the deep moans round with many voices

I am making yet another attempt to avoid my NaNo, which is currently trying to turn into a history lecture -- a trick all my stories seem to pull on me at some point. Hopefully this will be one of the times I fend off the lecture and unearth the plot without drowning in world-building trivia. (I totally blame my dad for that writing quirk, btw. Having a historian as a parent did wonders for my general writing and thinking skills, but it also ruined my ability to explain anything without spending an hour making sure the person being explained to understands all the relevant background before I get to the -- probably very simple and straightforward -- explanation itself.)

Anyway, a meme, snagged from various people:

I think it would be fun to talk about stories, but the usual memes are like, "What happens next?" "Tell me about Character A?" Which isn't so much talking about stories as it is writing more of a story. But you know how sometimes you read something and you're like, "I got ___ out of this story, I wonder if I have that right?" or "What on earth was ____ supposed to be?" and it's too awkward to ask the author? Now you could totally ask!

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to do work.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions! (Or use this to ask your flist to ask you questions).

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? Why did you decide to do this? And so on.