Random fic meta
I have been having thinky thoughts about my fic Burn Your Life Down, which I'm posting mostly for my own benefit, since I can't imagine anyone else will want to read them *g* Rambling about BYLD, characterisation, and issues of race.
Burn Your Life Down was the long fic I wrote during NaNo. It was quite a departure for me in a number of ways. For one thing, I knew from the outset that it was going to be a fairly long fic, and my initial thoughts about it were unusually plot-based. Generally even my longer fics have started out character-driven, or have had one key scene that I've been working towards, whereas with this I knew how it would start and finish and some of the places it would go along the way. So, that was interesting for me. I think that it's much pacier and more plot-driven as a result - events do a lot more of the work than is usually the case in my fic. Often I am exploring a character and finding events to hang that on, and I liked the fact that there was a lot going on in this. It represented a particular triumph for me in that the previous NaNo, I tried writing a long, plotty fic and failed abjectly. There were quite a lot of different factors which led to that long fic never seeing the light of day, but I think one of the key issues with it was that it was very formless. I had an underlying myth I was exploring, and several key scenes planned out in detail, but there was no overall structure and as a result I ended up with so many different strands that the whole thing collapsed in on itself. So, the fact that I came up with a plot which had some internal coherency feels like a step forward for me as a writer.
Another factor that was unusual for me was the use of multiple POV characters. I think this is related to the plottiness of the fic - normally I'm exploring one character in depth, and stay with one or two POVs, but in this case I needed several different characters to carry forward different aspects of the plot. The fic is an AU which imagines how life would have been if the Winchesters had stayed off Azazel's radar, and I felt like I needed Sam, Dean and Mary to explore the differences and to do the world-building that entailed without having too much in the way of exposition. Additionally, since I did ultimately want their story to dovetail with what was happening with the psykids, I needed to follow one of them - Dana, who has essentially 'replaced' Sam in the special children contingent. I found it quite demanding juggling all those different characters, but also really enjoyable exploring that different way of writing. Interestingly, I think it's probably the most televisual fic I have ever written - a lot of the tension comes from cut scenes where I jump to another POV. I am also pleased with the way the multiple POVs made Dana's story fit in more effectively. If I'd stuck to just using Dean and Dana, then the fic would have had a really different feel. I like the idea that they are all players in a much larger and more complex scenario which none of them really understands, and I think splitting the POV so much helped to convey that impression.
I do feel, though, that the pay-off for all of the above was that my characters were not as fully developed as I would have liked. In particular, I feel like I could have done more with my original character, Dana, and it's her character which has been giving me most of my thinky thoughts. She was a big step for me in terms of characterisation, because since she's an OC I had to do all the work of building her, but she's very far removed from my own experience. Obviously I've never been a tall, hot, demon hunter or a gun-toting spaceship dweller either, but when I am writing canon characters I have a lot to work with. When I started thinking about what kind of person might have taken the place of 'chosen one' if Sam was out of the picture, I quickly realised I needed a particular set of circumstances. For one thing, I was moving all the canon-based events (the awakening of the psykids and the opening of the Devil's Gate) forward in time. So, I wanted some reason for that, and most of the reason is based in Dana's early manifestation of her powers. That meant placing her in extreme circumstances and making her much more alone than Sam had ever been, and once I started thinking about that I knew she was someone who had been in the care system and had lived rough, on and off, for years. Those particular circumstances have honed her ability to sense weird stuff going down, after the initial manifestation of her telekinesis defending herself against being raped by her stepdad. The other reason I thought of her as someone who had been in extreme circumstances was that I wanted someone who would be tough and somewhat focused on her own survival, but also vulnerable to despair. This early in the timeline, I didn't see Jake as capable of playing out the kind of role that he has in canon - I think the ruthlessness that allows him to kill Sam stems from his experiences as a soldier. I really enjoyed giving Jake an alternative role here, where he showed some of that leadership and csre for others that he has in canon, but where he ultimately chooses to kill himself rather than play into Azazel's game. Conversely, my main character had to choose survival, or my plot would have disappeared, but I didn't want her to be as utterly amoral as Ava ends up in canon. I was interested in seeing how an essentially sympathetic personality would gradually come to feel that there was no option other than playing Azazel's game. I think one of the elements I feel dissatisfied with, in terms of characterisation, is my failure to really dig deeper into that process. It's a huge concept, more than big enough for a fic of its own, and the need to move the plot on wound up making me rush it a little, I think.
