Discussion Post: Writing!
So my Creative Writing homework (the one I should be doing right now *facepalm*) is to write a personal essay on something we are passionate about. I feel this may be somewhat redundant, but I'm going to do it on writing, why I write and when I started writing and such (because I feel an essay on fandom with just garner confusion *g
( Read more... )
It usually started with a basic idea or character or story that SOMEHOW inspired me. (Sometimes it came from a piece of music, a rl situation, or it was out-of-the-blue). I sometimes wrote about these things, but I mostly thought about them or talked about them with friends. What started as simple ideas grew and morphed and changed into epic tales that were rarely written down in full. In HS my friends and I did a lot of roleplaying. We each created a character and then we put them into a world and said "GO!" Some of my best work came out of things like that, and it was SO MUCH FUN. My characters got to interact with other characters that I didn't know completely and utterly like I did my own, if that makes any sense, and it was wonderful.
Um. Haha. Essay here… I also had my own universe where all the characters were mine, and most of my friends had their own sets of characters in their own world too. This is mostly what we talked about, our babies, and sometimes they 'verses overlapped and sometimes they didn't, and sometimes we wrote down their adventures and sometimes we drew them and we were ALWAYS fleshing them out. So I write because of that. I had a set of characters that I was passionate about (and man, I really miss them sometimes T.T) and instead of chronologically writing their stories, I only wrote the bits that interested me. Basically, I was writing fic in my own universe. But these stories were inspired by funny situations I had been in, or crazy conversations with my friends or just about anything in the sun.
I write fic for much the same reason. I feel like EVERYONE who follows ANY kind of story for an extended period of time (Harry Potter, Grey's Anatomy, Buffy) but isn't necessarily into fandom, will still sit around and think about the characters and suddenly think up a silly or tragic or awesome or brilliant scenario with them, but won't write it down because they don't really care enough and besides, wouldn't know what to do with a story about fictional characters owned by someone else. I feel we, as fen, are lucky to have an outlet for these sometimes-silly, insignificant side stories for characters we're emotionally invested in. (Haha that sounds a little holier-than-thou, but I really didn't mean it like that.)
AND…that's it. Because my thoughts are all over the place tonight and I don't have enough motivation to put this together in a more comprehensible manner. xp
Reply
That sounds totally awesome about you roleplaying. It sounds like so much fun and it's wonderful that you got to share your creativity like that with people. I'm always terrified of telling people about my original ideas because I'm worried they'll laugh at me for thinking too big XD
Yes! I do think that us people in fandom are lucky, in a way. I wonder how many people who aren't in fandom but are fans of things get ideas about their show/book/movie/whatever but don't write them down because they feel limited by the fact that someone else is writing the stories. Because I wonder, what is the different between us in fandom and those not in fandom? We can't be a certain subset of a population that are more inclined to write fanfic? We gotta be more common than that, I feel, and I wonder how many people who aren't or don't know about fandom would be into it, you know?
I LOVE YOUR THOUGHTS, THOUGH :D
Reply
NO SUCH THING as thinking too big for stories. They become more and more fun to play in the more intricate they get. ALL our stories were way too big. We each had our EPIC character sets and universes, and sometimes they overlapped with each other and… (OUR STORIES that we told each other make me wonder about Harry Potter. With the whole "Dumbledore is gay" thing that came out a while ago, well, it made me really think about all the side stories and character tidbits jkr must have had plotted out in her head and shared with her friends and laughed about. B/c when you think about it, only the bare essentials are actually put into a published work… I would have loved to be in her inner circle of friends during her HP years.)
WHAT IS YOUR ORIGINAL STORYYY? (haha I really like hearing about other people's universes and headspaces and characters. <3)
I feel like the difference between us groups of people is our commitment…? I know I get REALLY attached to sets of characters and plot lines, whether mine or someone else's. I've had brief conversations about this with a roommate of mine, and while she's really into a couple of shows, it's nowhere near the level of devotion that many of us feel. So fandom is created by necessity by people who have strong fixations on certain 'verses and need an outlet for it, for the stories they create and to have people to talk to that love these stories just as much as they do, because I think this laser-focused intensity is rare in society so we have to go online to find others like us.
I should discuss this with my sister, because she's really into SPN, but not really into fandom in general. She's dabbled for different series etc. but not as much as me…
Reply
Leave a comment