meh, everyone else has a Q&A section, so i want one too. :D

Ask me questions! Perferably ones i can answer! All posters get a free glowstick! Yes! :D

Greetings Rakie,

OK - one writer to another, I'm going to kick this off by asking you a staggeringly original question - one that I bet you've never been asked before, EVER!

*drum roll*

Where do you get your ideas?

*yawns and falls asleep*

How did you progress with formula for Terror Island?

There is so much going on that I'm sure authors who have been around a few years would have struggled to keep tabs on all the characters and situations. It must have been quite a task and I need to know how you did it and kept your sanity?

(Quick note: Rakie may appear insane but underneath that loony exterior she is a very talented author. That's right...not a writer, AN AUTHOR!!!!)

Hee. :D

Darrell - actually, I don't think anyone HAS ever asked me that! :D I dunno, where does everyone else get their ideas? I usually steal mine, then run away laughing and hope like hell that no one ever finds out. But that might just be me. :D The original idea for TI came from an episode of Ghostbusters (of course), back when I was like ten or so. It was the one where the Ghostbusters were fighting a bunch of werewolves and vampires, and inevitably the bad guys started squabbling and fighting amongst themselves. Peter posed the question: 'If a werewolf bite turns you into a werewolf, and a vampire bite turns you into a vampire, then what happens if a werewolf bites a vampire?' (if you ever get a chance to see that episode, do so, because it's a classic). Anyway, yeah, that was the original idea, and the whole story kinda expanded from there. :D

Garry - blimey, formula. Well, I would LOVE to say that I had the whole thing planned front to back before I even started, but that would assume that I was in some way organised and not just making up everything as I go along. :D I guess that SOME of it was mapped out - TI started life, about fifteen years ago, as a screenplay… it was supposed to be a sort of documentary about the mad things going on on this island (in a pre-Blair Witch sort of style-ee). I've still got the original draft somewhere (but it's rubbish so no one gets to read it). A wodge of stuff survived from that draft to the final novel (the basic plot, most of the characters, the hulking chunks of expositionary dialogue, Mike's camera, stuff like that), but that's about as much planning as it got. :D I don't like planning things too thoroughly because I think it's fun to find out along the way how stories are going to turn out… that's probably not a recommended way of doing things tho. :D My sister and Kitten were the ones who kept track of the characters and made sure I didn't get myself all confused - they were reading chapters as I wrote them and throwing shoes at me whenever something wasn't working. I'd recommend this shoe-treatment as an excellent way of staying sane. :D

Hee, and thank you for the kind words, is very sweet! *giggles and blushes shyly*

My question is: whilst you always have a good grip of descriptive writing, how do you manage to make your carnage scenes so lifelike? I'd have thought that'd be the hardest thing to write about in all its gory glory!

Red glow stick please. :)

i dunno, it's probably all the bad influences in my life - movies and comics and horror books. :D Gore is the most fun thing to read, and writing about it's pretty fun too. :) I s'pose it hasn't hurt working in the path lab, i've learned so many fun new words since i started there. 'Avulsed' is still my favourite. Blargh. :D

glad you think the scenes are lifelike!! that makes me teh happy. :D You know me tho, i'm rubbish with real life blood. If i ever had to encounter a real gore scene i'd go eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee like a girl and run away. :D

*passes glow stick*

I have a question for you, Rakie:

Why do you write?

because otherwise my brain will kerplode! it's true, i have a medical condition called, um, brainkerplodeitis. If i don't keep my mind occupied with scribbling then it tries to eat itself, or something... i've never actually let it get to that stage so i don't know for certain. :D

more sensibly, yeah, it's to stop myself going crazy! (working well, non?) :D Also i write because my friends are kind enough to read my scribblings... which means that i can get away with giving them stories instead of proper christmas/birthday presents, mwahahaha. :D

Good answer! :)

Rakie,

A lot of your fiction started out life on Happy People Have No Stories (for those not in the know, that's Rakie's Yahoo! group for creative writers). Do you write differently when posting stories online, chapter by chapter, as opposed to working on stories independently? If so, what are the differences?

*throws glowstick to Darrell*

Almost all of the stuff I write nowadays ends up on Happy People, because i'm an attention junkie-whore and if people aren't paying attention to me then I curl up in a little ball and die. :D So I don't work on much stuff independently anymore... except for film scripts, and i'm sure that if i could figure out a way to post them a chapter at a time i'd be doing that too. :D I guess the biggest difference is that the stories I post on the group tend to actually get finished. Being yelled at and shoed by Kitten is one hell of an inventive... :D Also, the chapters tend to be shorter, better written, of fairly equal length, and contain more cliffhangers. Oh, and I tend to write the chapters sequentially, instead of doing all the best/most interesting bits first, which means that i've frequently got no idea how the damn thing is going to end until it gets there (hmm, maybe shouldn’t admit that...) :D Getting feedback from people while posting chapters one at a time is the best thing ever, I need feedback like I need air (to quote a mutual Iowan friend of ours, lol), and more often than not the subsequent chapters end up being written with the previous comments in mind.

(Btw, again with the attention-seeking, if anyone wants to come check out our writing group, we're here:happypeoplehavenostories, and we're really very friendly, honest. :D)

Greetings Rakie,

Further to your previous post - on the subject of feedback, to what extent (if at all) do you think that posting your work online and receiving feedback from others has helped you to develop and improve as a writer?

It's helped like mad crazy. :D For a start, it's really encouraged me to keep writing and to finish the things I begin (I'm a very lazy person at heart and need someone standing over me with a big stick if I'm going to get anything done). And it gives instant feedback - you post something online and within a couple of days you've got a bunch of replies telling you whether its good or not and pointing out all the bits that suck (and because it's usually friends who are reading it, I know they'll tell me if it's rubbish so I can absolutely trust their opinions). :D I'm sure you'll agree that my writing is definitely better now than it was a few years ago, seeing as you've suffered through some of my earlier efforts. ;) If it wasn't for people politely telling me 'that bit is terrible', 'your spelling is awful' or 'for the love of god GET ON WITH IT, this chapter's been going on for DAYS' I would still be horribly overwriting everything and not understanding the difference between 'breath' and 'breathe'. More so, I mean. :D

I so get you on the feedback thing, Rakie. I always feel like what I write is crap unless someone else tells me its not, or tells me how to uncrap it.

You got room for little ol' me at your Happy place?

yes, definitely, that would be awesome!! eeeee, that'd be SO COOL if you wanna come join us! :D Things are a bit mad on the group at the moment - everyone's been doing crazy amounts of posting for some reason, so it's all nice and busy and my inbox is full. :D Come join us!! *runs off to prepare welcome cookies*

Reason for Darrell's manic posting of late - Banoch Brae. Blame KT's influence!

:P