That Interview Meme
The question and answer meme which has been going around my flist as the "Buffy Interview" meme and related names, even though I think only one of the questions explicitly refers to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Mostly it's on my method and history as a fanfic writer.
1. What was the first story you ever wrote? What inspired you to write it?
My first fanfic in any fandom was, I believe, Tapestries, a Star Trek: Voyager fic written when I was, say, fourteen or fifteen, followed by several more Voyager fics, most of them never completed. None of them were posted to the internet at the time (most of the fic I read them was on personal websites; I don't think I knew FF.net existed), although the original plan was to have "Tapestries" published in The Starfleet Journal which at the time I believed to be the pinnacle of online ficwriting. Eventually I gave up on fanfic and turned to original writing. Well, sort of. I worked on an Arthurian novel, The Fires of Love and Wrath.
Fast forward a few years to my sophomore year of undergrad, when there was a Buffy fanfiction idea that I could not get out of my head, so I reluctantly gave in and began writing Windows of My Soul, which is still incomplete, and posted it to FF.net. likeadeuce was very encouraging:Oh my God, this is wonderful. You write Dru so well -- I've recently gotten very interested in this character, and I've got my fingers crossed we'll see more of her before "Angel" is over. (I'm avoiding spoilers, so I don't know if this is going to happen, but I'd love to see her mess with Spike & Angel in the present). I'll be looking out for more of this -- such a great premise!
oh, anything with post-series Riley is good for me. though I'm not wild about Sam, I'm interested to see where this is going. Is the new girl a slayer? how does Dru come in?
OK, for real? You should email me b/c I think my Spike (from "Imagination") wants to have a talk with your Dru.
Her question about the new girl was the inspiration for "The Academy," another unfinished (and probably abandoned) epic which introduced St. Clare's Academy, which my current readers will recognize as the school where Faith and Kennedy teach in my Watcher!verse ( Twenty Facts about St. Clare’s Academy Not Found in the Brochure is actually one of the more popular things I've written).
My first completed Buffy fanfic was Maturity, an episode tag of "Graduation Day" exploring Xander's thoughts as he asked Harmony for help.
2. Which of your stories received the best response? Why do you think that is?
As mentioned above, "Twenty Facts" got a surprisingly strong response despite the fact that I still feel like the story itself is a bit of a cheat. I think that may be because it's a quick read, easily digested, effectively advertised as such, with equal parts drama and humor. That is, expectations are low when one clicks the link, but one clicks the link anyway because a list of 20 facts can't be too arduous reading, and then it's easy to exceed those expectations.
Outside the Buffyverse, Requiem at Reichenbach, my fic for yuletide 2006, got a nice response, including Ari saying I had "won yuletide." I think the reasons are fairly transparent: a bunch of people binge-reading, a fandom with which everyone is familiar, and a chance to show off my ability as a wordsmith by writing in the ornate Victorian voice of James Moriarty.
3. Which of your stories received a less favorable response than you expected. Why do you think that it?
I always have a hard time answering this when year-in-review rolls around, and it's pretty much impossible to answer for my entire ouvre--I've just written too much stuff. Some fics have no comments. Some have a lot. But the calculus of how many comments a fic gets vs. how many I feel it deserves is a complicated and fickle thing.
4. Which character do you enjoy writing the most? Why?
Oz. Or maybe Anya.
Okay . . . maybe not. I think the undisputedly obvious answer to this question is Dawn. Partly this is because she was still undeveloped enough at the end of canon for me to Mary Sue her. But even when I'm writing a younger Dawn closer to what we see in canon, her character is one I can really slip into.
The characters I really enjoy writing include Drusilla, Amy, Kennedy, Faith, . . . characters who aren't afraid of power. And Amanda, Vi, Fred, Giles, . . . characters who see the world in academic and/or geeky ways.
Dawn's at the intersection of the two groups.
5. Which character do you enjoy writing the least? Why?
Okay, this is where Oz and Anya really fall. Not that I dislike writing them or anything, just that I never really feel motivated to do so.
6. You wrote it and you loved it. Quote your favourite opening line. Quote your favorite closing line. Your favorite title. (Again, links to the stories are always welcome.)
