Question Corner Part 1

Hello and welcome to the first of (hopefully) many Question Corners with us, the authors at Tavern Talk. The aim of this first part is to start a conversation. A conversation that aims to both peel back the curtain and give back to the community that has supported us all. We hope this becomes a reference point for new, old and aspiring writers and a place where you can ask questions about writing.

Your Tavern Talkers are (currently): Prael, capslocked, mysonesecret, Peach, ddeun, majorblinks, kooya, Valentine Drifter, passingnotions, octoberautumnbox, Qwib Qwib, Orenji, defmaybe, gray, J Muns, xndrpndr

Below are just five questions, curated to give you all an initial insight into how some of us got into writing and our thoughts about the hobby and the process of writing. Not all of us have answered, though hopefully you see all of us pop up in various ways in the future.

Thank you for reading, and please enjoy.

Did you have any background in writing to begin with, or how did you get into the hobby?

kooya

Well I’ve always had a good amount of knowledge when it came to the literary bubble, writing and reading and things of that nature. So it’s the huge thanks to my english class and as well as my creative writing class in my fourth year of high school that has gotten me to delve into this position many years down the road! 

In terms of the smut space, I’ve been in and out of the fic verse for a few years with wattpad, then tumblr (the tumblr account that’s actually 9 years old and i finally had a purpose of using it LOL), and finding a gateway with the fabled bible of ao3. The Ksmut space wasn’t in my interest until mid 2022 and it got even more ignited around fall of 2023! I actually did a lot of wlw works on a previous account before making the switch to the more profound approach of a male reader a year later. While I’m trying to get the fic ideas that have been piling up in my google docs and notes, there might be a possibility where some of the wlw works may end up on fanprose! 

Orenji 🍊

Ok, this is SO funny because I really don’t have one! But I’ve participated in some essay writing contests before but wasn’t taken seriously. So, basically me being an author in this field is how I got into writing. Pretty much reading some authors back then like mint, peach, sins, and the others got me into this hobby and I really enjoyed it so far!

Qwib Qwib

No, just be delusional enough and you'll start creating stories in your head.

octoberautumnbox📦

i majored in english education does that count
look i know yuri isnt meta and never was but like this shit aint fair seriously WE JUST GOT TAXI i was sick of waiting sick of requesting i knew how to make coherent sentences ill fuckin do it myself and then i DID and now i have so many yuri fics its insane i fuckin love my job

xndrpndr 🤍

Writing and by extension story telling has always been something I’ve had an affinity for—regardless of medium. Be it original music, the many short films i’ve written over the years, the odd video game I’ll pitch to my friends and then never ever complete.

But creative writing is really the one I think I’ve hit my stride with.

I’m not entirely sure how other countries do it, but creative writing is pushed a LOT over here. A third of our high school English final was dedicated to it, and while I certainly wasn’t writing smut back then, writing has always been something I’ve done and enjoyed, and it helps that I've found a community who have been incredibly welcoming and supportive of me and my work!

Valentine Drifter 💘

I have zero, 0, zilch background in writing when I first started a year ago, with the only things that really serve as a ‘background’ being the multitudes of essays and academic research that I did for uni. The biggest reason that got me into writing and debuting as a writer was that at the time of my debut, I was going through a tough time of my life and thought: ‘I’ve been reading fiction for a while, why don’t I do that too?’

And I just started, I guess. Somehow debuted within a week of a certain author who’s written about St. Valentine getting his head decapitated, kept going, and somewhere along the way I’ve grown to enjoy the hobby of writing.

As to how I got into the hobby, I guess it started from reading all the k-smut fics from the active writers from 2022-2024. Prael, Capslocked, Kooya, Gray, Sins, Peach, IZ, ddeun, smite, locke, to name a few. The above then happened because of the aforementioned issue that I was facing in life and turned to becoming a writer to help get my mind off things.

capslocked

Not a lot. Wrote some smut for a few video game fandoms on AO3. Drabbled in sci-fi when I was younger.

ddeun

Technical academic papers only, no fictional writing background. I just read enough, saw others debut a little before I started, so I decided to give it a shot.

