December meme: fic talk, for Glovered
I'm so jazzed about this December meme and everyone's posts! Let's have a kiki, motherfucker \o/ (Except my head hurts a little, possibly from banging it against Fort Lauderdale sidewalk earlier, so I'm just going to post and go to bed and hope I can start an IV tomorrow with three fingers out of commission. Why yes, I did start preparing some December meme posts in advance, to ensure their coherency.)
I love talking shop. If you guys have something to share about your own writing technique and challenges with first lines, titles and characters, I'd be thrilled to hear it!
The fic I write start out under some working title that at least tries to be interesting, because if I have to click on a file named "Sam and Dean in the desert" or "Hell Rescue Fic #3", I'm already uninspired before even starting. Working titles like "Driftwood" that borrow some imagery but don't try to represent what the fic at least sets out to be are an equally bad fit. My personal favorite was Dinner Beneath a Hurricane. It refers to Dean's drunken dream of dining with fish and crabs in a ruined underwater restaurant, getting silently judged by the patrons for being in love with his little brother, while a hurricane rages on the surface. I like it because the title wraps up the dream, and the dream wraps up how Dean feels, and most importantly, because the title is specific and, at least for me, makes a mental image. "Like Brothers On a Motel Bed" doesn't make a mental image. WHAT is like brothers? Why is this title a dependent clause? (Here, I'm not picking on a specific fic but borrowing a song line that, I'm pretty sure, served as a title to a dozen of SPN fics.)
Favorite first line to date is The son of a goddess lived in a Bronx apartment building, behind eights door on the left, from Love and Crocodiles. I'm proud of it because it makes a nice hook: a divine character living in a place that sounds pretty unglamorous; a door, suggesting that someone is there to see this son of a goddess now.
The one fic I'm most proud of and had most fun writing was Tornado Warning, largely owing to its convoluted plot that surprised me with how nicely it clicked together. The TW half of the fic grew out of my frustration with trying to write two version of Sam without resorting to "Sammy", "RoboSam" and such. So the misaligned soul Sam, the Sam in the other Sam's guts, got amnesia and became Danny Broflovski. And around Danny Broflovski grew the Texan town, the butcher shop, the bull-headed man and the tornado weather. I LOVED how many people PM'ed me midway throught the fic to say "I have no clue what's going on but I can't wait to find out!" The NMT part of the fic, though, was not doing so well, and to this day when I think of "Tornado Warning", it's the Texan town that comes to mind first, and not RoboSam and Dean's travels. The wax-and-cold-water witch was the element that saved that half of the story when it was ready to croak on me. Incidentally, the old fat Slavic witch with her porcelain bowl and store-bought bunt cake, crime novels and anti-incest spells was the OC that made me fall in love with OCs. She was ridiculous, everything a hero wasn't supposed to be, and she was so alive and vibrant in my head that she started the whole OC trend.
Which brings me to the subject of OCs (again). My favorite was Black Betty from The Witch Is Dead, but I'm going to talk about Darren Leigh from Row Charon Row, because Darren was challenging in an interesting way. Maria Petrovna, the wax witch, was a step up to a new level, where I discovered how to write enjoyable characters. Darren Leigh was the level above that, because he was the first full-blown tragic character I've written in a fic, and that was HARD.
Dandy In the Underworld needed 10K of outsider POV to keep a secret, and the only reason it worked was because Ivan was a spoiled mobster baby douchebag. My favorite comment about him was "I hope he chokes on an olive from an overpriced martini when he gets back to the Strip". Ivan is allowed to tell the whole story, because he's not going to give anyone the impression that this is an OC trying to pull too much focus to himself or compete for the hero's spotlight. Fic, after all, is about canon characters. We're all here to read about Sam and Dean. Look at that fic in the last BB season which had a fantastic OC that nevertheless ruined the story by focusing all of author's attention. Since Maria Petrovna, every OC I've written, including the scary ones, had a touch of humor to them: the tornado demon that gets trapped in a can of tuna, Bluebeard who reminds Sam of Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Black Betty and Clementine constantly squabbling and yanking out each others' hair. If they're comical in some small way, this is my proof that I'm not writing a Mary Sue, or maybe not Mary Sue but my own hero who really has no place in an SPN fic. And I'm not saying this as some complaint against fandom. OCs have a very specific place in an SPN fic, and like everybody else, I'm going to stop reading if the OC is well-written but doesn't stay in his/her place. I'm here for Sam and Dean Winchester.