Another fact which emerged quite early on when I was writing Dana is that I envisaged her as non-white, probably from a mixed household. I hadn't particularly given a lot of thought to this at the time of writing - it was just the way I envisaged her. When I came to edit the fic, it so happened that the latest round of race fail was in full force in fandom. This meant that I was reading lots of thoughtful, thought-provoking posts on racism and cultural appropriation which made me consider what I was doing in writing a character of colour. One of the things I immediately realised was that Dana's race was actually almost invisible within the fic - partly because I rarely describe the way people look, but chiefly because I just hadn't thought through the implications before I started. Looking back over the fic, I realised that a lot of the situations she is in are situations when her race would have affected they way she felt and the way things went down. I have to confess that I was tempted to just remove the one detail which explicitly showed she was a person of colour, so as to sidestep the issue. But that did feel like racism, of exactly the kind that many people on my flist were so articulately pointing out. Instead, I went back through and tried to work in details that I thought were relevant. And what I realised was that it was really, really difficult, because the differences were at such a fundamental level that it would require some major rewrites. Obviously, I know on an intellectual level that the role race plays in our society is a lot more complex than merely how people look, but actually trying to retrospectively bring that out made me really face it and consider it more deeply. In the end, I didn't make a lot of changes to the fic, because I felt like I was going to do a lot of violence to the plot and flow. But, coupled with the general issue of sacrificing characterisation for plot, still makes me feel like I sold Dana short. Thinking about it even more after the fic was posted, I also interrogated my impulse to make her a POC at all, because I'm aware that the life she has had and the person she is (abused street kid, tough but with some compassion left to her) are arguably stereotypical 'downtrodden minority' characteristics. I'd like to think that it doesn't show an implicit racism - and certainly I think that it's possible to write characters who fit sterotypes without stereotyping them (particularly as some of the stereotypes stem from real life - non-whites are disproportionately represented in the lower socio-economic brackets of the USA, for example) - but I certainly think I have to consider the possibility that it does, or that some readers will read it that way. I certainly feel more dissatisfied with all the characterisation I didn't fit into the fic because of that fact.
I think one of the things I've realised is the fact that race really isn't incidental to writing a character. (I realise a lot of you are thinking 'Well, duh' at this point, but this is something I haven't fully thought through with respect to my own work before.) When I originally envisaged Dana as non-white, I should have taken a step back and thought through all the characterisation implications of her race, because that is actually a significant factor. I think this is something that it was easy for me to avoid considering, because as a white woman in a predominately white society, my race is incidental to my daily life. As part of the dominant group, I have the luxury of ignoring it. And that means that writing a COC demands that I think about that before I start. I don't think I did a terrible job with Dana - she's very fully developed in my head, and I hope that comes across on the page - but I could have done a lot better. And I'd genuinely appreciate other people's thoughts on how I could have done better (I'll try not get all defensive - one reason I wanted to make this post is that I know people hesitate to give concrit on these issues in fic feedback, because of the wank potential). Similarly, I hope all my flist know that if I say things which are unthinkingly racist (or prejudiced in other ways) then I'd rather be called on it than not. Well, I'd rather be a paragon of right-thinking and justice, but the fact is I'm a human being, so I'm made of fail more often than not.
Actually, thinking about it more, I think it was really in the original and semi original characters that I faced the biggest challenges. This is partly because Dana's life is far removed from mine in almost every respect, but also, I think, because working with canon characters allows for a lighter touch with characterisation. I'm fairly pleased with how I brought out the slightly altered characters of Sam and Dean and explored the differences from canon - I think this worked well precisely because there is an existing model to play off. Similarly, Mary was easier to do than Dana, although she presented more challenges than the boys, since her character is not so well-established in canon. I think that this is the chief thing I enjoy about writing fanfiction - it's a completely different skill taking something that already exists and reworking it, and neither less nor more creative and demanding than writing original material.
I am pretty pleased with BYLD, in terms of what it represents in my development as a writer. I think I would still characterise myself as a character-driven writer, but I enjoyed expanding my boundaries for this fic. Similarly, although I think I'd write Dana in a completely different way if I rewrote the fic, the process of writing it has enabled me to envisage that different way. I'd like to think that will show in my writing in future - the main reason I wanted to write this post is to tease out a lot of the things I've learnt in the hope that they will develop more meaningfully.
I'm also proud of BYLD in that I think it genuinely does work, for all its many flaws. I love Dana as a character, and I really enjoyed exploring how the Winchesters would differ and how they'd stay the same, if their lives were different. Things were pretty black in my life when I was writing that fic (they still are, a lot of days) and while that is probably reflected in the misery levels of the fic - highest bodycount of anything I've written! - I am proud that I managed to finish something that far outside my comfort zone as a writer, and have it not utterly suck.
