Just a writing survey I answered yesterday over at behindthename.com… until 2 a.m. Enjoy!
1. What inspires you to write?
Most often it is music. It’s great listening to songs while writing, because whatever the mood of the song is, it will have an effect on my writing, and I really like that.
2. What topics do like to write about?
Generally, I tend to move towards both romance and despair. My friend should really call me Death or something, because I often kill-off, not a lot, but a reasonable amount of my characters. So, yes, a lot of grief and sadness, but that’s what I like to write about… If I had been J.K. Rowling and writing the final book, don’t be surprised if I had killed Harry Potter for real…
3. What traits are typical of your main characters (personality, background, age, gender, etc.)?
So far, the protagonist has always been a girl and around my age, 16-20 perhaps. In the story I’m working on now, the lead character is 17 and she will at the end be 18, or perhaps 19. But there’s a whole bunch of other characters that are much older and younger, ranging from 1-68 (though some are much more older than their physical age). Their personalities are not always the same, but some traits are always there, such as stubbornness and being quite laid-back.
4. Do you ever incorporate your own personality traits and/or interests into your characters?
Inevitably I do, but only with the main character. I’m always very close to my main character (like most writers I assume) and I know her, inside and out, and for me it has just worked out for the best with incorporating myself into her. This can of course be a limitation, but I can’t not do it simply. When I described my main character in my current story for my friend, she asked if I wasn’t sure it was me I was describing. But that’s only with the personalty. Interests may rub off a little, but not as much. Often I tend to give them interests and talents etc that I don’t have, but would want to have or be able to do. My current main character, Harper is a really good guitar player and I have always wanted to be able to play the guitar. I guess I sometimes live a bit vicariously through my characters.
5. What kind of names do you usually give to your characters?
That varies a lot, it’s different from character to character. Sometimes, a name will just get stuck in my head and I can’t associate it with anything else than this special character, and other times, I take in consideration what the character looks like and go from there. A thing I never do is looking up the meaning of a name. I don’t know why, but it just, sort of ruins it for me. Though, sometimes I have to limit myself because of the year the characters were born or such. A girl form the early 1800s would probably not be named Cadence, right?
6. What is your favorite genre?>
I can’t limit myself to one only. It would have to be a mix of romance and angst, paired up with a touch of supernatural stuff and some fantasy (though I’m totally not a fantasy writer…). Of course, with the story revolving around a girl in her late teens, there has to be some high school drama… sadly, I know… though it is sort of fun to write about. If anything I write would make it to the shelves of a bookstore, it would most likely go under “Young Adult”. Though there is some scary shit going on in my latest story, I’ll tell you that…
7. Where and when do your stories usually take place?
Present time, give or take a few years. Now is the time that I feel I have the best knowledge of our world and that make me able to incorporate that in the stories. I never make my stories timeless. Each story I write, comes with an elaborate timeline of events, births, deaths and etc. And it never takes place in a completely made-up world, but I guess that comes with the “genre” I’m in. Though there are definitely fictional cities that I make up, instead of using an already existing one. But that would most likely be if I’m in need of a small town.
8. When did you start writing?
That would be elementary school… I began wrote a story about a haunted house and I think I wrote like 12 or 13 parts or something. And I can tell you, it was some scary shit already back then, flagpoles through people’s stomachs and I don’t know half of it.
9. What do you like to put into your stories to set them apart from other stories?
That would have to be incredibly detailed characters. The characters I would say is what makes my stories, and I take so much time developing them, and really making them their own, with their own traits and quirks and things they do, or what they like or not. I even once had a discussion with my friend (and fellow writer) concerning what color a character of mine would prefer her panties to be in, and I can tell you we came up with green instead of pink.
10. Which character that you created do you like best?
Oh, that is a really tough one. There are so many… My current main character Harper I’m of course particularly fond of, her I really like spending time with, as well as her family, they’re really nice. Especially her aunts. Then I have Harper’s boyfriend, Johnny, who’s really cool and nice to be around. His family is rather fun too. In particular Kane who is hilarious, he says the most stupid things sometimes… And Harper’s best friends are really fun too, especially when they’re all together… Ah, it’s really hard to choose. It’s like asking me which of my kids I like the most…
11. Do you usually have only one main character or more than one?
Usually only one MC, but I always incorporate plots from other characters that are of great importance to the main story. But under the MC, there’s always many degrees of importance of the characters.
12. What traits are typical of your antagonists?
Often I have many different antagonists. Right now, there are different families and they are sort of evil for different reasons. Sometimes they’re really evil, but with this pain deep hidden inside, other times they really just are pure evil… But often there is a “reason” for their nastiness… One antagonist in my current story, and she is not even that dangerous, but she is just this incredibly nasty high school she-devil… My MC pours soda over her at one point, and that is just pure satisfaction for the rest of the students watching her do that…
13. What do you avoid in your stories that a lot of writers seem to use in theirs?
I have no idea… Perhaps, ultra-super, hyper-quirky names… That is something that at least separate my best best friend and me…
14. Do you prefer writing short stories or longer stories (i.e. novellas or novels)?
Preferably, I like to write stories that are longer so they can span over several years… But, sometimes it happens that I write shorter things, that just pops up in my head and which I can’t fit into the novel I’m writing at that time.
15. Have you ever written a parody of something?
No, and I have a hard time imagining that I ever will.
16. Do you like to share your stories with others you know?
Yeah! Of course! That’s like my favorite thing to do in my spare time! Me and my friend always go to the library-café and we can sit for hours just talking about our stories, and many times, other classmates ask about it and then I let them read… I mean, in order to get opinions and their thoughts I have to let them read…
17. In terms of movie/video game ratings, what would you rate your stories?*
PG-13 in the lowest I can go… It varies from chapter to chapter, and it gets worse as the novel proceeds…
18. Do you like to illustrate what you write?
If you mean by drawing and such, then no… But something I do is photographs and make graphics of a certain extract of my writing. The latest in the bunch being this: 
19. Do you create media (wardrobes, family trees, etc.) for your stories? Yes, very much indeed. I really like making their wardrobes for special occasions, especially when what they’re wearing has a significance to the story. I use polyvore.com and you can find my character’s wardrobes here: http://www.polyvore.com/river_dark/collection?id=93848 And I definitely make family tress. It makes it a whole lot easier to keep track on the characters and who’s related to who, what year the were born and etc. And another thing I do, which I think is very different from writer to writer, is that I always have a picture in my head of my character that corresponds to a real person, such as an actor or a musician or similar. For me, that just makes my story more real.
20. If you had the chance, would you write for a living?
Is that a trick question? Of course!
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