harassed and readers barrelling down my throat. Apart from not knowing why someone would do that, I thought I'd made it pretty clear in my notes that I'm enthusiastic to receive readers' feedback. If they want to discuss my writing and my work I'm really happy to hear what they think and even what they want to see happen. I may not agree but it's interesting. More than that I've been pretty easy about people wanting to spin-off their own takes from my work. As long as it's not them passing it off as being 'canon' to my story - that sounds so pretentious - I didn't mean it to - then I love to read what others' imaginations come up with for 'my' characters. They're not mine of course but you know what I mean. Anyway - more to come but sadly, work calls.

That’s interesting. Just for the laugh, I tested my latest chapter. It has 449 sentences, of which 9 start with ‘the’… I’m assuming that’s ok. It’s like two per cent though.

This is a gorgeous idea! I agree, you bust butt to write something and have finally decided you might be a masochist...then you get a review *ray of sun while chorus sings* I’ve only just started posting on AFF (first chap of a Bleach fanfic; yaoi RenBya) so unless you would be willing to bolster my reviews on ff, I’ll just wait and take you up on that later, since you said ONE free review *tucks free review card in pocket* The concept is awesome, though. This is a lovely idea, to offer concrit reviews for other authors. I am in awe of your willingness to give that pretty ray of sunshine to someone who might need it