defmaybe

I picked up my MacBook and started writing after I broke up with my ex-friend. My first work was awfully inconsistent, but Tyler helped me shape my debut from the ground up.

passingnotions

Writing has always been the art form that most resonated with me since my early teens. Videogames and fictional worlds were the primary motivator at the time, though there was the occasional OC that I played around with. Additionally, I have always dabbled in different forms of journaling and blogging in both private and online spaces. As I grew up, literature became part of my formative, university-level education and, while I do consider myself rusty in regards to academics, it most certainly helped cement past experiences and hone my skills acquired throughout the years into something more official.

majorblinks

I’ve never taken any formal writing classes or anything. It was just something I got into as a kid! When I was in fourth grade one of our assignments was to write a short story (mine was a little scary and VERY Percy Jackson inspired) and ever since then I’ve been hooked. I used to write stories in Microsoft Word and print them out and give them to my parents to read. In fifth grade my friends and I all got into writing and we would email each other what we wrote or print it out and give it to each other at school… and then we all made Wattpad accounts. At 12 I started posting horrible but deeply passionate dogshit on Wattpad and then eventually made the transition over to Ao3, then Tumblr when I started writing for this community, then back to Ao3! And now Fanprose too! So I guess I’ve basically always been writing even though I’ve never been formally taught how to write or anything. I just kind of figured it out! And being in this community with so many incredible knowledgeable writers has taught me a lot too. :)

Prael

I have no formal ‘background’ in writing; in fact, during my education, I always hated literature. However, some part of me has always had an itch to tell stories, but I always let other parts of my life get in the way (sometimes I still do), even though I always believed in myself to be good at it. (whether I am or not, is up for debate)

So I got into this hobby, in part to scratch that itch of creative expression, and in part because I was reading the stories on Wattpad/Tumblr and always thought to myself two things: “I wish this fic went in this direction instead.” So eventually, I just made my own.

How do you keep scenes from feeling repetitive across a long work?

capslocked

I break up smut scenes in my head as a logical flow of 5 phases 

Banter
Undressing/Kissing/etc
Foreplay
The sex of it
Cum (who/where/how)

 writing a piece with multiple scenes I try to either (A) start each scene from a different point in the flow, and/or (B) only use a few phases for each sequence. Why not start your scene with a facial? It's also reasonable to reorder the phases as well. Put banter into the middle of two people fucking their brains out? Cool. 

My main goal is to make it unpredictable what kind of smut the scene is going to deliver. Writing smut is all about leveraging anticipation, and if it's pretty apparent you're going to get a full 5-phase course multiple times throughout a fic, you're not really left eager anticipating much in my opinion.

ddeun

By making the work short. I usually have a scene in mind as the focus of a fic, so a work doesn't extend past that scene. If it does have more than one then inherently the scenes are different enough already.

Will also put out something about being descriptive in my own chapter, but in short use of metaphors/imagery and deliberate word choices help make things feel different.

defmaybe

I keep my work short enough so that I do not repeat stuff. Yeah, it’s rather unhelpful, sorry. Still, perhaps, it can be interpreted as keeping your work succinct in a way?

majorblinks

I do a lot of editing as I go. Checking for word repetition, things like that. But also I think something I definitely keep in mind while writing (especially when I’m writing stories with smut) is that you have to keep upping the tension, raising the stakes. I try to not have my craziest smut scene as the opener. I think the tension should be at a gradual climb throughout the piece so I save my wildest or most emotionally cathartic beat for the very end! Everything should feel like it’s LEADING to something. I think that keeps things from being repetitive. If I write a scene and it feels too repetitive or like it’s not moving anything along, I just cut it! I also like to play around with scene length—if all my scenes are starting to look around the same length / with the same paragraph composition, I start getting a little antsy and want to break it up. But that’s just me—I’m big on rhythm!

Valentine Drifter 💘

Well I try to keep the main focus of the works as different from each other as possible. Whether that be the kink that I want to write (Petplay, Thighfuck, Anal), to how I want to write the fic (Texts only, Past tensing the majority of the fic, write it in an hour), or who the idol is.
Because I for the most part write one big scene across the fic instead of short scenes with cuts, I can allow myself to add things that are different from previous works that I either wanted to incorporate back then, or mix it up from a previous work.