Meme answers!
Yes, I'm actually fulfilling a meme in the same year in which I posted it! I got terribly wordy, so this is the Post of Many Cuts.
magnavox_23 asked for #1: Of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud?
That’s a tough one - but it’s tough for everyone, isn’t it? Especially since we’re supposed to reply that it’s hard to be ‘proud’ of our fic. We’re supposed to look embarrassed and murmur that we really think we suck.
Well, I don’t think I suck - although it is difficult to say that. But still. I know I used to suck, and I can tell the difference between then and now.
Anyway. I think I’m usually the most proud of whatever major work I finished most recently. If When I actually and finally finish Spider’s Web, I hope I’ll be most proud of that one. I'm proud of what I've built so far, and the long road it's already taken to get as far as it has. Till then . . .
I’m really, really happy with Reverb. I set myself some really terrifying goals in that one - ‘Show that MacGyver can work in the modern world’ - ‘Make Murdoc actually plausible’ - ‘And consistent’ - ‘While you’re at it, make him genuinely scary’ - ‘also, resolve umpteen dangling plot threads' - and I feel that I did what I wanted to do. I like the results (although I sometimes have trouble believing all that actually came out of me!) Possibly best of all: I’ve had several people, whom I like and whose opinions I value, tell me that it’s fed into their headcanon. For them, I actually achieved the ultimate goal: I made the show that we love so much move on into a new chapter. Who could ask for more?
a_phoenixdragon asked for #4: What are some themes you love writing about?
There are themes and themes, which makes this question interesting. I love the themes that are intrinsic to MacGyver: the hierarchy of brain over brawn that doesn’t assume weakness in the latter, the notion of managing with what you have handy and the linked idea that being deeply and creatively aware of your surroundings is tremendously valuable. The notion of paying it forward, of family as a nebulous network of everyone you’ve touched positively, etc. Environmentalism, pacifism, geek power, compassion, engagement. I love writing in that fanverse because the essential themes suit me well.
But there’s another thematic level that develops, in a fascinating and organic way, within my longer works, as I’m writing. I’m not sure how much control of choice I have in those themes, since they seem to grow right out of a given story and help unify it on a level entirely different from the plotlines. Those themes also tend to provide me with titles, which is a real plus as well.
For example: Up a Long Ladder carried themes of the incremental steps that can lead to either attainment of a new height, or a fatal fall: and that theme more or less started with my remembering a specific bit of radical Irish doggerel, which linked itself up with the thought ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be really great if I could get right inside Mac’s POV when he’s having an attack of acrophobia?’ I actually fought the title for ages, and had to give in to it in the end.
The themes of Aftershocks are right there in the title, and Revision, and Reverb. Revision deals with fundamental changes in how things are viewed, and contains a lot of strong visual imagery; Reverb works a lot with how events and decisions ripple outwards in time, and uses a lot of imagery of sound and echoes. None of this is accidental; I usually know that I’m doing it, although I can’t say that it’s a conscious decision made in advance. When I was working on the plotlines of Aftershocks, I didn’t decide at the beginning, ‘Okay, the story is about the messy follow-up after a specific episode, so I’ll have two physical earthquakes of increasing intensity occur at different points, with a third that only exists on a psychological level but is much more shattering.’ That does, in fact, happen within the story, and it’s part of the structure - but I didn’t plan it or outline it. It grew in place. I didn’t even know I was going to have a second earthquake until I actually reached that point in the story, and boom, there it was.
. . . all of which is a ridiculously long way of saying that most of the themes I write are there because they’re the right themes for the stories, and I love working with them - but they aren’t there because of the love. The love follows the themes, if that makes any sense. Or even if it doesn’t.
jackwabbit asked for #7: Create a character on the spot... NOW!
Heh heh heh. So many possibilities for this - I was going to create a bystander-type, or a helper/assistant, but I think I’m going to create a bad guy instead. I could use one for the Laundry!fic.
So, here’s Charlie Tsai. He likes to be called Tiger Charlie, but anyone who can get away with it calls him Charlie the Ox, especially behind his back. He’s Angeleno, born and raised in Chinatown, third-generation American-born of Chinese ancestry. He’s tall, big and burly, wide-shouldered, beginning to run to fat. He knows squat about martial arts, but he’s a pretty good shot. He’d rather bash things, though.
