tourist
Notes on tourist
Dr Who (Eleven); 2116 words; PG-13
I love writing in this fandom, because you get to touch on things universal (in a literal sense) as well as personal with each piece. The first piece I did was Deshabille - that was about Rose and Nine, their relationship evolving as seen through her changes of clothing. Chrysalis was about evolution and change again - death, or regeneration, and the parallels between Gallifreyan regeneration and human ageing. This piece is about sex, but it's also about instinct (as a species, as an individual).
* I researched this. I read through as much Whofic as I could find in the Amy/Eleven category (a lot of it was very fresh, at the time), and then I tried to pinpoint what I thought was missing, what I actually wanted to read. So I thought, right, I want to read his perspective, because I didn't want to get any more Amy POV, it seemed to have been done a lot, with varying levels of success. And I also wanted to read something which was about sex, the sexual tension between the characters, without having to get a big side-orer of romatic schmaltz, which I can't deal with. And I wanted to touch on something larger - take a galaxy perspective, so to speak. I really feel like you can't ignore that, for so many reasons: 1) the Doctor's really old, and has seen countless variations of existence, 2) the Doctor's really smart, in a theoretical sense anyway, so there has to be a modicum of intelligence in the writing, 3) the show's been running forever, so you should be able to take a wider view, and 4) the history and subject matter of the show encourage you to be a bit profound. I don't know if I got 'profound', but I got most of what I wanted, so I'm happy with it, as a piece.
* I wrote this in sections, and I wrote them all out of order. In fact, if you went through and numbered all the bits (which I did when I was piecing it together), the original order would be - 4, 5, 7, 10, 8, 9, 6, 11, 1, 14, 12, 13, final line, 2, 15, 16, 18, 17, last scene.
* I write down snatches of dialogue, or something that I think needs to be said/thought/noted, and then build a short scene or aside around it. Once I think I've got enough bits, I start arranging an order, which is generally narratively chronological, and then I can round it off with the last few scenes - you notice that the last five bits are all roughly chronological, so I obviously knew where I was going by that point. I only realized that when I was looking over the notes, by the way - I didn't know where I was going at the time of writing. Writing in this style seems to have its own rhythm though, so at some point in the writing I felt like I was getting to where I wanted to be.
* I don't know why I use this method, but it seems to be my favoured approach in this fandom. I think I want the fragments to be like a montage of a narrative that is behind, or subliminal to, the one we're shown on-screen - in tourist, Amy and the Doctor finish one adventure at the start, and have concluded another by the end, and that aspect (the adventure itself) is totally irrelevant to the story in the fic.
* My initial mental prompt was the phrase 'Shag?' - 'Please', which I used in Amy and Eleven's first exchange. But that was prompted by Steven Moffatt's reading of the way Eleven reacts when Amy jumps him at the end of the Weeping Angels story arc - anyway, I put that in the Author's Notes at the start. But I liked the idea of Eleven being rather 'book-learning'-smart, but not particularly 'worldly' (that's not a quality exclusive to Eleven, but he does seem to be more than typically ditzy or eccentric - he's definitely more Tom Pertwee than David Tennant, for example).
* Writing the Doctor's POV: I found this idea intimidating at first, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. I just had to think on a grander scale - species, not indvidual; galaxies, not planets; historically, not currently etc - and then mix it all up with what he's experiencing, his individual self, at this specific place at this specific moment... Which, incidentally, I think is the bit the Doctor himself has trouble with - he's so dispersed, his consciousness is either vast or non-existent. Hence the ditz. Ultimately I liked the idea that the Doctor is smart enough to almost talk himself into the delusion that he's fine. That for someone so clever, he can be hopelessly un-self-aware, which is where his Companions usually step up to the plate. My premise is that the Doctor is the best and worst of being human - the Doctor is Everyman (and I'm still holding onto another meta theory, that the Doctor and Dexter Morgan are like the two extremes of the Everyman arc).
* Dialogue: very little of it, and quite important. I wanted to place Amy as being a bit 'one-up' on him without hardly trying. Short pithy exchanges - he usually gets the last word in, but her laugh/facial expression suggests that he hasn't gained any benefit from that. In fact, she invariably comes out on top. Re-reading the notes, I hardly altered or edited any of the dialogue, only the tags: he says nods, etc. Tried to make the dialogue seem fairly natural - the 'mm' as she finishes what she's eating; the abrupt, interrupted and abbreviated exchanges of people who are familiar with one another, but with a certain politeness that suggests 'friends but not intimate'. When the language becomes really abbreviated - one-word exchanges - the sexual tension is much closer to the surface (all the things they're not saying).
* Once again, I'm trying to shred out as much description as possible - we know these characters, we know this situation/setting, so the author must assume reader intelligence/understanding, and avoid elaborate descriptions of the familiar. This allows the plot/characters to just carry on the story without needless interruption. I don't need to describe the interior of the TARDIS - we know it (plus the fact that it's always changing - it's the ultimate amorphous set). I don't need to give a description of Amy - we're already so familiar and comfortable with her. We just want the characters to get on with the show. With fanfic, less is so much more.
* My favourite bits: 'He's thinking of his skin, and the expression "it's bigger on the inside". The tourist analogy - I don't know what triggered that, but it was perfect. The final line, 'His mouth opens, makes the nice round vowel, his lips parting gently against hers, so they share one breath.' And I like very much the bit where he realizes that he's 'winding himself up' - I think it gives a lot to the UST.
* 'tourist' - Shit, I thought someone would pick me up on the idea of this fic being about sex tourism! But nobody did! So I'm hoping that nobody really noticed! (or took it seriously).
that's it.