So! Metafandom's been pretty dead recently, but has picked up this week with a couple of links on the topic of sex in fanfiction. The discussion starts here and continues here. ( An flist-sparing cut here... )

Friends, the Kitten(tm) is seriously into Wensleydale cheese. She mugged me just now and ran off with a chunk. My cat mugged me.

Yesterday's poll has "voyeurism" edging out "sleepy/unconscious" by a single vote, with the others also-ran. You all are either indifferent or want Giles in charge, so I will obligingly write one or the other of those two with Xander in charge. Nyah.

Have joined the masses and purchased a season pass to Dr Horrible from the iTMS. Haven't watched it yet, because it's still downloading. Mr P and I are in the middle of watching Death Note, which is about a million times better than the other animes we've tried. Except Trigun, which we loved and will be watching more of. Also, sometime soon need to write up a description of my first month going to the gym and working out intensely. Not right now.

Today I was thinking about my fanfic reading strategies and how they've changed.

Obviously I am a genre-hopping multi-shipper with a maniacal focus on one character. I'll read Giles with anybody, and probably would try writing him with anybody, though my own favorite pairings have settled out as Buffy, Xander, and Ethan. My decision to read or not read something is never based on slash-vs-het-vs-gen, or even on the ships advertised. It is always based on the name of the writer, or if I don't know the writer already, on the first paragraph of the story. I am more likely to persist through badness with my favorite ships, but these days I'm back-button-happy even for those. I find myself far more able to cope with rocky prose than with bad characterization or cliched situations. Rocky prose can be fixed by working with an editor; lack of imagination can rarely be.

Tell me, friends! How does this work for you? What's your strategy?

I was reading metafandom, as one does, and I read a link from prehistoric_sea about preferences in kinkfic. And also as one does, since I'm also writing kink_bingo prompts, I have my own thoughts about the process. ( Behind the cut, because not everybody wants to read about this kind of thing... )

Plans, plans, plans! I haven't wittered about fic in at least five minutes.

( Plans for that GX series and other prompts discussed... )

txvoodoo asks, "Does fandom expect too much" from its TV shows?

My short answer: No.

( What? You expected me to stop there? )

I was thinking. (Oh noes!) I was thinking about a number of things, but mostly I was thinking about fic ratings. My theory is that I've been over-rating things. In future, the FRAO will be reserved for... hmm. Dunno what. Whatever I wouldn't repost on FF.net, probably. Actual hard-core stuff. Big chunks of Blackmail, for instance. "Rough Boys" all the way. (Draft 2 proceeding, slowly.) Tradition & Protocol probably is just a hard R/FRM. I had been operating under the theory that if I used the favorite fandom four-letter word for the male dangly bit, it was FRAO, but now I think that's not quite the distinction I'm looking for.

Main intent prawn? FRAO. Main intent story, but prawny bits happen to be there? FRM. Though there's another use for ratings this use doesn't help: the "should I read it at work/in public" question. (I use this excuse regularly. Dunno about you.) For that purpose, I just want a sort of adult yes/no flag; don't care much about the difference between "safe for kids" and "safe for teens".

What think you? Do you ever care about the difference between FRC and FRT in practice? What distinguishes the "mature audiences" from the "adults only" story for you? Is it a warning or an advertisement? How do you use the label? How would you prefer me to use it? Or does it just not matter?

Need to ratchet my craft up a few notches. I feel I'm not pushing myself. Could stagnate if I don't watch out. Possibly I should get serious about the original story series I've been dreaming over in my head for a while now. Write some character sketches for it? Or I could resume some fandom projects. I would very much like to finish a few serieses. Ars Draconis, for one.

Possibly I should re-read a couple of short stories I love immensely and pull them apart to see how they work. Re-read The SF Hall of Fame or the Hugo Winners and think about 'em all.

( Or some other thinking out loud... )

( Fear of finishing... )

And I return to listening to one of Brian Eno's great triumphs and working on Buffy-as-Hero. Though... hey. I find designing soundtracks to inspire the story a successful mental strategy. The soundtrack for "Dust on His Hands From the Sky" slams me right down into the mood of that story. I should stop to do this.

