Who the Fuck Are You? Interview with Miss_Direct
Who the Fuck Are You?
Interview No. 11: miss_direct
Found online at: miss_direct and Fourteen Lines
Also known as: Shaye
Has written: Farscape, The West Wing, Doctor Who, Firefly, Stargate Atlantis, Veronica Mars, Buffyverse, Harry Potter, Gilmore Girls, Alias, X-Files and numerous crossovers.
Currently Writing: Multiverse and the odd ficathon.
Shaye talks about: Titles, Omniscient POV and writing backwards.
Just cut to interview:
Tell us about your first ff posting experience: how did you feel before and after you posted?
Hmm. If I remember correctly, the first time I posted was late in 1999. It was an Angel fic, a short missing scene. The experience wasn't really nerve-wracking at all, because this was in the old days, before the widespread use of automated archives, when you submitted your story to the archivist and waited days or weeks for the next update. I hadn't really discovered mailing lists yet, so there wasn't even a potential for an instant response, good or bad.
I think I remember a vague sense of awe when the update finally came, and there my story was with the rest of them. At the time, however, fanfic was a solitary activity for me rather than a communal one. It had never occurred to me to send feedback, and I wasn't really expecting any from the stories I posted. It wasn't until a bit later, when I stumbled onto the mailing list that was attached to the archive, that I began to worry about what people would think when I posted something. As part of a community, you hope that the people you respect will think well of your stories. I still feel that way a bit, every time.
Of course, those first stories in the Buffy and Angel fandoms were not the first fanfiction I'd written. There was plenty of execrable MSR drivel written longhand into my notebooks back when I'd first fallen for X-Files, but my only internet access at the time was in libraries, and mercifully those stories were never inflicted on the world at large.
This isn't so much a fanfic question, but I've been interested to ask people who moved from 'lists' to LJ how they felt about the transition. I met you on a very high traffic yahoogroups group called 'Farscape shippers;' how do you feel about that sort of fandom participation as compared to the lj format now?
Mailing lists were excellent ways to get to know people in fandom, much better than message boards, in my opinion. Still, these days I find that the LJ format is superior, at least for me. In the days of mailing lists, I didn't have time to keep up with more than one, so I had to pick which fandom I was most interested in. With LJ, it's easy to carve out your own niche, to shape your fannish experience based on a variety of interests. I also think threaded discussions are easier to parse than email discussions. I guess LJ is a good balance between the social aspects of mailing lists and the more topical, discussion-oriented message board format.
I also think it's interesting to look at how changing the format by which fandom operates has changed fandom itself. The communal nature of mailing lists tended to create an atmosphere where mutually agreed-upon rules, ethics and mores applied. Common wisdom says that fandom governs itself, but I don't think that's quite as true these days. If you don't agree with one set of rules, there's nothing to say that you have to follow them, and it's more anarchic as a consequence. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but I do think it's totally indicative of the ways the shift to LJ has caused fandom to evolve.
Speaking of Farscape, it was a small fandom when I met you with very few writers and a lot of us had moved into larger fandoms when it became popular. You stuck around though, and I'm wondering if the sudden influx of amazing writers, made a difference to you as a writer and whether you began to produce much the same or very different writings as a result.
I had the time of my life! All of a sudden my little fandom had all of this amazing stuff coming out of it, and the atmosphere had definitely changed. The show itself was certainly darker, and since the "will they or won't they?" question had been answered in the John/Aeryn relationship, a lot of the fanfiction was less romance-oriented and more focused on story; particularly in seeing how far the source material could be taken. At the same time, it was still a pretty small fandom, with remarkably little drama. hossgal used to say, "It's not a fandom, it's a quilting bee." That changed after the cancellation, but we had about a year and a half in this little magical bubble. I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of the best prose I've ever read is Farscape fanfiction that came out of that era.
