6th December
Sarah Jane of the Chalet School by Paranoidangel. Art by Laurab1 and Widgeon7
Title: Sarah Jane of the Chalet School
Author: paranoidangel42
Fandom: Old Who, Chalet School
Characters/Pairings: Sarah-Jane/Harry
Rating: PG
Word count: 26,176
Betas: Tanaqui, hhertzof, ladyvivien and Selenay
Summary: AU. In the 1930s in Austria, Sarah Jane Smith comes to the Chalet School to teach while looking for a journalism job, and Harry Sullivan takes a job at the nearby Sanatorium. They meet and fall in love, but with these two it's never going to be that simple.
Notes from the Author
For me the Big Bang ficathon was quite handy because I had an idea in my mind of a story transplanting Sarah and Harry into the Chalet School stories in the Austrian era, but that was as far as it had got. Having deadlines actually makes me write, although when I signed up I wasn't at all sure I could write that much. Before that point my longest story had been under 20,000 words, and in the end this one was only just over.
I started off doing research with an idea of having a plan of what I was going to write by the end of 2007. So I re-read the first twelve Chalet School books with a notebook by my side, where I wrote down anything that might be significant and any small details that I knew I'd forget, along with the book and page number so I could find it again later. I got so used to doing this that when I read some Chalet School books recently I kept on having to remind myself it didn't matter any more and I didn't need to make any notes!
I wrote the fic in chapters, which I changed to scenes for the final version. But chapters helped me sort out what was happening in each, whose point of view it was (as I swapped between Sarah and Harry) and work out how much to write at a time. Also, I knew that if I wrote 1000-1500 word chapters and write twenty of them I'd have enough words by the time I finished. Mind you, after the first draft I took out quite a few chapters and only had to change the point of view in one of them - but that one I think works better the way round it ended up.
I had intended to have a B-plot, which was mostly because I didn't think the A-plot would give me enough words. When this story is set Jack is in love with Joey, and various people know it, but Joey doesn't. Later they marry, but I was planning on contrasting their relationship with Harry and Sarah's. However, I never had quite enough time to write it and never quite worked out what I was doing with it, so I dropped the chapters that were supposed to be B-plot and had no A-plot in.
Despite writing an AU I tried to keep it as close to canon as possible. When it comes to the Chalet School books there's nothing to say that there wasn't another teacher at the Annex and another doctor at the San. Obviously, it goes quite a long way off Doctor Who canon, since it supposes Sarah and Harry were born forty years earlier than they actually were. But even so, I still tried to stick to as much canon as possible: Sarah and Harry still both travel in the TARDIS, albeit not at the same time as each other; and reading between the lines in various canon sources tell us that Harry and Esther broke up partly because of the (physical) distance between them, and partly because he fell in love with Sarah.
There were a lot of firsts for me with this, because it was my first go at writing romance. I'd done little snippets of things, mostly a long time ago, but this was different. As much as I love Sarah and Harry I can never see them getting together. Putting them in an environment where Harry would have been normal and Sarah ahead of her time was the only way I could make it work. Well, for a while, anyway :)
Since I was writing a crossover with a series of British books that although a lot of people (in this country) have read, a lot of them won't remember anything of them. So when it came to betaing I made sure I had someone who didn't know the books, since I knew people reading it would be familiar with Doctor Who, if not Sarah and Harry. She only knew my characters vaguely, both Chalet School and Doctor Who, and enjoyed it, so I took that as a good sign!
What others said:
But lets be honest, this is the harry and sarah we love.
Read all comments here WARNING! Comments may contain spoilers for the story. And remember, it's never too late to tell the author you liked it!
Art is by laurab1, widgeon7 Click the thumbnails to leave them feedback
Title: Sarah Jane of the Chalet School
Author: paranoidangel42
Fandom: Old Who, Chalet School
Characters/Pairings: Sarah-Jane/Harry
Rating: PG
Word count: 26,176
Betas: Tanaqui, hhertzof, ladyvivien and Selenay
Summary: AU. In the 1930s in Austria, Sarah Jane Smith comes to the Chalet School to teach while looking for a journalism job, and Harry Sullivan takes a job at the nearby Sanatorium. They meet and fall in love, but with these two it's never going to be that simple.
Notes from the Author
For me the Big Bang ficathon was quite handy because I had an idea in my mind of a story transplanting Sarah and Harry into the Chalet School stories in the Austrian era, but that was as far as it had got. Having deadlines actually makes me write, although when I signed up I wasn't at all sure I could write that much. Before that point my longest story had been under 20,000 words, and in the end this one was only just over.
I started off doing research with an idea of having a plan of what I was going to write by the end of 2007. So I re-read the first twelve Chalet School books with a notebook by my side, where I wrote down anything that might be significant and any small details that I knew I'd forget, along with the book and page number so I could find it again later. I got so used to doing this that when I read some Chalet School books recently I kept on having to remind myself it didn't matter any more and I didn't need to make any notes!
I wrote the fic in chapters, which I changed to scenes for the final version. But chapters helped me sort out what was happening in each, whose point of view it was (as I swapped between Sarah and Harry) and work out how much to write at a time. Also, I knew that if I wrote 1000-1500 word chapters and write twenty of them I'd have enough words by the time I finished. Mind you, after the first draft I took out quite a few chapters and only had to change the point of view in one of them - but that one I think works better the way round it ended up.
I had intended to have a B-plot, which was mostly because I didn't think the A-plot would give me enough words. When this story is set Jack is in love with Joey, and various people know it, but Joey doesn't. Later they marry, but I was planning on contrasting their relationship with Harry and Sarah's. However, I never had quite enough time to write it and never quite worked out what I was doing with it, so I dropped the chapters that were supposed to be B-plot and had no A-plot in.
Despite writing an AU I tried to keep it as close to canon as possible. When it comes to the Chalet School books there's nothing to say that there wasn't another teacher at the Annex and another doctor at the San. Obviously, it goes quite a long way off Doctor Who canon, since it supposes Sarah and Harry were born forty years earlier than they actually were. But even so, I still tried to stick to as much canon as possible: Sarah and Harry still both travel in the TARDIS, albeit not at the same time as each other; and reading between the lines in various canon sources tell us that Harry and Esther broke up partly because of the (physical) distance between them, and partly because he fell in love with Sarah.
There were a lot of firsts for me with this, because it was my first go at writing romance. I'd done little snippets of things, mostly a long time ago, but this was different. As much as I love Sarah and Harry I can never see them getting together. Putting them in an environment where Harry would have been normal and Sarah ahead of her time was the only way I could make it work. Well, for a while, anyway :)
Since I was writing a crossover with a series of British books that although a lot of people (in this country) have read, a lot of them won't remember anything of them. So when it came to betaing I made sure I had someone who didn't know the books, since I knew people reading it would be familiar with Doctor Who, if not Sarah and Harry. She only knew my characters vaguely, both Chalet School and Doctor Who, and enjoyed it, so I took that as a good sign!
What others said:
But lets be honest, this is the harry and sarah we love.
Read all comments here WARNING! Comments may contain spoilers for the story. And remember, it's never too late to tell the author you liked it!
Art is by laurab1, widgeon7 Click the thumbnails to leave them feedback