news & bibble
So, news: pre-interview scheduled for Tuesday, with an engineering company opening a new office here in Denver. The pre-interview is so the recruiter can check me out, make sure I'm sane, can dress myself, and am not a complete twit. Yay! If this goes well, we'll move on to a real interview, where they'll actually question my competency and career goals. I look forward to both of these with more anticipation than is probably obvious from this entry. It's good to know that at least my resume reads as if I still have skillz.
Second: found the following while cleaning out massive amounts of warehoused paperwork and old mementos. Written sometime in 1996 or so, from what I can make out by the margin notes; I couldn't write anything this straightforward on "how you become a fanfic writer" now, because it's so much a part of my life. Still, it may amuse, and I think I'll be putting it up on the Chaos Horizon ramblings in a week or so.
The 8 Stages of Fanfic
1. "What is fanfic, anyway?"
Someone mentions the term, and you think it's a euphemism for an obscenity, or an acronym for a production company. After your friend explains the concept, you say:
2. "People are allowed to do this?"
Why aren't they being sued, you ask. Why doesn't someone stop them? Underlying these questions is the assumption that these stories can't be very good. They're only written by fans. Not The Writers. And these people must be pretty strange. But you read some, to humor your friend, and find--
3. "Hey, this isn't bad. Where can I get more?"
If you're lucky, you find good stories on your first try. You realize these writers may be amateurs, but they're not talentless, obsessed hacks. They have a sense of humor. They know the characters. Heck, you might even hear yourself say....
4. "Some of this is as good as the series. (And one or two are better than the show.)"
Due to budget, time, and reality constraints, there's some stuff that never ends up on TV. Which is okay, but that doesn't stop viewers from wanting to see transitional scenes, background stories, or effects that Spielberg couldn't duplicate. Or keep people who like reading, and love to know what's going on inside the character's heads, from wanting more insight. Fanfic covers all of this. Many fanfic writers are very clever people who are trying their writing wings on already written characters; others just like writing for fun. Either way, you are pleasantly surprised to find these stories are often quite good, and sometimes excellent. But there are times when you can't help but comment:
5. "I can do better than this."
Many people quit reading at this point, frustrated by all the bad fanfic out there (and there is a lot of drek out there). They give up on the whole idea, hoard the stories they like, and go on to something else for their reading pleasure.
Some fans, though, are told to put up or shut up. "You think you can do better?" your friend asks you. "Prove it." Only those who are already latent writers actually go further along this route. If you have a deep fear of prose, no literary self-confidence at all, or no clear plot ideas, you stall out right here. But... if you keep reminding yourself "it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be better than that story" you will end up at Step 6.
6. "Why don't they air what I want to see?... I think I'll write it."
Dying to know what the characters said to each other during the cut to commercial? Convinced you have an explanation? You write it. You show it to a friend. You discuss it. Then, you get this other idea; what if this and this happened? I'll bet So-and-So would react like this... Several hundred words later, you've written your first fanfic. And it wasn't all that difficult, either. You practice. You write more, for fun, y'know. And then, one day....
7. "People will read MY stuff?"
Somebody liked your story. Enough to write an email to you about it. You're shocked. You're thrilled. You're a genius. Life is good. So you write more, get more ideas, outline them, tentatively start talking about them with other writers, enthusiastically discuss the characters you're by now quite fond of -- after all, you've been manipulating them for weeks now, they're old friends.
You get more comments, some good, some not-so-good. You get more ideas, for better stories; you try harder to make the writing perfect, the plots water-tight, the stories engrossing and believable. And somewhere along the way....
8. "Help! I'm a fanfic writer, I need help!"
There is no going back at this point. Everything you watch on TV is subject to the Writer Filter: can I make it better/tighter/smarter, does this give me a new idea, oo, have to remember that for my next story; hunh, what if...?
You can't shut it off. You can go without writing for a while. You try to ignore what the people in your head are saying. You can switch to viewing TV shows that don't inspire ideas. And it will still sneak up on you when you're not paying attention, and you won't be able to make the ideas go away until you write them down.
It only gets weirder from here.