Okay, I can't talk about opening lines without giving a mention of "Fucking cornfields!" from Class Trip. likeadeuce and I have this ongoing conversation (although at this point, it's devolved more into a running joke) about starting with dialogue, and this is the line of dialogue she admits does everything it has to do. "Surely, Holmes, you recognize the singular importance of Porluck" from "Requiem at Reichenbach" is one of my personal favorites, the way it takes a moment from Valley of Fear while at the same time establishing the POV character for "Requiem." And there's the opening sentence of Where the River Meets the Dawn, which is so long I'm going to blockquote it:Serenity flew straight, towards the second star to the right--it was the curve of space and time which was warped, broken, violently looping back upon itself, or perhaps it was that what was supposed to be curved suddenly found itself to be straight, if indeed such topological distinctions could be said to be any more, or any less, than geometrical illusions--straight through the violent vortex (a whirlpool, an eddying mass, from the Latin vertere, "to turn"--but to turn to where, into what? the dictionaries are as ever silent, in this and in all things), into what can only be described as a crash landing, as River clutched the yoke to her breasts as a child to her mother's, into what hitherto they have only known in their fantasies, and in their history books, as the Earth that Was.
As far as closing lines, there's always The Box of Yfrak's "And then they had an orgy." More seriously, there's The Fairest of Them All's "A pair of red-hot iron shoes is brought into the room with tongs and set before her, and these she is forced to put on and to dance in them until she can dance no longer, and only then does she begin to understand River’s pain," although most of that sentence I didn't actually write. And I like "The Mackenzie girl is eighteen and attractive, and Keith rationalizes that his physical response to what just happened is a perfectly natural one" in Towards Zero.
As for titles, I like how Richard the Third, Act Two, Scene Three, Line Sixteen, commonly abbreviated as R3 2.3.16, makes the reader work for the connection. In Soviet Russia, Femslash Writes You is a little more fun and playful. And My Girlfriend is a Telepath always just seemed to fit.
7. Do you identify with one pairing? If so do you tend to write mostly that pairing? When you don't- what inspires you to step off the beaten track.
I'm not quite sure what it means to identify with a pairing. I'm only one person and a pairing is, by definition, (at least) two. I've written a lot of Dawn/Giles, obviously, and I identify with both those characters in various ways. I identify with Wes and desire Fred, so Wes/Fred is a natural pairing for me. Same with Simon/Kaylee.
But really, I have the main pairings of the Watcher!verse--Buffy/Immortal, Willow/Kennedy, Faith/Kennedy, and Dawn/Giles--and other than those, I live off the beaten track. Most of the fic I write is for 'thons. Obviously, I deliberately select in part to control what characters I end up writing, but still, I'm at the mercy of the requester and the mod. I enjoy inhabiting a complex interstitual fiction universe in which a huge ensemble of characters are waiting to be written, paired up in whatever permutation the new story calls for.
8. Do you re-read your fic? Why or why not? Do you have a favourite fic to re-read?
I re-read in general, and my fic is no different. Usually I reread a story whenever a new comment comes in my inbox, so I can re-evaluate what is being responded to and appreciate anew what I was doing in the story. I also reread for fun, yes. "R3 2.3.16" in particular hits my kinks quite squarely, but it's not uncommon for me to go through my fic index and read some of my favorite stories and see what people had to say about them. The RPF gets re-read a lot.
9. Some writers find writing difficult. For others, it comes easily. Tell me about the experience of writing for you. How do you write? When? Where? Do you plot your stories or just start writing. Which of your stories was the easiest to write? Which was the hardest?
The epics, both Divine Interventions (which, okay, is only a 30,000 word novella and none of the others are likely to be much longer) and the started-but-incomplete ones (To Live in Hearts, Confessions of a Teenager Watcher, Windows of My Soul, The Academy, etc.) were started as what-ifs with no idea where they were going. (The "epic" stories I've brainstormed since then with similar scope but which I have not started writing do have planned endgames.) The challenge then is to take the plotlines I created in a way that leads to a coherent, satisfying climax. I think I did a decent job with Divine Interventions and while I'm struggling with To Live in Hearts I think it'll come out okay; it's just that this method requires an intense investment of time and effort; these are not stories which get written in a weekend. Bonfire Night was written in a similar way but with fewer plotlines introduced to have to tie up. I posted it in parts as a work-in-progress so that the first part could actually be posted on Guy Fawkes Day.
For 'thons, then--and this is the vast majority of my output--I usually have a clear idea of where the story is going before I sit down and write, since I only have a small amount of time within which to write it and I thus cannot afford to let the story take on a life of its own. The exception to this is when I'm notebooking on the train; since this is time I have to spend doing something anyway I'll let myself just start writing, since false starts wouldn't be wasted effort (since they at the very least kept me occupied on the train). I don't think I've ever actually had a false start this way. Notebooking also allows me to try out ideas not related to 'thons, like with Up, Up, and Away or the two 'cest pieces I posted last week, or to work on sequels like "My Girlfriend is a Telepath."
