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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.)
no subject
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 ...
no subject
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...
no subject
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 ...
no subject
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.