So, this is my general explanation for my thought process and general rules when writing, specifically for My Dreams are Smart! (I've been calling it MDaS. It's just easier than writing it out). I'm gonna break this up as best as I can, because there's a lot. I have spent literal years thinking about how I'd write a story, even if I didn't actually come up with the concept for MDaS until like two weeks ago, at most. I've just been playing around with the building blocks for a very long time. A lot of it is actually gonna be me ranting about what I think people do wrong when it comes to Kurama especially, and how I try my best to avoid the things that annoy me in writing both Kurama and Naruto.
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I guess the best place to start is with Kurama. To be honest, I feel like a lot of fiction and even canon did him dirty. He gets basically no focus or development until the Fourth Great Ninja War (which is the climax of the whole series!). And most of the time, he's treated like some sort of power-up for Naruto to tap into when he gets particularly angry. Sure, there's a ton of drama, and they do make him pretty cool, but as a character? He kind of just exists in the background, gets maybe five appearances, and then all of a sudden he's buddy-buddy with Naruto because there's a bigger threat and because Naruto's just that awesome and inspirational or something. Have them spend time together! Grow together! There's a ton of potential for redeeming a "purely evil" Kyuubi, but little to no actual work put in other than giving him a backstory relating to the Juubi, which feels totally retconned to me. I've already ranted about the Juubi and Kaguya in my other headcanon dumping fic (you're free to check that out, but I'll probably cover some of the same stuff here. And MDaS differs a bit from my general headcanon).
Seriously, go through canon and pick out a moment before the war arc that shows Kurama as anything other than "evil demon" and "glorified emergency battery" for Naruto. Sure, I bet everyone and their mom figured out that Naruto would "master the Kyuubi's power" in episode one, but what does that say about Kurama's character, other than he's just a tool for Naruto to use? I'm no writer, and it's been a while since I watched the actual show (I float around the fandom more often than not, because while Naruto is awesome, it's a long show with way too much exposition killing the tension, especially in early fight scenes.), so I could be missing something, but I don't think I am.
A lot of fanfiction kind of does that too. For example, The Uzumaki Tales: Return of the Whirlpool by jbriz is the fanfiction that brought me into fanfiction to begin with. It's an awesome story, I would totally recommend it to anyone looking for a long, passionately written Naruto story. There's a really cool dynamic between Naruto and Kurama, too. (I'm gonna get into very light spoilers here, but only for Kurama's first few appearances in that story). But in the first few chapters Kurama appears in, he feels more like a power source and exposition dump than an actual character. Like, he shows up, and he's like "sign this contract, and we can talk and share power and I won't kill you" and Naruto's like "Great! I'll do that!" and then Kurama's like "Here's all your fancy new powers" and that's just... it? Like, coming from someone who's struggled to integrate explanations into the story naturally, it's hard. Honestly, jbriz did an amazing job, but the first few chapters feel less fun and interesting and more like a necessary evil to schlop through to get to the actual good stuff.
So I want a dynamic between the two where Kurama isn't just a tool for Naruto. Sure, there are plenty of fics (and also canon sometimes) that do that, but they often do it at the expense of Naruto. For example, in canon, Naruto spontaneously gets a healing power when he and Kurama start working together. Sure, there's sort of foreshadowing with Naruto's crazy healing factor, but I see that as more a mutation on Naruto's part. Think about it. When literally any other living thing comes into contact with Kurama's chakra, it withers, burns, and dies. Sure, you could justify that by saying it depends on Kurama's emotional state or something (he was filled with hatred before Naruto got to him), but I like to think of it as more an inherent property of Kurama's chakra. If Juubi's chakra is nature chakra, then shouldn't Kurama's also be nature chakra? I really like that idea, so even when I cut Juubi out I like to think of Kurama as a sentient, physical embodiment of the chaotic and dangerous nature of natural chakra (on steroids). If taking just a little bit too much nature chakra in the toad style will turn you into a stone toad statue, imagine a pure mass of extremely powerful nature chakra like Kurama. No wonder his chakra kills everything it touches!
That brings me back to Naruto. See, if everything else dies when Kurama so much as breathes on it, why is it that Naruto heals? I mentioned it earlier, but I like to make it a kind of mutation. If you're exposed to Kyuubi chakra, and you are resilient enough to survive it, you still wouldn't survive for long. But it's kind of like poison; eat a lot and you die, but eat a little in slowly increasing doses over time, and you become immune. I figure Naruto's seal is designed to help him build immunity, and constant exposure to Kurama's chakra mutated him to actively depend on it and heal from it. That's why I think of his healing as a bloodline limit. Bloodlines are just that; bloodlines, so if Naruto mutated due to exposure to Kurama's chakra, then it totally makes sense that he gets a bloodline. But the bloodline of healing only when exposed to Kyuubi chakra is very conditional, so I kind of tack on Naruto's emotional powers to the bloodline just so his kids get something without having to be Jinchuuriki. (As a side note, I like to extend the emotion sensing to all emotions, not just negative ones. It makes for nice potential for sweet fluffy moments where Naruto gets to literally feel other people loving him and I really like fluff).
