Deviation Actions
But I've been asked how I write so much so fast. The short answer is that I write for a set amount of time (my Mirage writing playlist is 2 hours 46 minutes) 5-6 nights a week! Also, I started with a 6-chapter lead.
The long answer is that I write using an outline, building up each scene cumulatively. Here's an example using a scene that didn't get published.
It's from Chapter Fourteen, "3000 Miles to Graceland", which is the Mirage-version of the film Iron Man 2. In that chapter, it's mentioned that Tony's (canonically disastrous) birthday party was underwhelming...but it wasn't always! I wrote that party - and that fight - but ended up cutting it because the tone didn't fit, it used up a concept I wanted to hold in reserve for maximum impact later, and it was making the chapter just too blasted long. (Yes, there is such a thing! It very nearly got split into two, which would have been "Speedway Junky" and "3000 Miles to Graceland".) Besides, I went into Iron Man 2 resolved to pull out only what I needed for Mirage. I don't need to set up War Machine.
So let's look at that.
Each scene in Mirage starts with a single sentence. Actually, each chapter starts with a single sentence or string of keywords (14 is "Monaco; Lady Loki takes down Whiplash; SHIELD; palladium") but let's start a little further down the line.From my notebook: T's party still takes place off-screen with slightly less calamitous results b/c in the shadows of the fight, L stalking - R is threatening T!
That tells me that I'm writing the party, focusing on the Iron Man vs. War Machine fight, and that Loki's going to get involved.
I usually write out a longer description of the scene in my notebook or on the computer. Yes, I do a lot of fic-planning by hand. For this scene, it was my notebook. Here's the page, written - as far as I remember - during a slow day at work.
Do I expect you to read my handwriting? God no. Here's the translation:
L almost steps in to stop the T vs. R fight - but not as himself - NVG + motion tracking in T's HUD spots something big + dark in the shadows, creeping up on R - and instincts go crazy, b/c lion body and can-opener teeth - that's a sabertooth! And remembers the conv. about shifting - add that L can add mass up to "combat" size - and that R is threatening T, and that L will kill to protect him. And T shuts everything down, crashes himself, so no more threat, so R leaves w/ WM suit, so L doesn't have to strike.
Definitely a conversation about deadly force, L irritated to be reprimanded over it - yes, T should be scared of him! Who's calling the shots - literally - here?
+ R did say L would have gone for him barehanded to protect T...suddenly, not so hot.
L wasn't at the party b/c he's trying to enchant a stand-in for Mj., building up layers to fool at a glance - not for long, he knows.
L says of course I wouldn't have killed him - but I know how much work it is to stop one of your suits.
The idea that he can shift into something bigger, too, has been moved to 17.
And in the top right-hand corner, you can barely see my note: didn't use, kept in scribbles.
The great thing about a broad outline like this is that it's easy and quick to write, just an idea of what happens. But when I sit down and actually write the scene, I'm not looking at a blinking cursor on a blank page. I know where I'm going and how I'm getting there.
So here's the never-before-published scene these notes became:
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The party’s so much like old times it’s like nothing’s ever changed. Like Tony’s still that happy, shallow, stupidly naïve man who wore the title of Merchant of Death proudly because he believed everything he did was righteous and right and inherently awesome because it was him doing it.
Almost. The people filing up the driveway in chauffeured cars and filling up his house with their chatter and their pretty bodies are the same as they’ve ever been, the interchangeable glitterati set, uniform in their vapidity and aimlessness. It’s a hunting ground for someone like Tony used to be, interested only in his own entertainment and his own pleasure, sure in the knowledge that consequences happened to other people and he’d never have to clean up any mess he made.
And hell, why can’t he have that back, just for one night, one last time?
Everyone’s gotten dressed up for the party, but none of them like Tony has. He’s safe within his armor, helmet glaring down at the party poodles from the DJ’s booth, and if he’s stumbling, it’s because the suit isn’t meant for socializing in. If everything’s funny, it’s because he’s thinking very clearly and seeing them all for the cardboard cutouts they are. If nothing matters, it’s because nothing does.
Who is he kidding? He’s going to get blackout drunk, and try to resurrect some of that freedom he used to have, even as he shows off the Iron Man armor and the glowing blue chunk of poison embedded in his chest. The present needs a good sharp dose of the past. Then it’ll be a little more manageable.
A bunch of stuff gets broken. It’s only stuff.
Pepper tries to calm him down and send everyone home. But it’s Tony’s party, and he needs to be shallow and stupid again for just a little while longer.