There is a very clear demarcation in my writing. I think the level of discourse was raised by the number of people in the fandom who were interested in the craft of writing. It sounds snobbish when I say that, doesn't it? But it's true. Having those new writers in the fandom meant increased access to beta readers who would challenge you to tell a better story, rather than concentrating mainly on technical accuracy. Don't get me wrong, both are important, but until that time, I wasn't really growing a lot as a writer. I've learned more about good writing from the beta-reading process than I ever have from a class or a book.
One of the first stories I posted after the influx, Lizzie Borden Took an Axe, is about Aeryn taking out her frustrations by beating the hell out of John. I got some excellent critical feedback on it from Max, and my main reaction was, "Wow, thanks! Uh...would you mind taking a look at the next one?" In consequence, I really consider that story the dividing line.
Tell us about backwards fic, as I know you've written a particularly good one. How does one approach 'backwards' fic?
That story was so difficult to write that, in the end, using the unusual technique of telling it backwards was the only way I was able to make the story work.
I actually did a fairly extensive commentary on this story awhile back, in which I talked at length about how I put it together. It turns out that according to the commentary you were the one who gave me the idea to write it backwards and in second person.
The story, A Whiter Shade, had a lot of different parts that didn't really fit together. I think it was originally three different stories - I'd have to go back and read the commentary closely to be sure. The present tense and second-person POV gave it a kind of stylistic cohesion, and arranging the scenes backwards in time meant that they proceeded forwards in thematic importance. I think you really need that kind of dichotomy for a "backwards" story to work. There has to be something at the end-which-is-really-the-beginning to give it a kind of punch, otherwise there's no point in writing it backwards. This story is really kind of plotless; it's all about John Crichton's interior landscape. I think the gut-punch is really the last line in the penultimate "scene." (And I use the term loosely, since this story is very expository; there's almost no action or dialogue at all.) I would quote it, but it really doesn't stand that well on its own.
Ideally, in a plotty story told backwards, you'd have a last (first) scene which shed a whole new light on the events that came before (after). Something that changed the readers' perception of everything they'd just read and, you know, messed with their heads a little. I've never been ambitious enough to try writing something like that, because just writing the emotional and psychological parts were difficult enough. The movie/short story Memento is actually a great example of this technique, and someday I'd love to be good enough to try something like that.
As for the expository nature of the story, I think it works because I've set it up so much as a twisted fairy tale. That works for the backwards technique as well, because, as I said in the story: Once upon a time, you know how those stories go. Everybody knows how fairy tales go; and everybody pretty much knows how adventures in the Farscape universe go, too. The plot itself was really not that important; in fact, the story begins (ends) with John and Aeryn still stranded on the ice planet. I'm fairly certain that they survive - again, mainly because they always do - but their survival or demise wasn't the point. It was really all about John's obsessions - wormholes, Aeryn, finding Earth - and his sense of responsibility. The fact that the plot took a back seat made this a lot easier to arrange as a story that moves backwards in time.
During the final editing process, I had all these great pieces and very little idea of how I actually wanted to arrange them, because not everything has a fixed position in time. Some of the middle drafts were truly disastrous. I pretty much just had to move scenes around and around until they felt right. Anna (themoonbar) helped me a lot with this; I don't think I ever would have posted the story if she hadn't endlessly harassed me about it.
These were possibly the most difficult 3000 words I have ever written, but in the end, I think they're the 3000 words I'm most satisfied with, as well.
I remember we had a conversation about writing from the point of view of an 'omniscient narrator' - which is very rare in fandom - and you pointed me to a fic you wrote about Xander and a chicken which was told from the POV of an omniscient narrator. Can you talk a bit about why you chose an omniscient narrator for that story, how it went for you, and what advice you'd give to anyone writing from the omniscient POV?
Ugh. Omniscient POV is HARD. And that story is ancient! Seriously, I wrote it during Season 4 of Buffy, which was, what? 1999? You obviously have the memory of an elephant.
