Authorly Navel-Gazing for Influence
DONE!
DONE DONE DONE!
Now onto the sequel...
But first, for those interested in the writing process and such, some navel-gazing...
- I sometimes feel awkward with comments that try to predict what will happen because they inevitably come up with stuff better than what I actually have planned. All the people predicting that the big plan at the end would go wrong? Well, yeah, it kinda didn't. Heh. I'm bad at adding complications of that sort.
Though, in my defense, when I outlined this story many years ago, Spike not making it through the portal initially was the complication. Pacing being what it was, the part of the story with Buffy by herself in Sunnydale ended up being longer than I'd expected, so the ULTIMATE climax shifted.
- That being said, that's all just the plotty stuff. The emotional climax was the chapter, "Demons", wherein Buffy and Spike hit their respective rock-bottoms. That was the most difficult chapter to write, and not just cause I'm squeamish.
The scene with Buffy giving a blowjob for some drugs was difficult more for the technical side of how much detail to go into, how far would she go, would the readers hate me forever for it?
But the absolute hands down hardest scene was Spike torturing Avery. I wasn't certain on his characterization, and I agonized about how he should react to it. Should he enjoy it? Would it be going too far to make him shaky and nauseous over it? How much guilt could I pile on him?
I often plan out my stories while driving (cause I have to drive a lot nowadays), and on one occasion I remembered Spike's hesitation to try to kill the girl in the alley in Smashed. That cemented it for me. If Spike would have to reluctantly talk himself into feeding from someone after < 1 year being a White Hat, of COURSE he would have a crisis of conscience upon being asked to torture a human after five years spent not killing humans. Especially as he did have something of a soul in him, regardless of the fact that he's often at odds with it.
Once I had that, the scene was easier to write. Well, in that respect. It was still a hard scene to write just cause...torture scenes are never fun. I initially had Spike doing a lot worse to her when I thought he might enjoy it more, but I cut those parts out once I got the hang of how his character would react.
- I felt bad for the Scoobies because they were coming across so horribly. I limited myself to Buffy and Spike's POV while writing and so never got the chance to show what was happening behind the scenes, so to speak, for the Scoobies to do what they did. I imagine the divulging of Buffy's history was an honest accident. Xander or Willow mispoke or something. Once it came out, it all came out.
But since the story's not about any of them, it didn't make sense to spend any time in their headspace, so we just see Buffy's POV of things, and yeah, the Scoobies came out as jerks.
I don't know whether I'll expand the POV for the sequel. We'll see.
- Speaking of POVs, originally the last chapter was all in Buffy's POV. Then I realized I couldn't just conclude with that. I mean, Spike gained and lost his soul! What the hell is he thinking?
So I went back and rewrote the last part from Spike's POV. This actually allowed me to smooth out the sex miscommunication to make it work better.
Fun story: that whole miscommunication came about because I forgot Spike didn't have a bed in his crypt until S6. When I started writing, I fully planned to have the fic end with Buffy falling asleep in Spike's bed. As I was writing the scene later, I double checked screencaps and saw that he had no bed, so rather than go back and rewrite what I'd had written, I just went with it and made it a miscommunication. I fucking hate rewriting whole scenes.
I was a little sad to lose Buffy's POV in the last scene, because I was attached to some of the stuff I did with it, but I felt it was so important to let Spike have the stage. Spike got a bit tucked away near the end of Influence cause he was stuck captured and, well, there wasn't much horribly interesting to do with him in the meantime, there. Dude's stuck bound and in a supply tent.
The sequel will include more Spike time, to be sure. He might even be naked during some of it. YOU NEVER KNOW!
- Influence was more challenging than most for me in that I can't relate to Buffy too much. Honestly, drugs and addiction are so far beyond my realm of experience. I did a lot of reading off Erowid and various other sites to get some grasp of what it was like.
The reason I made Buffy addicted to cocaine rather than a "harder" drug (or having her experiment with mixing drugs and such) is because I don't feel I know enough about that to write it well. Coke, I can grok. It's a powder. You snort it. Stuff like crack and heroin? Well, I know it involves injections and maybe spoons with lighters, but...yeah...
So I kept it purposely simple.
