Fanfic Extra: Behind the Keyboard of "Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies."
spn_summergen 'DVD Fanfic Extra': "Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies" Behind the keyboard.
(AKA caffienekitty needs to babble a bunch of stuff into the ether or she'll go nuts)
Random trivia about the story and things learned while participating in SummerGen 2009
Random Trivia:
-Favourite placeholder line used in this fic: *Sam is waylaid by social bullshit*. Although **Sam, Sarah and Sarah's past do tough-guy jazz hands in the dark** comes a close second.
-The 'art' happened in the process of writing, I don't know how.
-I've never written or read any fanfic for the series "Chuck" before.
-There is a shout-out to ficwriter1966's story "Snowfall" in the story somewhere. It's a passing reference and easy to miss.
-Located in this fic are about ten things I was considering for titles. I'm still not happy with the title.
-I only intended to write 3000 words. That's it. The minimum was a thousand, I figured 3000 was fair and doable. Then the bunny decided otherwise. Total word count: 20770, thereby making this story my longest completed story to date. o.O
-To be sneaky and try to hide my identity, I went through prior year's SummerGens and picked out a different scene-bullet and title/header format. What I probably should have done is removed half the adverbs, and every other occurrence of grinned, nodded, smirked, shrugged, rolled his eyes, really, pretty, kind of, sort of... As well as most of the A/N. Or all of it. *facepalm*
Fic-Specific Things learned from Summergen:
-I should always google names I think I've come up with at random. The ghost was at various points named after a member of Metallica, a very well-known computer programmer and a hockey player. :-P
-The TV show Chuck needs a fan-wiki. The online detail available for the series is pathetic. I couldn't even track down whether Ellie and Awesome own a car, never mind what kind it might be. I bet they've got a Prius.
-Chuck, Casey and Awesome from Chuck are all at least 6'4" tall. It's only ginormous if you're filming in Vancouver. I guess most BC actors are wee creatures.
-Casey grunts a LOT canonically. In fic, it looks silly.
-It's tricky to make a disembodied adversary character batshit insane without making him inaccessible or incomprehensible. I don't think I really succeeded in that.
-I should really think about the logistics of having the majority of the action take place in the dark/in caves. Keeping track of light sources and who can see what and where things are pointing is a massive pain in the butt.
-The OC ghost character would not settle on a motivation. He wanted to mustache-twirl and be vague and pontificate. This doesn't lend itself to determining a method and pattern. I'm glad I blew him up. I mean Dean and Sam blew him up. Or set him on fire. They were gonna blow him up, but that much collateral damage wouldn't jive.
Generic Writing process things learned from (or reinforced by) Summergen:
(parts re-posted from earlier locked post)
-Deadlines kill me. Either by killing the plot-bunny under deadline stone dead or by making every single other damn thing in progress start bouncing around irresistibly. As time went on, I did manage to settle for jotting a few notes down in a text file for new/other stuff and going back to the fic on deadline, which means I eventually did get focused! I'm stunned.
-Outlines are lethal to me too. I can have a vague notion of where things are going and write 'til I get there, or I can do an outline and plan enough crap to GM an RPG scenario where the main characters are PC's and might do anything under the sun, and then kill myself trying to bring it all to detailed fruition from each individual perspective. I understand the purpose and usefulness of an outline, my bunnies don't. They just go fractal-bomb.
-If I get a prompt that takes off like a rocket, I should follow it immediately, or I should pick a less enthusiastic prompt, because nearly 20k in a single month is frigging ludicrous, for me at least.
-My bunnies tend to bounce in inverse proportion to the amount of time available to pay attention to them. Like 20 minutes past midnight on a work night.
-I have the horrible habit of going back and editing what's fleshed out instead of doing the intelligent thing and going forward to flesh out bits that are just point-form notes and three word statements in asterisks holding the place of scenes.
-If I don't have a title, I will spend at least an hour futzing around trying to think of one per writing session while under deadline.
-I need caffeine to think. I also need sleep to think. Therein lies a dichotomy.
-When I select a set of random character strings to indicate 'fix what's between these' I need to remember which one is the start point and which is the end.
-Clocks are evil, evil, lying bastards.
