One-shot progress
Completed "There is no Phantom of the Opera" (one-shot following Raoul's thoughts on the way up the stairs to the roof) and started work -- finally, after about two years! -- on the number-one entry in my mental 'queue', "If I Were Vicomte". Of course, as I might have predicted, when actually written it isn't coming out as a humorous spoof-fic at all, but as a 'straight' re-telling of the story as a romance with its 'Raoul' as a poor Breton peasant who is socially inferior to Christine, rather than being the entitled aristocrat of so much fan-fiction; apparently I simply can't do comedy.
The basic impetus behind the story remains my desire to demonstrate that Raoul's title wasn't created by Leroux so much as an aid to the character as it was an impediment. But having said that, I've set the story up in such a way that my Raoul-as-Yann encounters all the same problems as his canonical counterpart but ascribes them to his lack of social position, leaving the readers to draw the moral for themselves -- he has the loving parents that Raoul lacks, but of course it doesn't occur to him that his imaginary vicomte-self wouldn't be as richly endowed in that direction as he imagines he would be in romantic prowess, social influence, and independence of action...
Whether any of this is going to come across without my labouring it home with sledge-hammer humour is another question, of course :-(
It's slightly more AU than I had intended because I didn't have any access to reference material while writing it; I'm currently wondering whether I ought to try to change details to make it more canon-compliant, or leave it as originally conceived on the grounds that it is an AU concept anyway. Beyond the Abyss is hopelessly AU, for instance, for similar reasons (and I'm normally far more scrupulous about canon than most 'Phantom' authors).
A sample conundrum is my discovery that canon-Raoul actually greets Christine by kissing her (as an innocent hangover from their childhood relationship, I think -- it's in front of her father) when they meet again as teenagers, whereas Yann is thrown into confusion merely by touching her hand; one can possibly write this down to his severe case of social anxiety, since he considers the foster-family of Professor Valerius to be far more educated and refined than he is... I don't know if I can rewrite the scene to have him casually kiss her and for her to be thrown into confusion by this, which is what happens in canon :-(
At least, not without totally changing my concept of it.
As a result of turning 'straight' the story is also coming out rather longer than I had imagined and may not fit into the second half of the little diary I have "There is no Phantom" in. I'd quite like to keep it short[ish], as I really don't want to end up rewriting all the major scenes in canon with only the one detail changed; so far I've simply been expanding on the childhood scenes, which are only sketched in by Leroux (the teenage reunion consists of about one long paragraph at the bottom of a page, for instance), but the main plot points are a different matter. After all, the whole theme of the story was supposed to be to show that not much would have changed if Raoul hadn't been a vicomte after all! I also need to be careful that Yann doesn't become too whiny, given the unifying 'if I were vicomte' theme between the various scenes...
I've written pretty much all the material now that was in my original concept -- the scarf-rescue, the shy reunion and the scene with Philippe as a disapproving senior officer rather than elder brother (since recycled in "Blue Remembered Hills", of course) -- apart from Yann's and Raoul's mutual lack of influence with the management, and the ending, with Yann and his bride being welcomed to happy obscurity by his loving family in Brittany rather than fleeing the country for Scandinavia. So I have to work out how to summarise the middle without appearing to skim too much :-p I have absolutely no idea what Yann's relationship would be with the Persian, for example, or how he would imagine that being a vicomte would improve it... perhaps the daroga would deign to explain what on earth was going on instead of consciously keeping him in the dark, for instance? ;-)
I'm also wondering about publishing "There is no Phantom" in two parts rather than one, mainly in order to boost visibility and to gauge how many people read the whole thing rather than just clicking on the first chapter and disliking it. A possible split point does exist more or less halfway through, using an existing scene boundary (end of a flashback), so I'm tempted to do it; this rather depends how long the thing comes out when typed up. My estimate is about 4,000 words, which is a long single chapter or two short ones by my standards, but I have little real feel for word-counts using this little A6 volume. (Rough estimate of averaged pages: about 140 words per leaf.)
I split Child of the Law into two chapters, but that was more like 6,000 words.
This entry was originally posted at http://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/83374.html, where there are
comments.
The basic impetus behind the story remains my desire to demonstrate that Raoul's title wasn't created by Leroux so much as an aid to the character as it was an impediment. But having said that, I've set the story up in such a way that my Raoul-as-Yann encounters all the same problems as his canonical counterpart but ascribes them to his lack of social position, leaving the readers to draw the moral for themselves -- he has the loving parents that Raoul lacks, but of course it doesn't occur to him that his imaginary vicomte-self wouldn't be as richly endowed in that direction as he imagines he would be in romantic prowess, social influence, and independence of action...
Whether any of this is going to come across without my labouring it home with sledge-hammer humour is another question, of course :-(
It's slightly more AU than I had intended because I didn't have any access to reference material while writing it; I'm currently wondering whether I ought to try to change details to make it more canon-compliant, or leave it as originally conceived on the grounds that it is an AU concept anyway. Beyond the Abyss is hopelessly AU, for instance, for similar reasons (and I'm normally far more scrupulous about canon than most 'Phantom' authors).
A sample conundrum is my discovery that canon-Raoul actually greets Christine by kissing her (as an innocent hangover from their childhood relationship, I think -- it's in front of her father) when they meet again as teenagers, whereas Yann is thrown into confusion merely by touching her hand; one can possibly write this down to his severe case of social anxiety, since he considers the foster-family of Professor Valerius to be far more educated and refined than he is... I don't know if I can rewrite the scene to have him casually kiss her and for her to be thrown into confusion by this, which is what happens in canon :-(
At least, not without totally changing my concept of it.
As a result of turning 'straight' the story is also coming out rather longer than I had imagined and may not fit into the second half of the little diary I have "There is no Phantom" in. I'd quite like to keep it short[ish], as I really don't want to end up rewriting all the major scenes in canon with only the one detail changed; so far I've simply been expanding on the childhood scenes, which are only sketched in by Leroux (the teenage reunion consists of about one long paragraph at the bottom of a page, for instance), but the main plot points are a different matter. After all, the whole theme of the story was supposed to be to show that not much would have changed if Raoul hadn't been a vicomte after all! I also need to be careful that Yann doesn't become too whiny, given the unifying 'if I were vicomte' theme between the various scenes...
I've written pretty much all the material now that was in my original concept -- the scarf-rescue, the shy reunion and the scene with Philippe as a disapproving senior officer rather than elder brother (since recycled in "Blue Remembered Hills", of course) -- apart from Yann's and Raoul's mutual lack of influence with the management, and the ending, with Yann and his bride being welcomed to happy obscurity by his loving family in Brittany rather than fleeing the country for Scandinavia. So I have to work out how to summarise the middle without appearing to skim too much :-p I have absolutely no idea what Yann's relationship would be with the Persian, for example, or how he would imagine that being a vicomte would improve it... perhaps the daroga would deign to explain what on earth was going on instead of consciously keeping him in the dark, for instance? ;-)
I'm also wondering about publishing "There is no Phantom" in two parts rather than one, mainly in order to boost visibility and to gauge how many people read the whole thing rather than just clicking on the first chapter and disliking it. A possible split point does exist more or less halfway through, using an existing scene boundary (end of a flashback), so I'm tempted to do it; this rather depends how long the thing comes out when typed up. My estimate is about 4,000 words, which is a long single chapter or two short ones by my standards, but I have little real feel for word-counts using this little A6 volume. (Rough estimate of averaged pages: about 140 words per leaf.)
I split Child of the Law into two chapters, but that was more like 6,000 words.
This entry was originally posted at http://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/83374.html, where there are
comments.