It's not uncommon for me to go back and work the prompts into a 'thon fic after I've finished the first draft, especially if it was notebooked on the train. I have a tendency to forget what the prompts were (although they often do provide the initial inspiration).
The most important question I probably ask myself when I'm figuring out the premise for a fic is "When am I going to set this?" Everything else usually follows from that.
Of course, the entire Watcher!verse can be looked at as a large Work-in-Progress for which I have worked out a few important events (the deaths and births and major committed relationships) and general operating assumptions (Dawn sleeps with everybody) but is filled in as necessary.
10. How has the delivery of fanfic changed since you first started in fandom? Where did you first start posting? Do you have a web site? Do you maintain it? Did you belong to lists? Do you now? How do you find new fic to read?
I started posting at FF.net (see question #1), then followed likeadeuce and hjcallipygian over to LJ. While I'll mirror at archives, my fics and indices are hosted on LJ.
11. No shows = no inspiration. Let's face it, it's all been done, right? Or has it? How do you find inspiration in the Buffyverse? Do the comics help? Do you consider them canon?
I don't consider canon and don't really draw on them for inspiration. But post-"Chosen," there's a lot that needs to be done. So I just wait for someone to say "Buffy/Giles in an unusual place with mochas and an unexpected meeting," do my thing, and produce something like By My Side. (That's the most recent example of a 'thon fic.) Or, for non-'thon fics, go "How about. . . ?"
12. Feedback - how important is it to you? What sort of feedback do you like to receive? Do you leave feedback when you read?
I love feedback. Most of the feedback I get is LJ-standard, which is great. Critical analysis, positive or negative, is the best type of feedback, of course. When I read something on LJ and like it, I try to leave a comment.
14. Do you write professionally? Did you before you started writing fanfic or did fanfic pave the way?
Other than a year as a reporter for my local newspaper in high school, I've never been paid to write, sadly.
15. Final thoughts. I am sure I missed something- talk to me.
I'm exhausted and have homework to do and need to go to school in a few hours and want to eat and write meta before I do. But I think this has provided a sense of me as a writer that the Year in Review memes don't, really.
1. What was the first story you ever wrote? What inspired you to write it?
My first fanfic in any fandom was, I believe, Tapestries, a Star Trek: Voyager fic written when I was, say, fourteen or fifteen, followed by several more Voyager fics, most of them never completed. None of them were posted to the internet at the time (most of the fic I read them was on personal websites; I don't think I knew FF.net existed), although the original plan was to have "Tapestries" published in The Starfleet Journal which at the time I believed to be the pinnacle of online ficwriting. Eventually I gave up on fanfic and turned to original writing. Well, sort of. I worked on an Arthurian novel, The Fires of Love and Wrath.
Fast forward a few years to my sophomore year of undergrad, when there was a Buffy fanfiction idea that I could not get out of my head, so I reluctantly gave in and began writing Windows of My Soul, which is still incomplete, and posted it to FF.net. likeadeuce was very encouraging:Oh my God, this is wonderful. You write Dru so well -- I've recently gotten very interested in this character, and I've got my fingers crossed we'll see more of her before "Angel" is over. (I'm avoiding spoilers, so I don't know if this is going to happen, but I'd love to see her mess with Spike & Angel in the present). I'll be looking out for more of this -- such a great premise!
oh, anything with post-series Riley is good for me. though I'm not wild about Sam, I'm interested to see where this is going. Is the new girl a slayer? how does Dru come in?
OK, for real? You should email me b/c I think my Spike (from "Imagination") wants to have a talk with your Dru.
Her question about the new girl was the inspiration for "The Academy," another unfinished (and probably abandoned) epic which introduced St. Clare's Academy, which my current readers will recognize as the school where Faith and Kennedy teach in my Watcher!verse ( Twenty Facts about St. Clare’s Academy Not Found in the Brochure is actually one of the more popular things I've written).
My first completed Buffy fanfic was Maturity, an episode tag of "Graduation Day" exploring Xander's thoughts as he asked Harmony for help.
2. Which of your stories received the best response? Why do you think that is?
As mentioned above, "Twenty Facts" got a surprisingly strong response despite the fact that I still feel like the story itself is a bit of a cheat. I think that may be because it's a quick read, easily digested, effectively advertised as such, with equal parts drama and humor. That is, expectations are low when one clicks the link, but one clicks the link anyway because a list of 20 facts can't be too arduous reading, and then it's easy to exceed those expectations.