Inspired in some part, I just realized, by Susan Garrett's very good "Champion" series in the FK-verse, which take Natalie through all of these stages as she gets obsessed with a TV show-- which was inspired by FK's own cancellation and SOS movement to keep FK going.
Second: found the following while cleaning out massive amounts of warehoused paperwork and old mementos. Written sometime in 1996 or so, from what I can make out by the margin notes; I couldn't write anything this straightforward on "how you become a fanfic writer" now, because it's so much a part of my life. Still, it may amuse, and I think I'll be putting it up on the Chaos Horizon ramblings in a week or so.
The 8 Stages of Fanfic
1. "What is fanfic, anyway?"
Someone mentions the term, and you think it's a euphemism for an obscenity, or an acronym for a production company. After your friend explains the concept, you say:
2. "People are allowed to do this?"
Why aren't they being sued, you ask. Why doesn't someone stop them? Underlying these questions is the assumption that these stories can't be very good. They're only written by fans. Not The Writers. And these people must be pretty strange. But you read some, to humor your friend, and find--
3. "Hey, this isn't bad. Where can I get more?"
If you're lucky, you find good stories on your first try. You realize these writers may be amateurs, but they're not talentless, obsessed hacks. They have a sense of humor. They know the characters. Heck, you might even hear yourself say....
4. "Some of this is as good as the series. (And one or two are better than the show.)"
Due to budget, time, and reality constraints, there's some stuff that never ends up on TV. Which is okay, but that doesn't stop viewers from wanting to see transitional scenes, background stories, or effects that Spielberg couldn't duplicate. Or keep people who like reading, and love to know what's going on inside the character's heads, from wanting more insight. Fanfic covers all of this. Many fanfic writers are very clever people who are trying their writing wings on already written characters; others just like writing for fun. Either way, you are pleasantly surprised to find these stories are often quite good, and sometimes excellent. But there are times when you can't help but comment:
5. "I can do better than this."
Many people quit reading at this point, frustrated by all the bad fanfic out there (and there is a lot of drek out there). They give up on the whole idea, hoard the stories they like, and go on to something else for their reading pleasure.
Some fans, though, are told to put up or shut up. "You think you can do better?" your friend asks you. "Prove it." Only those who are already latent writers actually go further along this route. If you have a deep fear of prose, no literary self-confidence at all, or no clear plot ideas, you stall out right here. But... if you keep reminding yourself "it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be better than that story" you will end up at Step 6.
6. "Why don't they air what I want to see?... I think I'll write it."
Dying to know what the characters said to each other during the cut to commercial? Convinced you have an explanation? You write it. You show it to a friend. You discuss it. Then, you get this other idea; what if this and this happened? I'll bet So-and-So would react like this... Several hundred words later, you've written your first fanfic. And it wasn't all that difficult, either. You practice. You write more, for fun, y'know. And then, one day....
7. "People will read MY stuff?"
Somebody liked your story. Enough to write an email to you about it. You're shocked. You're thrilled. You're a genius. Life is good. So you write more, get more ideas, outline them, tentatively start talking about them with other writers, enthusiastically discuss the characters you're by now quite fond of -- after all, you've been manipulating them for weeks now, they're old friends.
You get more comments, some good, some not-so-good. You get more ideas, for better stories; you try harder to make the writing perfect, the plots water-tight, the stories engrossing and believable. And somewhere along the way....
8. "Help! I'm a fanfic writer, I need help!"
There is no going back at this point. Everything you watch on TV is subject to the Writer Filter: can I make it better/tighter/smarter, does this give me a new idea, oo, have to remember that for my next story; hunh, what if...?
You can't shut it off. You can go without writing for a while. You try to ignore what the people in your head are saying. You can switch to viewing TV shows that don't inspire ideas. And it will still sneak up on you when you're not paying attention, and you won't be able to make the ideas go away until you write them down.
It only gets weirder from here.
Inspired in some part, I just realized, by Susan Garrett's very good "Champion" series in the FK-verse, which take Natalie through all of these stages as she gets obsessed with a TV show-- which was inspired by FK's own cancellation and SOS movement to keep FK going.