I don't think I consciously chose to write it from an omniscient POV. Despite years of writing classes in school, I didn't really learn much. (Even when they try, public school teaches you nothing about writing. I came out of my freshman creative writing class having been taught that you should be as creative as possible with your dialogue tags!) If anything, the narrative voice in that story is my own commentary on the general events taking place in the season. I was particularly irritated by the direction of Xander's characterization, so I wrote a snarky story about it. Of course, they ended up riding that characterization train all the way to the station, so eventually I just had to get over it.
A much better example of an omniscient POV story is Flush, or, The One I Didn't Call Goodbye Mr. Chips, written for the SGA Flashfic "shark" challenge. Again, the narrative voice takes on a kind of detached bemusement at observing the characters, but this time I didn't have an axe to grind when writing it, so the outcome was more successful.
I've tried to write a dramatic story from an omniscient POV a few times, too, but I don't think either one was truly omniscient. I thought I needed an omniscient POV for The Archeology of Memory, but what I ended up writing is probably closer to a multiple limited-3rd, where the POV shifts without a clean scene break. The last time I tried this was with Non Autem Memoria (Far to Go Mix). This is my remix of your story Full of Woe, which I wrote for the Bordello Remix. I thought I needed an omniscient POV for this, too, but when fialka betaed for me, she gently informed me that what I'd written was, again, multiple limited-3rd.
She reminded me that not every story has to have a scene break when switching limited-3rd points of view, especially if you hand off the POV at times and in ways that make sense. This happens all the time in published fiction and it doesn't come off as head-jumping, but in both stories it was almost as difficult for me as writing a true omniscient POV. I think this is one of the reasons that fandom in general is so careful to make clean breaks when switching POV; it's a reaction against the rampant head-jumping so common in bad fanfic.
My best advice to anyone who wants to give it a whirl is: try comedy. Comedy is so much easier to write from an omniscient POV, because the narrative voice is not usually meant to be transparent. If you have a strong narrative voice, it's much easier to keep the story from sounding like it's head-jumping. And if you are going to try drama...well, be prepared to tweak the POV within an inch of its life.
I notice you're writing very sporadically currently. What gets you writing these days? Is there anything that sparks the mood or the inspiration?
It seems like the only thing that'll get me writing fanfic these days is a ficathon. My biggest problem is that, while I'm watching and enjoying some excellent shows, none of the fandoms are really pulling me in. Or maybe it's just that the idea of trying to gain a foothold in a new fandom fills me with dread! I'll start a story, get down a few paragraphs or a few pages, and then the desire to write or post in that fandom is gone. This has happened with The Office, Bones, House, Veronica Mars, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Wonderfalls, SGA (Stargate Atlantis), and Drive, which, alas, was canceled after only three weeks. I think the sense of community that comes from being active in a fandom is important to me when writing fanfic, and lately any of the shows that have sparked my interest have had fandoms that made me back away slowly. And part of it is just that, after the the post-campaign crazy in Farscape sucked the joy out of that fandom for me, I haven't really fallen that hard for anything since.
A ficathon, on the other hand, has an imposed deadline and often, a ready-made audience. Much to my surprise, I'm pretty good at writing to deadlines. I'm 4000 words into my entry for this year's Multiverse, and if I do say so myself, it's going to be awesome.
On the other hand, since November my writing group has been meeting regularly again IRL, and I have been working on original fiction off and on.
What do you write when you write original fiction? Is it different style-wise, tone-wise to you fanfiction?
Hmm. I think I've grown enough as a writer that I have a pretty distinctive style, whether I'm writing fanfiction or original fiction. The challenge for me is actually creating characters and worlds out of whole cloth. I struggle with this most of all, even when I have ideas that I'm excited about. I have one story I'm working on now that is set in a kind of post-apocalyptic America (I've been on an apocalypse kick lately.) I've worked out all sorts of facets and facts about the main characters, but none of them feel quite real to me, which is why the story is stalling out. However, like much of my fanfiction (and much of the fiction in any media that I tend to love best) most of my original fiction does have a speculative bent.
