thoughts on "my" 'verse
Sep. 5th, 2011 04:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
telperion1I'm up late (or early) because I can't sleep again. Probably not the best time for blogging, I know. But rabidsamfan has a pretty interesting poll going on and I wanted to get my thoughts down. Do go vote in that poll, btw, if you haven't already.
RSF asked whether we ever cry at our old fic. My first thought was that she meant she read an old story and it was so bad, she was literally reduced to tears. I'm often ashamed of my old stuf, but never that much. Turns out though she meant something else entirely. Are we ever reduced to tears by the sad or dramatic or whatever stuff that we wrote?
I've often described my fanfic-writing like journalism. See, I have this really involved world playing out like a movie in my mind. There are some corners that are really well imagined and other corners that I haven't discovered all the details. But it's all there to be discovered. And it's all a reflection of me because ultimately "my" world is a reflection of my own self. I think about something, some theme or even some sensation, and somewhere there is a character that jumps up and it's obvious that this character's experience is pertinent to what I'm thinking about. But I don't dream up the story; it's just there. The trick is finding a POV, a snippet that I can unravel enough so it's not just reality but there's an actual narrative to it, a plot structure that functions as literature. In many ways, my private fantasy world which is the backdrop for my fanfic is more "real" than reality. More potent, closer to the ideal than the messy world with all of its frustrating details that can get in the way of a good story.
Why shouldn't I cry at that? My stories are snippets of a world that I hope has more pathos than reality because the details I am aware of are the ones that matter to the issue I want to work with. And I cry at the news, at the horrible things people do to each other. In a very weird way I care about my characters. Yeah, I know they're not alive, I'm not crazy or anything, but in a very real sense they are alive to me. Sometimes more alive than actual people I know in RL.
Incidentally, this is why it's so hard for me to write longer-length pieces. Think about that scene in The Hours where Ed Harris's character talks about trying to capture all the details of a single moment in time. It's impossible, and developing a larger story-arc is that much more impossible. It already feels like I am reducing the situation, to mention this detail and not that one. Fanfic for me isn't constructive, it's reductive, and at a certain point it no longer captures even the basics of my world. It's not laziness. There's a reason why my stories are usually less than 5,000 words and are the results of months of mental percolation, until they basically write themselves.
So to answer RSF's question: of course I cry over my stories if they're sad. They are in many ways more real than reality, at least to me.
rabidsamfan has a pretty interesting poll going on and I wanted to get my thoughts down. Do go vote in that poll, btw, if you haven't already.RSF asked whether we ever cry at our old fic. My first thought was that she meant she read an old story and it was so bad, she was literally reduced to tears. I'm often ashamed of my old stuf, but never that much. Turns out though she meant something else entirely. Are we ever reduced to tears by the sad or dramatic or whatever stuff that we wrote?
I've often described my fanfic-writing like journalism. See, I have this really involved world playing out like a movie in my mind. There are some corners that are really well imagined and other corners that I haven't discovered all the details. But it's all there to be discovered. And it's all a reflection of me because ultimately "my" world is a reflection of my own self. I think about something, some theme or even some sensation, and somewhere there is a character that jumps up and it's obvious that this character's experience is pertinent to what I'm thinking about. But I don't dream up the story; it's just there. The trick is finding a POV, a snippet that I can unravel enough so it's not just reality but there's an actual narrative to it, a plot structure that functions as literature. In many ways, my private fantasy world which is the backdrop for my fanfic is more "real" than reality. More potent, closer to the ideal than the messy world with all of its frustrating details that can get in the way of a good story.
Why shouldn't I cry at that? My stories are snippets of a world that I hope has more pathos than reality because the details I am aware of are the ones that matter to the issue I want to work with. And I cry at the news, at the horrible things people do to each other. In a very weird way I care about my characters. Yeah, I know they're not alive, I'm not crazy or anything, but in a very real sense they are alive to me. Sometimes more alive than actual people I know in RL.
Incidentally, this is why it's so hard for me to write longer-length pieces. Think about that scene in The Hours where Ed Harris's character talks about trying to capture all the details of a single moment in time. It's impossible, and developing a larger story-arc is that much more impossible. It already feels like I am reducing the situation, to mention this detail and not that one. Fanfic for me isn't constructive, it's reductive, and at a certain point it no longer captures even the basics of my world. It's not laziness. There's a reason why my stories are usually less than 5,000 words and are the results of months of mental percolation, until they basically write themselves.
So to answer RSF's question: of course I cry over my stories if they're sad. They are in many ways more real than reality, at least to me.
