Interviewer:
Hello xxfaylinexx , I'm your interviewer Vee. First of all, I gladly welcome you to the Mystic Interviews, I hope you enjoy your time here!

Xxfaylinexx:
Thank you! I'm glad to be here!

Interviewer:
For the starters, I'd like if you could tell us your full name and your wattpad ID

Xxfaylinexx:
My name is Sam, also known as XxFaylinexX on Wattpad!

Interviewer:
So, Sam, let's start with the questions shall we!?
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?

Xxfaylinexx:
Sure! I am a historian with a specialization in ancient Roman religion and a deep love for classical literature and ancient epics. Currently, I'm halfway through getting my second bachelor's degree, this one in creative writing! Recently, I've mainly been
busy as a playwright, bringing historically inspired high fantasy stories onto a stage, but on Wattpad, I'm mainly focusing on writing prose. The stories I publish here are often romance-free, diverse fantasy tales, inspired by the mythology and culture I
research.

Interviewer:
Wow! That's Really impressive.
I'm sure your readers are going to love knowing this about you.
Now, moving onto our next question, How did you first come across writing on wattpad?

Xxfaylinexx:
I think that was about a decade ago by now; like many people here, I started my
writing adventure by writing bad fanfics as a teenager. Initially, I did so on a different, Dutch platform, and I still do check in there every once in a while. Someone who read the stuff I put on there, told me about Wattpad. I downloaded it, and since it had
an app, it turned out to be a lot more mobile-user friendly then the other platform. I got a lot of friends on here in my fanfic spaces, and while they gradually grew out of
the fandom and the platform, I guess I just sticked around and started writing some more original (and higher-quality) work. Now that I'm basically writing every day for school purposes, I use it as a place for low-stakes publication, interaction with people from across the globe and just to write things that I enjoy.

Interviewer:
Oh wow, that's an interesting story!
Since, we're talking about writing and Wattpad, can you tell us what is your
favorite book that you have written and how did you get the inspiration to write
that?

Xxfaylinexx:
That's a difficult question, as most of my stories are very dear to me for very different reasons. One of those fanfics I wrote, for example, was a collaboration with my partner. It's horrendously bad (and not on my account, and also in Dutch), but this is how we got to know each other and how we stayed in touch. Now, a decade later, we're living together. So that story quite literally changed my life. As for my other
stories; there's one called A Song of Purple Summer, which is important to me because it was my first original fantasy and first large worldbuilding project, and because the main character helped me better understand myself. I had joined a collaborative writing contest to spite the host (long story, not my proudest moment) and I was in the first year of my history major, so I had a lot of exams to study for - so I combined the two, writing incredibly long descriptions of the political entities in the Roman Republic that I had to memorize for an upcoming test. So that story was very much inspired by the contest, the other participants (since it was collaborative) and the things I was learning in uni at that moment. A couple years later, I got into applyfics here on Wattpad, and when I wanted to make one of my own, I decided to use all that fancy Purple Summer worldbuilding and make a high fantasy one. As per
usual for an applyfic, I provided a prompt/story hook, which was basically just 'large army is up against several smaller ones, the smaller ones all miscommunicate and it turns into a bloodbath'. That story became A Ballad of Falling Light: other Wattpad users provided me with characters and I wrote a story with that, so a lot of inspiration
came from the character sheets they provided me with. It is my first attempt at writing outside my native language, and also the first story I fully plotted out beforehand. As it is my current project and I'm having a lot of fun with the writing, that is one of my favorites as well.

Interviewer:
Each story of yours has a different backstory to it. Everything is dear to you in one or the other way. It's truly lovely to know that you have memories attached to a lot of these stories.
With this we move to our very next question about one of your books. We got to know about one book of yours, which is a multi collab, would you tell us your juicy gossip or tiring process of creating the collaboration book of yours, "A Ballad of Falling light".

Xxfaylinexx:
Honestly, I wouldn't call it gossip or even tiring, since every step of the collaboration, the process has been a delight. I've been working on it for two years and there hasn't been any drama. I didn't get a whole lot of responses and character sheets to work with, but the ones I did get were amazing and well-thought-out. I did have to
reconstruct the story though. Initially I meant to focus on how the nations of Ventus and Phaos miscommunicate and how their army got slaughtered because of it; however, a lot of the applications I got were characters who are scheming, lying bastards, spies and traitors. So instead of writing a tragedy of people trying and failing to collaborate and save the world, I changed the plot to be more like 'all these anti-heroes are trying to save themselves and they screw each other and the world over in the process'. That was a bit of a puzzle, but the applicants had given me plenty of information, so I managed to puzzle together a coherent plot from that.The
nice part about this type of collaboration is that you're not too dependent on
continuous participation. Sure, I love it when the creators of these characters stay involved, are available for questions or are actively engaging with the things I write, but if they don't, the show goes on. I can still write the story, and people who didn't apply can still enjoy it as just that: a story. Because after the character creation process, that's just what it is: a story with main characters that other Wattpad creators came up with, for everyone to enjoy. It's nice to have these people who were here from the start and who put so much time and effort in creating these characters, so it's sad if they stop reading for whatever reason, but I do appreciate the contributions they did when they were around, and I can still continue to write the story. So no, there isn't much gossip to tell, honestly. I thoroughly appreciate
everyone who interacted with the story in any way, from my partner listening to my rants when I get stuck on the plot puzzle, to the people who created the characters that drives this story forward and the people who just read it.

