If You Let Me Know... [N.H.]

Writer Answers 1

[Okay, these are the writer questions lonelyknucklehead had for me. Thank you so much for sending them in!]

To the writer (aka me): Hello missy. I have many (okay maybe two) questions for you. So... I expect essay style answers ;)

Okay... here we go. This is going to be fun (and long, but mostly fun)

How did you think of the idea of the two books?

I LOVE this question. I'm gonna try to keep it brief.

Post-answer edit: It didn't work. I'll answer this one the last one so you at least read the other ones because this one's answer is hella long.

What did you feel after posting the last chapter?

Ugh... I remember I felt really happy. And I think I cried a bit.

These stories had been such a big part of me for two years, I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. Which I was: I was saying goodbye to Victoria, who somehow was me; I was saying goodbye to Niall, to Harry, Liam, Louis and Zayn; to Valeria, Natalie and Dan... I was saying goodbye to the boys' team: Sam, Lou, Lottie, Mark, Basil... the characters, even though they were based on real people, had become a big part of me. And it was hard to let them go.

Also, since I posted a "last chapter" and then an Epilogue... I was hoping people would like the real ending. They were so angry when they read the last chapter... I really hoped the epilogue lived up to the expectations.

What was the reason you chose a future date?

I wanted it to be something realistic. And the summer I had the idea for IILYK, touring with them was not an option. 2015 could have been a great date, but the boys were doing another tour on January, and I wanted them to have a break before they started touring again.

I did tons of research on tour dates and breaks and promos and places to go, etc, etc. And I figured 2016 was perfect. Because a lot of things change in a year, so let's not talk about two...

How did you think of the idea of the two books?

It was Summer 2014. I had just watched them perform live and the feeling I got on that concert was... that they were normal people. Just ordinary boys in an extraordinary situation. And I started thinking about how extraordinary their situation was. What their life was like. And then I thought how cool it would be to tour with them just for a summer. You know, as an experience.

And it gave me the idea for the fanfic: touring with One Direction for the summer.

Obviously, I wanted to keep it real so I had to figure out a way that could possibly happen, and it was then when the fake girlfriend contract cliché popped up. I knew it was an overused idea but I wanted to do something different with it. Like, I didn't want it to be the normal "they are obliged to be together but they fall in love".

I wanted something more realistic. I wanted a girl with a reason to take that chance other than wanting to date him, and a boy not very pleased with management's decision. I wanted them to grow into the relationship. And I love how I achieved that. I felt it gave their relationship something to stand on, such as a previous friendship.

I then picked Niall because I realised he never sang the "I love you" bit in Little Things. And that surprised me. I started wondering why didn't he sing it.

So I guess it was the mixture of both ideas (touring with them and wondering why Niall didn't sing the end of his solo in Little things) what made me start writing If I Let You Know...

I'm not sure if I said this here or in Tumblr, but the first thing I wrote about this fanfic was the Twitlonger Victoria posts. Which is a pretty weird way to start writing a story, since it is like, chapter 20, but after that I started the Prologue, and the rest of the story followed a normal order.

As for If You Let Me Know..., I'm gonna be completely honest: I was very happy with IILYK's ending, but I felt like there was so much more to the story, so much more to the characters, etc, etc. But I knew people had liked If I Let You Know... so much, the stakes were really high. I thought about it a lot before I decided to write it.

I didn't want another tour happening. I felt like I needed a different storyline, but as good as the first one. I realised I needed Niall and Vic to be together. Since the story is told from Vic's POV, I didn't want to be switching POVs because one was in Spain, and the other one was in England. And somehow the idea of the Erasmus came to mind and it was the perfect puzzle piece to start writing the story.

I'm gonna tell you a little secret. If you've read this far, I feel you deserve it: I dreamt about the story. About IILYK and IYLMK.

I dreamt about sleeping with Liam on the tour bus that ends with the Victoniam threesome trending. I dreamt about surprising Niall on stage and running up the platform at the end of the concert. I dreamt about Niall staying up late playing guitar, Monopoly and eating pizza. I dreamt about the night in Paris and Niall disguised as the guitarist in Trafalgar Square. Those were ideas I had in my dreams and helped me so much with the development of the story. If I hadn't had any of those dreams, the stories would have not existed.

[I'm extremely sorry this is so long, but no one had asked me that question and you expected essay style answers. So deal with it.]