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magibrainI occasionally feel kinda odd about maintaining two blogs – this one and magistrate – because I post so infrequently that it occasionally feels like I don't have enough content to reliably keep one blog interesting, let alone two. But I do feel like separating my fannish content stream from my more real-life stream is a good pragmatic decision; in how I conceptualize my own life, they represent different spheres of interest.
(I toyed briefly with the idea of separating my original fiction/professional writing into a third stream, but then I noticed that I never posted in it at all, so tomagistrate it went.)
Being someone who grew up as a writer in fannish spaces and is now also trying to get somewhere in the big, bad world of original fiction, I think a lot about how skills and paradigms do and don't translate. The different genre structures and conventions, the different skills each type of writing emphasizes or strengthens. (I notice that in my original writing, characterization is something people continually call out as one of my weakest skills. Which is still kind of a mindscrew for me, because in fanfic, a lot of people seem to enjoy my characterization. Then, with fanfic, I have something pre-existing to riff off; one of the consequences of growing into writing through fanfiction seems to be that I have less experience in how to establish and differentiate character in my own work.)
Anyway. Given the amount of time I spend musing about fannish vs. original spaces, I kinda have to raise an eyebrow at myself for needing to discover (and rediscover, and remind myself of, again and again) the fact that the criteria for success for fanfic and original stories are often wildly different.
I think it's something of the same way in which the criteria for success for a TED talk and an awesome discussion in a group of friends is different.
In original fiction, I have to spend a lot of time thinking about arcs and structure and pacing, and how the plot and the story inform each other, and how themes are deployed, and how to create a polished and technically competent work. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, those things are great to pay attention to in fanfiction, but I find that fanfic rises or falls on something more like, broadly oversimplified, its ability to be an efficient delivery mechanism for squee.
I think the fanfics I'm personally most proud of manage to hit both notes; they extend and expand beloved aspects of canon, but they also work as well-structured, polished and tuned-up technical works. But I also find myself, a lot of times, flailing over posting something because its pacing is a mess, the structure is lopsided, there's that one horribly awkward phrasing at the beginning that I can't think of a good way to get rid off, the theme is a contortionist, and the arc thinks about arcing and then veers sideways into a wall, and I have this horrible urge to apologize to everyone for punting it out into the world, and then no one seems to care. Which is reassuring, at times, and then at other times it's just a boatload of cognitive dissonance and the vague suspicion that everyone's just being nice because... some... nefarious purpose of their own? I think a lot of writers share this anxiety. I think this anxiety enjoys the fact that it doesn't have to make sense.
I used to produce a lot more fiction. I mean, that was something like a decade ago, when I was bouncing all around my million FFVIII fics, but I remember being significantly more prolific than I am right now. I think a major factor in my slowdown is the fact that I started turning my attention to craft, and really struggling a lot with the places where I could see something wrong but I didn't know how to fix it.
(Or where there wasn't a plausible way to fix it. If I go back through my braintics scraps collection, for example, there's a ton of stuff which flat-out does not work on a logical level, but which amused me enough to put scenes down. There's also stuff where the tone is too wildly self-indulgent for my sense of propriety, or where it's clearly just me working out my beef with a certain character, or where I looked at it and just went "Nope, not going to write that, because I'm not going to typecast myself as that author who only writes stories where horrible things happen to Sam Carter and the boys go D: and then the whole rest of the fic is only there to showcase how tough and embattled Sam is." (Yes, I have enough of those braintics to make it its own genre. I'm not proud. I also regret nothing.))
This is, of course, not entirely a bad thing: it lets me continually improve my writing, even if I'm not aware of the improvements as they're happening. (But I can go back and look at works from a few years ago – works that represented the best I could do at those times – and see immediately how I could improve them, and that's a humbling and kinda nifty feeling.) But it is, I think, something I also need to become more aware of. Because the other great thing about fanfiction is that it provides a space for me to play around with ways of telling stories in this fantastically open and engaging and forgiving environment, and that's also a fantastic resource for growth. Letting my internal editor set up roadblocks there isn't actually helping me.