Summery, sunny, warm, healing, starts discordant, ends triumphant. Hmm. "I'll Come Running" is high point. I'll build to that.

Am now home from work with soul-destroying, painkiller-resisting headache of wanting to lose lunch. Ulch. Serious badness, and I'm going to put a pillow over my eyes in another second. Before my head exploded I wrote this:

This is what it's all about. At least for me as a writer. It's the same point as the John Gardner "describe the barn" exercise.

Describe a barn from the point of view of a man who has just learned that his son has been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, the war, or the death. (The exercise should run to about one typed page.)

Okay. That's not what it's all about; there are other things. But that's a big one.

There are so many ways of writing that page of description. So many correct answers to the problem. And the process of evaluating those answers is so difficult. synecdochic gives one method of approach & evaluation.

In which Carter is bewitched, bothered, and bewildered... ( Spoilers ho! )

And it appears to be time to find a Eureka icon.

Here's an interview with fantasy writer Glenn Cook from a couple of years ago:

Q: Has any particular novel been more difficult for you to write than others?

A: Whatever I happen to be working on at the moment is the hardest goddamn thing I've ever wrestled with. I grow to hate it. I know it sucks. And, usually, when I read it after I've had a chance to forget it, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Heartening, perhaps, that this feeling is shared?

The unfortunate people I've beta-read for know all too well that I mostly agree with this post by fairestcat wailing that stories are often too short.

We've all read the hundred-chapter epics that go on and on and progress at a rate of about half a plot inch per chapter. (HP fandom seems to have more of these than the corner of Buffy fandom I love best.) But more often I read stories that are much shorter than I think they need to be to achieve their goals as story.

A good drabble is a wonderful thing. It sets out to send you to the mat with a right cross to your jaw, and it does so.

A good short story has a different ambition. It has a plot to work out. Some characters to show in action. Some moment of change to visit. And so often I read stories that give me the basic idea of a story, without satisfying me. The writer pointed in the direction of the story, but didn't lead me all the way there. They gave me the pencils for a comic page, without the inking and the coloring.

Okay, that's enough with the metaphors. You've had an idea! Okay, great. Now the work starts. And please, do the work. ( Write more, dammit, and here's where... )

I want to spend more time in these story worlds. I love the characters and the settings. I long to be with them and soak them in. Please let me! Please slow down and give me more. You know secrets about these characters and what happened. You do! That's why you're writing. Tell me all the secrets. Everything. I want all the juicy details, please!

T&P part 1 went off to the amazing beta reader last night. I finished my scene revisions yesterday evening, then printed it out & did a line edit pass in the bath. (Brief bath product review: this bath line edit party was brought to you by the Lush Sunny Side bubble bar. It was refreshingly citrusy. The water was very pretty. The glitter didn't remain afterward.)

( Revising and line editing... )

The decks are cleared for Rupertus Domesticus.

Frontline documentary on "The Soldier's Heart". Here's some material on the effect of killing somebody on a soldier, and what has to be done to prepare a soldier to kill somebody else.

Useful material when writing Giles and Buffy, I think. Buffy can dehumanize her enemies, literally, by classing them as demons. But they sure look human. What does her calling do to her? What should Giles be doing to help her cope? Is the Council any better than the US military at admitting that killing has an effect on its soldiers? Did it train Giles, or is he figuring it out on the job? Or is he not figuring it out because he's experiencing it himself? Or what?

The Buffy of Ars Draconis is a lot smarter than the Buffy of Reconnection. I just realized this while writing her. The Reconnection-Buffy is more, er, an idiot savant? Which is exaggerating. She's sweet, and ditzy, and serious when she needs to be, and completely willing to do her job, but not entirely conscious of what makes her a sound tactical thinker. Whereas the ArsDraconis-Buffy is conscious of her skill acquisition and her training, an active participant in her Slayerness. And is a little less sweet.