Interviewer:
I love your answer. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Since, we're talking about the book, 'A Ballad of Falling Light' , what are your 2
most favorite iconic lines from this book?

Xxfaylinexx:
"Okay, I maybe spied a eeny-meeny tiny bit on the officer's meeting and I technically did desert, so if you really want to get all technical about it like some nagging nit-picker, then yes, I am a 'traitor', I 'betrayed' the idiots in charge of the Phaosian army." - Siraj, Chapter 4: Sailors Take Warning 'She did what the centurion told her, prancing around in the shame of her enslavement like it was one of the silk ball gowns she had worn at the parties from her childhood.' - Chapter 6: Once More, With Feeling
I love these lines because I think they say a lot about the characters who are
narrating/talking (Siraj and Mele respectively). They have such vibrant and interesting personalities that are so much fun to explore. And with these two, well, Both of them are incredibly overconfident - a classical case of hubris, so to say. For Siraj, that means acting like a kid in detention every time someone corrects him, and For Mele, it comes down to believing she is absolutely flawless and can do no wrong.
I just think their vibes are really iconic: the idealistic teenage assassin with plenty of bad ideas and zero impulse control and the fallen royalty who's unwarrantedly convinced that she is The Chosen One™. And since the characters are really at the center of this story, it's lines like these that I think really shine.

Interviewer:
Woww! Now, I'm even intrigued to know more about them. Readers, go check out
the story and enjoy these fun dialogues!!
We also noticed that this is the first time that you have taken English as the main
language in your book.
How was your experience with that?

Xxfaylinexx:
It's quite tough. I'm quite fluent in English, so it mostly turns out fine, but Dutch is my native language. This means that I constantly have to double check ('does this word mean what I think it means' and 'how do you say that in English again'), even with simple words. For example, in the last chapter I wrote, I spend a lot of time on a sentence because my brain had deleted the word 'virtue' out of my brain and I really couldn't find the right translation. Most of my writing brain operates in Dutch, so occasionally, I want to express something that makes perfect sense in my language, but that doesn't translate well. In those cases, I tend to have to rework the phrase several times until it does what I want it to. But in general, I think it's going quite
alright! And if I ever get insecure about it, I just throw in some more Latin. Most
people's English may be better than mine, but their Latin probably isn't ; )

Interviewer:
Wow, introducing the Latin element is a really clever idea, you've got there.
Moving on to the next question, which character in your own book do you most relate
and why?

Xxfaylinexx:
That wouldn't really be anyone from the main cast, I think. Though they all have
different aspects I can relate to (Siraj's need for validation, Ashe's internal struggle of following the rules vs following your heart, Vanora's general calm and quiet, for example), I didn't create them, so they tend have less of my traits than the characters I did make. So my answer would be one of the minor characters: Brand. He's the narrator and the main character in one of my other stories, so I know him very well. In the few years since I created him, I've noticed how much he's like me in
many ways - either because I found out more about myself or because I grew to be more like him. He's a storyteller, loves history, is a bit of a nerd, and he's under a lot of pressure from his family to be successful - with severe anxiety as a consequence of that. He kind of has all the aforementioned characteristics of the main cast as well, in his own way. So yeah, I really relate to his internal panic and suboptimal attempts to do good. And in the past few years, I've picked up his dark academia aesthetic as well, so we have the same burgundy - white/black - gold - sepia color scheme :' ) Now if only I could wield a sword, summon fire and talk to gods like he does...

Interviewer:
Wow, The way you've described the character, it's similarities to you is really
beautiful Since, we're talking about characters, I and all the readers here would like to know, How do you inculcate the emotional factor in the characters in your books?

Xxfaylinexx:
I don't think I fully understand the question, could you maybe rephrase it?

