frost muses on fanfic
You know, one of the reasons I think I like writing fanfiction so much is that I really like doing short pieces. I mean--I was looking over all the stuff I've posted, and the vast majority of it is under 3000 words. A lot of it's under a thousand, even. And maybe I'm just an instant-gratification sorta gal, but I really like sitting down, writing for half an hour, and coming up with something small and beautiful like My Soul From Out That Shadow or resplendent. (please excuse the conceit. this is my opinion only.)
And that's really hard to do with origfic. I mean, I could write six hundred words on how Bob Smith is angsting over Ted Jones, and if I tried really hard I could probably make it significant and affecting, but if I use Sheppard and McKay, or Daniel and Jack, or Neil and Todd or Don and Charlie or whoever, there's suddenly this whole great weight behind the fic. (Canon? Is heavy.) You can do so much more with so much less, because they already have this gigantic backstory. So if Bob says to Ted, "My wife used to tell me the same thing," then okay, interesting, but if Daniel says to Jack, "My wife used to tell me the same thing," then hoo boy, there's major stuff going on there--and it's stuff that I could give to Bob and Ted, but it comes free-of-wordage with Jack and Daniel.
And this is all basically obvious, but I've been thinking about it lately. And I think it has something to do with me liking Biblefic so much. If you think about my last one, And none was left but the tribe of Judah alone, (okay, those of you who read it think about it--so many people are scared of biblefic!) I could have substituted made-up place-names and people-names, and it would have been exactly the same fic--foreign official comes in to govern a vassal state, hangs around and thinks, "huh, these people are really strange. Oh, now they're going to get crushed. How sad." But the fact that it's biblefic gives it three thousand years of history's worth of punch. If it was some random fantasy kingdom, well, it'd probably be interesting and a little funny and semi-sad, but it wouldn't be nearly what the Bible makes it. Which is why I love biblefic--can't beat the Bible for weight. Bob and Ted definitely don't hold a candle.