The story I'm focusing on most closely at the moment actually had its start as fanfiction. It was one of the few original character-POV stories I have written, and it really lended itself to making it fully my own. The story as it stands now bears very little resemblance to the piece of fanfiction I wrote all those years ago, because I've adapted and molded it to fit the new directions I want the plot and the characters to go.
I tend to use a lot of imagery, and I focus heavily on the cadence of the words and sentences. I'll often go back and read aloud bits of my stories, to make sure they sound the way I want them to. Usually my sentences are longish rather than short, unless I'm trying to convey a specific sense of urgency. At the same time, I try to keep things as simple and easy to parse as possible - having to stop and reread a sentence for comprehension interferes with good cadence, no matter how finely tuned. I think I write good dialogue, but I also enjoy writing long sections where people don't say anything. I tend to focus intimately on their actions at times like these. Tone-wise, most of my stories are bittersweet, although I do like a good sense of dread on occasion.
I think all of these things are true whether I'm writing original fiction or fanfiction. The pacing of my fanfiction is quite different, usually, because almost all of my fanfiction is short-story length. And for some reason, every time I try to write a short original story, it decides it needs to be a novel instead. I think maybe it's just that I'm so daunted by the task of world and character-buildng that I feel the need to spend more time in those playgrounds.
In a similar vein, you've been a bit of a shipper in the past, and I know it's often a pairing that gets me writing in a fandom rather than the show/source material itself. Is this true for you? Is it just not finding the right ship?
Oh, yes and no. I certainly fall prey to the tendency to write a specific pairing, but it's not necessarily the rule. I tend to think of myself as more of a gen writer than anything else, although in a recent census I took of my own fanfiction, it turns out that I've written almost as much het as I have gen. The biggest reason for that, however, is that I was so active in the Farscape fandom, and almost everything I wrote had a John/Aeryn bent. Before John and Aeryn, I'd never actually had a "One True Pairing," and I don't think I've had one since.
It made sense for it to be so pervasive, though, because even onscreen, John Crichton hardly took a breath without taking Aeryn into account. I suppose that the glorious, fraught, dependent, messed-up relationship between those two was a big part of the appeal. I have such a "you and me against the world" kink, and that was the way their relationship came off most of the time, sometimes even when they were at odds with each other. That didn't account for my love entirely, though. It was the universe, the writing, the humor, the fandom, the characters. I didn't just love John and Aeryn together, I loved them each individually, and all of the other characters were either people I loved, or people I loved to hate. And the show had such possibilities. They explored many of them onscreen, but there was still a huge amount of room to play, and I think that was a big motivating factor.
Since then, I've written mostly gen, even when I like a particular pairing. I've moved away from romance and character-based vignettes and have become a lot more concerned with plot, theme, ideas. cofax7 has been a big influence on me in those terms. So I might have pairings I really like - Bones/Booth (Bones), or House/Cuddy (House), or Vala/Daniel (Stargate: SG-1), or The Doctor/Any Companion Ever (Doctor Who), even Veronica/Logan(Veronica Mars) before season 3 managed to make them boring - but none of those have really been sufficient to make me write. I mean, I just mainlined Doctor Who season 3, and I'm thinking all sorts of enthusiastic thoughts about the Doctor and Martha and Jack, but whether I'll end up writing anything is anybody's guess. If I do, I doubt it'll be overtly sexual or romantic.
I do read a lot more pairings than I write, but I think that's mainly because fanfic in general is so pairing-based. For instance, I read slash even though I don't really write a lot of it, particularly m/m slash. Of course, according to my fanfic census, I'm about 90% more likely to write from the perspective of a woman than of a man, so that's one mystery solved.
I'm curious as to why you think that is (that you write more from the perspective of a woman). I would have said this was true for me not so long ago, and then (somewhat abruptly) changed. Which also caused me to (dramatically) re-evaluate what I thought of the motivations behind m/m slash fiction. So why do you think you lean toward women?