Darren Leigh was a problem. There's absolutely nothing funny about a confused ghost of a WWII veteran with a broken skull. There goes my humor defense. But then he also sounds like a classic hero. I needed Darren and the rest of his ship to evoke sympathy and distract attention from what's in the fridge, but I also needed readers not to look at him and go, Oh, Tiger's too in love with her OC, fuck this. Darren is actually 32 when the destroyer blows up, which is historically correct but which I can't mention, because now I have a standard issue straight white male who is not funny, not fat or ugly, sympathetic and all heroic, AND he is about the same age as the Winchesters, and now clearly this is a subterfuge! I had to make goddamn sure that the character was constantly filtered through Dean's perception of him. This is why he's "Leigh" throughout the fic: because Dean feels the distance between them, in Leigh's rank and in Dean's own respect for veterans like his dad. This is why Dean only addresses him by the first name once, at the very end of the night, as a way of recognizing him as a person more than a gruesome ghost. This is why, when Dean looks at him, he sees the blood and injury first, or is constantly waiting for them to appear - for his eye to do something weird, for blood to run. Because Darren Leigh had to be the dead captain before he was anything else.
Darren was a pain in the ass to write, like some characters are more difficult than others, and it took a a long time, a gazillion emails, a questionable tattoo and one baby-eating girlfriend to get him right. But as far as "Row Charon Row" goes, it was an interesting writing experiment to create a tragic character and NOT overdo it - don't turn him into a tear-jerker device, don't let him be so boring that readers start wondering about the contents of the fridge (theirs or Bluebeard's), don't create the impression that you're dragging your own darling baby into the spotlight. Of course he's my darling baby, just like Black Betty and Ivan and everyone else! But I never realized before how damn careful you have to be with tragic heroes in SPN fic.
I love talking shop. If you guys have something to share about your own writing technique and challenges with first lines, titles and characters, I'd be thrilled to hear it!
The fic I write start out under some working title that at least tries to be interesting, because if I have to click on a file named "Sam and Dean in the desert" or "Hell Rescue Fic #3", I'm already uninspired before even starting. Working titles like "Driftwood" that borrow some imagery but don't try to represent what the fic at least sets out to be are an equally bad fit. My personal favorite was Dinner Beneath a Hurricane. It refers to Dean's drunken dream of dining with fish and crabs in a ruined underwater restaurant, getting silently judged by the patrons for being in love with his little brother, while a hurricane rages on the surface. I like it because the title wraps up the dream, and the dream wraps up how Dean feels, and most importantly, because the title is specific and, at least for me, makes a mental image. "Like Brothers On a Motel Bed" doesn't make a mental image. WHAT is like brothers? Why is this title a dependent clause? (Here, I'm not picking on a specific fic but borrowing a song line that, I'm pretty sure, served as a title to a dozen of SPN fics.)
Favorite first line to date is The son of a goddess lived in a Bronx apartment building, behind eights door on the left, from Love and Crocodiles. I'm proud of it because it makes a nice hook: a divine character living in a place that sounds pretty unglamorous; a door, suggesting that someone is there to see this son of a goddess now.
