sholio | (no subject)

It's snowing (SNOW! ING!) and has been doing it all day, though it's slightly above freezing so we've only accumulated a couple of inches of very wet, heavy snow. Still, the less said about that, the better.

My plan for today was to spend a few hours outside, sitting on the rocks and writing (in longhand!) in my shiny new writing journal. Seeing how the rocks are now covered with snow, I've been huddled at the computer all day instead, banging my head against the rewrite of one of my original novellas.

Something I've been wanting to start a topic about, over at

writers_lair, is the difference between writing fanfic and writing original stories, for those of us who do both. Except I can't seem to get my brain together enough to actually make a coherent post on the topic. I've been thinking about it, though, as I'm scrapping scenes and rewriting them from scratch, because I really don't do that in fanfic very often, and when I do it's almost always plot-driven and not character-driven, if that makes any sense. In other words, I'll scrap or rewrite a scene in fanfic because it doesn't work with the plot, but very rarely will I end up seriously reworking a scene in order to display a character in a different light or show a different side of them, which is exactly what I'm doing here. Maybe it's the difference between characters that come pre-packaged, as those in fanfic generally do, and having to wing it on every aspect of characterization, as one does in original fiction; I find that in fanfic, I can "hear" the voices very easily and I don't really ever end up totally reworking a characterization in the middle of the writing process. *glares at novella*

And speaking of

writers_lair, I'm not a mod over there or anything -- I'm pretty sure

kriadydragon and

bratfarrar run the place -- but it is a nice place for chatting about the writing process; I've been enjoying the discussions and finding plenty of tidbits that are applicable to both my fanfic and original writing.

And while I'm plugging things,

sheppard_hc is running another remix challenge while we wait for the new season to begin -- sign up in this thread to make your stories available to have missing scenes and tags written for them. I wrote this and this and, oh hey, this last year; it was a lot of fun, and I've made all of my stories available again this year. (Technically, they're always available for that sort of thing, just so you know.)

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Oh, a discussion on the difference between fanfic and original fic would be very interesting. Characterization might be a good starting point as the differences seems pretty obvious. With fanfic (which I always like to describe as a starting kit for writers) you have the characters laid out before you, and it's only a matter of tweaking their personalities through plot to get emotions and reactions you don't always get on the show. With original fic, the character's a complete blank slate that it's up to you to develope, which means paying closer attention to everything you have the character do and say.

I think Fanfic vs. original fic would be a fun discussion.

Yeah, it's a really fascinating topic. I think to some extent, the approach that an author takes to their fic does affect how much freedom they have to re-interpret the characters; non-AU gen is probably the very closest thing to having the characters straight "out of the box", as it were. But even with the mostly wildly AU scenarios, there's still a sort of character baseline that you can't veer away from before you're basically writing original fiction. For me, it's very comfortable to have that guideline in writing fanfic, and to be able to go back and check canon when you start to go astray. In the novella, for example, I've realized that I keep changing one character's hair color; in different scenes, I have her blonde, redheaded and every point in between. That's simply not a problem that comes up in fanfic!

You have snow? Could you send some of that weather here? It was in the mid 90s here in AZ yesterday and today - a few of my neighbors actually cranked up their air conditioners...

Believe me, if one could mail snow, I'd send you all of it. :D

Yeah, technically we run the place, but that mostly consists of making sure stuff's tagged properly. You guys seem to be pretty well behaved.

Well, writers, you know how those people are. Notoriously rowdy bunch.

snow? okay, it was back to chilly (for us chilly anyway) here in CA, but... we're talking a long sleeved shirt - not a heavy coat!! snow?!?!! wow..... And this weekend we're expected to have the 90+ temperatures again (and fire warnings). fun, fun, fun. Too bad you can't send the snow this way :) I'm sure you're very, very, very tired of it.

Oh yeah, you guys are having fires -- you have my sympathies. We'll be there in a month or so, but not yet. I've got fingers crossed for a cool, wet summer; we had a couple of really bad fire years (Fairbanks collects smoke and if there's a fire anywhere within a couple hundred miles, you can't so much as see across the road), and then a couple of damp years that were very, very nice. I'm hoping for more damp weather.

I've been keeping all the writers lair posts for the day I get the courage to write something :) Is there one on how to start? :)

*puts on mod hat*

Well, here are the three entries on beginning that we have at the moment. But if those aren't what you're looking for, feel free to post your own. Even if it's just along the lines of "I want to write something but I don't know how/where to begin". That's perfectly acceptable.

Oh I've just had an idea (it was Anzac Day on the 25th April) but what would a Dawn Service be like on Atlantis? Thank you for at least getting me this far. I've also got a HP/ Keeping Up Appearances xover that I don't know what to do with. Well one of these days I'll stop lurking and dip the toe in a bit further.

I'd definitely be interested in a post on the difference between the two. I haven't written much in the way of original fiction since my college creative writing class. One comment that I remember to this day was someone telling me that I had written my own characters out-of-character... which I really didn't know what to make of back then. Now I'm wondering, if you're the writer, is that a valid sort of comment? Or is it just an indication of bad writing/uneven characterization?

And if you want, I'll trade you our cloudy, windy low eighties for snow. Texas was cheated out of a winter this year.

Wow! (Giggles) You've been busy. :D

Very good stories on the ones I got to read that you've posted this year. :)