The Theme of This LiveJournal Entry Is....
Thamiris asked about themes last week, though I didn't see that LJ entry until today. I could have commented there, but I knew my answer would end up being long and rambling.
Usually my creative process starts with a situation, scene, or piece of dialogue showing up. If some theme doesn't show up by the end of writing the story, I end up considering it a piece of fluff, but usually I end up with at least one theme threading through. My brain surprises me constantly by the things it suddenly tosses in. I mean, I'm the person caught in a story that's over 400K that I never thought would climb over 100 at most.
For example, "Nonsense" was born with a scene of Fraser dreaming about Ray talking to a toad, quickly followed by snarky dialogue for that scene. (Me, on the train to an interview: "Say, what? Why is Ray talking to a toad?") It grew and turned into a study of how Fraser wants his life and mind to be efficient. He prefers the dark, doom-laden dream that precedes the toad dream because its symbolism is blatant, making it useful. Once he can ascribe a meaning and purpose to the silly dream, he's more content.
He likewise sees his attraction to Ray as frivolous and useless. (Me: "So that's what was going on.")
I shape the things my backbrain tosses to me, but the themes and really cleverness show up out of nowhere. In my current work in progress Charlemagne Bolivar suddenly showed up a'purring and making trouble as he tends to do. I'm very fond of him, so I didn't mind, but I didn't know why he was there. Then I did find out, which left me wondering what my guys would do to get out of the trap he was tossing them into. Then my guys responded with something that ties things up beautifully for me. I was shocked and really pleased.
All I did was type and shape it. The Median series has constantly been surprising me with what shows up. Imagine my shock when Tyr started taking a direction he'd never gone in for me before. See my surprise as some pieces and themes keep surfacing as if I'd always intended them to.
Themes that commonly show up in my stories, though the fandom and characters involved shape how they show up:
Trust
Personal change/transformation
Abandonment
Attaining and struggling with friendship and love
Finding yourself
Being trapped by and/or overcoming the past
Distrust and questioning of authority and privilege
The battle of logic and intuition / the melding of logic and intuition
Those keep showing up for me whether I expect them to or not. Not surprising that I started out in The X-Files, is it?
Another personal quirk I have involve innocents. I have very little interest in them. (Which may be why Smallville fic has to work harder to please me, since Clark Kent is a problem for me. He's an innocent, and he doesn't strike me as an old soul either.) I prefer my characters to have lived and often lived hard, been knocked around and beaten, yet keep on going, usually with a smart remark on their lips. This probably accounts for the power of Andromeda's ensemble for me since we have
Beka, who's struggled to keep her own business afloat mostly alone, saddled with a junkie/pusher father she had to watch slowly die, a con job brother, and the mother she's never mentioned;
Tyr, who's the last of his entire slaughtered clan, outcast and alone while being the member of a race that prizes family and blood connections above almost all else, fighting to earn the right to achieve a new family;
Harper, raised in dire poverty and oppression, two of his cousins mercy-killed by his family after being raped and impregnated by monstrous aliens, his parents dead to save him from a slave raid, spending the first 20 years of his life mostly living like a hunted animal;
and even Dylan (before his recent actor- and Tribune executive-driven lobotomy), who lost everything and everyone he ever knew. Though Dylan's still so fresh to it that I like to kick him once in a while because I'm evil.
Look at my favorite pairings--RayK/Fraser, Pike/Benny, Mulder/Krycek, Angel/Doyle, etc--and you can see the "lived and keeps on going as best they can" thing at work. Even Twitch City's Curtis has some of that going on, as you wonder what first triggered his phobia against leaving the house since he went outside to university years ago, where he met Newbie. Who knows what's up with Newbie. ::grins::
(I think this also explains my problems with elves, such as those in Lord of the Rings [movie-verse, since I couldn't keep my attention going all the way through the book]. Immortal, they live in a protected paradise, unthreatened... and pass judgment on the short-lived humans who face and fight and die from the encroaching evil every day. It's much easier to be at peace when no one can threaten you. Elrond's different for me because of what he's been through. I had a great deal of empathy for Boromir, since humanity knew nothing of the One Ring, so of course he saw it as a power to be used to help humanity, much of which is fighting and dying on the front lines. And, anti-royalist that I am, I perfectly understand why he wouldn't want to acknowledge Aragorn as his king just because Aragorn has the bloodline, while he and his are out there trying to protect his people. I distrust Aragorn for being a wannabe elf.)
Themes and preferences may be a chicken and egg argument. Do I write these themes because I prefer these characters and these themes naturally arise from them, or do I prefer these characters because they fit my personal themes? Since themes are as subconscious and organic as almost every other part of my creative process, I don't know.