He’s 24 or 25, born in January 1962. Three days later, and he’d’ve been born in the Year of the Tiger, but noo, his mother went into labour prematurely and he was born in the Year of the Ox. He’s spent most of his life feeling pissed off and cheated, one way or the other. His best friend growing up was a cousin, Ming, whose father was a refugee from the Cultural Revolution, an oppressed academic. Charlie used to alternate between protecting Ming from bullies and bullying him himself, but they drifted apart starting in their early teens. Ming was incredibly bright and went to college on a scholarship. Charlie quit high school and started hanging out on the streets, shaking people down and bashing things. He started with car theft and moved on to drug dealing because the money was better. He hasn’t seen Ming in years, but if he ever does see him, he’ll bash him.
Charlie wants to be respected and looked up to: he wants to get back at the world for having somehow, ineffably, not done what it was supposed to do for him. He has a vague feeling that he should be, should always have been, very important, rich, powerful, the kind of person who only has to move a finger to make people jump. He can’t manage to be like that, which pisses him off all over again.
He likes fancy cars, because he thinks people who drive them are admired. Since he lives in LA’s Chinatown, there are a lot of people with very fancy cars in the general area. His first real crimes involved joy-riding.
He’s madly horny, was sexually precocious, and really likes the amount of tail that comes with the territory of his current lifestyle. He’d like more of it. He especially likes the idea that other men envy and hate him when he’s with a hottie. He’s had his eye on Lian, the young girl at the laundromat, for quite a while, but she won’t have anything to do with him. He hasn’t taken any action because her grandmother secretly intimidates the hell out of him. If he could, he’d bash the grandmother and kidnap and rape Lian. He fantasizes about raping her in front of her grandmother.
Charlie drinks a lot, but he doesn’t do drugs himself, just deals. He’s contemptuous of people who do drugs; he thinks they’re weak and stupid. Since he knows, just under the skin, that he’s weak and stupid, he’s terrified that he’ll disintegrate if he ever tries drugs himself.
He’s not going to get on well with MacGyver.
sidlj lost_spook asked for #9: A passage from a WIP
Here's one that's been stalled for a couple of years -- I can't manage to work on it in the summer, and in the winter, it isn't wintry here, which threw me off. Maybe I should watch the Weather Channel for a few hours and see if that will get me going.
Nikki had to stop again, right in the middle of the road - the trees and bushes were crammed up against both edges of the narrow lane, and there was no place where she could pull off to the side. Not that there was any traffic to worry about; it felt like hours since she’d seen anyone else up here. She checked the odometer again, then studied the long sheet of ridiculously complicated directions.
Watch your odometer - 7.3 miles after the turnoff from Forest Service Road 5388, you’ll see a big blue spruce on the left -
“And I’m supposed to recognize this particular tree in the middle of the whole damned forest?”
“Oh, you’ll know it when you see it, Ms. Carpenter. It looks just like a Christmas tree. You can’t miss it.”
“Oh, God, did you have to say that? Now I’m screwed.”
The problem was that all the trees looked like Christmas trees, or at least like trees in a Christmas card - mile after mile after mile of dark evergreens, their thick branches weighted down with masses of thick white glop. On the outside edge of the windshield, frost was forming in delicate patterns, each crystal a visible geometric tracery of angled threads. Who could have guessed there’d be so much snow up here already? It was barely November. The only places that had any right to look this much like Christmas at this time of year were department stores, and she didn’t like those a whole lot either.
Nikki double-checked the odometer against the figure she’d written down when she passed the last turn, and began to drive forward again, slowly and carefully, making sure her wheels stayed in the narrow tracks that led up the road, the only sign of life. Any minute now, she’d come around one of the endless curves and find herself looking at SantaLand, complete with tacky plastic reindeer.
She came around the next curve and saw the big blue spruce, and recognized it immediately. The needles really were a kind of blue-green, very distinctive, and it really did look even more like a Christmas tree than all the others. And it was huge and stately, and right across from it was the even narrower chute of the drive that led up to the ridge, with the single set of wheel tracks beckoning her on. The tracks of MacGyver’s Jeep.
