The Wrong Kind of Fic
I'm trying to take a quick break from Futureproof to work on the second in my Transport series, tentatively titled "The Wrong Kind of Snow", in which an asexual Sherlock takes the next step in a sexual relationship with John. It's a series that's close to my heart, because reasons, and it's frustrating me that it keeps diving off in a direction I don't want.
It's not supposed to be a talky fic. I don't want vast long relationship negotiations that fix things, because (1) it's not in character and (2) it doesn't fit with the source material I'm transforming. But I do very much want to convey the complexity and the nontraditional joy of the relationship. It's the same tug of war between narrative causality and truth that I had to put up with while writing Carpooling, the first fic in the series. Only now I've got a third player in the tug of war which is the 'feeling' that's been laid down by the first story.
In my source, the way the relationship progresses between someone who doesn't really understand that they're asexual and someone who's assuming everything is normal, there's a lot of miscommunication. And some messiness, and confusion and shame and accidental button pressing and all those things, and there's some dysfunctional unsatisfying sexual encounters, but also an increasing propertion that might seem dysfunctional but are satisfying on all sides in their various ways. And there's some communication which lights things up, but not much because everyone's just guessing what the answers might be. Mostly, it's two people struggling along in the dark, trying to understand themselves and each other, making each other's lives better in all sorts of myriad ways, because they want to and they can.
Aces can and do have satisfying sexual relationships, because they experience what's called secondary sexual desire. They can desire to have sex with someone for a reason other than their own sexual pleasure. And that? Is totally okay. But I guess I'm finding it hard to convey the okayness of that. I guess that's why I started writing the story, because that's the okayness of that is the story I wanted to tell.
The first story is pretty firmly show-not-tell, very close POV, and it's left a little ambiguous. There's very few lines of dialogue, and I like it that way. And Sherlock is a faintly unreliable narrator, disconnected enough from his own experience that no one including him is quite certain what he feels, which I love.
This story's not like that. It's getting looooong, particularly for a 'quick' flashwork before I get back to what I'm supposed to be working on. It's over 5K words so far of the stuff I'm fairly certain I'm keeping, which is... a lot of writing in a fairly short time, for me. Which is good. And annoying. For some reason, despite what I set out to write, in this story my keyboard wants them to talk talk talk talk talk. And John's doing a lot of being patient and understanding and mildly horrified, and Sherlock's alternating between petulant sulking and making frustratedly awkward romantic declarations. Except when he's being passive.
I'm tearing out my hair. I've written the same conversation at least four different ways, and there's a lot of great lines and great interactions to cherry-pick, but I'm not sure I want any of them in the story. Because... the whole point was the not talking. This is going to fall out differently to my source, because you know what? The people involved are different to the characters in this story. And that's okay too.
Now I think about it, I've had this very same happen before, when I was writing Ring Truly. The problem there wasn't about the story not being true enough, but I guess I had similarly fixed ideas about forcing characters to follow a storyline that didn't come easily, forcing them to be happy when the ideas felt a bit angsty. All Lex and Clark wanted to do was talk it out, which while it immediately fixed all the problems, did not work for their characters or the story. The solution then was to kill Lois, which sent them straight back into a deep and not-talky connection, and to ruthlessly kill all the explainy OOC dialogue. No Lois here to kill, although it occurs to me I've disappeared Mary by unspecified hurtful means, I could lean further into that..
The OOC dialogue has to go. And I have to find a way to do it all through body language and experiencial incidents. Sherlock needs some fire. So does John. And apparently I have to find a way to let myself write happy sex scenes. Me. Writing sex where no one's crying on the inside. /o\ I don't think I'll ever be able to write sexy sex. But I guess if I'm ever going to be able to write at least happyish sex, it'll be this story. I've got most of two scenes, I don't know how they play for other people, but they're fine for me. I think I need a third, too, but okay.
You know the other thing I need to do? Stop obsessing about what's wrong with this story, and just write it. Even if it's wrong. Leave the dialogue. Fill in the gaps, tidy it up, get it done. Not perfect; out the door. Enough with the pointless, euphemistic excuses for why it's not right. Do the thing.