Usually my creative process starts with a situation, scene, or piece of dialogue showing up. If some theme doesn't show up by the end of writing the story, I end up considering it a piece of fluff, but usually I end up with at least one theme threading through. My brain surprises me constantly by the things it suddenly tosses in. I mean, I'm the person caught in a story that's over 400K that I never thought would climb over 100 at most.
For example, "Nonsense" was born with a scene of Fraser dreaming about Ray talking to a toad, quickly followed by snarky dialogue for that scene. (Me, on the train to an interview: "Say, what? Why is Ray talking to a toad?") It grew and turned into a study of how Fraser wants his life and mind to be efficient. He prefers the dark, doom-laden dream that precedes the toad dream because its symbolism is blatant, making it useful. Once he can ascribe a meaning and purpose to the silly dream, he's more content.
He likewise sees his attraction to Ray as frivolous and useless. (Me: "So that's what was going on.")
I shape the things my backbrain tosses to me, but the themes and really cleverness show up out of nowhere. In my current work in progress Charlemagne Bolivar suddenly showed up a'purring and making trouble as he tends to do. I'm very fond of him, so I didn't mind, but I didn't know why he was there. Then I did find out, which left me wondering what my guys would do to get out of the trap he was tossing them into. Then my guys responded with something that ties things up beautifully for me. I was shocked and really pleased.
All I did was type and shape it. The Median series has constantly been surprising me with what shows up. Imagine my shock when Tyr started taking a direction he'd never gone in for me before. See my surprise as some pieces and themes keep surfacing as if I'd always intended them to.
Themes that commonly show up in my stories, though the fandom and characters involved shape how they show up:
Trust
Personal change/transformation
Abandonment
Attaining and struggling with friendship and love
Finding yourself
Being trapped by and/or overcoming the past
Distrust and questioning of authority and privilege
The battle of logic and intuition / the melding of logic and intuition
Those keep showing up for me whether I expect them to or not. Not surprising that I started out in The X-Files, is it?
Another personal quirk I have involve innocents. I have very little interest in them. (Which may be why Smallville fic has to work harder to please me, since Clark Kent is a problem for me. He's an innocent, and he doesn't strike me as an old soul either.) I prefer my characters to have lived and often lived hard, been knocked around and beaten, yet keep on going, usually with a smart remark on their lips. This probably accounts for the power of Andromeda's ensemble for me since we have
Beka, who's struggled to keep her own business afloat mostly alone, saddled with a junkie/pusher father she had to watch slowly die, a con job brother, and the mother she's never mentioned;
Tyr, who's the last of his entire slaughtered clan, outcast and alone while being the member of a race that prizes family and blood connections above almost all else, fighting to earn the right to achieve a new family;
Harper, raised in dire poverty and oppression, two of his cousins mercy-killed by his family after being raped and impregnated by monstrous aliens, his parents dead to save him from a slave raid, spending the first 20 years of his life mostly living like a hunted animal;
and even Dylan (before his recent actor- and Tribune executive-driven lobotomy), who lost everything and everyone he ever knew. Though Dylan's still so fresh to it that I like to kick him once in a while because I'm evil.
Look at my favorite pairings--RayK/Fraser, Pike/Benny, Mulder/Krycek, Angel/Doyle, etc--and you can see the "lived and keeps on going as best they can" thing at work. Even Twitch City's Curtis has some of that going on, as you wonder what first triggered his phobia against leaving the house since he went outside to university years ago, where he met Newbie. Who knows what's up with Newbie. ::grins::
(I think this also explains my problems with elves, such as those in Lord of the Rings [movie-verse, since I couldn't keep my attention going all the way through the book]. Immortal, they live in a protected paradise, unthreatened... and pass judgment on the short-lived humans who face and fight and die from the encroaching evil every day. It's much easier to be at peace when no one can threaten you. Elrond's different for me because of what he's been through. I had a great deal of empathy for Boromir, since humanity knew nothing of the One Ring, so of course he saw it as a power to be used to help humanity, much of which is fighting and dying on the front lines. And, anti-royalist that I am, I perfectly understand why he wouldn't want to acknowledge Aragorn as his king just because Aragorn has the bloodline, while he and his are out there trying to protect his people. I distrust Aragorn for being a wannabe elf.)
Themes and preferences may be a chicken and egg argument. Do I write these themes because I prefer these characters and these themes naturally arise from them, or do I prefer these characters because they fit my personal themes? Since themes are as subconscious and organic as almost every other part of my creative process, I don't know.