Pete, you are so going to owe me one.
lost_spook sidlj asked for #10: What are your strengths in writing?
I like -- no, love -- words. This is both a strength and a weakness: I like strong images and interesting turns of phrase. I am not and never will be an ‘invisible’ writer: the writers whose work I love are the ones who are willing to run risks with their writing, who use words and build stories in interesting ways.
I like people. I like building characters that are complete people, even when it’s a minor character. This is especially valuable when writing bad guys: they aren’t bad guys in their own perception, and building out their personalities makes their motivations and actions stronger and easier to write.
I have a background in theatre (15 years as a professional theatre tech), and I often steal from that background when I have to solve problems. I work out action sequences by mentally blocking them out, as if my characters are rehearsing. I often work on dialogue in the same way. I have a strong image of a mental ‘rehearsal hall’ in my head, where I can have my characters work out difficult scenes.
I also have a background as a folk musician, and I think the musicianship feeds into the writing. To do folk well, you have to build good set lists, which means being aware of how different bits of story build up and carry energy along. Good writing incorporates rhythm and pace and changes in tone - changes in key, if you like. Even before I started editing other people’s writing, I was tweaking and revising the lyrics to songs so that they played better - specifically, so that I could use the lyrics to deliver a story to a live audience more effectively, whether it was an actual narrative or an emotional storyline. If you count that as practice, I’ve been working on my fundamental narrative skills for about 35 years. That much practice really can add up.
And especially: I read a lot. I’ve always read a lot. I don’t read massive amounts of fanfic; I mostly read published works, including a lot of classics. I’ve listened to thousands of hours of books on tape, including a lot of nineteenth-century literature (which probably also helped develop my ‘ear’ for writing). I’ve read a lot of writing done by a lot of people who write really, really well. Admittedly, I’ve also read stuff written by people who wrote badly, and that’s another set of lessons.
The bottom line is that, when I finally actually started writing myself, my model was and still is the professional novel. It took me a while to learn to write vignettes and drabbles and inserts. I’m always aiming for the standard set by the writers I admire the most: I may fall way short of the mark, but that’s the one I’m throwing myself towards.
magnavox_23 asked for #1: Of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud?
That’s a tough one - but it’s tough for everyone, isn’t it? Especially since we’re supposed to reply that it’s hard to be ‘proud’ of our fic. We’re supposed to look embarrassed and murmur that we really think we suck.
Well, I don’t think I suck - although it is difficult to say that. But still. I know I used to suck, and I can tell the difference between then and now.
Anyway. I think I’m usually the most proud of whatever major work I finished most recently. If When I actually and finally finish Spider’s Web, I hope I’ll be most proud of that one. I'm proud of what I've built so far, and the long road it's already taken to get as far as it has. Till then . . .
I’m really, really happy with Reverb. I set myself some really terrifying goals in that one - ‘Show that MacGyver can work in the modern world’ - ‘Make Murdoc actually plausible’ - ‘And consistent’ - ‘While you’re at it, make him genuinely scary’ - ‘also, resolve umpteen dangling plot threads' - and I feel that I did what I wanted to do. I like the results (although I sometimes have trouble believing all that actually came out of me!) Possibly best of all: I’ve had several people, whom I like and whose opinions I value, tell me that it’s fed into their headcanon. For them, I actually achieved the ultimate goal: I made the show that we love so much move on into a new chapter. Who could ask for more?
a_phoenixdragon asked for #4: What are some themes you love writing about?
There are themes and themes, which makes this question interesting. I love the themes that are intrinsic to MacGyver: the hierarchy of brain over brawn that doesn’t assume weakness in the latter, the notion of managing with what you have handy and the linked idea that being deeply and creatively aware of your surroundings is tremendously valuable. The notion of paying it forward, of family as a nebulous network of everyone you’ve touched positively, etc. Environmentalism, pacifism, geek power, compassion, engagement. I love writing in that fanverse because the essential themes suit me well.
But there’s another thematic level that develops, in a fascinating and organic way, within my longer works, as I’m writing. I’m not sure how much control of choice I have in those themes, since they seem to grow right out of a given story and help unify it on a level entirely different from the plotlines. Those themes also tend to provide me with titles, which is a real plus as well.