(Besides, you people don't mind if I completely shed my dignity now and again, right? Maybe I'll clean up the ridiculous angstcrack scene where Neal is vaguely suicidal circa As You Were and discovers that Peter has an invisible dragon living in his house. Or the wtfery of the braintic where Sam Carter's consciousness gets transposed across a universal boundary and put into a partially-uplifted mountain lion who's a working animal with the USAF. I once heard the Pern books described as "tapping into the 'I want a PONY!' instinct, except for people who liked fantasy." You can probably tell which kind of kid I was.)
magistrate – because I post so infrequently that it occasionally feels like I don't have enough content to reliably keep one blog interesting, let alone two. But I do feel like separating my fannish content stream from my more real-life stream is a good pragmatic decision; in how I conceptualize my own life, they represent different spheres of interest.(I toyed briefly with the idea of separating my original fiction/professional writing into a third stream, but then I noticed that I never posted in it at all, so to
magistrate it went.)Being someone who grew up as a writer in fannish spaces and is now also trying to get somewhere in the big, bad world of original fiction, I think a lot about how skills and paradigms do and don't translate. The different genre structures and conventions, the different skills each type of writing emphasizes or strengthens. (I notice that in my original writing, characterization is something people continually call out as one of my weakest skills. Which is still kind of a mindscrew for me, because in fanfic, a lot of people seem to enjoy my characterization. Then, with fanfic, I have something pre-existing to riff off; one of the consequences of growing into writing through fanfiction seems to be that I have less experience in how to establish and differentiate character in my own work.)
Anyway. Given the amount of time I spend musing about fannish vs. original spaces, I kinda have to raise an eyebrow at myself for needing to discover (and rediscover, and remind myself of, again and again) the fact that the criteria for success for fanfic and original stories are often wildly different.
I think it's something of the same way in which the criteria for success for a TED talk and an awesome discussion in a group of friends is different.
In original fiction, I have to spend a lot of time thinking about arcs and structure and pacing, and how the plot and the story inform each other, and how themes are deployed, and how to create a polished and technically competent work. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, those things are great to pay attention to in fanfiction, but I find that fanfic rises or falls on something more like, broadly oversimplified, its ability to be an efficient delivery mechanism for squee.
I think the fanfics I'm personally most proud of manage to hit both notes; they extend and expand beloved aspects of canon, but they also work as well-structured, polished and tuned-up technical works. But I also find myself, a lot of times, flailing over posting something because its pacing is a mess, the structure is lopsided, there's that one horribly awkward phrasing at the beginning that I can't think of a good way to get rid off, the theme is a contortionist, and the arc thinks about arcing and then veers sideways into a wall, and I have this horrible urge to apologize to everyone for punting it out into the world, and then no one seems to care. Which is reassuring, at times, and then at other times it's just a boatload of cognitive dissonance and the vague suspicion that everyone's just being nice because... some... nefarious purpose of their own? I think a lot of writers share this anxiety. I think this anxiety enjoys the fact that it doesn't have to make sense.
I used to produce a lot more fiction. I mean, that was something like a decade ago, when I was bouncing all around my million FFVIII fics, but I remember being significantly more prolific than I am right now. I think a major factor in my slowdown is the fact that I started turning my attention to craft, and really struggling a lot with the places where I could see something wrong but I didn't know how to fix it.
(Or where there wasn't a plausible way to fix it. If I go back through my braintics scraps collection, for example, there's a ton of stuff which flat-out does not work on a logical level, but which amused me enough to put scenes down. There's also stuff where the tone is too wildly self-indulgent for my sense of propriety, or where it's clearly just me working out my beef with a certain character, or where I looked at it and just went "Nope, not going to write that, because I'm not going to typecast myself as that author who only writes stories where horrible things happen to Sam Carter and the boys go D: and then the whole rest of the fic is only there to showcase how tough and embattled Sam is." (Yes, I have enough of those braintics to make it its own genre. I'm not proud. I also regret nothing.))
This is, of course, not entirely a bad thing: it lets me continually improve my writing, even if I'm not aware of the improvements as they're happening. (But I can go back and look at works from a few years ago – works that represented the best I could do at those times – and see immediately how I could improve them, and that's a humbling and kinda nifty feeling.) But it is, I think, something I also need to become more aware of. Because the other great thing about fanfiction is that it provides a space for me to play around with ways of telling stories in this fantastically open and engaging and forgiving environment, and that's also a fantastic resource for growth. Letting my internal editor set up roadblocks there isn't actually helping me.
(Besides, you people don't mind if I completely shed my dignity now and again, right? Maybe I'll clean up the ridiculous angstcrack scene where Neal is vaguely suicidal circa As You Were and discovers that Peter has an invisible dragon living in his house. Or the wtfery of the braintic where Sam Carter's consciousness gets transposed across a universal boundary and put into a partially-uplifted mountain lion who's a working animal with the USAF. I once heard the Pern books described as "tapping into the 'I want a PONY!' instinct, except for people who liked fantasy." You can probably tell which kind of kid I was.)
