NaNo: The Day of Excuses

[greenconverses]

Word Count: 34,106

I'm behind by about 2,500 words, I think. I didn't write anything on Thursday because I drank a bit and then couldn't focus the rest of the night. Didn't do much on Friday, either, because my roommate had people over to drink and they didn't leave until like 11ish. Plus, I made icons. I have my excuses and I'm not afraid to use them!

I am a bit worried that 34K in, and I haven't gotten anywhere near the important plot points yet. Probably because I'm stuck in the middle and keep dragging out scenes that don't need to be extended.

I have discovered that when I'm stuck, inserting Nico into any scene will guarantee me at least 300 extra words. Plus, it's never not fun to write all the characters' OMG NICO WTF YOU'RE A CREEP reactions.

Instead of a selection today, I want to do another meme! I've seen this one floating around the last couple of weeks, so let's have a go at it.


Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Comments

~GOING~

[greenconverses.livejournal.com]

Out of the four marriage scenes for this fic, this one was the first one I wrote because it was the strongest idea out of them. Plus, it would help to have the actual way they got married around first to work off of for the other three.

The reason I love this scene so much more than the others and probably the reason it gripped me right away was because I based it on how my parents got engaged. When I asked my mom how my dad proposed to her, she gave this sardonic little laugh and said there was no "traditional" proposal. After a couple of months of dating, he just turned to her one day and said something along the lines of, "So, are we going to get married or what?" This story of theirs has always stuck with me, not because it's particularly romantic (because it totally isn't, but that's my dad for you), but because it's just so real - and I wanted to give Percy and Annabeth that same kind of realism.

Percy's kind of like my dad in the sense that there's no way he'd get away with doing something traditionally romantic like proposing on one knee - he's just not that guy and I think Annabeth would just laugh in his face if he tried. Percy just goes with the flow and when he does something, he does it because it just feels right.

And I really didn't think Percy and Annabeth needed all the pomp and circumstance that goes with a traditional wedding. Out of everything that's happened in their lives and their relationship, a wedding wouldn't be for them -- it'd be for everyone else. This scenario just makes it all for them.

At the beginning of the scene, he's most likely just gotten out of the shower or out of bed, and he's having mid-morning breakfast when he spies Annabeth sitting in the living room. I imagined he would just see her sitting there, reading a paper and just being Annabeth, and be struck by the fact that he really, really wants to spend the rest of his life with her, and he wants to start today. He knows that he's going to freak her out by asking this because Annabeth likes plans, but he also knows that there's no way she'll say no because, duh, she loves him. By now, he's been able to work out how to get the response he wants from Annabeth and that's by poking as many holes as he can in her logic.

I think Annabeth's are pretty clear throughout this scene - she mostly thinks Percy's gone a bit insane - but one thing I didn't make clear but was thinking of the entire time I was writing it was that the only reason that Annabeth agrees to Percy's insanity is because she has nothing better to do that day, ahaha.