Men are a mystery to me. *g*
I think many of us tend to write more about characters whom we identify with, and while I might have male characters whom I absolutely love, it's usually the women that resonate most strongly with me. I guess I could go into all sorts of psychological talk about my childhood and my father figures, but nobody wants to hear that story. My biggest influences - personally, emotionally, creatively - have always been women. I can't explain it beyond that.
I recall talking to you about the difficulty of titling fic and how we put more effort into titling our fic if we like the fic than if we feel ambivalent about it. Can you give an example (or two) of when you did this? Also, do you feel a lot of pressure to come up with a good title when you've written a good fic? How difficult is it to come up with the title under that kind of pressure?
I put a lot of thought into titling almost everything I write, but if I think I have a great story, I do feel like I need to be more exacting in coming up with a good title. I usually start by skimming the story for a phrase that I can use or adapt, one that encapsulates the story. A good example of this Audrey Hepburn Gets the Clues, a Veronica Mars story I wrote for thassalia's and hossgal's Gal Pal Ficathon. In it, Veronica describes watching Gia Goodman eat ice cream as "Audrey Hepburn gets the munchies." I loved that description, and after several tries I found a variation that worked great as a title. The story was about Veronica and Gia teaming up, and VM often used plays on words for their episode titles ("Wrath of Con," "Kanes and Abel.")
If that doesn't work, I fire up Google and see what I can come up with. Quotes are always good for a suggestion or two, particularly from poems or Shakespeare. I don't usually use song titles, although there are exceptions. ("A Whiter Shade" is, of course, a reference to Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale.") If it's appropriate, I might also search for a foreign word or phrase. The best example of this is Ekphugion, my Multiverse 2005 entry. The story is about the fleet from Battlestar Galactica jumping into airspace over Sergyar, from Bujold's Vorkosigan series, where they are eventually granted asylum. "Ekphugion" is an ancient Greek word I found, after much searching, that means "a place of refuge." I can't tell you how delighted I was by that discovery.
Every once in awhile I'll just agonize over a title. Strange Love, which is Gilmore Girls apocafic that I wrote on a dare from gatefiction, is one of these. I like it as a Kubrick reference, and I think apart from that it works because the story is about makeshift families, but I sometimes worry that people will think it's a story about hardcore kink or something.
I met you writing for a scifi show (Farscape) and then you showed up writing for West Wing (as many of us were doing at the time). I remember I went from X-Files to West Wing and was rather thrown by how restricting it was writing for a 'real' show where the accuracy of the political situation was very important not only to the show but to the fanfic. Did you/ do you find the transition from writing scifi (especially something as fantastic as Farscape) to a more 'reality' based show such restricting in terms of what you could write and what you could do with the characters? What was the first difference you noticed between the two and did your writing change as a result?
I don't know that I found it more restrictive, but I certainly found myself writing very different stories. I never got the urge to write sprawling epics for The West Wing, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing just how much I could break the characters while still remaining realistic. In that sense, I suppose that was the first difference I noticed: my approach to the text changed. To be honest, I've never been interested in real politics, so it wasn't that aspect of the show that drove me. (And from my perspective, it never looked like the accuracy of the political situation was all that important to Aaron Sorkin, either, so.) I didn't write very much for The West Wing, and the stories I wrote were a on a much more intimate scale. In addition to "you and me against the world," my other bulletproof kink is unrequited love, or love on both sides that's a half-step out of sync. CJ and Toby had that written all over them, although sometimes I think we as fans built their history into something much more than Sorkin ever intended.
My West Wing stories tended to be bittersweet, full of fraught silences and philosophical reflection and quiet conversation. I started writing in the fandom because of the mind-blowing greatness of Pene and August's Retina Burn, and it always felt like it was hard to live up to a story that good. I had a few things that I wanted to say about CJ and Toby, and when I felt like I'd finally gotten it right, I wasn't inspired to write any more stories about them.
I don't think I found it more restricting because in a setting like The West Wing, there were just different things you could do with the characters. You couldn't get John and Aeryn in a room drinking and debating gender politics any more than you could get CJ and Toby blowing things up to escape from a crazed dictator with a personal grudge.