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Date: 2014-03-10 06:58 am (UTC).... OH YES, PLEASE DO. :D I would read the hell out of that.
I find that fanfic rises or falls on something more like, broadly oversimplified, its ability to be an efficient delivery mechanism for squee.
Yes! I think this is a really good statement of what fanfic is, and what it does, and why it's different from original fiction (though the squee/ "shiny!" element exists in a lot of original fic too -- it's not usually at the forefront, though). Which is what makes it so much fun, and why people really don't care about a lot of the details that become an issue with original fiction ... well, assuming that it's somewhat competently written.
But yeah, you can't just port that over to original fiction; it doesn't work the same way. I've read original novels where I could see that the author was trying to do something vaguely fanfic-like (squee above plot, basically) and it didn't work; it was simply a self-indulgent mess. It's obvious that the writer is deeply in love with their characters and their tropes, but they didn't give ME any reason to care ...
And yet, while I know I need to focus more on craft in my original writing, I also sometimes think that my original fiction needs, perhaps, a bigger dose of the "squee!" element too -- that one of the things which makes fanfic so much fun is that it's so vibrant and playful, and people are drawn to that sense of joy in any genre. My earlier -- 15 years ago -- attempts at writing are joyless and melodramatic and stilted; I think fanfic did a lot of good for me as a writer because it taught me to loosen up and listen to the part of myself that gets excited about stuff. It taught me that writing from your id isn't all bad. You have to dial back on that in original fiction, but I kinda wonder if it isn't possible to dial it back too much -- there are a couple of pro writers whose fanfic I like better than their original stuff, and I kinda wonder if this doesn't have something to do with it.
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Date: 2014-03-10 07:29 am (UTC)It would probably just be the scene in which Neal breaks into the Burkes' house and gets an OMGWTFDRAGON to the face and all the fallout from that, because, erm, context is for the weak? ...mostly it's because the stuff I write out in braintics for my own amusement is generally just the high notes and the stuff I find shiny, with even less attention paid to creating a viable story.
But I do have circa 7,200 words of it written out, complete with Neal having knowledge I can't actually justify him having about shrikes and larders. (Maybe Mozzie went on a ramble about it sometime?)
...7,200 words and it's also incomplete, go figure, because my brain doesn't operate at lengths under 4k. ...I was, at one point, going to post a long thinky-thoughts ramble about why I find angst enjoyable and whether in fact "enjoyable" was the correct word, and my odd preconception with brainticcing out characters who are passively suicidal, but then I realized that I didn't actually know what I could say on the topic, so I didn't.
[though the squee/ "shiny!" element exists in a lot of original fic too -- it's not usually at the forefront, though]
*nods* I think there's a kind of slant parallel with the "why do I care?" aspect of original fic. This is something that comes up now and again in the slush that I read: I'll come across a competent story, the prose is there, the mechanics and the arc are in place... but I don't care. I didn't feel like I had a reason to read the story.
In fanfic, a good chunk of the "why do I care" is built-in: you care because you already have an emotional investment with these characters and/or this world. Granted, that's usually not the only criteria; most of the people I know don't want to read every single story in a fandom. It's usually "I cate about this world/these characters, plus the genre of the fic and the basic predicament promised in the summary, possibly also plus I care about this author's stuff." It's not "I like White Collar fic!" so much as "I want a White Collar fix in the form of some gen Neal angst!" But the genres of fanfic – hurt/comfort, character study, episode fic, whatever – and the pre-existing engagement with the canon material gives you a really convenient framework to hook people with. And it's the sort of thing that only really works when you have a canon to riff off.
In original fic, you can't just deliver squee. You also have to construct the subject matter people will squee about, and that construction is a whole 'nother skillset.
...and I just realized that "a whole 'nother" is a kind of emphatic infixation and that is SO COOL I LOVE LANGUAGE
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Date: 2014-03-10 07:47 am (UTC)I would still read the hell out of it, btw.
In fanfic, a good chunk of the "why do I care" is built-in: you care because you already have an emotional investment with these characters and/or this world. Granted, that's usually not the only criteria; most of the people I know don't want to read every single story in a fandom. It's usually "I cate about this world/these characters, plus the genre of the fic and the basic predicament promised in the summary, possibly also plus I care about this author's stuff." It's not "I like White Collar fic!" so much as "I want a White Collar fix in the form of some gen Neal angst!" But the genres of fanfic – hurt/comfort, character study, episode fic, whatever – and the pre-existing engagement with the canon material gives you a really convenient framework to hook people with. And it's the sort of thing that only really works when you have a canon to riff off.