Interviewer:
I meant how do you bring out human emotions of your characters into your
words?
Like sadness, anger, hurt, happiness, excitement and all that

Xxfaylinexx:
Well, my characters are dealing with larger-than-life threats that would be very alien to most us: all kinds of magic, assassination attempts, the direct
interference of gods, etc. So since the situations they are in are not things that
most people have experienced (I hope), I have to show that they do have
experiences we do relate to. Without spoiling too much, there's a character who gets disabled over the course of the plot, who has to start dealing with
chronic/phantom pain and re-learning the limits of their body, as well as accepting that they cannot do the things they used to do. While the circumstances are very much high fantasy, these kinds of problems are very human. I try to portray such things (particularly more heavy emotions) by observing the world around me: research on individual experiences of people who dealt with similar things, or if I can, I draw on my own experience. I try to factor some kind of 'physicality' into it: How does this emotion make the character's body feel? Because well, as far as I
know, we all have a body, and we all sometimes pick up on physical sensations, both internal and external.
That aside, the way the people in my book experience certain emotions is widely different from a human experience. The Phoinixian people are the most striking
example of this: they are physically unable to cry and the only emotion that's
culturally seen as useful to them is anger - though they do feel other things (though way less than humans do) they are taught not to show it. In cases like this one I try to strike a balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar: a heart that's beating, trembling fingers etc, but Phoinixians also have a unique pattern of lines on their skin. When they get emotional in whatever way, they feel emotion running through those lines like a kind of heat. That way, I try to convey that these creatures experience things differently than humans do, while also making sure that it stays comprehensible and relatable in a way. With Ashe, the Phoinixian point of view character, who tends to feel 'less' and expresses close to nothing, a lot is portrayed within her inner monologue - careful wording of her thoughts helps me portray how
she feels. And when I describe her through the eyes of a character from a different nation, I emphasize how hard to read she is. That way I try to use emotions as a way to not only advance the plot and build character, but also to build the world.

Interviewer:
Wow, that is some insane amount of hard work you do!
In future, do you plan to write something like this book again or are there any other upcoming projects which you are very excited about?

Xxfaylinexx:
I'm unsure about what my next project will be, I still have about 7 chapters to write, but I do think it will be set in the same universe, and it's likely that it will be an applyfic again. For this project, I took an event from my Purple Summer timeline and created a plot from that with the characters I got. I'm thinking of doing something similar when I finish this; there's an event called 'the Morning Revolt' in my timeline notes that barely has any explanation yet, so that's perfect for an applyfic-like setup.Though unlike this story, that would probably be more of a classical hero's journey kind of fantasy, instead of a tragedy. I do really love writing this tragedy - telling a story
that tells you upfront that the heroes will fail, and is about how it goes south - but I'm not sure I could do two in a row, so perhaps writing about an uprising instead of a massacre makes for a nice change in vibes. Other than that, I've been considering writing some short 'bonus chapters' for A Ballad of Falling Light, about character applications that didn't make the main cast/other side characters. There are a lot more individual stories to tell about some of the characters and I'd love to do that
(and I just think that Captain Mako deserves a spin-off). But if I end up doing that, it would probably be an addition to this book, rather than a new one. Right now, A Ballad of Falling Light is nearing its fourth act, which means that the downfall of These characters are drawing close. I'm very excited about resolving the plot, tying it all
together and finally finishing a novel-length story for once in my life.

Interviewer:
Woww! I'm intrigued just by the sounds of it.
We wish you the very best for the upcoming projects.
I'm sure the readers are also going to love your plans.
Moving on to the next question, What are some common mistakes you made when
You first started writing on wattpad and how did you overcome those mistakes?

Xxfaylinexx:
Mainly grammar and interpunction errors, honestly. My first few stories are basically unreadable due to excessive use of caps lock and exclamation marks and my attempts to feign heterosexuality. The characters were overly dramatic and the plot was going on and on and on, only to be abandoned eventually. There was no ending to reach. While I think some of those aspects just generally improved as I became older and wiser and more practiced, I also entered some knock-out race writing contests that helped quite a lot. To stay in the race (and keep your character alive),
you just had to get better and take the feedback you got seriously. That certainly got rid of my interpretation errors (and now I find out that English has some obscure interpunction rules that are just a tiny bit different from the Dutch ones so I have to re-learn it, meh). Learning to structure my stories and plan them ahead of time is something I learned in art school: spending 40 hours a week studying and writing and talking about literature really helps you understand the shape of stories and how
to structure them effectively - so that they actually reach a satisfying end. And like Most beginning writers, my early work had a lot of 'tell don't show'. I gradually turned that around, as I was challenged to make my descriptions as long, detailed and precise as possible. Ironically, that came back around and is now one of the bigger flaws of my writing: my descriptions go on for too long and I'm bad at scratching
things (I put those details in for a reason, after all). I've kind of accepted it as part of my style. After all, a lot of fantasy writers write books with descriptions that go on and on and on; it's fitting of the genre and it's quite fitting of the tradition of ancient epics as well. If it doesn't work, well, I guess I'll just write plays instead, to get rid of that
problem altogether.I've become more true to myself, and that shows in my writing. I no longer try to write romance; I will not be able to write that in a way that makes sense to other people. My characters get to be more like me, instead of idealized versions of who I thought I had to be, or who I thought would be cool. And I've become more comfortable with my own style as well. I have more ownership and agency over my writing nowadays; the decisions I make are conscious. I can get cranky if people don't understand or appreciate them (like my use of modern words
in a historical fantasy setting) but hey, any style is someone's favorite or least
favorite taste. At least I can be confident about doing what I do. I can stand behind my choices as a writer now. That's something I never could have done as a 14-year-old fanfic writer - no beginning writer truly knows what they are doing.