I could probably meta on about this fic for as long as it took me to tell the story in the first place, but I think that is enough from me. Maybe now I have rambled about it a bit I can stop thinking and get some sleep!
Burn Your Life Down was the long fic I wrote during NaNo. It was quite a departure for me in a number of ways. For one thing, I knew from the outset that it was going to be a fairly long fic, and my initial thoughts about it were unusually plot-based. Generally even my longer fics have started out character-driven, or have had one key scene that I've been working towards, whereas with this I knew how it would start and finish and some of the places it would go along the way. So, that was interesting for me. I think that it's much pacier and more plot-driven as a result - events do a lot more of the work than is usually the case in my fic. Often I am exploring a character and finding events to hang that on, and I liked the fact that there was a lot going on in this. It represented a particular triumph for me in that the previous NaNo, I tried writing a long, plotty fic and failed abjectly. There were quite a lot of different factors which led to that long fic never seeing the light of day, but I think one of the key issues with it was that it was very formless. I had an underlying myth I was exploring, and several key scenes planned out in detail, but there was no overall structure and as a result I ended up with so many different strands that the whole thing collapsed in on itself. So, the fact that I came up with a plot which had some internal coherency feels like a step forward for me as a writer.
Another factor that was unusual for me was the use of multiple POV characters. I think this is related to the plottiness of the fic - normally I'm exploring one character in depth, and stay with one or two POVs, but in this case I needed several different characters to carry forward different aspects of the plot. The fic is an AU which imagines how life would have been if the Winchesters had stayed off Azazel's radar, and I felt like I needed Sam, Dean and Mary to explore the differences and to do the world-building that entailed without having too much in the way of exposition. Additionally, since I did ultimately want their story to dovetail with what was happening with the psykids, I needed to follow one of them - Dana, who has essentially 'replaced' Sam in the special children contingent. I found it quite demanding juggling all those different characters, but also really enjoyable exploring that different way of writing. Interestingly, I think it's probably the most televisual fic I have ever written - a lot of the tension comes from cut scenes where I jump to another POV. I am also pleased with the way the multiple POVs made Dana's story fit in more effectively. If I'd stuck to just using Dean and Dana, then the fic would have had a really different feel. I like the idea that they are all players in a much larger and more complex scenario which none of them really understands, and I think splitting the POV so much helped to convey that impression.
I do feel, though, that the pay-off for all of the above was that my characters were not as fully developed as I would have liked. In particular, I feel like I could have done more with my original character, Dana, and it's her character which has been giving me most of my thinky thoughts. She was a big step for me in terms of characterisation, because since she's an OC I had to do all the work of building her, but she's very far removed from my own experience. Obviously I've never been a tall, hot, demon hunter or a gun-toting spaceship dweller either, but when I am writing canon characters I have a lot to work with. When I started thinking about what kind of person might have taken the place of 'chosen one' if Sam was out of the picture, I quickly realised I needed a particular set of circumstances. For one thing, I was moving all the canon-based events (the awakening of the psykids and the opening of the Devil's Gate) forward in time. So, I wanted some reason for that, and most of the reason is based in Dana's early manifestation of her powers. That meant placing her in extreme circumstances and making her much more alone than Sam had ever been, and once I started thinking about that I knew she was someone who had been in the care system and had lived rough, on and off, for years. Those particular circumstances have honed her ability to sense weird stuff going down, after the initial manifestation of her telekinesis defending herself against being raped by her stepdad. The other reason I thought of her as someone who had been in extreme circumstances was that I wanted someone who would be tough and somewhat focused on her own survival, but also vulnerable to despair. This early in the timeline, I didn't see Jake as capable of playing out the kind of role that he has in canon - I think the ruthlessness that allows him to kill Sam stems from his experiences as a soldier. I really enjoyed giving Jake an alternative role here, where he showed some of that leadership and csre for others that he has in canon, but where he ultimately chooses to kill himself rather than play into Azazel's game. Conversely, my main character had to choose survival, or my plot would have disappeared, but I didn't want her to be as utterly amoral as Ava ends up in canon. I was interested in seeing how an essentially sympathetic personality would gradually come to feel that there was no option other than playing Azazel's game. I think one of the elements I feel dissatisfied with, in terms of characterisation, is my failure to really dig deeper into that process. It's a huge concept, more than big enough for a fic of its own, and the need to move the plot on wound up making me rush it a little, I think.