I'm kind of wandering off topic though. The reason I brought up the healing in the first place is because Kurama is almost treated like the answer to every problem rather than letting other characters shine. Sakura is already treated pretty badly by the writing, but these new healing powers make her downright pathetic. What, exactly, is her point if Naruto can heal everything she can't, in a fraction of the time she would take? And it invalidates Naruto too. I'm not sure if it was a review or if it was something I thought up, but imagine this scenario: Naruto saw Danzo steal Shisui's eye. Naruto escapes with Shisui, and immediately heals Shisui's eye. No harm done! Can you see the problem there? The stakes are totally removed! Danzo is still a threat, but does he seem that threatening if all of the harm he does can be healed in an instant? Does Naruto have to be creative to defeat him? Does Shisui ever have to deal with consequences, or do we just return to the status quo as soon as the problem is dealt with? It's kind of a similar problem with most ways people avoid the massacre. A skilled writer might be able to do something like that without invalidating the threat or any of the characters, but this is literally the first time I've tried to write down the stories I've been bouncing around in my head for years. I'm not an experienced writer, I've just had a lot of time to think about it.
So, what do I want Naruto and Kurama's relationship to look like? First off, they have to be their own characters. Naruto needs to have a will beyond whatever Kurama wants, and vice versa. For example: in Chapter 4, when Naruto is trying to get his "dreams" to teach him how to read. Would Kurama have wanted him to do that? No! Kurama didn't know how to read yet, so I made it into a sort of indirect fight. I'm not sure I did it well, but the point is that the two of them have to be distinct characters and I'm trying my best to make it like that.
So this whole section is kind of my answer to sandmanwake's recent review suggesting a solution to the Uchiha Massacre. He suggested that Kurama could sense Obito hanging around, and then warn Naruto, who could then warn the Hokage so he would stop persecuting the Uchiha. It is a cool suggestion, and I'm sure a skilled writer could pull it off, but I wouldn't really want to do it that way because it'd be way too easy to make Kurama (someone who really couldn't care less about the Uchiha) be the only driving force trying to save them. There would be no input from Naruto other than "warn the Hokage" (who would also be extremely skeptical of literally anything Kurama says). And even then, the whole persecution of the Uchiha isn't just a Hiruzen issue; it's Danzo, and the council, and basically the whole village. It's a very complex issue that I'm not sure even Hiruzen could really solve on his own, even if he did believe Kurama. Besides, Kurama spends most of his time napping, watching the world through Naruto's eyes, or planning out dream lectures because he's bored. I don't think he's really paying attention to his senses, if the seal even lets him sense things without borrowing Naruto's senses. And Naruto's senses will be way less developed than Kurama's. Again, really cool suggestion, but I don't think I'm experienced enough to do it right, and it'd be way too easy to invalidate Naruto, Kurama, or the conflict itself.
Right now, I'm kind of taking a little inspiration from Come Out of the Ashes by SilverStudios5140 over on Archive of our own. It's an incredible story, although it doesn't have much focus on Kurama. I'm more talking about how it dealt with the Uchiha Massacre; I don't want to spoil it (go read it, you won't regret it), and I definitely won't copy it (that exact solution just wouldn't work in this context), but I am thinking of something vaguely similar.
I think I've rambled long enough about all that (not really, I've barely scratched the surface. Say what you want about this fandom and the canon, I love them both to death). I'd like to talk a little bit about my writing style.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in an author's note at some point, but I literally just have a little notepad that I write ideas in and then I flip through and pick one to turn into a chapter. But the way I do it is almost like word vomit; I pick an idea, then I just run with it. There is barely any editing other than fixing weird grammar or some minor wording changes. Most of my planning phase happens in my head when I'm picking out the ideas; I've got a bunch of extra ones that I can't use yet because I already know they don't make sense until Naruto gets older. There's one or two inspired by reviews that I just haven't been able to write out yet because they don't make sense for this point in the timeline.
So my approach is almost episodic. I don't have a huge overarching story with a climax or anything, my whole inspiration was a mix of "How do I get Kurama and kid Naruto to interact without actually interacting" and "snapshots of Naruto growing up". I've always wanted to be the type of writer who plans, but I find that I'm a much better pantser.
I don't know if this cleared anything up, but I'm hoping it helps. Feel free to contribute anything you think would work (I've vetoed some ideas here, but I promise I think about them and how to integrate them as best as I can). I absolutely love reading your suggestions! You guys have actually directly inspired some chapters, even if I haven't posted them yet (I'm kind of preoccupied with the Uchiha Massacre and dealing with that). Most of my headcanon came from thinking about other people's ideas, then adding my own spin to them. Tell me about your headcanons, and there's a pretty decent chance that something from yours could be added or integrated into mine. That's the whole point of a community, isn't it? Sharing ideas to make even better ones? I just want really cool ideas so I can share them with the community, and then I want to see what the community does with those ideas once I'm through with them!
And if there's anything else that needs clearing up (again, this is barely scratching the surface), I can always add another chapter on to this thing. Or just give up and start trying to break it up into author's notes. This is more fun though. It's a lot easier to just word vomit my thoughts instead of trying to strategically squish it all into tiny author's notes.
Oh! And I'm going to keep a list of ideas in the second chapter of this glorified author's note. I'll update it regularly based on my little memo notebook. Just to see if you guys want to contribute ideas or if you particularly like one or if you think one is garbage and I should just throw it out.
Thank you so much for reading my word vomit. I'm absolutely ecstatic that you guys actually like my weird ideas, so even if activity might slow down every once in a while (like the last few days. Again, math test. Ugh.), I'll keep writing because I love that you like what I make!