Fanfic Year in Review 2019

[igenlode]

Stats

List of Completed Fics

(over the last 12 months)

To quote from last year, "Thanks to continuing work on the Swedish story, I haven't completed much this year, and what I have done has been [almost] entirely one-shots"! An introduction I hope not to have to repeat for yet another year, or at least not for the same reason. (Oddly enough, I did get the nibble of an idea for a "Sunset Boulevard" one-shot last night...)

The Opportunist (3,300 words)
Fandom: Frozen
Characters: Anna, Hans
Summary: Feelings are one thing, but a golden opportunity is quite another... and all that is required is for Hans to do nothing.

Familiar (7,500 words)
Fandom: Frozen
Characters: Anna, Hans
Summary "All she could remember was the sword coming down": AU. Anna wakes to a strange place and unwelcome company.

Coming back (1,400 words)
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux)
Characters: Madame Valerius, Professor Valerius, Christine, Raoul
Summary: Life in vignettes. Entry for the Writers Anonymous Drabble Challenge.

Total number

Three (and two of those wouldn't have been written if it hadn't been for forum challenge prompts, and the other wouldn't have been written if not for the first!)

Total word count

About 12,000 words -- which rather to my surprise is more than the 9,000 words I managed to spread across a total of five one-shots last year.

Plus another 57,000 words or so in manuscript on the Swedish story, which really is very, very nearly finished now (another shortish chapter and a half or so; maybe five thousand words more, or even less?)

Ship/character breakdown

Raoul/Christine, two (if you count the Swedish story, and I feel that one should)

Anna/Hans, one-ish

Specifics

To be honest, I feel it's hard to be very specific with such an extremely small pool of work to choose from...

Best/worst title?

None are brilliant; none are outstanding. "The Opportunist" actually had its title changed at a late stage -- after publication -- from "Nothing at All", this being in fact a reversion to what had been the original title. I think I still prefer "The Opportunist" overall for that story, as it sums up the theme better.

Perhaps the title I'm most satisfied with is "Familiar", which is quite an elegant allusion to what the story is about, without actually saying anything about it :-D And I rather enjoyed the complex chapter titles in that one (Yesterday and a Lifetime Ago/Tomorrow for Amends) contrasted with the very simple overall heading.

Best/worst summary?

The worst summary is undoubtedly "Coming back", which really isn't likely to lead anyone to read the story in the absence of some other motivation! I'm afraid that one was rather hamstrung by my (possibly misguided) attempts to avoid giving away the identity of the protagonist in the opening chapter, although even so I might have been able to do better. As it is, the summary basically says 'This is a story written in drabbles" :-P

Best... I think I prefer "Familiar" to "The Opportunist".

Best/worst first line?

"The Opportunist" can more or less be ruled out, as the terms of that contest dictated a mandatory first line -- and definitely the worst, I feel.
Of the other two, I think I prefer All she could remember was the sword coming down on Elsa — Elsa, who'd never intended any of this, who'd meant no harm to anyone to She grew up in a little town in Sweden a long way from the sea, and there was never any thought in her mind that she might leave.

Best/worst last line?

I think I probably like There was room for two on the sledge more than either of the more 'poetic' candidates. (I seem to be voting overall for the simpler options this year; perhaps my subconscious is trying to tell me something, because that's certainly not what I usually write as such.)

General questions

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Quoting from last year, "At the start of the year I would probably have predicted that I would finish the Swedish story as my major achievement"... well, actually, probably not! Although there was a halcyon period around September when it seemed possible that I would in fact reach the final chapters before the end of the year ;-p

I'm not sure that I'd have predicted that I should end up writing quite so few stories in addition to my main project, although in all fairness my word-count overall was higher than under similar conditions last year (mainly owing to "Familiar", which came out quite long for something that was intended to be a one-shot),

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

I doubt that I'd have predicted a leap into "Frozen" fandom, although in fact "The Opportunist" was based on an idea that had been around in the back of my mind since 2015, and I was finally prodded into taking action by the news of an imminent Disney sequel¹ which would almost certainly render the idea incompatible with canon in one way or another. So I shoehorned it into the next forum contest, which happened to be the fixed-first-line one. Unfortunately I misremembered the first line in question, so it didn't fit quite as well as I'd originally planned :-p

(¹ No, I haven't watched it -- I did see the trailers. I'd actually assumed that "Frozen Fever" had been the trailer for some straight-to-video sequel in normal Disney mode, but discovered when researching for these stories that it was all there was of it.)

