FIC: Soaked
The notes that follow are not necessary to receive this drabble and can impose certain interpretation, so feel free to skip them if you’d rather avoid this. The fic can of course stand on its own, and is another take on the rain prompt at sirius_remus100.
I wrote this piece for paulamcg (at least in as much as I could ever write anything for anyone), whose particular ( Read more... )
I wrote this piece for paulamcg (at least in as much as I could ever write anything for anyone), whose particular ( Read more... )
You’re offering a very interesting diagnosis of your problems (and I’m happy that my babbling could out you on this track). Perhaps this is the moment when you have to more decisively enter and influence your story. It’s occurred to me now: what if you subconsciously refuse to do it (and end up not writing in consequence), because you fear it will shatter the illusion of reality you are experiencing as the alpha reader when you let the story evolve before your eyes? What if you’re afraid that, when you direct Remus somewhere on purpose, arbitrarily deciding what ought to happen, you will disturb the natural course of events and your own conviction that all this is true?
As for my writing, yes, I suppose that doing it more purposefully, with a clear goal in mind, instead of just recording images that come to me of themselves, might allow me to better control the emerging of characters from my fiction. No idea whether the theory is right, but I must try it. If I can, that is.
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Your diagnosis of my problems convinces me (and your excellent wording of it impresses me). It’s incredible that you can do all this for me, while it should be up to me to choose the diagnosis which I genuinely feel is the right one for me. I think I’ve had this fear for a couple of years (since just before the HBP release I was told that, after all that time and those words, I should have been close to the resolutions and known what they were going to be). Perhaps this diagnosis is right for me now when I’m also guided to think what I can do. Could I enter the story by somehow disguising myself as the older Remus who remembers all this and also knows how it ends? (That shouldn’t be too alien to me, as this Remus of 1996 is there in those letters he writes, sometimes even in the present tense, from the schoolboy’s perspective.) That wouldn’t necessarily mean that I’d include future paragraphs like those in A Midnight Clear (or at the beginnings or ends of the letters). In fact, back in 2003 or early 2004 I wrote a dialogue scene which would be set at the end of the story. I don’t think I like my writing in it any longer, but I should now give some thought to the reality behind it.
As for your theory on your writing, I trust you’ll try (your best to try) it, as you won’t stop. Do you know what you want to say, or is there something you’d really like to tell us in what happened to Remus and Sirius? Perhaps you could take them through a chain of situations and that would reveal their characters in more nuances.
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I understand the idea about disguising yourself as the older Remus, whose mind ‘contains’ all the story. Can it work, though? The older Remus knows what happened, all right, but he hadn’t chosen what would happen. Unless you just let his knowledge fill you, you convince yourself that it has already happened, and trust that the solutions just, well, found themselves. I might be taking a wrong perspective, but I fail to see the possibility for you to influence the story this way, either.
No, there’s nothing particular I have in mind. That’s the problem. I never know anything until it just comes of itself. I can hardly put Remus and Sirius into any situation artificially, I either see them or not. It’s like, I don’t want to tell anything about them, I merely happen to have something to tell from time to time. Well, recently a bit more often …
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I don’t know if it’s arrogant of me to think my theory could work. How could I approach such a perspective from which there is no time in the sense humans experience it - so that everything has already happened while it is also going to - is meant to - happen. I must stay blind and have faith. I do think too much. Perhaps after this I’ll be happy to get back to simply writing without any theories or treatments.
If you don’t feel that your Remus and Sirius are persons, and that you could find out what happened to them by following them from one situation to the next ones (and telling us about it at the same time)… perhaps you’d at least like to say something about what it means to be human in some respect, or rather try to learn to understand a bit better what it could mean? Or just continue to show moments in a relationship, with more or less context, as you can do it so evocatively in any case.
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I like the idea that you’d stay blind and have faith. Now that I’ve reached the temporary end of “Revolt” and see how much there is still to be written, as well as the results of your ‘just’ following Remus, I am blissfully certain that you can go on like that and let the story come to its conclusions naturally.
I can’t remember my reaction when I first received this comment of yours, but now upon rereading it I was startled by your suggestion:
… perhaps you’d at least like to say something about what it means to be human in some respect, or rather try to learn to understand a bit better what it could mean?
Do you mean that I could use Remus and Sirius’s story in order to say something like that? But I don’t have anything to say about being human! At least not consciously. I have no idea why I should want to, or how. If you think that I am tackling this issue in my writing, then I am most happy and flattered, but I never intended to make statements about being human. Like you said, I just “show moments in a relationship”, the way I imagine them, and perhaps only show my own understanding of the world. But never consciously, no.
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Oh, now I really need all the faith I can borrow from you, too, as I can’t deny there is a lot more to be written. And at the same time you also remind me of the fic promised by Pamela, who does not seem to be reliable at all! There’s certainly no reason to complain about lack of story ideas to think about here while waiting for your return. But I’ll also be thinking about you and hoping that everything is going splendidly.
I … perhaps only show my own understanding of the world
I suppose that’s how we can tackle this issue best, while telling stories or showing moments, without consciously making statements. I don’t know if it’s good to be aware of an agenda like “developing understanding of what it means to be human”. But towards the end of last year, I think, I read on minisinoo’s journal (she’s the professional and multi-fandom novelist who could not follow what I Don’t Dream was about) that fiction consists of style and heart, and the heart of the story stands for “the writer’s insight into what it means to be human”. And I just could not help becoming fond of the idea.
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