At the same time, I think there's a theme that runs through a lot of what I write. I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the same person who wrote my West Wing stories also wrote my Farscape stories. Anna and I used to talk about how sometimes it felt like we only had one story to tell, and we kept telling it over and over again in different ways and in different fandoms. I suppose it comes as no surprise that my universal story is about unrequited love between two people united against larger outside forces. Sometimes the rest of it seems a bit like window dressing, and a lot of my writing lately has been trying to grow beyond that tendency.
You say you have one story to tell, which is something that has come up in other interviews, what changes then from story to story? The beginnings? The ends?
The details, I think. I don't usually write unabashedly happy endings, but I don't normally write tragic ending either. As for the beginnings...I think that changes from story to story, of course, because the impetus for each story will be different. Two stories can have completely different characters and settings and even plots, but still have the same types of themes. I write a lot about guilt, about absences and enforced parting, about those times when love can't save you. I also write about the kinds of redemption and hope that you aren't expecting, rather than the ones you are.
For example, in the story "Strange Love," Lane and Lorelai dance around the subject of Rory's absence, but never address it directly. Luke and Lorelai in this story are portrayed as leaning on one another, but it's still not enough to make a difference in a world at nuclear war. When Lane finally goes home to her estranged mother, it's for a variety of reasons, but none are because they have forgiven one another for not being what the other would have wanted.
In "The Archeology of Memory," on the other hand, John Crichton goes searching for Aeryn Sun after learning that she's pregnant. In this story, he finds out that this was a prophecy, not an absolute truth: Aeryn is pregnant, but the baby isn't his. She decides to leave her resistance group and go with him to rescue Moya, but this is mainly because she didn't find what she was looking for in the Peacekeeper resistance, either.
So these two stories have very different plots, settings and characters. Yet there are similarities that even I didn't notice until I started comparing them just now. They both have adults in a relationship based on shared history and a shared mission and lingering passion. They both have people reunited for reasons that aren't ideal, but are, in the end, enough. It's just that in "Strange Love," the first pair and the second pair are two different sets of people, whereas in "The Archeology of Memory," John and Aeryn fulfill both roles
What story of yours would you like to pimp out, and why?
Normally the story that I point out as the best example of my writing is "A Whiter Shade", but we've covered that one. As an alternate, I'll point to my Multiverse entry from last year: The Monster in the Closet, a Firefly/SGA crossover about being imprisoned by Reavers. It's probably the only thing I've ever written (or ever will write) that qualifies as horror.
Get to know miss_direct better! Check out:
Shaye's discussion of her backwards fic, A Whiter Shade (Farscape,should have tempted you to take a look. If not, let me say, it's well worth it. A fine piece of writing and a fantastic use of a novel narrative device. I also particularly like Ekphugion (Battlestar Galactica/ the Vorkosigan Series) which not only has a clever title but is a wonderful example of a crosssover in the 'worlds collide' tradition. Great characters meet great characters, and a certain resemblance between two amazing women will have you shouting, "Yes!" to the rooftops.
Lastly, I recommend I Don't Know Why Sometimes I Get Frightened (Gilmore Girls) because it's funny and sweet with great dialogue and great characterisations and it's so reminiscent of the show, you'll want to get out your dvds and do the whole seven seasons all over again.
That's the show, ladies and gentlemen, you've been a wonderful audience. On the menu tonight we've got dahl with Turkish bread and I know that's a lot of culture clashing but what the fuck, it's whatever the chef finds in the fridge these days. Thank you, come again.
Interview No. 11: miss_direct
Found online at: miss_direct and Fourteen Lines
Also known as: Shaye
Has written: Farscape, The West Wing, Doctor Who, Firefly, Stargate Atlantis, Veronica Mars, Buffyverse, Harry Potter, Gilmore Girls, Alias, X-Files and numerous crossovers.
Currently Writing: Multiverse and the odd ficathon.
Shaye talks about: Titles, Omniscient POV and writing backwards.
Just cut to interview:
Tell us about your first ff posting experience: how did you feel before and after you posted?
