Wilby Wonderful fic: Still Life (Duck/Dan, NC17)
Still Life [on my website]
Wilby Wonderful, Duck/Dan, NC17, about 6400 words
Summary: Duck and Dan, before and after, from there to here.
With much gratitude to riverlight and sageness, whose suggestions made this a much better story.
This is my version of the "after the end" story for Wilby Wonderful - as well as my "before the beginning" story. There are lots of these stories out there (relatively speaking), but each of them come from a slightly different perspective, and none of them exactly represented mine. Ideas in my head included:
- Wilby's a small town (population 4200!) and I can't imagine the gay cruising scene to be quite as anonymous and casual as it would be in a city.
- Duck and Dan had not had sex before, at the Watch. They just seemed so awkward together in the hotel room, with the almost-kiss.
- Duck had been in a stable relationship while he was away, but he broke up with the guy a while back. (I actually have a whole backstory in my head.) It's never said explicitly in the movie that Duck has been away from Wilby, but in the behind the scenes interviews CKR mentions it. I think he wants a stable relationship again; his line to Emily about Sandra wanting "what everyone wants, to love and be loved" suggests it to me.
- Dan had realized his sexuality a long time ago, but he suppressed it (after a few flings; again, I have more backstory in my head than made it into the story), and married Val. So he's not very experienced with men, but he's also not tentative about his desire.
- My husband and I met when we were already relatively old (me late twenties, he late thirties) and had been in a lot of relationships. We knew what we were looking for, pretty much, and things moved quickly. I've translated a bit of that to this story.
- The idea of Duck as a painter (artist) just seemed right to me - I came up with it on my own, but I have since read a story which also depicts him as such. Again, so much in my head never made it to the story!
From the beginning, I wanted to write a story which explored both backwards and forwards, which looked at what happened after the end of the movie but also which flashed back to what built up to it. So much Wilbyfic is short present-tense vignette, and even though I don't really like present tense for long stories, I decided that making the "now" (which is mostly over a continuous, short time period) present tense would throw the past-tense flashbacks into sharper relief. I wibbled over this a lot and almost scrapped and rewrote several times. The POV switch at the end happened because my "past" ran up to "now", and I needed something to help delineate the passage of time into the future. riverlight held my hand and helped me navigate the nasty Tense Minefield, which I appreciated very much.
The story changed focus a few times while I was writing it, but I think it was basically finding its own focus, and I just let it. The original working title was "Cowboys," which was just sort of pulled from the movie, but I was hoping to find a real title eventually. As I wrote, the theme of water started showing up, of movement and change, and the title "Water Flowing Under" popped into my head. I even considered turning this into an almost-songfic of the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime, with a lyric subtitle for every scene, as so many of the lyrics seemed apropos, but fortunately I came to my senses. Besides, the actual lyric was water flowing underground, which didn't work. So I begged my betas for better suggestions, and sageness suggested "Still Life With [something]," and the astonishing appositeness, the multiple meanings of "Still Life" just grabbed me. Because there is the painting meaning, and then the idea of stillness being embodied in the water, which is both still and not-still, flowing but not moving, and of course the river is a metaphor for life, here, and then there is the literal reading of "still, life" - that Dan is yet alive, that life still is there for him.
sageness is also responsible for pushing me to add more descriptive detail, which is something I tend to overlook in all my writing. Probably there still isn't enough for her, but there's a lot more than I started with!
Wilby Wonderful, Duck/Dan, NC17, about 6400 words
Summary: Duck and Dan, before and after, from there to here.
With much gratitude to riverlight and sageness, whose suggestions made this a much better story.
This is my version of the "after the end" story for Wilby Wonderful - as well as my "before the beginning" story. There are lots of these stories out there (relatively speaking), but each of them come from a slightly different perspective, and none of them exactly represented mine. Ideas in my head included:
- Wilby's a small town (population 4200!) and I can't imagine the gay cruising scene to be quite as anonymous and casual as it would be in a city.
- Duck and Dan had not had sex before, at the Watch. They just seemed so awkward together in the hotel room, with the almost-kiss.
- Duck had been in a stable relationship while he was away, but he broke up with the guy a while back. (I actually have a whole backstory in my head.) It's never said explicitly in the movie that Duck has been away from Wilby, but in the behind the scenes interviews CKR mentions it. I think he wants a stable relationship again; his line to Emily about Sandra wanting "what everyone wants, to love and be loved" suggests it to me.
- Dan had realized his sexuality a long time ago, but he suppressed it (after a few flings; again, I have more backstory in my head than made it into the story), and married Val. So he's not very experienced with men, but he's also not tentative about his desire.
- My husband and I met when we were already relatively old (me late twenties, he late thirties) and had been in a lot of relationships. We knew what we were looking for, pretty much, and things moved quickly. I've translated a bit of that to this story.
- The idea of Duck as a painter (artist) just seemed right to me - I came up with it on my own, but I have since read a story which also depicts him as such. Again, so much in my head never made it to the story!
From the beginning, I wanted to write a story which explored both backwards and forwards, which looked at what happened after the end of the movie but also which flashed back to what built up to it. So much Wilbyfic is short present-tense vignette, and even though I don't really like present tense for long stories, I decided that making the "now" (which is mostly over a continuous, short time period) present tense would throw the past-tense flashbacks into sharper relief. I wibbled over this a lot and almost scrapped and rewrote several times. The POV switch at the end happened because my "past" ran up to "now", and I needed something to help delineate the passage of time into the future. riverlight held my hand and helped me navigate the nasty Tense Minefield, which I appreciated very much.
The story changed focus a few times while I was writing it, but I think it was basically finding its own focus, and I just let it. The original working title was "Cowboys," which was just sort of pulled from the movie, but I was hoping to find a real title eventually. As I wrote, the theme of water started showing up, of movement and change, and the title "Water Flowing Under" popped into my head. I even considered turning this into an almost-songfic of the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime, with a lyric subtitle for every scene, as so many of the lyrics seemed apropos, but fortunately I came to my senses. Besides, the actual lyric was water flowing underground, which didn't work. So I begged my betas for better suggestions, and sageness suggested "Still Life With [something]," and the astonishing appositeness, the multiple meanings of "Still Life" just grabbed me. Because there is the painting meaning, and then the idea of stillness being embodied in the water, which is both still and not-still, flowing but not moving, and of course the river is a metaphor for life, here, and then there is the literal reading of "still, life" - that Dan is yet alive, that life still is there for him.
sageness is also responsible for pushing me to add more descriptive detail, which is something I tend to overlook in all my writing. Probably there still isn't enough for her, but there's a lot more than I started with!