When Characters Write Themselves

I've mentioned it here before but sometimes characters write themselves. I always thought authors were ... not really kidding but using hyperbole when they said that, but I'm telling you, that shit is for real. You'll find yourself writing something with absolutely no idea where it's coming from. The story will take off in a direction you never intended. They may be your fingers flying over the keyboard but the words don't seem like they're yours at all.

It can be ... disconcerting, to say the least. Disconcerting and yet, most of the time, awesome as all get-out.

The most recent example I have of this is the latest chapter of my current Once Upon a Time story. It's a series of sequential mid- and post-ep one-shots chronicling Emma finding a place to belong over the course of the first season. Little unseen moments between the scenes.

This conceit of mine became an issue when I got up to "Hat Trick." We spent most of the episode with Emma so unseen moments were few and far between, but there was too much good material within the episode for me to bypass it entirely. I rewatched the episode, found my span of unseen time, and started to write.

And what came out ... that was all Emma and Mary Margaret. It was not me at all. Believe me, I know how it sounds when I say things like that. These people don't really exist, and even if they did exist, they most certainly would not choose to have their conversations through, you know, me. But it does happen, and I don't know that it's something you can fully understand until it happens to you.

I certainly didn't understand it. Hell, it's happened to me more than a few times and I still don't understand it. But it's a real thing that happens and what it results in can be really cool.

Don't believe me? Check out the chapter below, entitled "Family By Choice." And believe me when I tell you that I have no freaking clue where this came from.

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On Process, and Changing Things Up

Back when I started on the fanfic train, I had a very simple process: write, edit, post. I've mentioned before that I used to do a lot of handwritten work. Mostly that was because I grew up in the Dark Ages before everybody and their mother had a laptop. However, as a college student traveling to and from school on trains and buses four or five days a week, you know what I did have? Waiting time and lots and lots of looseleaf paper.

I'd pull sheets of paper out of the binders I used for class and write on the train or at the station. I would then do a bulk of the editing when I typed up what I'd written. My first drafts are typically very dry; the embellishments come during editing so the handwritten drafts were pretty much just guideposts. So I would write whenever I could, type it up once I got enough written to make it worth it (because this was also back in the Dark Ages when an entire family actually had to share one computer), and then give everything a once- or twice-over before posting it to ... wherever I posted things to. A couple of mailing lists, I think, and a forum community.

Then I joined up at fanfiction.net and they had this nifty little system to divide your story by chapters. So my new process became write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x, write chapter y, edit chapter y, post chapter y. And so on. Which is all well and good but then once in a while I would run into a situation where, three-quarters of the way through the story, I'd get stuck.

Getting stuck now presented a new issue. Since I had been posting works as complete units before, I'd never felt pressure when I got stuck. I'd set it aside for a couple of days and brainstorm and figure a way out of it. Now, though, people were reading my stuff as I wrote it. I didn't want to leave them hanging for too long. Because there are fewer things more frustrating than being really into a story and the author either taking forever to update it or never updating it again.

I mean, I get it. Most fanfic authors are doing this as a hobby. They all have lives outside fanfic and the muse can be extremely fickle. Just because you have inspiration for something now doesn't mean you're going to have inspiration for it a week from now when the show completely screws your plot to hell or your everyday life demands more of your attention. But at the same time, I felt a responsibility to my readers to give them some kind of closure. So I would just ... write an ending. It wouldn't be the ending I really wanted to write, but it was the only ending I could write at that point in time.

After that happened two or three times, I started waiting until I had a few chapters written before I started posting a new story. That way, I would always be a couple chapters ahead of myself, so if I did get stuck, I could release a new chapter on schedule without the undue pressure on myself to get around the stumbling block omgrightnow.

And then, as it happened, I got writers' block. The real and serious writers' block where nothing comes out the way you want and you hate everything you try to write. It lasted close to two very long, very excruciating years. By the time I was ready to try another multi-chapter story, I was afraid of getting a block again, so I decided to change my process yet again. This time, I'd write the whole thing, then edit chapter x, post chapter x, edit chapter y, post chapter y.

At first, that was a really difficult change to make. A large part of the fanfic process for me, especially if I'm writing a story for a new fandom, is the feedback. I love hearing when I'm doing things correctly, obviously, but I also want people to tell me what I'm doing wrong. It helps to refine my writing, and it helps me get a better handle on the characters. "You know, I don't think Sam would really say that to Dean" is just as helpful to hear as "Oh, that was so Sam! Great job!"