*nods a bunch*
There's a great post by Jo Walton about the long spear, where all the buildup is leading you to the emotion-packed moment (the pointy end of the spear), but you need that buildup in order for the spearpoint to penetrate. But fanfic is all spearpoints; the buildup is canon itself, which means you can write the pointy bit and people already care about it so the spear goes in. I think some people go from fanfic to original fic and can make great spearpoints, but don't know how to construct the spear itself. (I can totally relate to this. I think my spearpoints are pretty good -- god knows I've made enough of 'em -- but my shafts are warped, weird, and either too short or way too long. I sometimes notice when I'm editing my original fic that there is a noticeable style shift about halfway through, where it stops being a slog and takes off, and I think this is exactly why. I've had plenty of practice at writing emotional resolutions for characters we already care about, but not so much at doing the buildup that makes people care in the first place ...)
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Date: 2014-03-10 08:21 am (UTC)...and there was this older fic I wrote, which was basically finding a way to turn Dr. Chase of House M.D. into James Sunderland of Silent Hill II. (It's so AU that there are pretty much no spoilers.) Because they have the same hair. (It... yeah.) There's one moment in particular, where Chase has been trying to get away from his old life for a really long time in the fic, and someone from his old life has just shown up, and you get the line:
"Dr. Robert," a cheerful voice calls, and he turns and wishes he had a mask or a gun or an Ebola culture or just a good thick board with a nail through it.
Which totally got the reaction of a spearpoint, but not because of any work the fic put into it. It relies entirely on the reader recognizing the nail board as the first weapon James gets in the game.
And you can do some really neat things with fanfic and spearpoints! Like, the nail board was not a spearshaft in SH2. (There were plenty of spearshafts. The nail board was almost wholly utilitarian.) But you can take stuff that wasn't intended to carry a lot of emotional heft and repurpose it, imbuing it with additional significance. But yeah; it's a different skillset from knowing how to construct the shafts from scratch.
MAN. ...let's study how characters become established and emotional engagement is fostered. That seems like a good next step.
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Date: 2014-03-10 08:33 am (UTC)I actually got that just today when I was (finally) reading Bujold's latest Vorkosigan book. I'm not sure if you've read those, so I don't know if describing the exact character/situation would make any difference. But it was a neat little "click!" moment when I finally got something she'd been doing with one of the characters, going back 20 years. It's all there, but was never spelled out, and I never got it until I finally hit just the right clue to make me realize that it had been obvious all along.
And yeah, there are many different kinds of spearpoints -- not just from the stories leading up to them, but also from various sorts of knowledge that the readers bring with them. Of course, then it's a matter of guessing what your readers know and what they don't ...
MAN. ...let's study how characters become established and emotional engagement is fostered. That seems like a good next step.
I LOVE SPECULATING ON THAT STUFF. :D
One thing I've noticed is how much I love characters to sneak up on me and surprise me. Loving a character at first sight can happen, but some of my best reading experiences have been the ones where it's taken most of a book, or even most of a series, for a character to evolve slowly from an apparent throwaway supporting character to protagonist, or to reveal enough facets that it finally makes me go, "All right, you little bastard, I actually kind of love you now." It's SO much fun to have characters sneak up on me all unexpected, so that I have to go back and reread the books to figure out how the sneaky little jerks managed to get into my heart. It seems to be a good way to get me to let my guard down, whereas having the author throw ~authorial love sparkles~ all over a character is a turnoff.
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Date: 2014-03-10 09:29 am (UTC)I haven't read the Vorkosigan books, though I probably will at some point, as they keep getting recommended to me.
[And yeah, there are many different kinds of spearpoints -- not just from the stories leading up to them, but also from various sorts of knowledge that the readers bring with them.]
Which is an interesting direction to come from; in some cases, the applicable skillset really isn't creating things whole-cloth, it's manipulating the ambient information. Which isn't without its pitfalls; you have to take a gamble on what people know, as well as how they feel about it. Like, with a few exceptions, fairytale retellings don't do much for me because I don't have the right emotional resonances. But for others, playing within those forms and doing new twists on them can be a way to establish character. And even if it's not something as specific as a fairytale character or an archetype... yeah.
[whereas having the author throw ~authorial love sparkles~ all over a character is a turnoff.]