Yeah, yeah, I already knew that.
It's not supposed to be a talky fic. I don't want vast long relationship negotiations that fix things, because (1) it's not in character and (2) it doesn't fit with the source material I'm transforming. But I do very much want to convey the complexity and the nontraditional joy of the relationship. It's the same tug of war between narrative causality and truth that I had to put up with while writing Carpooling, the first fic in the series. Only now I've got a third player in the tug of war which is the 'feeling' that's been laid down by the first story.
In my source, the way the relationship progresses between someone who doesn't really understand that they're asexual and someone who's assuming everything is normal, there's a lot of miscommunication. And some messiness, and confusion and shame and accidental button pressing and all those things, and there's some dysfunctional unsatisfying sexual encounters, but also an increasing propertion that might seem dysfunctional but are satisfying on all sides in their various ways. And there's some communication which lights things up, but not much because everyone's just guessing what the answers might be. Mostly, it's two people struggling along in the dark, trying to understand themselves and each other, making each other's lives better in all sorts of myriad ways, because they want to and they can.
Aces can and do have satisfying sexual relationships, because they experience what's called secondary sexual desire. They can desire to have sex with someone for a reason other than their own sexual pleasure. And that? Is totally okay. But I guess I'm finding it hard to convey the okayness of that. I guess that's why I started writing the story, because that's the okayness of that is the story I wanted to tell.
The first story is pretty firmly show-not-tell, very close POV, and it's left a little ambiguous. There's very few lines of dialogue, and I like it that way. And Sherlock is a faintly unreliable narrator, disconnected enough from his own experience that no one including him is quite certain what he feels, which I love.
This story's not like that. It's getting looooong, particularly for a 'quick' flashwork before I get back to what I'm supposed to be working on. It's over 5K words so far of the stuff I'm fairly certain I'm keeping, which is... a lot of writing in a fairly short time, for me. Which is good. And annoying. For some reason, despite what I set out to write, in this story my keyboard wants them to talk talk talk talk talk. And John's doing a lot of being patient and understanding and mildly horrified, and Sherlock's alternating between petulant sulking and making frustratedly awkward romantic declarations. Except when he's being passive.
I'm tearing out my hair. I've written the same conversation at least four different ways, and there's a lot of great lines and great interactions to cherry-pick, but I'm not sure I want any of them in the story. Because... the whole point was the not talking. This is going to fall out differently to my source, because you know what? The people involved are different to the characters in this story. And that's okay too.
Now I think about it, I've had this very same happen before, when I was writing Ring Truly. The problem there wasn't about the story not being true enough, but I guess I had similarly fixed ideas about forcing characters to follow a storyline that didn't come easily, forcing them to be happy when the ideas felt a bit angsty. All Lex and Clark wanted to do was talk it out, which while it immediately fixed all the problems, did not work for their characters or the story. The solution then was to kill Lois, which sent them straight back into a deep and not-talky connection, and to ruthlessly kill all the explainy OOC dialogue. No Lois here to kill, although it occurs to me I've disappeared Mary by unspecified hurtful means, I could lean further into that..
The OOC dialogue has to go. And I have to find a way to do it all through body language and experiencial incidents. Sherlock needs some fire. So does John. And apparently I have to find a way to let myself write happy sex scenes. Me. Writing sex where no one's crying on the inside. /o\ I don't think I'll ever be able to write sexy sex. But I guess if I'm ever going to be able to write at least happyish sex, it'll be this story. I've got most of two scenes, I don't know how they play for other people, but they're fine for me. I think I need a third, too, but okay.
You know the other thing I need to do? Stop obsessing about what's wrong with this story, and just write it. Even if it's wrong. Leave the dialogue. Fill in the gaps, tidy it up, get it done. Not perfect; out the door. Enough with the pointless, euphemistic excuses for why it's not right. Do the thing.
Yeah, yeah, I already knew that.