For example: Up a Long Ladder carried themes of the incremental steps that can lead to either attainment of a new height, or a fatal fall: and that theme more or less started with my remembering a specific bit of radical Irish doggerel, which linked itself up with the thought ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be really great if I could get right inside Mac’s POV when he’s having an attack of acrophobia?’ I actually fought the title for ages, and had to give in to it in the end.
The themes of Aftershocks are right there in the title, and Revision, and Reverb. Revision deals with fundamental changes in how things are viewed, and contains a lot of strong visual imagery; Reverb works a lot with how events and decisions ripple outwards in time, and uses a lot of imagery of sound and echoes. None of this is accidental; I usually know that I’m doing it, although I can’t say that it’s a conscious decision made in advance. When I was working on the plotlines of Aftershocks, I didn’t decide at the beginning, ‘Okay, the story is about the messy follow-up after a specific episode, so I’ll have two physical earthquakes of increasing intensity occur at different points, with a third that only exists on a psychological level but is much more shattering.’ That does, in fact, happen within the story, and it’s part of the structure - but I didn’t plan it or outline it. It grew in place. I didn’t even know I was going to have a second earthquake until I actually reached that point in the story, and boom, there it was.
. . . all of which is a ridiculously long way of saying that most of the themes I write are there because they’re the right themes for the stories, and I love working with them - but they aren’t there because of the love. The love follows the themes, if that makes any sense. Or even if it doesn’t.
jackwabbit asked for #7: Create a character on the spot... NOW!
Heh heh heh. So many possibilities for this - I was going to create a bystander-type, or a helper/assistant, but I think I’m going to create a bad guy instead. I could use one for the Laundry!fic.
So, here’s Charlie Tsai. He likes to be called Tiger Charlie, but anyone who can get away with it calls him Charlie the Ox, especially behind his back. He’s Angeleno, born and raised in Chinatown, third-generation American-born of Chinese ancestry. He’s tall, big and burly, wide-shouldered, beginning to run to fat. He knows squat about martial arts, but he’s a pretty good shot. He’d rather bash things, though.
He’s 24 or 25, born in January 1962. Three days later, and he’d’ve been born in the Year of the Tiger, but noo, his mother went into labour prematurely and he was born in the Year of the Ox. He’s spent most of his life feeling pissed off and cheated, one way or the other. His best friend growing up was a cousin, Ming, whose father was a refugee from the Cultural Revolution, an oppressed academic. Charlie used to alternate between protecting Ming from bullies and bullying him himself, but they drifted apart starting in their early teens. Ming was incredibly bright and went to college on a scholarship. Charlie quit high school and started hanging out on the streets, shaking people down and bashing things. He started with car theft and moved on to drug dealing because the money was better. He hasn’t seen Ming in years, but if he ever does see him, he’ll bash him.
Charlie wants to be respected and looked up to: he wants to get back at the world for having somehow, ineffably, not done what it was supposed to do for him. He has a vague feeling that he should be, should always have been, very important, rich, powerful, the kind of person who only has to move a finger to make people jump. He can’t manage to be like that, which pisses him off all over again.
He likes fancy cars, because he thinks people who drive them are admired. Since he lives in LA’s Chinatown, there are a lot of people with very fancy cars in the general area. His first real crimes involved joy-riding.
He’s madly horny, was sexually precocious, and really likes the amount of tail that comes with the territory of his current lifestyle. He’d like more of it. He especially likes the idea that other men envy and hate him when he’s with a hottie. He’s had his eye on Lian, the young girl at the laundromat, for quite a while, but she won’t have anything to do with him. He hasn’t taken any action because her grandmother secretly intimidates the hell out of him. If he could, he’d bash the grandmother and kidnap and rape Lian. He fantasizes about raping her in front of her grandmother.
Charlie drinks a lot, but he doesn’t do drugs himself, just deals. He’s contemptuous of people who do drugs; he thinks they’re weak and stupid. Since he knows, just under the skin, that he’s weak and stupid, he’s terrified that he’ll disintegrate if he ever tries drugs himself.