AD-Buffy is aware that Giles is male, and attractive, but also aware that he's not for her. At least not that way. It's a Giles-Buffy partnership story. It's season 5; the relationships among the Scoobies are healthy, and the threat is external. But Giles' role among them is shifting because of the sword, especially his role with Buffy, and thus they must adjust. And then there's the mutter mutter issue, hinted at in part 2, which part 3 makes clear.

There are several editions of Giles co-existing in my head, some of them harder-edged than others. I've known this for a while. I was interested to note that my internal Buffy has begun to take on variations.

There are some similarities. I tend to class Buffy as a tactical thinker (assess a roomful of threats accurately; make judgments on the fly about immediate combat) and not as a strategic thinker (putting her in charge of larger battles or campaigns would be a mistake; that's what Watcher-training is for). Also that she has completely trustworthy instincts about who's evil and who's not. And that her #1 repeated mistake is going to be not trusting the people around her to help her, even when they've proven over and over that they can.

This is exactly the thing that fanfic gives you that standard writing does not. If I were to write a series of stories about an original character (which is, btw, exactly my goal in the next year), I would aim for consistency of character. Or a single growth arc, perhaps. I would not write variations on the character. Or write several takes on how the character would act in a fixed (canonical) situation. But we do this in fanfic, and enjoy it.

Resolved: The reason I like writing Giles/Xander is that Xander is cheerful, and he brings the people around him up, and therefore stories getting him together with somebody are stories in which he spreads cheerfulness and good humor around. Not that he's angst-free, just that he's happy at his core. Writing this makes me happy, and so I enjoy it.

PS: This probably means my next G/X story will turn out to be an unrelieved downer.

Been jumping through my link collection, and speed-re-reading stories to build these recommendation lists. And I have come to a few realizations:

- Giles/Oz creeps me out. This even though some of the stories are very well-written, the Giles/Oz pairing having attracted some skilled authors. I haven't figured this one out. It's not the age difference-- Giles/Xander is a relationship I love, and of course Giles/Buffy works for me. I enjoy Oz as a character plenty. It doesn't help that some of the writers set the stories after season 1. Or that often Oz is so broken, or Giles is so broken, in many of them. Hmm, perhaps that's getting at the problem.

- Giles/Willow doesn't work for me either, but I understand why not, and believe a good writer could talk me out of it. Willow isn't strong enough for Giles: not feisty enough, not playful enough, not resilient enough. I think he likes his partners a little bit wicked. Consider what Ethan and Jenny have in common. Olivia we don't see enough of, but we do see her being fairly strong-willed about "enough small talk" in "Hush".

- There needs to be more Core Four genfic, set during the series and after it. I will take this as a goal in life after the NaNo project.

Let's talk about point of view today. I don't rise to the level of Jamesean obsession with it, but I do think that managing it is a basic craft issue.

I just wrote something, realized that hey, Giles can't know that, and had to rewrite to make the same point more obliquely. Because I am writing something that has established itself as pretty solidly in his point of view. I haven't pulled out to be omniscient at all, or dipped into Ethan's viewpoint at all. I haven't so much as done a "Giles failed to see the giant spider crawling up the wall" sort of thing. If Giles fails to see it, I cannot mention it. This late in the story is not the time to start breaking that implicit contract with my readers. If I had done something like that early on, while I was setting up the rules for the contract, I could do it now.

I think it's possible that the rules are in place by the end of the first page. You almost have to do everything you're going to do in the first paragraph or two.

I am not a fan of head-hopping, that is, point of view changing from paragraph to paragraph. Point of view shifts can only happen on section boundaries. And almost certainly shouldn't happen in short stories at all. I'm not even sure a novella is long enough to sustain two different points of view. Probably it depends on the novella.

I recently re-read "The Dead" to pay attention to what Joyce was doing with point of view. He doesn't follow my rules at all. It's more of a cinematic thing, where the camera moves smoothly through the house, handed from person to person, and eventually settles on Gabriel's shoulder. (Though of course Joyce wouldn't have had this metaphor for it.) But he doesn't volley it around, either: no ping-ponging.

Reader expectation and fictional convention also factor in. As a modern reader, I expect stricter control over viewpoint characters. I think of headhopping as a sign of ... well, a new writer.