Once I got myself well-versed enough on cocaine to feel comfortable writing it, I had to read up on withdrawal from cocaine. It's tempting, after doing some research, to try to throw it all into the story to PROVE that you know what you're talking about. I tried to resist doing so. Cocaine withdrawal is one of the less exciting drug withdrawals in terms of the drama factor. You don't have the tremors or crazies or anything. With coke, apparently, you sleep a lot and have IMMENSE CRAVINGS (that might lead you to stealing money from your mother and giving a blowjob to a drug dealer in a back alley).
I'm afraid that I was probably inconsistent with the drug stuff throughout the story, and I will absolutely fess up that I embellished some for the sake of the narrative. Creative license and all that.
- Of course, Buffy's addiction will play a part in the sequel, and I'm looking forward to exploring it. I dropped some hints as to the direction that's gonna go in the last couple chapters of Influence. I also hope to use a BDSM relationship between Buffy and Spike to explore a) Buffy's trauma of being forced into prostitution and b) Spike's trauma of what he did to Avery. In addition to researching drug addiction, I've been researching PTSD, another thing I have no experience of.
The BDSM relationship, especially, promises to be challenging because I want to be able to portray it in a way that highlights the issues it's dealing with, but without being overly prurient. The sex in Influence was always fairly unsexy for me to write, and I imagine this will be, too.
I'm looking forward to it all. I have ideas for scenes and such bouncing around my head, and there are some key things I want to do. Influence was very plot-dependent. It had a standard "journey" plot: Protags must get from Point A to Point B. The sequel will be a lot more character-focused. Yes, it'll deal with everything that happens in S5, but the driving force of the conflict will be the characters and the baggage they acquired in the other world.
I also think the sequel will read a bit more consistently. Like, with Influence, each chapter was it's own little mini-story with an independent theme and resolution (though less so with some of the "arc" chapters). I think there'll be less of that in the sequel as I'm gonna try to write the bulk of it before I start posting.
Also, on a shallower note, I find the idea of a short-haired older!Buffy wearing Spike's coat adorable. I hope he lets her wear his coat some more in the sequel!
This entry was originally posted at http://gabrielleabelle.dreamwidth.org/365387.html. There are
comments on the DW side. Comments are welcome on either side. Due to massive SPAM issues on LJ, anon comments are only on the DW side.
DONE DONE DONE!
Now onto the sequel...
But first, for those interested in the writing process and such, some navel-gazing...
- I sometimes feel awkward with comments that try to predict what will happen because they inevitably come up with stuff better than what I actually have planned. All the people predicting that the big plan at the end would go wrong? Well, yeah, it kinda didn't. Heh. I'm bad at adding complications of that sort.
Though, in my defense, when I outlined this story many years ago, Spike not making it through the portal initially was the complication. Pacing being what it was, the part of the story with Buffy by herself in Sunnydale ended up being longer than I'd expected, so the ULTIMATE climax shifted.
- That being said, that's all just the plotty stuff. The emotional climax was the chapter, "Demons", wherein Buffy and Spike hit their respective rock-bottoms. That was the most difficult chapter to write, and not just cause I'm squeamish.
The scene with Buffy giving a blowjob for some drugs was difficult more for the technical side of how much detail to go into, how far would she go, would the readers hate me forever for it?
But the absolute hands down hardest scene was Spike torturing Avery. I wasn't certain on his characterization, and I agonized about how he should react to it. Should he enjoy it? Would it be going too far to make him shaky and nauseous over it? How much guilt could I pile on him?
I often plan out my stories while driving (cause I have to drive a lot nowadays), and on one occasion I remembered Spike's hesitation to try to kill the girl in the alley in Smashed. That cemented it for me. If Spike would have to reluctantly talk himself into feeding from someone after < 1 year being a White Hat, of COURSE he would have a crisis of conscience upon being asked to torture a human after five years spent not killing humans. Especially as he did have something of a soul in him, regardless of the fact that he's often at odds with it.
Once I had that, the scene was easier to write. Well, in that respect. It was still a hard scene to write just cause...torture scenes are never fun. I initially had Spike doing a lot worse to her when I thought he might enjoy it more, but I cut those parts out once I got the hang of how his character would react.
- I felt bad for the Scoobies because they were coming across so horribly. I limited myself to Buffy and Spike's POV while writing and so never got the chance to show what was happening behind the scenes, so to speak, for the Scoobies to do what they did. I imagine the divulging of Buffy's history was an honest accident. Xander or Willow mispoke or something. Once it came out, it all came out.