Doing things this way, I still got the feedback as I was doing the edits, so I could tweak things that weren't quite working in -- or add things that were working to -- future chapters. It just made the actual drafting phase very tense because I had no idea how it would be received.

With my Once Upon a Time fic, for whatever reason, I've pretty much been throwing caution to the wind. My first story, as I chronicled here, was "Breaking Point." I don't usually write multi-chapter epics the first time out. It's easier for me to get a handle on characterization with oneshots, so I usually do a couple of those first before tackling a multi-chapter, plot-heavy story.

My latest story, "Navigation," was supposed to be a oneshot. The reader response to it was overwhelming, and pretty much everyone asked me to continue it. So I did. I completely flew by the seat of my pants, going back to the write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x process.

I was terrified I wouldn't be able to find a way to tie it all together (because this was not a story I'd intended to continue, there really was no laid-out plotline to follow and I only had a vague notion of what I even wanted to do with it), but apparently what I came up with worked, because the readers seemed to love it.

*whew*

So, yeah. That was an interesting exercise. And by interesting, I mean terrifying, of course. I had a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, and the readers were fantastic and made me feel wonderful. It was maybe just a touch too on-the-spot for comfort. At least going outside my comfort zone presented a nice challenge!

On Striking a Chord

I've been writing for a good long time now and I've been posting my stories for people other than me to read for over a decade. And yet, having one of my stories be really well-received still shocks the hell out of me.

As is obvious from my last few posts, I have been very into Once Upon a Time fanfic lately, both writing and reading. The most recent story I wrote, a little three-chapter deal titled "Can You Help Me," turned out, to my surprise, to be one of the most popular stories I've ever written.

The idea for the story was simple, really. It came from a song by the same name by Vertical Horizon that became one of my favorite songs of all time pretty much the first time I heard it. It's a lovely song, and as I was driving to work one day, the lyrics in the chorus gave me this little inkling for a post-curse Once Upon a Time story with a hurt and guilty Snow White trying to reconnect with a defensive and walls-up Emma.

It was just supposed to be a one-shot -- a complete story told in a few thousand words -- but as I wrote, it grew too long to post as a one-shot. I quickly decided to make it a three-parter and wrote the whole thing in about a week and a half.

I posted the first chapter less than two weeks ago, and the reader response to it has been overwhelming. It's been put on more alert subscriptions (which meant the readers wanted to be notified via email when I updated it) than any of my others, and it is the 4th most-favorited story I have on the ff.net archive.

To put things in perspective, I've been posting to ff.net since 2001. The three stories that are ahead of it in terms of being favorited are "Sorry" and "Locked Out," two Supernatural stories I wrote in 2007 and 2008, respectively, and the magnum opus for SVU, "The Heart of the Matter," which I wrote in 2005.

To have a story take off this quickly is flippin' insane to me. I'm thrilled to pieces, don't get me wrong, but it's insane.

It's just that it surprises me what strikes a chord with a readership. Like I said, "Can You Help Me" was a little idea I got on the drive to work. "Sorry" was based on, no lie, a real game of Sorry that happened in my family that I translated into a cute little pre-series Supernatural story, and "Locked Out" was an idea about a preteen Dean locking himself and Sam out of the motel room during a rainstorm that came quite literally out of nowhere. And "The Heart of the Matter"? I still have no idea why that story is so popular. It's a half-casefile, half-personal relationship, slow-burn Casey/Olivia story that I really don't think is anything super-special. Apparently, though, it is, for reasons completely unknown to me.

But things like that that also give me confidence. Having something that I don't think is in any way special resonate with an audience is an amazing feeling.

On Gripping and Searching For Talent

I'll admit it: I'm totally gripping here.

I'm trying for a voice I'm not sure I can achieve, and even if I can achieve it once, I'm not sure I can maintain it over the length of a novel. The closest I've ever come to the voice I'm trying for was in a Supernatural fanfic entitled "Corpse Fire," but even that had its moments of adult voice mixed in with the kid voice.

I'm okay with doing the whole thing in that kind of mixture. (Because, really, I kinda like the way that story turned out.) And it would be easier for me, since adult voice is closer to my style anyway.