Other opinions?

ETA: I think I'm being way unclear here. I do not object to shifting the point of view or having multiple viewpoint characters or anything like that! I think the important thing, to me, is that implicit contract with the reader I mention, about how you're going to do it. And yes, I confess, ping-ponging POV every paragraph or so does bug me. I will have to get more long-winded in a comment, or something. Or just go away and shut up. Sigh.

This began life as a comment on this post by the esteemed Dr penwiper26, but it grew too large to be contained by the margin. Alas, I ramble and repeat myself.

( Hmm. Conflicted reactions. Let's see if I can figure out what I think. )

I signed up for my first ficathon! I'm doing the maleslashminis Giles round. I've signed up for a ficathon before, the next round of cya_ficathon, but this one will finish first, I think. So it will count as my first.

Post-Grave h/c made a big jump forward last night. I started understanding one of the threads running through it. It's interesting to me how this process bounces up & down from conscious to unconscious and back. Something in the back of my mind chews on this stuff, and produces character actions and imagery. Later on I select among the options more consciously and highlight the ones that connect to others or to whatever story it is I'm convinced I'm telling.

In "Tradition & Protocol" there is a very clear repeated image that I saw right away, in my opening scene, that kept coming to mind again, until I realized that it was important and needed to be picked up and sharpened. Then in another pass I submerged it somewhat, so it's not in the reader's face in a clumsy way. (Needs more submerging, if you ask me.) It's just there, for you to pick up on if you read in that fashion, and to affect you unconsciously if you don't.

Payoffs have more power when they're distant from their setups. Set up early, remind, remind, whomp. This is, I think, what many fanfic writers give up when they choose to write serial fiction, and why writing it makes me v v nervous. How can I make where the story ends up satisfying if I don't know that at the start? Or maybe other people just plan better than I am capable of planning at the moment. Sometimes my unconscious waits until I'm writing the end scene to tell me what I needed to do in the very first one. (This is what just happened with the Post-Grave H/C story. Which needs a new title. Sigh.)

Have been skimming around in dammit_holmes, which is a community about the Laurie R. King Holmes/Russell books. About which I have mixed feelings. Apparently the one I haven't read yet, the newest, is annoying a lot of smart readers, who feel it carries Russell from mere quite-Mary-Sue-ish to over-the-top Sue, and inconsistent to boot. Though I am likely oversimplifying the objections.

Sigh.

I disagree with the criticisms of LRK here, in re a lack of research about skin dye. This seems to me to be like Hamlet dispensing with his opposition off-stage so he can head back to Denmark. (R&G, they're dead, you know?) It's not important to the story, so nod to it and move on. Okay, avoid blatant impossibilities, but I'm okay with the suggestion that "yucky skin dye exists; they use it; it works". An SF writer might have pickier reader standards to live up to, but not a mystery writer who's repurposing Holmes to give him a love interest.

An example of a detail that does not particularly need to be perfect to keep the fictional dream chugging. Though perhaps she's a sloppy writer in other ways.

But in the end I come down on the same side as singer_d: Doyle's Holmes is a very different man from King's Holmes. She's writing fanfic (cough, excuse me, pastiches) so that's fine. We're all okay with it. But I prefer the original.

Probably because I am fond of Watson.

Despite my general aversion to meta, something ljs said this weekend sent me looking around for whatever foofahrah was going on about allusion. I do love the allusion game. It seems to me that fiction in English is crammed with it; it makes the experience of reading richer. It's a supercharged version of the experience we get when we use words with specific connotations. An allusive phrase is sparked up with extra meaning for the reader who is aware of the reference. You still have to make it work for the reader who doesn't get it, though, so allusions don't get you off the hook for good craft.

My theory: just do it. Allude when it feels right, and for pete's sake, don't footnote the things. It's too self-conscious. Just let the writing and the story be themselves. As the first creative writing teacher I had used to say: Never apologize. Never explain.

This Cassandra Claire crap, though, is plagiarism, not allusion. Entire sentences lifted: bah. It's gone beyond allowing one's phrasing to be influenced and moved right into thievery. Footnoting it wouldn't help.