Interviewer:
Wow! Seems like you've really evolved over the years.
I love your answer and even more your honesty.
Since we're talking about mistakes, you must have gotten advice as well. What
advice have you received from other fellow writers which has always stayed with you?

Xxfaylinexx:
The one thing that has stayed with me the most somehow, is when a senior writer pointed out that I was starting basically every sentence the same way. That was
such an eye-opener - I couldn't believe I had never even noticed that. Though it was a very small feedback thing, I think it made me much more aware of how text functions. It's not just some sentences in isolation, they influence each other as well.
It should have been kicking down an open door, but at the time, it felt mind blowing.
And now that I'm doing my bachelor's, I'm getting a lot of advice all the time as well.
One that has been really important to me was my playwriting teacher's response to
my insecure rant about feeling that the theater creates too many technical difficulties to make a fantasy show without a broadway level budget. You can't exactly bring a dragon on stage like you can in prose, you can't have characters spitting lightning or
whatever it is that your fantasy heart desires. She basically told me 'just do it' and send me a list of examples of Dutch fantasy plays that were in theaters at that moment. There weren't a lot of them (one high fantasy and one magical realism play)
but the one I went to see was enough to, well, make me 'just do it'. And that has kind of my theme this year. Sometimes your own mind will tell you that something isn't possible, or doesn't work, or is impractical or too hard. Sometimes other people will do it. But in the end, if you're passionate about it, you're going to have to start saying 'What if I do it anyway?' and then do it. Figure out the solutions as you go, learn in the process, find a way to make it work. Aut inveniam viam aut faciam - I'll either find
a way or I'll make one. So that crazy idea that you think will probably not work but won't leave your brain because it would be so cool if it did work - go do that.
Eventually someone has to try and it might as well be you.

Interviewer:
You're absolutely right about this. I hope this advice stays with other beginner
writers as well and they try to get better.
With this we now move onto our last but but not the least question, How do you hope to be remembered on wattpad as?

Xxfaylinexx:
Oh, that's a tough one. I've never really aspired to become Wattpad-famous or
anything, to really be remembered that way - it's the platform I use for fun, the
professional stuff all happens offline. So it's not really like I have a lot of ambitions.
Well, for starters, I kind of hope people have forgotten about the temper tantrums I threw as a teen - my early Wattpad days were not exactly my proudest moments. I guess I'd want to be remembered for who I am on here now, for the fun people had interacting with me and my stories. I love interacting with readers and other users on
here, hence why I love collaboration projects like applyfics so much. I know I've made some great friends on here, and I hope that I'm as much of a good memory in their mind as they are in mine. Whether that is because of some meme I made, chapter I wrote, comment I made or whatever way I interacted with them,doesn't It really matters. I just hope that people enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs. As for my writing, well, I'd be incredibly happy if you learned at least one new thing from
me, whether it is about queerness/asexuality, Roman religion/culture, Latin
etymology or whatever else I've been ranting about. I'm very excited about learning new things myself, and part of the reason I started my second bachelor was that I wanted to find a way to spread my historical knowledge outside of my circle of research colleagues at the university. So I guess I'd like to be remembered as the huge (history) nerd that I am: a bit of a know-it-all, but also someone who's here to have fun together.

Interviewer:
That's a really great answer.
Thank You so much for sharing your insights and experiences with us today!It's been
truly fascinating to know more about you!!
We really appreciate your time and are looking forward to more amazing work

Xxfaylinexx:
Thank you for having me! It was a delight to talk to you!

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗯𝘆 XxFaylinexX

Interviewee : XxFaylinexX
Interviewer : DazzlingVee_
Editor : primestar0571
Graphics by : DazzlingVee_ & the_lonely_pi

Thanks to entire Mystic Book Club Community