In conclusion:
Writing the story was a blast, I learned a lot about the way I write and the way I procrastinate, it nearly drove me insane and I loved every minute of it. Thanks for reading my blithering here! :-)
(AKA caffienekitty needs to babble a bunch of stuff into the ether or she'll go nuts)
Random trivia about the story and things learned while participating in SummerGen 2009
Random Trivia:
-Favourite placeholder line used in this fic: *Sam is waylaid by social bullshit*. Although **Sam, Sarah and Sarah's past do tough-guy jazz hands in the dark** comes a close second.
-The 'art' happened in the process of writing, I don't know how.
-I've never written or read any fanfic for the series "Chuck" before.
-There is a shout-out to ficwriter1966's story "Snowfall" in the story somewhere. It's a passing reference and easy to miss.
-Located in this fic are about ten things I was considering for titles. I'm still not happy with the title.
-I only intended to write 3000 words. That's it. The minimum was a thousand, I figured 3000 was fair and doable. Then the bunny decided otherwise. Total word count: 20770, thereby making this story my longest completed story to date. o.O
-To be sneaky and try to hide my identity, I went through prior year's SummerGens and picked out a different scene-bullet and title/header format. What I probably should have done is removed half the adverbs, and every other occurrence of grinned, nodded, smirked, shrugged, rolled his eyes, really, pretty, kind of, sort of... As well as most of the A/N. Or all of it. *facepalm*
Fic-Specific Things learned from Summergen:
-I should always google names I think I've come up with at random. The ghost was at various points named after a member of Metallica, a very well-known computer programmer and a hockey player. :-P
-The TV show Chuck needs a fan-wiki. The online detail available for the series is pathetic. I couldn't even track down whether Ellie and Awesome own a car, never mind what kind it might be. I bet they've got a Prius.
-Chuck, Casey and Awesome from Chuck are all at least 6'4" tall. It's only ginormous if you're filming in Vancouver. I guess most BC actors are wee creatures.
-Casey grunts a LOT canonically. In fic, it looks silly.
-It's tricky to make a disembodied adversary character batshit insane without making him inaccessible or incomprehensible. I don't think I really succeeded in that.
-I should really think about the logistics of having the majority of the action take place in the dark/in caves. Keeping track of light sources and who can see what and where things are pointing is a massive pain in the butt.
-The OC ghost character would not settle on a motivation. He wanted to mustache-twirl and be vague and pontificate. This doesn't lend itself to determining a method and pattern. I'm glad I blew him up. I mean Dean and Sam blew him up. Or set him on fire. They were gonna blow him up, but that much collateral damage wouldn't jive.
Generic Writing process things learned from (or reinforced by) Summergen:
(parts re-posted from earlier locked post)
-Deadlines kill me. Either by killing the plot-bunny under deadline stone dead or by making every single other damn thing in progress start bouncing around irresistibly. As time went on, I did manage to settle for jotting a few notes down in a text file for new/other stuff and going back to the fic on deadline, which means I eventually did get focused! I'm stunned.
-Outlines are lethal to me too. I can have a vague notion of where things are going and write 'til I get there, or I can do an outline and plan enough crap to GM an RPG scenario where the main characters are PC's and might do anything under the sun, and then kill myself trying to bring it all to detailed fruition from each individual perspective. I understand the purpose and usefulness of an outline, my bunnies don't. They just go fractal-bomb.
-If I get a prompt that takes off like a rocket, I should follow it immediately, or I should pick a less enthusiastic prompt, because nearly 20k in a single month is frigging ludicrous, for me at least.
-My bunnies tend to bounce in inverse proportion to the amount of time available to pay attention to them. Like 20 minutes past midnight on a work night.
-I have the horrible habit of going back and editing what's fleshed out instead of doing the intelligent thing and going forward to flesh out bits that are just point-form notes and three word statements in asterisks holding the place of scenes.
-If I don't have a title, I will spend at least an hour futzing around trying to think of one per writing session while under deadline.
-I need caffeine to think. I also need sleep to think. Therein lies a dichotomy.
-When I select a set of random character strings to indicate 'fix what's between these' I need to remember which one is the start point and which is the end.
-Clocks are evil, evil, lying bastards.
In conclusion:
Writing the story was a blast, I learned a lot about the way I write and the way I procrastinate, it nearly drove me insane and I loved every minute of it. Thanks for reading my blithering here! :-)