{fake meta} Fiction ain't easy
I've been a thinking about my fanfic, about the quality of fanfic, and contemporary fiction.
Mostly, I've been thinking about subtext. Because, lets face it, some of the most awesome bits of TV is the subtext (and not just the homoerotic kind).
I think I've been too straightforward in my fic, saying too much and having the characters listen to each other. Who does that?
It's far more interesting to have them talk and not listen, to not say what they think. That is as much cannon as the minute details I like to adhered to.
On another note, I've been thinking about one of the truly great things about fanfic that has to be one of the benchmarks: not having to describe people and places.
I don't need to have a single line in my story as to what Giles apartment or Adelle's office looks like. Why waste the time and space describing the color of the walls or the sheen of the leather furniture?
Fanfic's work marvelously without such details, don't get me wrong. Especially in ficlets and drabbles. This benchmark is part of the draw, sidesteps what a lot of original fiction struggles with, establishing characters and places and a whole 'verse, is something the reader is already intimately familiar with.
I am guilty of this pass over. I realize now that even if we know what the characters look like, what theses spaces look like, we can miss out on some great dept in our stories.
My classic fiction example:
"Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shoulders and a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable
for a certain hysterical brilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sort of way, peculiarly
offensive in a boy. The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to belladonna, but there was
a glassy glitter about them which that drug does not produce."1
This description tells little about what this kid actually looks like; it doesn't matter as much as BAM this is who he is. Who cares about the color of his eyes when they have "a certain hysterical brilliancy"? As a fanfic writer, I don't need to describe the color of a characters eyes, (in fact, I kind of hate it), but I can say something that moves my story, that adds to the tone and dept.
My pretentious ass example:
That scent: denim soaked by
anger. Old paper. blood sheathed
in skin. Rainwater. Shaving soap
from Harrods. Oak shavings.2
The Watcher.
Of course scent is one thing open to fanfic writers because we have no inkling what the characters smell like3, so it's a detail that gets added in more often then not. But as I'm going through my stuff, I'm trying to find moments of description and they are few and far between.
Anyone else have some thoughts on this?
1) Paul's Case by Willa Cather (http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Cather/Pauls-Case.htm).
2) Moths in Rainwater (http://duh-i-read.livejournal.com/10878.html) moar egotism from me!
3) While also guilty of this once or twice, I hate when female characters smell like lavender or vanilla or cinnamon or shit like that all the time. I have an inkling vampires do not smell like much of anything.