He’s not going to get on well with MacGyver.
sidlj lost_spook asked for #9: A passage from a WIP
Here's one that's been stalled for a couple of years -- I can't manage to work on it in the summer, and in the winter, it isn't wintry here, which threw me off. Maybe I should watch the Weather Channel for a few hours and see if that will get me going.
Nikki had to stop again, right in the middle of the road - the trees and bushes were crammed up against both edges of the narrow lane, and there was no place where she could pull off to the side. Not that there was any traffic to worry about; it felt like hours since she’d seen anyone else up here. She checked the odometer again, then studied the long sheet of ridiculously complicated directions.
Watch your odometer - 7.3 miles after the turnoff from Forest Service Road 5388, you’ll see a big blue spruce on the left -
“And I’m supposed to recognize this particular tree in the middle of the whole damned forest?”
“Oh, you’ll know it when you see it, Ms. Carpenter. It looks just like a Christmas tree. You can’t miss it.”
“Oh, God, did you have to say that? Now I’m screwed.”
The problem was that all the trees looked like Christmas trees, or at least like trees in a Christmas card - mile after mile after mile of dark evergreens, their thick branches weighted down with masses of thick white glop. On the outside edge of the windshield, frost was forming in delicate patterns, each crystal a visible geometric tracery of angled threads. Who could have guessed there’d be so much snow up here already? It was barely November. The only places that had any right to look this much like Christmas at this time of year were department stores, and she didn’t like those a whole lot either.
Nikki double-checked the odometer against the figure she’d written down when she passed the last turn, and began to drive forward again, slowly and carefully, making sure her wheels stayed in the narrow tracks that led up the road, the only sign of life. Any minute now, she’d come around one of the endless curves and find herself looking at SantaLand, complete with tacky plastic reindeer.
She came around the next curve and saw the big blue spruce, and recognized it immediately. The needles really were a kind of blue-green, very distinctive, and it really did look even more like a Christmas tree than all the others. And it was huge and stately, and right across from it was the even narrower chute of the drive that led up to the ridge, with the single set of wheel tracks beckoning her on. The tracks of MacGyver’s Jeep.
Pete, you are so going to owe me one.
lost_spook sidlj asked for #10: What are your strengths in writing?
I like -- no, love -- words. This is both a strength and a weakness: I like strong images and interesting turns of phrase. I am not and never will be an ‘invisible’ writer: the writers whose work I love are the ones who are willing to run risks with their writing, who use words and build stories in interesting ways.
I like people. I like building characters that are complete people, even when it’s a minor character. This is especially valuable when writing bad guys: they aren’t bad guys in their own perception, and building out their personalities makes their motivations and actions stronger and easier to write.
I have a background in theatre (15 years as a professional theatre tech), and I often steal from that background when I have to solve problems. I work out action sequences by mentally blocking them out, as if my characters are rehearsing. I often work on dialogue in the same way. I have a strong image of a mental ‘rehearsal hall’ in my head, where I can have my characters work out difficult scenes.
I also have a background as a folk musician, and I think the musicianship feeds into the writing. To do folk well, you have to build good set lists, which means being aware of how different bits of story build up and carry energy along. Good writing incorporates rhythm and pace and changes in tone - changes in key, if you like. Even before I started editing other people’s writing, I was tweaking and revising the lyrics to songs so that they played better - specifically, so that I could use the lyrics to deliver a story to a live audience more effectively, whether it was an actual narrative or an emotional storyline. If you count that as practice, I’ve been working on my fundamental narrative skills for about 35 years. That much practice really can add up.
And especially: I read a lot. I’ve always read a lot. I don’t read massive amounts of fanfic; I mostly read published works, including a lot of classics. I’ve listened to thousands of hours of books on tape, including a lot of nineteenth-century literature (which probably also helped develop my ‘ear’ for writing). I’ve read a lot of writing done by a lot of people who write really, really well. Admittedly, I’ve also read stuff written by people who wrote badly, and that’s another set of lessons.
The bottom line is that, when I finally actually started writing myself, my model was and still is the professional novel. It took me a while to learn to write vignettes and drabbles and inserts. I’m always aiming for the standard set by the writers I admire the most: I may fall way short of the mark, but that’s the one I’m throwing myself towards.