Hmm. If I remember correctly, the first time I posted was late in 1999. It was an Angel fic, a short missing scene. The experience wasn't really nerve-wracking at all, because this was in the old days, before the widespread use of automated archives, when you submitted your story to the archivist and waited days or weeks for the next update. I hadn't really discovered mailing lists yet, so there wasn't even a potential for an instant response, good or bad.
I think I remember a vague sense of awe when the update finally came, and there my story was with the rest of them. At the time, however, fanfic was a solitary activity for me rather than a communal one. It had never occurred to me to send feedback, and I wasn't really expecting any from the stories I posted. It wasn't until a bit later, when I stumbled onto the mailing list that was attached to the archive, that I began to worry about what people would think when I posted something. As part of a community, you hope that the people you respect will think well of your stories. I still feel that way a bit, every time.
Of course, those first stories in the Buffy and Angel fandoms were not the first fanfiction I'd written. There was plenty of execrable MSR drivel written longhand into my notebooks back when I'd first fallen for X-Files, but my only internet access at the time was in libraries, and mercifully those stories were never inflicted on the world at large.
This isn't so much a fanfic question, but I've been interested to ask people who moved from 'lists' to LJ how they felt about the transition. I met you on a very high traffic yahoogroups group called 'Farscape shippers;' how do you feel about that sort of fandom participation as compared to the lj format now?
Mailing lists were excellent ways to get to know people in fandom, much better than message boards, in my opinion. Still, these days I find that the LJ format is superior, at least for me. In the days of mailing lists, I didn't have time to keep up with more than one, so I had to pick which fandom I was most interested in. With LJ, it's easy to carve out your own niche, to shape your fannish experience based on a variety of interests. I also think threaded discussions are easier to parse than email discussions. I guess LJ is a good balance between the social aspects of mailing lists and the more topical, discussion-oriented message board format.
I also think it's interesting to look at how changing the format by which fandom operates has changed fandom itself. The communal nature of mailing lists tended to create an atmosphere where mutually agreed-upon rules, ethics and mores applied. Common wisdom says that fandom governs itself, but I don't think that's quite as true these days. If you don't agree with one set of rules, there's nothing to say that you have to follow them, and it's more anarchic as a consequence. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but I do think it's totally indicative of the ways the shift to LJ has caused fandom to evolve.
Speaking of Farscape, it was a small fandom when I met you with very few writers and a lot of us had moved into larger fandoms when it became popular. You stuck around though, and I'm wondering if the sudden influx of amazing writers, made a difference to you as a writer and whether you began to produce much the same or very different writings as a result.
I had the time of my life! All of a sudden my little fandom had all of this amazing stuff coming out of it, and the atmosphere had definitely changed. The show itself was certainly darker, and since the "will they or won't they?" question had been answered in the John/Aeryn relationship, a lot of the fanfiction was less romance-oriented and more focused on story; particularly in seeing how far the source material could be taken. At the same time, it was still a pretty small fandom, with remarkably little drama. hossgal used to say, "It's not a fandom, it's a quilting bee." That changed after the cancellation, but we had about a year and a half in this little magical bubble. I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of the best prose I've ever read is Farscape fanfiction that came out of that era.
There is a very clear demarcation in my writing. I think the level of discourse was raised by the number of people in the fandom who were interested in the craft of writing. It sounds snobbish when I say that, doesn't it? But it's true. Having those new writers in the fandom meant increased access to beta readers who would challenge you to tell a better story, rather than concentrating mainly on technical accuracy. Don't get me wrong, both are important, but until that time, I wasn't really growing a lot as a writer. I've learned more about good writing from the beta-reading process than I ever have from a class or a book.
One of the first stories I posted after the influx, Lizzie Borden Took an Axe, is about Aeryn taking out her frustrations by beating the hell out of John. I got some excellent critical feedback on it from Max, and my main reaction was, "Wow, thanks! Uh...would you mind taking a look at the next one?" In consequence, I really consider that story the dividing line.