Hahahaaa, WELL, YOU KNOW MY THOUGHTS ON THIS ONE. XD Having characters who get away with things by authorial fiat is another peeve of mine; I often point back to the adage that a really good way to drive up reader sympathy is to dial down the sympathy of the narration. I feel like dialling down the sympathy in the plotting helps, too.
I'm not actually sure what makes me fall for a character. I know I definitely have types – certain archetypes and character roles tend to show up a lot in my lists of favorite characters – but I also know that characters have to be rounded and surprising and contradictory and flawed and such, beyond those. Rich inner lives, a contrast between inner and outer lives...
There was an exercise I ran into, a while ago, that had you thinking about circumstances in which your character would lie. I kinda want to dig that up again.
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Date: 2014-03-12 07:03 am (UTC)I'm not actually sure what makes me fall for a character. I know I definitely have types – certain archetypes and character roles tend to show up a lot in my lists of favorite characters – but I also know that characters have to be rounded and surprising and contradictory and flawed and such, beyond those.
*nodnod* I think this is also true of me. I can point to particular archetypes that I like, but I can also point to instances of those archetypes that should have pushed every button and didn't, as well as characters who really aren't my type that I fell for anyway. But I think the things you mentioned here are a big part of it -- they have to surprise me and interest me, like real people do.
Aha, it was you who made the point about reader sympathy and narrative sympathy being directly inverse to each other. XD I think it's an excellent point and something I am going to try very hard to keep in mind when I'm writing ...
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Date: 2014-03-12 09:53 am (UTC)Ahahahaaa. NEW LIFE (AND CAREER) GOAL. Though, knowing me, it'll be endless AU fanfic, and then I'll end up crossing over my own stuff, and then retreating to AO3 and crossing over my own stuff with SG-1.
I have joked about how if I ever find myself in a position where my works have somehow spawned a fandom, I'm just going to troll the fandom and get into the sorts of arguments where people argue with me about what the author really intended. And then I'll laugh, quietly, to myself. A lot.
[Aha, it was you who made the point about reader sympathy and narrative sympathy being directly inverse to each other. XD]
XD I do enjoy that piece of narrative advice! I'm sure it's not 100% applicable across all circumstances, but I tent to have a very low threshold for works that are grabbing after my heartstrings, so I find that it's pretty effective where I'm concerned.
And situational stuff, as well. I feel like, often, the less goes the character's way, the more I root for them. Which is one of the reasons I spent so much of White Collar S3 really detesting Neal, because it felt like logic was twisting itself into pretzels to make sure everything worked out for him. (Which isn't an issue restricted to S3, but it sure stood out in that season.
There's a boatload of related tricks I have a gripe with, too. Like, the "showing your character is smart by having them outsmart a clearly incompetent person." (BBC Sherlock pulled this twice in one season by having Sherlock deduce passwords which were proper names. From people who should ostensibly be highly security conscious. I had to have stronger passwords than that when I worked at a public university, and I had to change them every 90 days.) Or "Showing that the situation is dire by having everyone look at it and give up right away." (That One Doctor Who Season Finale, I am looking hard at you.) I think, really, when you're trying to engineer audience reaction, you have to be really really careful, because most of the shortcuts aren't actually good ones.
Though it would be interesting to look at the shortcuts (or shorthands) which are effective, which is something I really want to make a story of, especially in original shortfic. One example that was brought up to me a while ago was that you could make a villain more sympathetic by having them be nice to a dog, or something. I'm not sure how many people would call that out as a tropey thing (and thus roll their eyes), but you can imagine how it could be deployed effectively...
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Date: 2014-03-12 11:58 pm (UTC)I ... may have crossed over my own worlds with any number of things. XD Though I haven't posted it anywhere ...
tbh, there are times when I see a particularly insightful fic set in a universe created by an author that I know writes fanfic, or has written it in the past, and I can't help wondering if they're sockpuppeting their own fandom. I doubt if it's true in most cases, but there's always that possibility ...
I think, really, when you're trying to engineer audience reaction, you have to be really really careful, because most of the shortcuts aren't actually good ones.
Ha, yeah; I think the harder (and more overtly) the writer loads down the narrative with This Is How You're Supposed To Be Feeling, the more I knee-jerk against it. So these characters' love is meant to be, huh? I think I'll root for one of them to fall into a pit of angry bees instead! So I'm supposed to feel sorry for the tortured angsty hero's torturous angst? I think there's still room in the bee-pit ...
Which is probably why a lot of my character relationships are the ones that just snuck up on me, rather than being at the forefront of the narrative where I could see them coming a mile away.
Though it would be interesting to look at the shortcuts (or shorthands) which are effective, which is something I really want to make a story of, especially in original shortfic.