He can’t do it, okay? He can’t bear up under the weight of who he’s become, and everything he’s taken responsibility for. He can’t be who they want him to be.
Nobody he cares about is here, and so he doesn’t have to care. Rhodey said he was going to be here, and Tony saw him at the back of the crowd while he was blowing up wine bottles to make people laugh, but he’s disappeared. Happy ran for it hours ago. Loki…Tony’s not up to thinking about Loki right now, so it’s good he’s not around. Even Pepper has given up and fled.
His life used to make sense, and it’s slid into not making any sense at all in tiny stumbles and sharp snaps, like he’s been falling down a mountain. Sometimes he’s up to his neck in a snowbank that’s drifting – hah – down a slope at its own leisurely pace, and then sometimes it goes over a cliff and he’s fallen into some new world of madness.
Tony just wants to make it go away, and for a while, it does, and sometime soon, it’s all going to. His last blood test said 36%.
And then Rhodey storms up from the basement, the sleek-silver Mark II turning him into a proper knight in shining armor because fuck that, who really thought Tony Stark could be one?
“Go home,” Rhodey commands like the crack of Judgment Day, and instantly, the entire party shuts down. It must be hard to tiptoe in high heels across broken glass, but a whole bunch of pretty girls are managing it.
Tony says something. He doesn’t hear what, but it must have been funny, because he’s laughing.
Man, there are days he hates that blank, metallic faceplate that Rhodey has just snapped down, ready for a fight, even as he snatches up his own helmet and it moves under his hands, sliding into place. He’d really like to punch it.
So he does.
Rhodey fights back, and Tony takes the blow. He doesn’t really care. Rhodey should have one of the suits…just in case…and Tony is happy to provide his first lesson in wielding it.
And it’s so damn easy to fight. So good to have something he can punch. Tony gives himself over to the physical, the steps and leaps and the tiny movements that send him soaring on repulsor power and kept balanced on flight stabilizers. It’s a fight he doesn’t have to think about, because it doesn’t matter.
The wall that shatters as Rhodey throws him through it, snapping planks and exploding drywall shattering beneath his armor? Irrelevant. The numbing echoes of metal on metal on metal, as he grabs up 250 kilos of free weights like they’re nothing, shaking them off the pole so he can swing it into Rhodey’s armored gut, a move Tony’s been on the other end of plenty of times now? Not important. The shock of being hit with one of his own repulsors, throwing him off-balance enough for Rhodey to body-slam in a flying leap, knocking Tony into the gas jets of the fireplace? Meaningless.
That they’re scaring the hell out of the horrified and fascinated partygoers, clustered outside like it’s entertainment, an unannounced gladiator match? So what? This is Tony’s spotlight too.
Rhodey’s talking, probably trying to talk him down, and Tony hears himself answering, but doesn’t have a clue what he’s saying. That’s what people don’t get. The sass is truly reflexive, and he can’t turn it off.
He can just stop thinking, lose himself in the mindless strikes and blows and counterattacks, as the shifting party lights are washed away in the heads-up display’s night vision.
Tony is extremely drunk, but action and adrenaline are burning the alcohol from his blood, and so he’s not so drunk that he misses the movement in the shadows.
Braced against the fireplace wall, he looks past Rhodey, past the shifting lights and the shattered pieces of his front room, and tries to get past the basic, instinctive what the hell?
Something there. In the darkness, moving, at a steady and relentless pace that has the monkey in the back of every human brain, even the Incredible Brain, gibbering in terror and looking for a tree to climb.
Within his helmet, Tony blinks, trying to focus, and the image before his eyes resolves into something impossible.
That should not exist.
Not in his house. Not anywhere.
Twice the size of a lion, which it somewhat resembles. Stocky shoulders, powerful limbs, a long tail lashing like a metronome counting out the last heartbeats of its prey. Coarse fur catches the light in patches as it ripples over seeming acres of rolling muscles, every one of them in perfect alignment. It’s an avalanche of flesh and death, and while he’s never seen one in person – no one in a million years has seen one – there’s no mistaking that heavy muzzle and those teeth.
That’s a sabretooth tiger prowling through the shadows of the hallway, intent and focused, flashing cat’s eyes fixed on –
Rhodey, who stands on guard with his back to it, ignorant, blind.
Adrenaline and horror whip together into a potent blowtorch, and at the end of a truly horrible moment, Tony’s as sober as the proverbial judge, and suddenly, shockingly aware of what’s about to happen here.