Another fact which emerged quite early on when I was writing Dana is that I envisaged her as non-white, probably from a mixed household. I hadn't particularly given a lot of thought to this at the time of writing - it was just the way I envisaged her. When I came to edit the fic, it so happened that the latest round of race fail was in full force in fandom. This meant that I was reading lots of thoughtful, thought-provoking posts on racism and cultural appropriation which made me consider what I was doing in writing a character of colour. One of the things I immediately realised was that Dana's race was actually almost invisible within the fic - partly because I rarely describe the way people look, but chiefly because I just hadn't thought through the implications before I started. Looking back over the fic, I realised that a lot of the situations she is in are situations when her race would have affected they way she felt and the way things went down. I have to confess that I was tempted to just remove the one detail which explicitly showed she was a person of colour, so as to sidestep the issue. But that did feel like racism, of exactly the kind that many people on my flist were so articulately pointing out. Instead, I went back through and tried to work in details that I thought were relevant. And what I realised was that it was really, really difficult, because the differences were at such a fundamental level that it would require some major rewrites. Obviously, I know on an intellectual level that the role race plays in our society is a lot more complex than merely how people look, but actually trying to retrospectively bring that out made me really face it and consider it more deeply. In the end, I didn't make a lot of changes to the fic, because I felt like I was going to do a lot of violence to the plot and flow. But, coupled with the general issue of sacrificing characterisation for plot, still makes me feel like I sold Dana short. Thinking about it even more after the fic was posted, I also interrogated my impulse to make her a POC at all, because I'm aware that the life she has had and the person she is (abused street kid, tough but with some compassion left to her) are arguably stereotypical 'downtrodden minority' characteristics. I'd like to think that it doesn't show an implicit racism - and certainly I think that it's possible to write characters who fit sterotypes without stereotyping them (particularly as some of the stereotypes stem from real life - non-whites are disproportionately represented in the lower socio-economic brackets of the USA, for example) - but I certainly think I have to consider the possibility that it does, or that some readers will read it that way. I certainly feel more dissatisfied with all the characterisation I didn't fit into the fic because of that fact.
I think one of the things I've realised is the fact that race really isn't incidental to writing a character. (I realise a lot of you are thinking 'Well, duh' at this point, but this is something I haven't fully thought through with respect to my own work before.) When I originally envisaged Dana as non-white, I should have taken a step back and thought through all the characterisation implications of her race, because that is actually a significant factor. I think this is something that it was easy for me to avoid considering, because as a white woman in a predominately white society, my race is incidental to my daily life. As part of the dominant group, I have the luxury of ignoring it. And that means that writing a COC demands that I think about that before I start. I don't think I did a terrible job with Dana - she's very fully developed in my head, and I hope that comes across on the page - but I could have done a lot better. And I'd genuinely appreciate other people's thoughts on how I could have done better (I'll try not get all defensive - one reason I wanted to make this post is that I know people hesitate to give concrit on these issues in fic feedback, because of the wank potential). Similarly, I hope all my flist know that if I say things which are unthinkingly racist (or prejudiced in other ways) then I'd rather be called on it than not. Well, I'd rather be a paragon of right-thinking and justice, but the fact is I'm a human being, so I'm made of fail more often than not.
Actually, thinking about it more, I think it was really in the original and semi original characters that I faced the biggest challenges. This is partly because Dana's life is far removed from mine in almost every respect, but also, I think, because working with canon characters allows for a lighter touch with characterisation. I'm fairly pleased with how I brought out the slightly altered characters of Sam and Dean and explored the differences from canon - I think this worked well precisely because there is an existing model to play off. Similarly, Mary was easier to do than Dana, although she presented more challenges than the boys, since her character is not so well-established in canon. I think that this is the chief thing I enjoy about writing fanfiction - it's a completely different skill taking something that already exists and reworking it, and neither less nor more creative and demanding than writing original material.
I am pretty pleased with BYLD, in terms of what it represents in my development as a writer. I think I would still characterise myself as a character-driven writer, but I enjoyed expanding my boundaries for this fic. Similarly, although I think I'd write Dana in a completely different way if I rewrote the fic, the process of writing it has enabled me to envisage that different way. I'd like to think that will show in my writing in future - the main reason I wanted to write this post is to tease out a lot of the things I've learnt in the hope that they will develop more meaningfully.
I'm also proud of BYLD in that I think it genuinely does work, for all its many flaws. I love Dana as a character, and I really enjoyed exploring how the Winchesters would differ and how they'd stay the same, if their lives were different. Things were pretty black in my life when I was writing that fic (they still are, a lot of days) and while that is probably reflected in the misery levels of the fic - highest bodycount of anything I've written! - I am proud that I managed to finish something that far outside my comfort zone as a writer, and have it not utterly suck.
I could probably meta on about this fic for as long as it took me to tell the story in the first place, but I think that is enough from me. Maybe now I have rambled about it a bit I can stop thinking and get some sleep!