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Hello everyone,

I haven't been around much so I thought I'd just give some story updates. First of all, I've been getting a lot of work done on Gabon (and even next season, as well, which is my own cast). I really hate that you guys will have to wait until the end of December because I'm confident that this is going to be my best premiere. A lot of you like strategizing and I can promise a power struggle right from Episode 1 and a great pre-TC scene. I've kindof been working on both Gabon and my next season concurrently, and I can't wait to post my own cast either. That will be in April. Anyway, I just wanted to touch base with people and share my excitement over these projects. Hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

Loved Micronesia, my favorite fanfic so far, and thrilled to read Gabon! How am I supposed to wait until December! Hopefully, more time waiting means the reward will be oh so sweet when we finally do get to read it! Good luck!

Thanks, SurvivorFan1989. Glad to hear that Micronesia was your favorite, and I hope that Gabon will be able to surpass it. It will need to have some great post-merge episodes, I think, bc Micronesia had a very strong start and then dwindled a bit at the end. Sorry for making everyone wait until December. With school, I just don't have time to regularly write episodes so we'd end up with a very irregular schedule and possibly long waits between episodes, so it's better to get ahead of the game. I think you will enjoy the new season though, and I'm glad you're excited for it. Thanks for that! Hope you have a great day! :)

So Gabon will premiere in three months today - it seems like so far off.

I finished the Episode 1 strategy scene yesterday - there's definitely a lot going on there and I think it will be exciting for you guys to read.

Okay, back to work. Hope everyone has a good night...

I'm glad someone bumped this! :)

How do you decide who wins a fanfic

The most important thing for me is that I'm able to develop that person as a strong character, explain how/why they win, and give them a significant story that is different from other winners. I also try to hit all the different age/gender demographics and vary the winner up in that way as well, so it's unlikely for me to have three 20-something year-old girls or guys winning in a row, for example. Sometimes I have specific criteria that I'm looking for and other times I don't. In Cook Islands, I wanted a winner who was a likable leader and won a lot of Immunity Challenges to get to the end. In Fiji, I wanted a more negative female winner who would come from behind and be a little bit sneaky and underhanded. For Gabon, I more-or-less picked the winner first and then more-or-less came up with how he/she wins afterward. I've done that both ways and it seems to work out fine either way. I also try to not make the winners too obvious, but as we all saw with Tracy, sometimes that doesn't work out.

I remembered that I answered this question recently, so here's my more detailed post that talks specifically about each of the winners:

For Eliza, I liked that she clearly knew a lot about the game, so I figured she would be strong strategically and be cutthroat when she needed to, and I also thought that she had a great personality that she would keep things interesting for the duration of the season.

I thought Willard would be the one opportunity to have a strategic guy over 50 win, and with his story about telling everyone he was a postal worker and the other lies he told, I thought it would give him a very interesting story of how he manipulates his way to the top and beats out a bunch of young people (almost everyone in the Final 6ish were all in their 20s). I just thought he would be a good character.

That left me with 2 demographics that I had yet to represent: an older woman and a younger man. Unlike all of my stories since, for Guatemala, I hadn't decided 100% who the winner would be when I started writing Guatemala. I obviously wasn't as well-versed in Edgic either because Brandon had an UTR start and Lydia ended up being pretty OTTP, so neither of them had that great of a winning edit. Both Eliza and Willard, in my mind, were fairly strategic, but since this was the first season I was actually going to post, I also wanted Brandon to end with a strong strategic edit and be almost like a "mastermind." Still, I wanted a winner that was going to ultimately be hardworking and likeable and both Brandon and Lydia fit that. Overall, I picked Brandon because I thought his story was ultimately better and he just felt like a more suitable winner than Lydia...

After that, the winner was down to an "older woman," and I wanted to have a winner this time who would win by being on a dominant tribe, and controlling a majority alliance, which is what was a huge part of Exile Island. I knew that Melinda wasn't going to win and I don't even consider her older. That left me with three possible choices. Honestly, sometimes I wish that I had went with Cirie, but I thought she was perfect in the Casaya underdogs, and I also thought that Tina having the added story of her son's tragedy would give her a little something extra to overcome. I decided that it would be interesting and different to have two older women (Tina and RM) that were fairly good strategically and actually made moves in the game and end up in the Final Two, since it had never happened before. But apparently it didn't fly with some people, and sometimes I still question it. I would have maybe had Danielle in the Final Two or something... Anyway, I hope that answers your question.

Now for Cook Islands, I was looking for yet another winner story to go with. I decided that I wanted the winner to be a leader (although Brandon and Tina sortof were too) who relied a lot on winning Immunity to get to the end because he ended up being such a threat. Yes, it was probably going to be a "he." I'll admit that when I found out about the race twist, I felt obligated to have a minority winner, even though this is something I wanted to do for a long time anyway but Vanuatu-Guatemala barely had any of them. So I was watching the Early Show cast announcement for Cook Islands and JP was the last person to be shown on it, and I immediately said that he was going to be the winner. That was it. He seemed to fit perfectly for what I was going for. I didn't know anything about it except his name, but I thought I had created a pretty good story. He later turned out to be a California model more than a voleyball coach, which I didn't like, but I was happy with him winning overall.

After three seasons of winners that were fairly positive overall, I wanted to have a winner that skewed negative and maybe was involved in driving some conflict. The cast was released and I started to figure out who would fall into what roles, and I was left with either Stacy or Jessica (maybe one other person?) as the potential winner. Stacy was the obvious choice for me here. I wanted her to be somewhat of a villain, manipulative, but I knew that she had to become a bit more sympathetic at the end for people to be okay with her winning over someone who would be the clear favorite for practically the entire season: Earl. I call this a "come from behind win," which is interesting because she was on the winning tribe at the beginning of the season, but it was the tribe that ended up getting outnumbered. I really liked her as the winner and I was happy with her edit except for that INV1 that I would like to erase.

Now we get to All-Stars, and I knew that Candice was going to win this season since before I even had a final cast picked for it. Honestly, there weren't a lot of All-Stars that I actually wanted to have win, so I narrowed it down quickly to only a few choices. Candice's win was very reminiscent (sp?) of Eliza's, since I had not written Vanautu into a full season. They both played very similar games and Candice was what I imagined Eliza to be in Vanuatu, being that they were both big Survivor fans who were willing to make cutthroat strategic moves, etc. There's not really much else I can say about this season. I also picked Jamie as the runner-up to Candice extremely early - possibly before people voted on the cast, but I don't remember exactly when. I remember making a possible list of early, mid, late boots from the Top 30 and of the ones who were in the cast, it pretty much stuck when I planned out the full season. Okay, I'm rambling now...

Finally, for China, I wanted to have someone who was clearly a villain win this time, and Dave was definitely an obvious choice for me once again. Most of my winners have been very strategic, but I felt like Dave was the first one who was really strategic in a ruthless kind of way. Again, I don't have much to say about this one - I think I've talked about picking Dave before. And with him having the lies and stuff, it was once again a different kind of story. Leslie's character was also essential to this since she was screwed over by him and cast the deciding vote for him to win.

Hope that answers it, but if there's anything else specific you'd like to know, please let me know. :)

Excited for Dec. 29th!!

Me too! :)