Ok, I Have Two Questions For You

Ok, I have two questions for you

1.- What is your process for writing? Like, how do you plan out a story in the long term?

2.- How the fuck did you improve so much in so little time?? Ive been a fan of yours for some time and istg, CRaawloTT and ABCs and 123s are years light apart in quality!! And they were posted just with a months difference, like what??? Did you sign a deal with the devil?? Tell me your secret, ive been writing since 2022 and i havent improved a lot😭😭

Warning: This is going to be a ramble 😭

First of all, I want to say thank you for the ask and for reading my fics!! I really appreciate it :)

Now, for your questions:

1. I am someone who needs everything to be picture perfect before I even begin to think about writing the fic. So, I’ll come up with the vague concept first. Most of my WIPs don’t get past this point lol. But if they do, then I explore the idea a bit more. Make the concept more than just a sentence or two. Think about other things that could link and come into play. Think about how this concept COULD potentially be fleshed out into a story. Just get a word document, or a Google Doc, and just dump. Dump every single idea in your head, don’t overthink it. If you still like it after that, and you still have inspiration and passion for it, then start a rough outline. Now, an “outline” is subjective. Like I said, I’m an extreme perfectionist. Therefore, I’m not happy to start writing before I have every single moment of the entire story planned out. I have a Google Doc for “Yours, Veronica” which has a summary of everything that happens in every single chapter. It’s nearly 200 pages long. You do not need to go this crazy! 😭😭😭 This is just my personal preference. So I write an outline for the story. I go back and read it. I change it. I add more. I read it again. I research things to make sure there are no historical inaccuracies. I add more. I keep on redrafting it and adding to it and changing it until I am 100% satisfied. For “Yours, Veronica” this took me a few years. Again, you don’t need to be this particular about it, it’s entirely up to you. You don’t even need an outline! Write how you want to write. This is my personal planning system, and it’s what works for me. I like having a strict and thorough outline to refer back to when writing the chapters.

Okay, for your second question, I’m going to waffle a bit, so bear with me! And I do want to preface by making it very clear that I am not a professional writer. Like… at all. I don’t really know what I’m talking about! So take it all with a pinch of salt :)

I do want to say thank you. I can’t believe you’ve been around for so long! That’s incredibly sweet, and I appreciate you so so so much.

In terms of progress, I have a lot of thoughts about this.

I think a big reason why there is such a difference between CRaawloTT and ABCs is because CRaawloTT was so unfathomably bad. It was immature, there was no effort, no planning, no spellcheck, it was written rapidly and badly, and it was (objectively) stupid. I was young when I wrote it, and I had never properly written a story before. So my point is that CRaawloTT was such utter trash that literally anything would be better than it, which is why ABCs seems a lot better. I still don’t love ABCs and I still don’t think it’s very good in hindsight but oh my god it’s SO much better than CRaawloTT. The thing is, it’s pretty easy to be better than CRaawloTT.

Another thing that I do want to point out is that I was very young when I wrote my very first fic. Even though ABCs wasn’t that long after, when you are young your maturity rapidly grows and each year you’re like a new person. If that makes sense? So, I would say that I was really young when I wrote CRaawloTT (and it shows) and I was less young when I wrote ABCs (and it shows). I think even the end of CRawloTT has a pretty big difference to the start. But really, it is effort that is the main point. During those few months between the stories, I worked a lot on the new story and therefore was improving, and also was automatically making a better story. I was just doing at least the bare minimum, which I hadn’t done before.

I mean, even now I go back and I look at The Prom Bet (which is a ton better than ABCs) and I cringe because it’s so frustrating and immature and there’s a lot of contrivances. You have improved and you will improve. I’ve been doing this for nearly 6 years now and I know you may not feel like you’ve made progress but you have. We are all our own biggest critics. But if you want to keep on improving until you notice it, then all you can do with writing is just keep doing it and you will get better. It’s experience, that’s all it is.

I’d say a big tip is trying new challenges and getting out of your comfort zone and testing yourself. With ABCs, the difference was I started implementing things like minimum chapter word count goals and that made a huge difference. From CRaawloTT chapters that were rushed and less than 1000 words to ABCs which had chapters that were a minimum of 3000 to 5000. Another thing was doing an outline, like I mentioned before. CRaawloTT had no outline and I had no idea where it was going. I would randomly open a word document and decide “Uh okay, chapter 7? I guess… this can happen?”. The impact that makes on the quality of your story is huge because you’ve got a story there. It’s not guessing games, and spur of the moment incoherent babble. Of course there’s spellchecker too. Listen, ABCs still has a lot of spelling errors because I was still a bit lazy 😭 but it’s better. And that’s the progress that you’re talking about. Such basic tools that I just didn’t implement at first. So don’t beat yourself up! What I’m trying to say is that you probably started at a much higher level, with much more effort, passion and consideration. So, of course your progress isn’t going to seem as dramatic!

So really, it wasn’t like I went from “good” to “amazing”, you know? I went from “really really abysmal” to “not as bad”, which seems like a huge jump but it’s not. It’s just a big difference in quality, because the first one has such a lack of quality that anything feels like a big jump. I think you need to give yourself more credit.

Finally, and perhaps the most important point of all, is that I didn’t love doing CRaawloTT, and that shows in the writing. You can put hours of effort in, you can have all the talent in the world, you can use every technique in the book. If you don’t like what you’re writing, it’s going to be so clearly. I loved writing, I loved being part of the Heathers fandom, but I didn’t like CRaawloTT itself. I had no passion for it. I had passion for ABCs. I enjoyed writing it. I enjoyed the story (at the time). I was excited for it. That’s such a huge difference. Just like how I feel even more excitement for Yours, Veronica.

so TL;DR:

The reasons for the improvement from my first fic to second fic are that my first fic was just so awful, I implemented very basic writing and planning methods, and also I was very young when doing my first fic.

I’m sure you have improved, even if you don’t see it. Just continuously writing and gaining practice and experience is the best you can do

Implement challenges and goals if you haven’t already. Set a higher minimum word count for your chapters in order to improve pacing, for example. Write an outline, if that’s what helps you, so you don’t go off-track. Try a new style of writing that you’ve seen before that you like.

I am so terribly sorry for this completely unnecessary babble. I got a bit passionate there! I really really loved this ask and I really loved talking about this stuff, so thank you ❤️ good luck with your writing, I’m sure you’re doing great and you’ll continue to do even better. Have faith!