*nods* I have been trying to keep an eye on the specific things that engage me with a character, especially in an "affection at first sight" kind of way, but it's hard to pin down. One thing I've noticed that often gets me is incongruity -- a character who is supposed to be [x], but is actually [y] instead. The "pet the dog" example is one version; you could also have things like the mook who quotes 18th-century poetry, or the one person in a room full of suits and ties who's wearing a leather jacket. (Or the one person in the room full of leather jackets who's wearing a suit and tie ...) I guess like anything else you can obviously overdo this -- waving the character's ~quirkiness~ like a flag, for example. But I've noticed a lot of times getting snared by something like this. The other thing that tends to get me is characters caring about other people, friendship or loyalty or even (in fact, maybe especially) kindness to strangers .... "pet the dog" again, except not contrasted against overall villainy. The example that always comes to mind is from a romance novel that I tried to read some years back. The heroine meets a playboy type with a flashy car, and while he's showing off his flashy car, he knocks over a fruit stand and spills all the fruit ... and then stops and helps the old lady pick it up again. And I thought, awwww! I like this guy! -- and then the next chapter it turned out he's the murder victim and the "hero" is actually some jerkass who is a dick to the heroine, and I metaphorically threw the book across the room and swore never to read anything else by that author. XD But the principle stands ...
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Date: 2014-03-13 07:05 am (UTC)Yes! That, I think, is a really good point – especially because incongruity is more conceptually interesting than congruity. It's like those tests that people did with object permanence, how if you show someone – a child old enough to have the concept ingrained, an animal smart enough to – an object, then obscure it, then remove the obscuring object, sooner or later they'll stop paying attention. But if you remove the object while it's hidden, suddenly the interest skyrockets.
...there was a piece of advice Chuck Palahniuk brought up, at one point, which contrasted two conversations something like this:
Compared to:
The point he was making had to do specifically with dialogue; that you can ramp up interest and tension by not having the topic tennisball back and forth predictably but rather by interrupting it and sending it off in another direction by not answering each line explicitly. But I think it hits on that broader pattern, too: unexpected things generate more interest.
•ponders•
[The heroine meets a playboy type with a flashy car, and while he's showing off his flashy car, he knocks over a fruit stand and spills all the fruit ... and then stops and helps the old lady pick it up again. And I thought, awwww! I like this guy! -- and then the next chapter it turned out he's the murder victim and the "hero" is actually some jerkass who is a dick to the heroine, and I metaphorically threw the book across the room and swore never to read anything else by that author. XD]
XD Awww. I feel your frustration. I feel it a lot.
...I am not really in Teen Wolf fandom, but from what I've seen of the series, and from what I've seen of the fandom, I feel like the most wildly popular character isn't the main character, but his best friend Stiles. Which makes a lot of sense to me. Because Stiles has this fantastically odd relationship with pretty much everyone, and he and his father are adorable and a little breaky and brilliant, and he's so mush less trope than Romantic Angst Plot Scott.
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Date: 2014-03-10 07:51 pm (UTC)hahahaha I feel like some of this has to do with your own standards as a writer and as a reader. I sort of feel like a lot of people reading fanfic just want to enjoy themselves and aren't looking at it that critically, and the issues that seem glaring to you just don't jump out at someone who's just along for the ride and hasn't been spending a ton of time working with the story already. I think a lot of people are that way with published fiction, too, but with published fiction those people aren't the one who are vocal. With fanfic, I feel like you get a little more of the positive reviews just because it's easier to share comments in an online community and you sort of have to if you want more of what you like -- it's the equivalent of buying merch to show your support.
But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed. I miss writing fanfic and being comfortably anonymous and not caring so much about putting myself out there. I think I just had a few rough experiences where stories I was proud of or just wrote for fun got torn down and that killed a lot of the fun for me. I still write quite a bit but sharing stuff doesn't feel like a good investment of my energy anymore. I think what I'm getting at here is that just because your idea of what makes a story flawed and your readers' ideas about that might be totally different, and it might not be that people are seeing the flaws and not caring. It might be that they don't see them as flaws at all.