The one fic I'm most proud of and had most fun writing was Tornado Warning, largely owing to its convoluted plot that surprised me with how nicely it clicked together. The TW half of the fic grew out of my frustration with trying to write two version of Sam without resorting to "Sammy", "RoboSam" and such. So the misaligned soul Sam, the Sam in the other Sam's guts, got amnesia and became Danny Broflovski. And around Danny Broflovski grew the Texan town, the butcher shop, the bull-headed man and the tornado weather. I LOVED how many people PM'ed me midway throught the fic to say "I have no clue what's going on but I can't wait to find out!" The NMT part of the fic, though, was not doing so well, and to this day when I think of "Tornado Warning", it's the Texan town that comes to mind first, and not RoboSam and Dean's travels. The wax-and-cold-water witch was the element that saved that half of the story when it was ready to croak on me. Incidentally, the old fat Slavic witch with her porcelain bowl and store-bought bunt cake, crime novels and anti-incest spells was the OC that made me fall in love with OCs. She was ridiculous, everything a hero wasn't supposed to be, and she was so alive and vibrant in my head that she started the whole OC trend.
Which brings me to the subject of OCs (again). My favorite was Black Betty from The Witch Is Dead, but I'm going to talk about Darren Leigh from Row Charon Row, because Darren was challenging in an interesting way. Maria Petrovna, the wax witch, was a step up to a new level, where I discovered how to write enjoyable characters. Darren Leigh was the level above that, because he was the first full-blown tragic character I've written in a fic, and that was HARD.
Dandy In the Underworld needed 10K of outsider POV to keep a secret, and the only reason it worked was because Ivan was a spoiled mobster baby douchebag. My favorite comment about him was "I hope he chokes on an olive from an overpriced martini when he gets back to the Strip". Ivan is allowed to tell the whole story, because he's not going to give anyone the impression that this is an OC trying to pull too much focus to himself or compete for the hero's spotlight. Fic, after all, is about canon characters. We're all here to read about Sam and Dean. Look at that fic in the last BB season which had a fantastic OC that nevertheless ruined the story by focusing all of author's attention. Since Maria Petrovna, every OC I've written, including the scary ones, had a touch of humor to them: the tornado demon that gets trapped in a can of tuna, Bluebeard who reminds Sam of Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Black Betty and Clementine constantly squabbling and yanking out each others' hair. If they're comical in some small way, this is my proof that I'm not writing a Mary Sue, or maybe not Mary Sue but my own hero who really has no place in an SPN fic. And I'm not saying this as some complaint against fandom. OCs have a very specific place in an SPN fic, and like everybody else, I'm going to stop reading if the OC is well-written but doesn't stay in his/her place. I'm here for Sam and Dean Winchester.
Darren Leigh was a problem. There's absolutely nothing funny about a confused ghost of a WWII veteran with a broken skull. There goes my humor defense. But then he also sounds like a classic hero. I needed Darren and the rest of his ship to evoke sympathy and distract attention from what's in the fridge, but I also needed readers not to look at him and go, Oh, Tiger's too in love with her OC, fuck this. Darren is actually 32 when the destroyer blows up, which is historically correct but which I can't mention, because now I have a standard issue straight white male who is not funny, not fat or ugly, sympathetic and all heroic, AND he is about the same age as the Winchesters, and now clearly this is a subterfuge! I had to make goddamn sure that the character was constantly filtered through Dean's perception of him. This is why he's "Leigh" throughout the fic: because Dean feels the distance between them, in Leigh's rank and in Dean's own respect for veterans like his dad. This is why Dean only addresses him by the first name once, at the very end of the night, as a way of recognizing him as a person more than a gruesome ghost. This is why, when Dean looks at him, he sees the blood and injury first, or is constantly waiting for them to appear - for his eye to do something weird, for blood to run. Because Darren Leigh had to be the dead captain before he was anything else.
Darren was a pain in the ass to write, like some characters are more difficult than others, and it took a a long time, a gazillion emails, a questionable tattoo and one baby-eating girlfriend to get him right. But as far as "Row Charon Row" goes, it was an interesting writing experiment to create a tragic character and NOT overdo it - don't turn him into a tear-jerker device, don't let him be so boring that readers start wondering about the contents of the fridge (theirs or Bluebeard's), don't create the impression that you're dragging your own darling baby into the spotlight. Of course he's my darling baby, just like Black Betty and Ivan and everyone else! But I never realized before how damn careful you have to be with tragic heroes in SPN fic.