A Conversation With My Muse - 1. Chapter 1: Brandywine

It was a dark and dreary night…

“No. Too Edgar Allen Poe sounding,” he muttered, highlighting the line and hitting his delete button with extreme prejudice.

The night was filled with the howling of the wind…

“My Lord. What am I? A third rate writer?” he asked himself, flopping back into his chair with a huff, shoving back his dirty blond hair and glaring at the screen as if it were the cause of all of his problems, glasses glinting in the lamp-light.

His companion looked up from his book and raised a dark peach eyebrow at the other, getting a huff and a glare for his effort. Smiling in return, the man put his notepad aside and stood up, walking over to his creator.

“What’s up, Sunny? Story giving you hell again?” the character asked, raising his eyebrow once more, getting a piece of crumpled piece of paper tossed at him.

“Yeah, again. You’d think I would be used to it but it’s always so frustrating for me when it does happen,” Sunny moaned softly, slumping in his chair, taking to pouting at his screen.

“Okay, so, explain to me how the hell you write your stories,” Brandywine demanded, perching himself on the desk corner after clearing it.

“Which type do you want me to start on? Fan fiction or originals?” Sunny asked in response, picking up a pencil and some scrap paper. With the fae watching him doodle, he waits patiently.

“Fan fiction first, since it’s probably the easiest,” Brandywine replies.

“Not. Fan fiction is just as hard to write as originals,” Sunny snorted. “One shots or chapter stories?” he asked, adding some definition to the lips he was working on.

“One shots first.”

“Alright, so how I start a one shot fan fiction, say something like ‘A Chibi Valentine,’…I have to know the characters,” Sunny started, but seeing the blank look on Brandywine’s face explained. “The one with the Yohji and Omi pairing for Shinigamikitsune that I did for the Valentine’s swap?”

“Oh! Right. The one that was a bitch to you,” Brandywine replied, blushing lightly and fidgeting on his spot.

“I swear your hair isn’t peach but blond sometimes,” Sunny drawled slowly, smirking at the icy glare tossed at him.

“Bite me and continue, bitch,” Brandywine said, crossing his legs.

“Fine, fine. With Weiss Kruez, I know the characters from three episodes and the manga, which I’m still reading,” Sunny continued, starting to doodle once more. “Now that I know what characters I’m working with, I have to figure out if I dare to try for smut, love making, fluff, etcetera.”

“Fluff?” Brandywine asked.

“Warm and Fuzzy Feelings. WAFF for short,” Sunny replied, before continuing on. “With ‘A Chibi Valentine’ I went with WAFF, otherwise known as fluff. Now that I know what’s going to happen, I have to choose what the setting will be, how I will get them there and what they should say.”

“And here I thought that you just sat down and pounded it out in 10 minutes,” Brandywine purred, sliding off the desk and laughing at the snarled ‘fuck off, uke-bitch’ that was sent his way.

“Anyway, once I have the set-up down, usually in my mind and not in my head, I start to write. I usually do this with music playing and ignoring the world for the most part,” he continued, standing up and stretching slowly before tugging up his jeans. “Now from there, I tend to go over it a few times as I work on it. After finishing it, I scan through it once more and send it off to my beta, if I have time before the post date.”

“Why do you put a date on yourself if you still need to send it to a beta?” Brandywine interrupted, getting a pen tossed at him.

“Quiet and sometimes I have a post date. Contests, birthdays, Christmas, swaps…you name it, I’ve probably done it,” Sunny replied, settling back into his chair and running a hand through his hair once more. Pulling off his glasses, he raised an eye brow at Brandywine who was playing with the pen.

“That makes you a slut of writing wouldn’t it?” Brandywine drawled with a sweet expression on his face before dodging the flying snow globe. “So mean. Continue with what you were saying.”

“Twat. Anyways, I’ve done all sorts of one-shots. Original one-shots are just about the same, but this time I have to figure out which characters to use, what their personalities are, what they look like. How they’ll react to a situation,” Sunny continued, sending a dull look at Brandywine, who just smiled brightly at his creator.

“So, fan fiction one-shots and original one-shots are nearly the same, but the original is a bit longer a process,” the peach-haired man stated, laying out on the couch and relaxing.

“Yes, pretty much,” Sunny replied, looking at his screen before pressing the back button until the last line was completely gone.

“Okay, so…what’s the difference between the one-shots and your chapter stories?” Brandywine asked after a few minutes of watching Sunny tap out a line only to delete it.

