Comments | mariagoner: Murder Your Darlings Some More

mariagoner

Murder Your Darlings Some More

Dec 12, 2007 17:17

I've a question to any and every writer out there.

What's the absolute worst thing you've ever done in a piece of fiction (original or fanfic) to a character that you've genuinely liked?

( Spoilers for the 'fic Imprint here )

meme

Comments 34

rushikayu13 December 12 2007, 22:46:14 UTC

I suppose the worst thing I've ever done to a character that I liked was probably when I infected one of the characters with Jenova cells and then had him torture his boyfriend almost to death. The two characters in question (one of which is in the icon), are still two of my favourite characters in that fandom.

I wanted to take the Final Fantasy crossover in a different way. I think I succeeded. :D

mariagoner December 14 2007, 06:51:43 UTC

Yes! I'd love to see the FF Crossover meme take hold and grow... I've been dying for some good Luna/Penelo (possibly slash, possibly just friendship, always very awesome) fic.

Rambling time! cygna_hime December 12 2007, 23:57:46 UTC

Um. Tough question ( ... )

Re: Rambling time! mariagoner December 14 2007, 07:01:50 UTC

Darling! Long time no see! I'm glad to have you back in my life again. ;)

In fanfic, I've slaughtered characters wholesale, had their lives end tragically and pointlessly, lost them their loved ones, and worked my fingers into their souls at their most agonized. And I don't feel bad about a minute of it. Part of that is that so much of it is things that did happen or had to happen in canon. And the rest of it...the rest of those things had to happen, because they were who they were. Not being DC Comics, I don't 'fridge characters. If something terrible happens to them, it's about them.

Hee. The nice thing about anyone you can write for fanfic is that, whatever you've done to them, there's probably always going to be something else that's done even worse. So my ability to feel guilty about fanfic is... limited, though my conciencse does act up at times. And I don't really have any OCs or original characters since I'm not a writer by trade. I can only gasp at the depths of wonderful sadism on display here!

It still hurts when I think ( ... )

safire_griffon December 13 2007, 01:00:22 UTC

I'm a total sap...I hate being mean to characters, even ones I don't really like. I think I'm going to have to experiment with being mean soon, since it really is a large barrier to becoming a better writer, but so far, every mean thing I've done to a character, they've recovered from.

mariagoner December 14 2007, 07:04:45 UTC

It was really hard for me to work up to being mean to the characters in the FFXII fandom too... at least, in any sense other than "oh, these darlings are going to be pining away for their lost lovers now." So I totally feel you-- especially when it comes to physical violence. That really makes me wince to write, more than anything else!

safire_griffon December 14 2007, 07:12:09 UTC

Well, FFXII isn't the only fandom I dabble in, but the only time I was mean to a character, really, she was an original (in my first ever fanfictio on...oh, it was so bad.), and I made her destroy an entire planet to save herself when she was nine years old. She didn't set out intending to do it, but she didn't really care at the time, either. The guilt really didn't bother her as much as I'd intended it to do, though. ^_^; But I don't even like to read darkfic, so writing it...meh.

mariagoner December 14 2007, 08:28:41 UTC

Nobody should push themselves to write what they don't want to write! have to admit, though, that I adore writing darkfic when I'm in certain... moods. It's nice to have an outlet for your own pain through the mouthpiece of fictional characters. It's not like they can really suffer, after all... ;)

Thread 6

myaru December 13 2007, 01:01:26 UTC

Hm. I'm rarely sadistic, I think, but I will let the story guide my hand. If a character needs to suffer, then they'll suffer. That advice - "Kill your darlings" - is good, but not something I feel should be taken literally.

My Primrose project is a historical novel set in the Heian period of Japan. The main character is meant to lose everything she holds dear, little by little, and die of grief in the end, never realizing there was one person she didn't lose, that she simply never learned to recognize. Both characters suffer quite a lot over something that didn't have to happen. Although I care for them, the story that came out of this idea demands misery, so that's what they get! Delightful.

(I guess I am a little sadistic.)

mariagoner December 14 2007, 07:14:08 UTC

Hm. I'm rarely sadistic, I think, but I will let the story guide my hand. If a character needs to suffer, then they'll suffer. That advice - "Kill your darlings" - is good, but not something I feel should be taken literally.

Hee! I have to admit, I sometimes take "kill your darlings" a little too seriously. It'd explain how I killed off the main cast of FFXII not once but twice over the course of one year. And that's not even counting the incidental deaths...

A little bit of inspired sadism is good! And I love me some O. Henry-esque twists so that sounds right up my alley as well. ;)

puella_nerdii December 13 2007, 01:28:24 UTC

I'm a mean, mean writer. I freely admit this. And the more I like the characters, the more horrible I am to them. It's really a wonder that some of my OCs are functional at all. Then again, I like exploring the broken. I really like having my characters screw up and making them suffer the consequences for it. And I love seeing really fucked-up people trying to make the best of their lives without knowing quite how to do it. My default mode when I write tends to be dark, I think -- not angst, necessarily, because most of my characters either don't take themselves seriously enough to do it, don't spend a lot of time thinking about what they've done, or are just so messed-up that they don't realize the full extent of what has been done to them -- although I do insert (black) humor ( ... )

mariagoner December 14 2007, 08:13:34 UTC

Tch, TLDR is always loved and welcome in my journal. And I know you're cruel already, Puel. But in a way that always makes sense, which is the saving grace of dark!fiction. Otherwise, if you heap misery on characters without any rhyme or reason-- or if you let characters act fecklessly without consequences-- you really compromise how real and how balanced your writing is.

I think the key to writing darkfic, or dark anything, is to keep the characters active while you're doing it, because if you let them sit around bemoaning their situations, they'll have so many justifiable complaints to air that they'll never get anything done. They might end up failing a lot, but I think their failures are a better illustration of just how damaged they are than any three-page monologues about how their lives suck because their parents didn't love them would be.

Mmmmmmm... very good point. I need to keep this in mind since I get sort of awful about the inner introspection at time, especially with long fics like Knots. More action, less inner ( ... )