He doesn’t have a sabretooth tiger. What he has is a shapeshifter.
A shapeshifter from a planet where there are dire wolves and probably other megafauna to go with them. A shapeshifter who has been downstairs most of yesterday and today, working layers of magic into an illusion that needs to show up as real under even the most intent scrutiny, and who might not have seen how this fight started or why. Who sat there and said of course I can become something bigger than myself, who spoke openly of turning into something that would hold up in combat.
Who is all too willing to kill to protect Tony.
The monkey in his brain sees the ancient predator and screams mindlessly. The man looks at the biggest cat to ever walk his planet and thinks what big can-openers you have even as dread wells up in his throat like vomit.
Oh god, Tony can’t even say, because for a moment he can’t breathe, no, Loki, no, don’t –
What he says instead is, “Cut all power. Complete shutdown. Now!”
The suit dies around him, and everything goes black except for a tiny blinking LED light, the hair-thin voice link that will let him reboot with a word. The weight of it drives him to his knees as the hydraulics give out, trapping him in a dark, close coffin perfectly sculpted to his body, a claustrophobe’s worst nightmare. Almost at once, he can taste the difference in the air. Life support is offline with everything else, and if he doesn’t get this helmet off soon, he’ll suffocate, which would be a horrible and ironic way to die.
Which he doesn’t really want to do. Everything he’s done tonight has been a protest against the swelling belief that he’s going to anyway, that salvation isn’t going to fall from the skies in time.
But he’s just removed himself as a viable opponent. And Rhodey is a good man, or Tony wouldn’t have deactivated the protocols that keep anyone else from using the extra suits.
Rhodey won’t hit him while he’s down, not when he’s literally on his knees in surrender. So Rhodey is now no threat.
Blind and trapped and helpless, Tony holds very still and listens and does not – probably – pray that he’s right.
Silence answers his racing thoughts as he tells himself again and again that he couldn’t have shouted and warned Rhodey about the pissed-off shapeshifter stalking him. Rhodey would have reacted like any sensible man with a weapon in hand – he would have taken a shot.
And then Loki would have killed him anyway, just to satisfy that mad built-in sense of honor.
Dead silence – please no – echoes around him, and in a very low voice, Tony says, “Restore power. Essential systems only. Minimal levels.”
Air rushes back into his lungs and the full weight of the suit eases off his shoulders, letting him look up through the restoring HUD. After a moment, he can even lift his hands and remove his helmet.
Rhodey’s standing over him, somehow radiating disappointment even through the motionless silver faceplate and the statue impression he’s doing. If Tony had painted it gold in the first place, it’d be like being threatened by the Oscar statuette, only scarier. “You’re out of control, Tony,” Rhodey says, and there’s the disappointment, overlaid with metal as it is. “Stay down.”
Beyond him, in the shadows, nothing moves, but Tony imagines fierce, primeval golden eyes fixed on him, waiting for his next move.
He doesn’t make one. He stays down. He listens to the ringing in his skull, and the sick lurching of his stomach, and the ragged sound of his own tattered and overstressed lungs as he fights for breath. He watches as Rhodey angles the Mark II’s repulsors down and takes off, scorching into the night sky and away.
It’s done.
Head spinning, body rebelling, mind feeling as if it’s been mangled in sabretooth jaws, Tony’s done.
He stays there, in the abyss at the end of his strength that he keeps returning to, just done.
Some time later, maybe a few minutes, maybe a year, he sees a pair of shoes that must be Pepper’s, because they stop at his side and there’s a hand on his shoulder. He can’t feel it, through the armor, but he can see it.
“Tony?” she asks carefully. “Can you stand? Can you get downstairs? We need to get you out of that armor –”
We? Tony hears, and makes the effort to look up. Pepper’s standing over him. Beyond her, Natalie – or whoever the hell she is – hovers, waiting to be helpful, playing whatever role she’s playing.
At the very limits of his blurry vision, on the edge of the shadows in the hallway, Loki is leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching Tony with cold, assessing eyes.
Yeah. Tony can stand.
Whether he can stand himself is another question entirely.
He grabs his helmet, hits the tiny trigger, and dons it. The instant he hears the catches lock, he snaps, “Restore full power,” and the battered suit hums back to life.
Tony takes off in a blaze of flight, going nowhere except away from the fool he’s made of himself and the people he can’t face and the sick knowledge that his last birthday party will certainly be remembered.
It's not a bad scene. It just didn't work, and I didn't need it.