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

"Coming back", definitely. It was a considerable technical challenge, it was fun to explore Madame Valerius and create the background to her marriage, and I managed to preach subliminal RC even to the fandom-blind readers ;-D

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

That's actually hard to establish, given that two of them were for forum contests and thus derived a lot of reviews that they wouldn't otherwise have got (and that one of them had fourteen chapters of only a hundred words each, which someone loyally reviewed one by one). "The Opportunist" got the most favourites; "Coming back" got the fewest, but I felt that it got the most favourable reception (which is to say that I didn't get any embarrassing technical criticism on it... well, apart from the issue with Elsa's identity in Ch2). The first chapter of "Familiar" got quite a lot of favourites, but I suspect that didn't reflect how the readers felt about the story as a whole.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

"Familiar", alas. The first chapter stirred up a good deal of enthusiasm and follows, but the second chapter got only one rather disappointed review. I suspect the Dumas crossover went over everybody's heads, meaning that the backstory in which Hans effectively becomes the Count of Monte Cristo simply came across as confused and arbitrary, the non-romance with Hans didn't satisfy either Hans-haters or Hans-lovers, and they probably expected it to be longer.

I enjoyed writing Hans the superannuated adventurer, but it has to be admitted that he was practically an OC with the exception of his history with Anna.

Story that could have been better?

Not sure. I already did some major revisions to "The Opportunist" in response to criticism and don't know what more I could do with it. Likewise, "Familiar" did what I wanted it to but apparently not what the readers wanted it to.

Sexiest story?

There's a kiss in "The Opportunist" ;-D
Out of a very celibate field, probably the Swedish story, which after a couple of years of scrupulous attempts on my part to keep it entirely sex-free, acquired the vaguest of gestures at a 'wedding-night' scene, in that it is made apparent that one did actually take place with a certain amount of joint trepidation.

Saddest story?

Objectively, probably "The Opportunist", in that it's the story of Anna getting let down and deserted by her lover. However, the fact that it's narrated by said lover in a pretty much impenitent vein robs it of most of its potential 'sadness', so I'd go for "Coming back", which has a vein of bittersweet nostalgia running through it despite the ever-present love.

Most fun?

Probably "Familiar", featuring snarky superannuated-Hans.

Story with single sweetest moment?

Ah, that would definitely be "Coming back", even if I'm not quite certain which of the many candidates in that story...

Hardest story to write?

The Swedish story, of course :-p

Otherwise, they all had their difficulties; a major rewrite for "The Opportunist", an 'action-scene' rewrite for "Familiar", and of course the drabble constraint on "Coming back".

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Possibly "Coming back", despite the constant word-counting and compromises over phrasing. It was nice to revisit the POTO universe again and to hint at the underlying story, and I did complete the whole thing amazingly quickly -- due to not starting until a few days before the deadline!

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

"Coming back" made me see Madame Valerius as more of a person in her own right, rather than just a tiresome and senile old woman.

Most overdue story?

Guess!

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I did an entire story in drabbles despite only having ever done one before, and having made rather heavy work of that one. The best way to get a lot of story into a drabble is to use the hundred words for dialogue and allow much to be read between the lines; I signally failed to do that at all :-p

I'm not sure how much I learned from it, other than that I can, after all, write drabbles.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Quoting yet again from last year, "My immediate goal is to get to the end of the Swedish story and give Raoul his triumphal parade" ;-)