Outside the Buffyverse, Requiem at Reichenbach, my fic for yuletide 2006, got a nice response, including Ari saying I had "won yuletide." I think the reasons are fairly transparent: a bunch of people binge-reading, a fandom with which everyone is familiar, and a chance to show off my ability as a wordsmith by writing in the ornate Victorian voice of James Moriarty.
3. Which of your stories received a less favorable response than you expected. Why do you think that it?
I always have a hard time answering this when year-in-review rolls around, and it's pretty much impossible to answer for my entire ouvre--I've just written too much stuff. Some fics have no comments. Some have a lot. But the calculus of how many comments a fic gets vs. how many I feel it deserves is a complicated and fickle thing.
4. Which character do you enjoy writing the most? Why?
Oz. Or maybe Anya.
Okay . . . maybe not. I think the undisputedly obvious answer to this question is Dawn. Partly this is because she was still undeveloped enough at the end of canon for me to Mary Sue her. But even when I'm writing a younger Dawn closer to what we see in canon, her character is one I can really slip into.
The characters I really enjoy writing include Drusilla, Amy, Kennedy, Faith, . . . characters who aren't afraid of power. And Amanda, Vi, Fred, Giles, . . . characters who see the world in academic and/or geeky ways.
Dawn's at the intersection of the two groups.
5. Which character do you enjoy writing the least? Why?
Okay, this is where Oz and Anya really fall. Not that I dislike writing them or anything, just that I never really feel motivated to do so.
6. You wrote it and you loved it. Quote your favourite opening line. Quote your favorite closing line. Your favorite title. (Again, links to the stories are always welcome.)
Okay, I can't talk about opening lines without giving a mention of "Fucking cornfields!" from Class Trip. likeadeuce and I have this ongoing conversation (although at this point, it's devolved more into a running joke) about starting with dialogue, and this is the line of dialogue she admits does everything it has to do. "Surely, Holmes, you recognize the singular importance of Porluck" from "Requiem at Reichenbach" is one of my personal favorites, the way it takes a moment from Valley of Fear while at the same time establishing the POV character for "Requiem." And there's the opening sentence of Where the River Meets the Dawn, which is so long I'm going to blockquote it:Serenity flew straight, towards the second star to the right--it was the curve of space and time which was warped, broken, violently looping back upon itself, or perhaps it was that what was supposed to be curved suddenly found itself to be straight, if indeed such topological distinctions could be said to be any more, or any less, than geometrical illusions--straight through the violent vortex (a whirlpool, an eddying mass, from the Latin vertere, "to turn"--but to turn to where, into what? the dictionaries are as ever silent, in this and in all things), into what can only be described as a crash landing, as River clutched the yoke to her breasts as a child to her mother's, into what hitherto they have only known in their fantasies, and in their history books, as the Earth that Was.
As far as closing lines, there's always The Box of Yfrak's "And then they had an orgy." More seriously, there's The Fairest of Them All's "A pair of red-hot iron shoes is brought into the room with tongs and set before her, and these she is forced to put on and to dance in them until she can dance no longer, and only then does she begin to understand River’s pain," although most of that sentence I didn't actually write. And I like "The Mackenzie girl is eighteen and attractive, and Keith rationalizes that his physical response to what just happened is a perfectly natural one" in Towards Zero.
As for titles, I like how Richard the Third, Act Two, Scene Three, Line Sixteen, commonly abbreviated as R3 2.3.16, makes the reader work for the connection. In Soviet Russia, Femslash Writes You is a little more fun and playful. And My Girlfriend is a Telepath always just seemed to fit.
7. Do you identify with one pairing? If so do you tend to write mostly that pairing? When you don't- what inspires you to step off the beaten track.
I'm not quite sure what it means to identify with a pairing. I'm only one person and a pairing is, by definition, (at least) two. I've written a lot of Dawn/Giles, obviously, and I identify with both those characters in various ways. I identify with Wes and desire Fred, so Wes/Fred is a natural pairing for me. Same with Simon/Kaylee.
But really, I have the main pairings of the Watcher!verse--Buffy/Immortal, Willow/Kennedy, Faith/Kennedy, and Dawn/Giles--and other than those, I live off the beaten track. Most of the fic I write is for 'thons. Obviously, I deliberately select in part to control what characters I end up writing, but still, I'm at the mercy of the requester and the mod. I enjoy inhabiting a complex interstitual fiction universe in which a huge ensemble of characters are waiting to be written, paired up in whatever permutation the new story calls for.