And yet: Philip Pullman retelling "Paradise Lost", a-okay. Shakespeare borrowing all his most famous plots: a-okay. Because everything else: not borrowed.

There's something about CC's "borrowing" that is exactly at the level of writing that really ought to be original. Right at the places I'd think of as the best places to strut my personal style and craft, this fanfic writer chooses to insert two entire sentences from Gene Wolfe. Okay, great taste there on the ripoff, but... the impulse makes me suspicious. Sayers puts her quotations into the mouths of highly-educated characters witticizing at each other; she doesn't use them to describe Lord Peter's experience in the belfry while the bells are being rung.

As you know, Bob, in addition to as-you-know-bobs, one of the great sins of story-writing or screenplay-writing or any-writing is on the nose dialog. "But what is that?" I hear you cry. Your dialog is on the nose when your characters are talking about exactly what they're thinking. When they say what they mean. Real people just don't do that. Real people don't talk like George Lucas wrote them. They talk like David Mamet wrote them.

Mr Pedia and I have been trading email on this topic today. It is a problem for me, and I've been fussing about how to get better at it. Our thoughts about how to avoid this tragedy:

If you have only one goal in a scene, it's hard not to be on the nose. So overload every scene. Make it do three things. Or more.

A character arc for every character makes small talk easier. Even if it's a very short, stubby arc, like "can I snag the last jelly donut without appearing to do so?"

Sometimes I think the single most important writing technique ever is the one taught by this exercise, a famous one suggested by John Gardner:

Describe a barn from the point of view of a man who has just learned that his son has been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, the war, or the death. (The exercise should run to about one typed page.)

Works for everything, from descriptive passages to dialog. Translated:

Buffy is late coming back from patrol with a particularly nasty demon known to be on the loose. Describe Giles and Xander discussing what happened to the last jelly donut. Do not mention Buffy, the demon, or lateness.

I'll try this if you try it!

Really it isn't, because this is not in "ministrations" territory. (I remind you at this time that the word "ministrations" is banned from use in fanfic in the Antennarepublic. On pain of.... I dunno; do it and I'll think of something nasty.) I am suspecting that it is mere personal squick. But um, well...

I have to say that the verb "engulf" has started to make me uncomfortable. To be honest, it has moved past merely non-erotic and is fast approaching nerve-wracking. Like, the image I get when I read it is of octopus arms, pale and purple, writhing and pulling the prey in toward an implacable mouth. And then I say, no, wrong! it's all about flooding and overflowing and that isn't a happy good-touch place either. At least for me.

So maybe, if I asked nicely, you (the generic you) could consider other, less cephalopoidal verbs. Thank you for listening. Eek.

Motion first, then speech. Try writing something the other way, and notice that it's odd.

Events in the order they happened. No jumping back.

Events are never simultaneous. They always have an order. Even in real life you process events one at a time.

The reader's attention is where you put it. The sharper you render something the more attention they'll pay to it. Blur the places you don't need them to notice.

The reader wants to trust you. The reader wants to stay in the dream.

Tension keeps them reading.

Payoffs are sweeter the further they are from the setups. More tension.

Scene-sequel. Motivation-reaction. Tension-release.

All rules can be broken, of course, if you know why you're breaking them. But I ain't at the rule-breaking stage.

Alphas and betas, and the software release cycle.

Triggered by penwiper26's alpha vs beta plaint, though not a reaction to any of its actual content.

( Oh, how I hate the term 'beta'... )

This morning's pointless craft pondering is about production in Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'". Specifically the backing vocals. At one point, several voices join in to sing the words "Ventura Boulevard".

All the vampires, walkin' through the valley, move west down Ventura Boulevard.

( Production techniques considered... )

So then over that second cup of coffee I re-read Updike's "The music school", a story I recall admiring greatly as an undergraduate. I discovered that I have changed since I last read it.

( Short stories, loved and unloved... )

I conclude that I want to write SF. OMG, what a shock.

Plan for the day: laundry, draft of story outline. The recurring image of a lost sock will haunt you.