Jealous

[igenlode]

A fanfiction writer I vaguely used to know has announced proudly that she has done a file-off-the-numbers job on one of her existing stories and it will now be published (in fact, she 'turned down a publishing house').

So I looked up the original story out of curiosity, and... ouch. I honestly can't tell any difference between the chapters where she said she had a beta-reader and the ones after she said she'd unfortunately lost her beta-reader. It's stiff with dangling participles, greengrocer's apostrophes, epithets in place of character names, malapropisms ("burdened with a heavy conscious") and sheer clumsy writing (the hero digs 'the pointy end' of an improvised weapon into a hostage's throat -- although the author refers to it as an "impromptu weapon"; I do not think that word means what you think it means).

All right, fair enough -- that was four years ago, and she may have done a *lot* of rewriting on it since then. In fact, she clearly has, since she's apparently turned a historical novel into a far-future SF military adventure -- thus ironing out the anachronisms, presumably. (Referring to the King and Queen as "the Royals", for instance, or having heroin around in an era that predates the existence even of morphine.)

But she is by no means a teenager, and her writing hadn't improved noticeably over the previous four years, after all. (And frankly the story doesn't particularly appeal to me; it's a classic case of wallowing in angst and character-torture to the degree that the only one of the characters I really recognise is the one who is allowed to retain his self-control. Perhaps I need to take a lesson from that over my own angst-filled tendencies ;-p)

But if someone like that can get something based on *that* published..!

---

Of course, instead of feeling bitter and jealous, what I ought to be doing is putting in some actual work on Arctic Raoul. It's very easy not to get published if you never even dare to try :-(

Comments

[erimia]

So presumably the implication of what you're saying is that I do all these things *well*, such that the reader isn't left uncomfortably conscious of it...

I'd say that those things in your stories don't give off the feeling of weird distortions and flatness that a lot of fanfiction writing gives. For example, of course your stories focus on Raoul and Christine, but it doesn't feel like the world outside of them is made of cardboard or revolves around them, while in a lot of fics it does. The melodrama, I'd say, is canonical for the Phantom of the Opera in general, but the dramatic emotions in your fics feel less, I don't know, "shapeless" and "endless" and "repetitive" than they tend to in less well-written fanfics. I don't really mind the stories where "no action happens" and that are based mostly on emotional lives of the characters, but when the author is not very skilled, such stories often end giving the impression that nothing at all happens, including in the said emotional lives. I'm not a writer, but I guess a lot of it depends on how good the author is in giving the story structure, and knowing what purpose each line serves.

[igenlode]

of course your stories focus on Raoul and Christine, but it doesn't feel like the world outside of them is made of cardboard or revolves around them, while in a lot of fics it does

I suspect that's a factor of my actually having some idea of what the contemporary world outside was like, whereas a lot of young authors really are writing in what amounts to a complete blank; I may not be all that well acquainted with 19th-century France, but I know 19th-century and Edwardian England quite well from a literary standpoint, and have at least a modicum of knowledge about the changes across the Channel. And I have personal experience of life without a lot of the modern conveniences young Americans take for granted, which probably helps from that perspective.

As for the world not revolving around the protagonists -- yes, that is something I've tried to make a conscious point of doing. Partly because I enjoy creating original characters, and like the idea that all these incidental spur-of-the-moment people have lives and histories of their own outside the brief moment when their lives intersect with those of the protagonists, even if I myself don't know anything more about them. Partly because (related) I tend to invent details on the fly as I go along, which gives the impression of an enormous hinterland of 'world-building' to support the story but that isn't really there ;-p

I don't sit down and work out a detailed backstory for characters or construct a society for them to move through before I start, and then only show the tip of my creation in the actual story (as some writing manuals recommend; hence 'character questionnaires', and elaborate maps and alien sociologies); it's more like turning a creative torch beam around a darkened room where an infinity of possibilities potentially exist, but have no defined reality until the authorial gaze happens to fall on them.

The world outside my immediate plot is there, going on with no relation to my story, but only the parts that happen to impinge upon the characters' consciousness actually get invented in order to be written about. Although it's the other way round, really. They get invented as a result of being written about; they are mentioned at random, and grow from that. To give a tangible example, I don't even know what my characters are wearing unless or until there is some active reason for someone to interact with some item of clothing -- and then you suddenly get a rush of detail, like the lumpiness of waistcoat buttons or the fastening of a collar-stud, or the roughness of stiffened broadcloth in a tailored jacket.

the dramatic emotions in your fics feel less, I don't know, "shapeless" and "endless" and "repetitive" than they tend to in less well-written fanfics.

I think (hope) that's probably because I know where they are going. The characters aren't just emoting at random for the sake of emotion; I have a target in mind. I don't always know how exactly I'm going to get there, but by the time I've got as far as writing the story I do know (having been through it all before in the process of experiencing the plot) where the scene is going to end.

On the rare occasions where I get an unanticipated extra chapter after the expected finale, as in "The Choices of Raoul de Chagny" or "Count Philippe Takes a Hand", the sensation of not knowing where I'm going is very tangible and rather frighteningly undefined.

I'm not a writer, but I guess a lot of it depends on how good the author is in giving the story structure, and knowing what purpose each line serves.

Unfortunately, for me at least it's pretty much a subconscious process; structure is held in the back of my mind, and lines don't serve a deliberate purpose other than sounding good and springing from what came before. (The latter, I think, is more important than one might expect -- poor-quality writing often seems to give the impression that people say and do things disjointedly and arbitrarily because the author wanted them to, rather than because it seemed like a natural consequence.)