8. Do you re-read your fic? Why or why not? Do you have a favourite fic to re-read?
I re-read in general, and my fic is no different. Usually I reread a story whenever a new comment comes in my inbox, so I can re-evaluate what is being responded to and appreciate anew what I was doing in the story. I also reread for fun, yes. "R3 2.3.16" in particular hits my kinks quite squarely, but it's not uncommon for me to go through my fic index and read some of my favorite stories and see what people had to say about them. The RPF gets re-read a lot.
9. Some writers find writing difficult. For others, it comes easily. Tell me about the experience of writing for you. How do you write? When? Where? Do you plot your stories or just start writing. Which of your stories was the easiest to write? Which was the hardest?
The epics, both Divine Interventions (which, okay, is only a 30,000 word novella and none of the others are likely to be much longer) and the started-but-incomplete ones (To Live in Hearts, Confessions of a Teenager Watcher, Windows of My Soul, The Academy, etc.) were started as what-ifs with no idea where they were going. (The "epic" stories I've brainstormed since then with similar scope but which I have not started writing do have planned endgames.) The challenge then is to take the plotlines I created in a way that leads to a coherent, satisfying climax. I think I did a decent job with Divine Interventions and while I'm struggling with To Live in Hearts I think it'll come out okay; it's just that this method requires an intense investment of time and effort; these are not stories which get written in a weekend. Bonfire Night was written in a similar way but with fewer plotlines introduced to have to tie up. I posted it in parts as a work-in-progress so that the first part could actually be posted on Guy Fawkes Day.
For 'thons, then--and this is the vast majority of my output--I usually have a clear idea of where the story is going before I sit down and write, since I only have a small amount of time within which to write it and I thus cannot afford to let the story take on a life of its own. The exception to this is when I'm notebooking on the train; since this is time I have to spend doing something anyway I'll let myself just start writing, since false starts wouldn't be wasted effort (since they at the very least kept me occupied on the train). I don't think I've ever actually had a false start this way. Notebooking also allows me to try out ideas not related to 'thons, like with Up, Up, and Away or the two 'cest pieces I posted last week, or to work on sequels like "My Girlfriend is a Telepath."
It's not uncommon for me to go back and work the prompts into a 'thon fic after I've finished the first draft, especially if it was notebooked on the train. I have a tendency to forget what the prompts were (although they often do provide the initial inspiration).
The most important question I probably ask myself when I'm figuring out the premise for a fic is "When am I going to set this?" Everything else usually follows from that.
Of course, the entire Watcher!verse can be looked at as a large Work-in-Progress for which I have worked out a few important events (the deaths and births and major committed relationships) and general operating assumptions (Dawn sleeps with everybody) but is filled in as necessary.
10. How has the delivery of fanfic changed since you first started in fandom? Where did you first start posting? Do you have a web site? Do you maintain it? Did you belong to lists? Do you now? How do you find new fic to read?
I started posting at FF.net (see question #1), then followed likeadeuce and hjcallipygian over to LJ. While I'll mirror at archives, my fics and indices are hosted on LJ.
11. No shows = no inspiration. Let's face it, it's all been done, right? Or has it? How do you find inspiration in the Buffyverse? Do the comics help? Do you consider them canon?
I don't consider canon and don't really draw on them for inspiration. But post-"Chosen," there's a lot that needs to be done. So I just wait for someone to say "Buffy/Giles in an unusual place with mochas and an unexpected meeting," do my thing, and produce something like By My Side. (That's the most recent example of a 'thon fic.) Or, for non-'thon fics, go "How about. . . ?"
12. Feedback - how important is it to you? What sort of feedback do you like to receive? Do you leave feedback when you read?
I love feedback. Most of the feedback I get is LJ-standard, which is great. Critical analysis, positive or negative, is the best type of feedback, of course. When I read something on LJ and like it, I try to leave a comment.
14. Do you write professionally? Did you before you started writing fanfic or did fanfic pave the way?
Other than a year as a reporter for my local newspaper in high school, I've never been paid to write, sadly.
15. Final thoughts. I am sure I missed something- talk to me.
I'm exhausted and have homework to do and need to go to school in a few hours and want to eat and write meta before I do. But I think this has provided a sense of me as a writer that the Year in Review memes don't, really.