It makes a lot of sense to me that really working on your craft and focusing on improving it rather than just having fun with it would make you a lot less prolific. And I admire the hell out of how hard you've worked to identify your weaknesses and work at them.
the tone is too wildly self-indulgent for my sense of propriety
I get hung up on this too, and I totally understand it but it bugs the hell out of me at the same time that self-indulgent automatically equals bad. (Not attacking your idea, here, just my own internal editor throws this at me all the time: you can't show people that! It's not serious enough! You'll embarrass yourself!) I get caught up in the idea of self-indulgence, and in telling myself I'm not allowed to do the things I want to do in a story because it won't be palatable to everyone else. Even though I have no idea if that's actually true or not -- I just feel like I can't judge my own work when it comes to my self-indulgence so it's best to err on the side of caution. And of course there's something very personally revealing about showing other people your indulgences. It takes guts.
ANYWAYS, blah, I have a lot of writing issues, but I totally hear what you are saying here and I really enjoyed reading your thoughts. They made me think thoughts! About something that's important to me but that I don't get to talk about a lot.
The other thing I want to say is that I would so much rather read self-indulgent fic my friends have written than no fic at all. Sometimes my indulgences correlate with theirs and I get to be full of squee. Sometimes they don't but I still really enjoy reading people being passionate and excited about things.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-10 10:38 pm (UTC)I think the issue I have isn't so much that self-indulgent fiction is unserious or unpalatable, necessarily; it's that it angles for an emotional payoff without doing any of the work to establish, justify, or make credible those emotions. Which isn't something that's necessary, when you're writing to indulge yourself: you're already on board with what you're doing.
It's like – if you'll permit me a very silly analogy – if you run a business that makes furniture. One day, your friend needs to borrow a buffet table, and you go "No problem! I'll lend you my personal one." Except that your personal buffet table is a long plane of wood that's held up by an end table at one side and a stack of cinder blocks at the other, and you just throw a tablecloth over it and it's not like anyone notices. So then you show up at your friend's house with this length of wood and a tablecloth, and they'd be quite justified in going "...what the hell?" at you.
I mean, at least, this is how I interact with the term. When I write something self-indulgent, it's just what it says on the tin: it's meant to indulge my particular sensibilities. Even the phrase, to indulge my particular sensibilities, suggests a pre-existing substance which it interacts with. It's the sort of thing you can't get away with in works of fiction proper, where you have to include all the bits that make the fiction functional. If I put out something that's wildly self-indulgent and a reader comes by who shares my sensibilities, it'll work for them – they have a couple of fifty-gallon drums to balance the tabletop on, or something. But if they don't, they don't have a story, just the superficial emotional trappings of one. If nothing else, I feel like I'd have to warn people that the end tables and the cinderblocks are something they'll need to provide, themselves.
If that makes sense?
[But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed.]
Heh. Well, if you ever want to get back into it...
One of the things I've learned in original fiction, both writing and editing it, is that every single story I've run into is meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have sold has been meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have bought has been meaningfully flawed. Sometimes I've been able to see past the flaws to really love my stories despite them; sometimes by the time I send them out, all I can see is the flaws, and I'm just working on this blind faith in my own process.
(The story I sold at the beginning of this year – the one that's up at Clarkesworld – is one of the latter stories. Dear god, the thing is a mess. Nothing actually happens in it. It's a whole bunch of talking and then the character doing all the talking makes the choice you'd narratively expect her to make, in the end. There's a fairly major background plot thread that I'd meant to flesh out and developed but couldn't, so it just gets totally dropped halfway through. And do not get me started on the title; it has to be one of the worst titles I've ever come up with. ...and yet, the editor liked it enough to buy it. Some people around the internet seem to like it (even as other people clearly don't). I do not understand the affection shown to the story, but in a way, it's not really my place to; my job is to write the best story I can at the moment and try to write a better one next time, not to judge the story. Except to the extent that it helps me write a better story next time.)
And, I mean, there are flaws that ruin people's ability to enjoy a story. I reject a lot of stuff that's fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it not work. (And there's a wide, wide spectrum in that, from "not work as an intelligible piece of prose" through "not work as a cohesive story" to "not work for me, particularly, as a reader".) And when something is flawed in one of those ways, it's probably best to revise it or trunk it or... something.
But as for putting stuff out even though it's flawed... well, there's really no other way to put stuff out. :P
I don't know if that's actually encouraging, but it's something I find a strange, slant kind of comfort in. (And, yeah, as is probably obvious from the post above, it's something I still have a lot of issues with. Because if I see a flaw, I want to be able to fix it. A flaw should, to my mind, be something fixable, and the gap between my ability to see flaws and my ability to correct them frequently rankles. I feel like this is the curse of many creative people.)
no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 11:14 pm (UTC)I really struggle when it comes to my own work about the idea of a flawed thing still having value, even though I know I love a lot of flawed stories, sometimes because of their flaws. But my personal neuroses mean I have a hard time seeing the value in my own flawed works and in trusting myself at all to recognize whether what I'm creating is okay to share with people or not. My own self-perception is so warped that I don't trust myself to be able to look at my work and imagine what someone else's actual reaction to it will be.