But my problem is I need a hook. I need something to draw the reader in, I need someplace to start. In the original fanfic version of "The Witch of November," I opened with Allie standing at the fence after Charlie had thrown the Frisbee over it. Since that opening scene was meant to be a teaser--sort of a prologue--I tried to expand it for Chapter One in the novel version. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake.

I've been reading some of my old stuff over the last couple of days, trying to see where I'm going wrong. I'm not sure I've discovered it yet. I'm not sure I've found my voice. But I have to believe that I will, if only because this feeling of being stuck stinks and the thought of never getting over the hump is terrifying.

Cautious Optimism

I know, I know, I've been neglecting this blog. Truthfully, I've been neglecting writing lately, which meant I had no real content for the blog. Since no one likes to read "Yeah, nothing's really changed, but I'm here just to babble" posts, I just ... haven't posted.

The reasons for the neglect are numerous and all sound like bad excuses. At the beginning of the year, I had a really stressful couple of months, which left no energy or even real interest for writing. Then when things calmed down in my personal life, I found myself writer's-blocked. Nothing came out the way I envisioned, I didn't like the sound of anything I wrote, the whole shebang.

So I took a break. Breaks not of my own choosing are frustrating, to be sure, but sitting there hating everything I wrote was even more so. The hardest part of any break is getting back into the swing of things, but I knew that if I didn't, I never would.

I like writing, so the thought of not being able to make myself sit there and do it made me sad. So tonight I kicked my own behind, put my headphones on, and tried to work on my epiphany. I'd written the new prologue a couple of times already, but it never sounded ... right. And I can't really explain what "right" is; I just knew that what I had wasn't it.

Tonight? I'm cautiously optimistic that I got it right. Cautiously because I tend to like the things I write the day I write them but then I look at it more objectively the next day and see all the problems. We'll see if I still like it tomorrow, but I like it a lot tonight. The tone, the voice, a nice balance of exposition in the prose and in dialogue ... I kinda think I nailed it.

On Rewrite Projects, and Why They Help

I've mentioned before that when I get stuck/frustrated, I sometimes work on a rewrite project to help get the creative juices flowing again. I don't believe I've ever actually sat down and explained the rewrite projects, though, so here goes:

It's pretty much what it sounds like: I take a story I've written previously and completely rewrite it, from beginning to end. The pieces I choose are usually years old and have problems that I didn't see when I was writing it the first time.

For instance, my most recent rewrite was on a Supernatural story I wrote in 2007 called "Child's Play." It's a pre-series story about a young Sam and Dean meeting the ghost of a little girl who's haunting the motel at which John left them during his hunt. Over the course of the rewrite, I tightened up the language and also changed two things: how little Lucy was killed in the first place, and why neither Sam nor Dean told anyone on staff at the motel about the kidnapped child staying in one of their rooms.

I changed Lucy's manner of death because, in all honesty, it was too hard to prove and thus seemed too convenient that John and Dean caught onto it relatively quickly. I originally had the kidnapper drugging her food and overdosing her by mistake. Since a five-year-old (for that's how old Lucy was) wouldn't understand much other than "This tastes funny and makes me sleepy," it was just really convenient that she not only described it like that but also that John made the leap from funny-tasting food to drugging food to overdose as quickly as he did.

The whole thing with Sam and Dean not telling anyone in charge about Lucy was something I never thought of at all during the initial drafts. Because, well, I knew that Lucy was a ghost. It wouldn't have mattered what Sam or Dean told anyone because Lucy had been dead for eleven years. But when I was doing the rewrite, I realized that I at least needed to acknowledge the thought process of people who don't yet know that she's a ghost. So I had Sam offer to go tell someone and Lucy beg him not to, and I had Dean on his way to tell someone when John came back and the two of them figured out that Lucy was a ghost. So the intent was there, at least, even if neither of them managed to follow through.

The rewrite project I want to do now is on a Charmed story I wrote back in 2004 called "With a Vengeance." The basic premise of the story, that a demon/bad person/whatever wants to turn the Charmed Ones by using Prue's guilt over Andy's death as a way in, has a lot of potential, but the execution of it was ... not so good. There are too many things I spelled out way too much and too many things I didn't spell out enough. There are bits that are clunky and bits that are melodramatic and bits that are rather good. Basically, I want to even it out, and I think the distance from the piece will help a lot with that.