“First of all, length. Since they are chapter stories, how many pages I write are considerably shorter then my longer one-shots,” Sunny automatically answered, shoving away from his desk. “An average chapter for me is about five to six pages long and somewhere around four to six thousand words.”

“I thought most chapters are longer then that though,” Brandywine replied, watching the rather short male stand up and limp to his book shelf.

“Eh, that’s other writers though. If I make a chapter to long, I give everything away or it ends up an information dump on the readers, which really kinda sucks,” Sunny said with a sigh, browsing through the various books before pulling out two books on quotes and a thick binder full of printed papers.

“Okay, hold up there. Information dump?” Brandywine asked, sitting up with a confused expression on his face. “What the fuck is that?”

“Language. Will you kiss your partner with that mouth?” Sunny teased, moving back to his desk, dropping the books down onto it.

“Bite me and tell me what an information dump is already,” was the reply, including a flying pen.

“Fine, fine. Bitchy much?” Sunny muttered, frowning slightly as he moved to sit on one of the recliners near the TV set. “An information dump is where you take a bunch of stuff and just pile it into one chapter or paragraph. If you notice, I spread out my descriptions for the most part.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. But why?” Brandywine inquired.

“Because that makes it easier to read,” Sunny stated simply, shifting to get into a more comfortable position. “That, and if you spread it out right, you can easily make a chapter that would be one or two pages long into a chapter with 6 or 7 pages long. Now, can I get back to how I do chapter stories?”

“Yes, now that you’ve told me what an information dump is,” Brandywine said, sniffing slightly before sneezing.

“Bless ya. Anyway, chapter fan-fictions and originals start out about the same as before, but this time I have to get into greater details on what I want for the story,” Sunny continued, smiling and handing over a tissue to Brandywine. “I have to figure out the cast, and when and how they will show up. The little details of the plot so I can’t call it Swiss cheese at the end; much like I’m doing with ‘A Different Life’ at the moment, no matter how much people like it.”

“I like it,” Brandywine retorted before blowing his nose. Sunny rolled his eyes and smirked at his character.

“I know you do, but I don’t. And the only reason why you like it is because it has Xander in a threesome relationship,” he said, watching the blush cross Brandywines cheeks.

“Fuck off.”

“No thank you. Now, as I was saying, after I have the plot thought out and most of the angles that I want, I then have to work out who is going to be doing what and who the main character will be,” Sunny continued, eyeing his desk, wondering if he should get up for his sketch pad. “After I do that, I need to write the first chapter. It has to be captivating. It has to spark interest.”

“It has to be longer then 2 paragraphs,” Brandywine muttered, making his creator burst out in laughter.

“Yes, that too. I don’t care what people say, but that first chapter is all important and will help set the tone for the rest of the story,” he said after taking a few minutes to catch his breath. “With fan fictions, I can usually skip over character development, but with originals I have to spend quite a bit of time playing with my characters. I refuse to write with half-baked characters.”

“Is that why you’ve been playing with me for so long?” Brandywine asked, trying hard to pull on a sweet and innocent look.

“That…sounded so wrong,” Sunny drawled, shaking his head and blowing a bit of hair out of his face. “Anyway, after I get the characters and plot, it’s pretty much up to me to sit down at my computer and type the chapters out. I’ve learned my lesson though. If I want to write chapter stories, I need to write and edit them before I start posting.”

“Why?” Brandywine asked, tilting his head to look at Sunny, green eyes meeting green eyes.

“Because if I don’t I find it takes me a long while to get a fresh chapter out to my readers,” Sunny answered simply, smiling brightly at Brandywine. “Do you have any idea how utterly SCARY fan girls and boys are? They terrify even me, and if my 300 pound lummox of a cousin can’t scare me, then that’s saying something.”

“Ah, yes…I see your point,” Brandywine sighed, shaking his head. “Hey, with your fan fictions, you said you need to know the characters right? Well, how do you choose the fandom?”

“Ah, that’s the easiest part of the entire thing. The idea already comes with a fandom,” Sunny said, smiling enigmatically.

“That’s not a real answer!!” Brandywine complained as Sunny stood up suddenly wanting to write something. Sitting down, he waved a hand at his creation and started typing.

“Yes it is. Now, shoo with you. I’m writing,” he retorted, starting to type out the newest story in his head.

Why was he doing this? Why did he stay in a world, in a place, where the people hated him or loved him, never choosing one to settle on? Why did he stay in a world that expected so much from him, putting him on a pedestal then tearing him down just as quickly?