Oh my goodness, I am writing fan fic
So, roleplaying on LOTR Online is still my primary hobby. I absolutely adore the interaction with other RPers as we create a story together with our characters, and the stories are pretty darn cool. Right now my main character is in Angmar (which is filled with evil in LOTRO) in rather dire strats, which isn't great for the rest of the party, either, because she is the primary healer. Sadly the player who plays her husband has been overtaken by RL so a lot of things I wanted to write didn't happen, but it's been interesting to work with, as it's not exactly a problem you deal with when writing by yourself.
Anyhow, a couple nights ago in chat, we were talking about Tolkien and theories (a lot about Rangers) and the topic came up to fan fiction. I talked a bit about it, and somehow I found myself wandering to Stories of Arda.
After a little bit of clicking around and browsing, I went to Cairistiona's work. And read. A lot. (By the way, where is the third story in the Bowen Rushlight trilogy?!) And I sorta remembered why I loved it so dang much.
So I went back to my story sitting at over 200,000 words and only a few chapters from completion until I abandoned it, due to finding that new hobby. I started reading it over. I changed a few names to better sounding Sindarin ones (thank goodness for find and replace!). And I've started polishing it up again. One thing that RPing has really done for me is that it has *forced* me to really, really concentrate on character elements that I did not concentrate on before. I have only reworked the first half of the first chapter so far, but it already reads so much better; there's just so much more detail and emotion and /life/. It's elements I did not have in my writing three and a half years ago.
I'll use one sentence as an example. The beginning of a paragraph used to read: "He was astounded to see that, rather than a normal citizen such as himself in his shop..." It now reads: "He came to the front of the shop and his breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of his customer. No common man was he that stood before him now."
So... we'll see where this goes. And, huh, Cairistiona, if I actually end up finishing it (because I am not doing what I did to you again haha) do you want to beta version 2.0? :-P
I'll keep you guys posted ;)
Anyhow, a couple nights ago in chat, we were talking about Tolkien and theories (a lot about Rangers) and the topic came up to fan fiction. I talked a bit about it, and somehow I found myself wandering to Stories of Arda.
After a little bit of clicking around and browsing, I went to Cairistiona's work. And read. A lot. (By the way, where is the third story in the Bowen Rushlight trilogy?!) And I sorta remembered why I loved it so dang much.
So I went back to my story sitting at over 200,000 words and only a few chapters from completion until I abandoned it, due to finding that new hobby. I started reading it over. I changed a few names to better sounding Sindarin ones (thank goodness for find and replace!). And I've started polishing it up again. One thing that RPing has really done for me is that it has *forced* me to really, really concentrate on character elements that I did not concentrate on before. I have only reworked the first half of the first chapter so far, but it already reads so much better; there's just so much more detail and emotion and /life/. It's elements I did not have in my writing three and a half years ago.
I'll use one sentence as an example. The beginning of a paragraph used to read: "He was astounded to see that, rather than a normal citizen such as himself in his shop..." It now reads: "He came to the front of the shop and his breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of his customer. No common man was he that stood before him now."
So... we'll see where this goes. And, huh, Cairistiona, if I actually end up finishing it (because I am not doing what I did to you again haha) do you want to beta version 2.0? :-P
I'll keep you guys posted ;)