Now, as to why these little projects help with the current one. There's a lot less pressure on the rewrites, because the story's already done. It was posted in various places many moons ago. I only update my own personal files/archive with the rewrite information, so mostly they're for my eyes only. Because there's less pressure, the words usually wind up flowing nice and easy. And when the words flow, it loosens you up. Makes you realize that yeah, maybe you can do this after all.

Then, when the rewrite is finished, you have gained not only a little bit of distance from the project on which you were stuck/burnt out, but also a little more confidence in your talent and abilities. You're closer to and more in tune with your own style.

In a way, it's kind of a palate cleanser, a chance to clear out the cobwebs so you can return to your current project bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for anything.

Finding a Voice

I don't know what happened, I don't know what I did differently, but I think I've finally found the voice I want for The Witch of November.

I can't even really explain why it's different from what I'd written before. It's not as verbose and a little funnier than before. I also think I've managed a nice balance between the adult voice for the narrative and just a touch of kid voice to give the prose a punch.

Have a snippet:

“I’ll be right back,” she muttered, more to herself than to Charlie. All right. She could do this, right? It shouldn’t take more than a minute to find the ball and squeeze back through the fence and she could totally handle sixty little seconds. And besides, the longer she stood there thinking about it, the more nervous she’d be. A rescue mission like this needed to be done quickly and without thinking. Kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid.

But then again, she’d always been afraid to rip off the Band-Aid super-fast.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she gave Charlie a small wave and took off for the back yard. The next time Charlie fired the ball over the fence, he was going to have to be the one tromping into the Witch’s yard to get it back. Even if he called her a chicken on top of calling her a baby.

The plastic ball had rolled to a stop a couple inches shy of the wooden deck attached to the back of the house. Oh, Charlie so owes me an ice cream for this, Allie thought as she dashed forward and wrapped her hand around the ball. A real ice cream sundae from Sweet Indulgence, too, not one of those little treat things he usually got from the freezer at the 7-11.

“Hey, Allie!”

“I’m coming!” she hollered back. Cripes, that boy had no patience. She hadn’t even been gone a full minute yet! What more did he want from her? “Relax! Jeez.”

A flicker of movement in the dining room window stopped Allie dead in her tracks. Oh, holy crap, if that was even the Witch … that one little glimpse of her from the safety of the lot across the street had been more than enough, thank you very much.

It still needs work, of course, but it's reading more the way I want it to now. Which has turned my "There's no way in hell I can do this" into "I just mght be able to do this!"

Writing Pride

Sometimes I'll be reading a book and I'll think, "I can totally do this!" And then other times I'll be reading a book and I'll think, "Oh, there is no way in HELL I can do this!"

I'm on the "no way in hell" end of the spectrum right now with regards to The Witch of November (although the edits have been going better since I stopped trying so dang hard), so I decided I needed to do this post now rather than later.

I've kept a lot of the fanfic I've written on hard copy. I tend to fall in and out of fandom (I'll go through, say, SVU phases and Sports Night phases and so on) so sometimes I feel like re-reading some of the stuff I've written. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this!) Most of the time, I read it very critically, all, "Holy crap, this is kinda horrible." Especially the older stuff. Sometimes, though, I have flashes of, "Hey, this actually might be kinda good!"

So, at the risk of sounding terribly conceited, I'm going to link to the couple of stories I've written that I actually like, if only to remind myself that I do have some semblance of talent lying around somewhere, hee.

-"Lost in Time", a Charmed story it took me three dang years to get out on paper.

-"Stalemate", an SVU story that is kind of AU (alternate universe) in that we were never given any info about Casey's family so I gave her one. It is probably the most dramatic story I've ever written and was therefore very challenging, but I do like the end result.

-"Hide and Seek", the most recent fanfic I've written. It's a Harper's Island fic through the eyes of the killer, so it spoils the end if you haven't seen the whole thing, but you have no idea how much fun it was to write. Which should worry me, I think, hee.

And just so this doesn't look like I'm shilling my old work (because I'm really not ... it's more for me to remember that I can do this and that it's not hopeless), here's a snippet from The Witch of November, a letter from my ghost to her husband, back when she was still alive (there are a few of these scattered throughout the story).