But since the story's not about any of them, it didn't make sense to spend any time in their headspace, so we just see Buffy's POV of things, and yeah, the Scoobies came out as jerks.
I don't know whether I'll expand the POV for the sequel. We'll see.
- Speaking of POVs, originally the last chapter was all in Buffy's POV. Then I realized I couldn't just conclude with that. I mean, Spike gained and lost his soul! What the hell is he thinking?
So I went back and rewrote the last part from Spike's POV. This actually allowed me to smooth out the sex miscommunication to make it work better.
Fun story: that whole miscommunication came about because I forgot Spike didn't have a bed in his crypt until S6. When I started writing, I fully planned to have the fic end with Buffy falling asleep in Spike's bed. As I was writing the scene later, I double checked screencaps and saw that he had no bed, so rather than go back and rewrite what I'd had written, I just went with it and made it a miscommunication. I fucking hate rewriting whole scenes.
I was a little sad to lose Buffy's POV in the last scene, because I was attached to some of the stuff I did with it, but I felt it was so important to let Spike have the stage. Spike got a bit tucked away near the end of Influence cause he was stuck captured and, well, there wasn't much horribly interesting to do with him in the meantime, there. Dude's stuck bound and in a supply tent.
The sequel will include more Spike time, to be sure. He might even be naked during some of it. YOU NEVER KNOW!
- Influence was more challenging than most for me in that I can't relate to Buffy too much. Honestly, drugs and addiction are so far beyond my realm of experience. I did a lot of reading off Erowid and various other sites to get some grasp of what it was like.
The reason I made Buffy addicted to cocaine rather than a "harder" drug (or having her experiment with mixing drugs and such) is because I don't feel I know enough about that to write it well. Coke, I can grok. It's a powder. You snort it. Stuff like crack and heroin? Well, I know it involves injections and maybe spoons with lighters, but...yeah...
So I kept it purposely simple.
Once I got myself well-versed enough on cocaine to feel comfortable writing it, I had to read up on withdrawal from cocaine. It's tempting, after doing some research, to try to throw it all into the story to PROVE that you know what you're talking about. I tried to resist doing so. Cocaine withdrawal is one of the less exciting drug withdrawals in terms of the drama factor. You don't have the tremors or crazies or anything. With coke, apparently, you sleep a lot and have IMMENSE CRAVINGS (that might lead you to stealing money from your mother and giving a blowjob to a drug dealer in a back alley).
I'm afraid that I was probably inconsistent with the drug stuff throughout the story, and I will absolutely fess up that I embellished some for the sake of the narrative. Creative license and all that.
- Of course, Buffy's addiction will play a part in the sequel, and I'm looking forward to exploring it. I dropped some hints as to the direction that's gonna go in the last couple chapters of Influence. I also hope to use a BDSM relationship between Buffy and Spike to explore a) Buffy's trauma of being forced into prostitution and b) Spike's trauma of what he did to Avery. In addition to researching drug addiction, I've been researching PTSD, another thing I have no experience of.
The BDSM relationship, especially, promises to be challenging because I want to be able to portray it in a way that highlights the issues it's dealing with, but without being overly prurient. The sex in Influence was always fairly unsexy for me to write, and I imagine this will be, too.
I'm looking forward to it all. I have ideas for scenes and such bouncing around my head, and there are some key things I want to do. Influence was very plot-dependent. It had a standard "journey" plot: Protags must get from Point A to Point B. The sequel will be a lot more character-focused. Yes, it'll deal with everything that happens in S5, but the driving force of the conflict will be the characters and the baggage they acquired in the other world.
I also think the sequel will read a bit more consistently. Like, with Influence, each chapter was it's own little mini-story with an independent theme and resolution (though less so with some of the "arc" chapters). I think there'll be less of that in the sequel as I'm gonna try to write the bulk of it before I start posting.
Also, on a shallower note, I find the idea of a short-haired older!Buffy wearing Spike's coat adorable. I hope he lets her wear his coat some more in the sequel!
This entry was originally posted at http://gabrielleabelle.dreamwidth.org/365387.html. There are
comments on the DW side. Comments are welcome on either side. Due to massive SPAM issues on LJ, anon comments are only on the DW side.