I'm curious whether you have that issue with your own stuff. I know you said you can't understand the affection for one of your own stories -- in which case, how do you get to a point where you think "this is good enough to submit"? And do you enjoy the editing and rewriting process? Does it destroy your affection for your work at all?
no subject
Date: 2014-03-13 01:22 am (UTC)No worries! Fiction is an emotion-y thing. :P (Even when I am super-bad at emotions.)
[And (despite what my upbringing led me to believe) it is okay to have a hobby and spend your time and energy on something that doesn't have a profitable, tangible result that you can show people.]
Hah. It is, indeed! I find that, for me, I really want to be able to use the things I love to make me money, because then it would cut down on the number of things I didn't love but had to do in order to make money. But there are definitely still things – hi, fanfic, I see you there – which I've been told I should probably grow out of, but I refuse to, because this is my happy place goddamnit and when original fiction is stressing me out because I don't know how to make it work and I don't know why anyone is paying me for this stuff and I'm convinced that the next thing I send out, they'll all figure out that I'm a hack and they'll stop humoring me... fanfic is where I can come back to where I can dial down all those anxieties, if not wipe them away entirely.
Though, speaking of writing-as-game, have you ever done, like, an LJ or DW-based RP? They can be really fantastic, if you find good ones.
[I'm curious whether you have that issue with your own stuff.]
Oh god, yes. You have no idea. One of the things I keep saying, only half-jokingly, is that by the time I start sending things out to magazines, I usually hate it. Which may be some kind of protective response I developed because that way, if it gets rejected, I can go "Yeah, that makes sense" and not feel hurt that the editor didn't enjoy it. Of course they didn't enjoy it; it was completely broken!
How I get to a poing where I think it's good enough to submit? Basically, it's when I get to a point where it's the best that I can make it. If I'm reading over it and I can't figure out how to fix or improve it, that probably means that it's the best my skills are capable of at this moment. And as for the actual decision to send it out when I don't particularly like it, there's a mix of things that goes into it. One of those things is my awareness that I'm a terrible judge of my own work; I know I'm not seeing the thing unbiased, and so I can't be the one to decide that it's not good enough.
If I send something out, the worst thing that's going to happen is that the magazine won't take it and will tell me why not. (In a way, it's similar to fanfic: if I post a fanfic, the worst thing that's going to happen is that people won't read it. Or they will read it, and they'll tell me things are wrong with it.) And that's just data – failed experiments are just data. Data that can be a hard pill to swallow, sometimes, but that's also where being able to see that it has flaws and agree comes in and helps me.
But if I'm overstating the flaws in my own mind, and if I've produced something that other people will enjoy more than I think they're likely to enjoy it, then if I send it out or post it or whatever, I end up with a payday of some sort – either people will enjoy it and tell me what did work for them and reassure me that I can write, or people will enjoy it and buy it and give me money and reassure me that I can write. And after a while, building up that pattern of favorable responses also helps me to put things out, because I know that such a response is possible even when I don't anticipate it. I can look at something and say "I put in a ton of work on this, and there are parts I like, but I don't know that they'll shine past the parts that are broken that I don't know how to fix," and then think, "but I have a fairly good track record on putting things out when I feel exactly like this, so there's no harm in trying."
I guess the other thing that I have to hang on to is the fact that there was something I really loved about the story, or I wouldn't have started it or gotten it through to completion in the first place. So I have to have some faith that whatever I loved about the story is still there, even if I'm not feeling particularly loving toward it. And sending the story out, or putting it up, is one way of doing right by that thing that I loved.
[And do you enjoy the editing and rewriting process? Does it destroy your affection for your work at all?]
Hahaa, that's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Partly because editing and revising are so often such intrinsic parts of the writing process for me. If we're talking about sitting down with a finished draft, seeing that it doesn't work, and then cracking open its ribs to muddle around with its insides, I guess I don't particularly enjoy it, partially because I don't fully understand how it works. I'm so much more comfortable and confident when I'm tinkering with stuff during the process of writing, when everything still feels elastic.
As for destroying my affection for my work, I don't know. At that stage, it's usually not about affection any more; more like a bull-headed determination to get the story into a state where it can go out the door. When I start hating a story, I usually start hating it somewhere around the 60%-80% completion stage.