Tell us about backwards fic, as I know you've written a particularly good one. How does one approach 'backwards' fic?
That story was so difficult to write that, in the end, using the unusual technique of telling it backwards was the only way I was able to make the story work.
I actually did a fairly extensive commentary on this story awhile back, in which I talked at length about how I put it together. It turns out that according to the commentary you were the one who gave me the idea to write it backwards and in second person.
The story, A Whiter Shade, had a lot of different parts that didn't really fit together. I think it was originally three different stories - I'd have to go back and read the commentary closely to be sure. The present tense and second-person POV gave it a kind of stylistic cohesion, and arranging the scenes backwards in time meant that they proceeded forwards in thematic importance. I think you really need that kind of dichotomy for a "backwards" story to work. There has to be something at the end-which-is-really-the-beginning to give it a kind of punch, otherwise there's no point in writing it backwards. This story is really kind of plotless; it's all about John Crichton's interior landscape. I think the gut-punch is really the last line in the penultimate "scene." (And I use the term loosely, since this story is very expository; there's almost no action or dialogue at all.) I would quote it, but it really doesn't stand that well on its own.
Ideally, in a plotty story told backwards, you'd have a last (first) scene which shed a whole new light on the events that came before (after). Something that changed the readers' perception of everything they'd just read and, you know, messed with their heads a little. I've never been ambitious enough to try writing something like that, because just writing the emotional and psychological parts were difficult enough. The movie/short story Memento is actually a great example of this technique, and someday I'd love to be good enough to try something like that.
As for the expository nature of the story, I think it works because I've set it up so much as a twisted fairy tale. That works for the backwards technique as well, because, as I said in the story: Once upon a time, you know how those stories go. Everybody knows how fairy tales go; and everybody pretty much knows how adventures in the Farscape universe go, too. The plot itself was really not that important; in fact, the story begins (ends) with John and Aeryn still stranded on the ice planet. I'm fairly certain that they survive - again, mainly because they always do - but their survival or demise wasn't the point. It was really all about John's obsessions - wormholes, Aeryn, finding Earth - and his sense of responsibility. The fact that the plot took a back seat made this a lot easier to arrange as a story that moves backwards in time.
During the final editing process, I had all these great pieces and very little idea of how I actually wanted to arrange them, because not everything has a fixed position in time. Some of the middle drafts were truly disastrous. I pretty much just had to move scenes around and around until they felt right. Anna (themoonbar) helped me a lot with this; I don't think I ever would have posted the story if she hadn't endlessly harassed me about it.
These were possibly the most difficult 3000 words I have ever written, but in the end, I think they're the 3000 words I'm most satisfied with, as well.
I remember we had a conversation about writing from the point of view of an 'omniscient narrator' - which is very rare in fandom - and you pointed me to a fic you wrote about Xander and a chicken which was told from the POV of an omniscient narrator. Can you talk a bit about why you chose an omniscient narrator for that story, how it went for you, and what advice you'd give to anyone writing from the omniscient POV?
Ugh. Omniscient POV is HARD. And that story is ancient! Seriously, I wrote it during Season 4 of Buffy, which was, what? 1999? You obviously have the memory of an elephant.
I don't think I consciously chose to write it from an omniscient POV. Despite years of writing classes in school, I didn't really learn much. (Even when they try, public school teaches you nothing about writing. I came out of my freshman creative writing class having been taught that you should be as creative as possible with your dialogue tags!) If anything, the narrative voice in that story is my own commentary on the general events taking place in the season. I was particularly irritated by the direction of Xander's characterization, so I wrote a snarky story about it. Of course, they ended up riding that characterization train all the way to the station, so eventually I just had to get over it.
A much better example of an omniscient POV story is Flush, or, The One I Didn't Call Goodbye Mr. Chips, written for the SGA Flashfic "shark" challenge. Again, the narrative voice takes on a kind of detached bemusement at observing the characters, but this time I didn't have an axe to grind when writing it, so the outcome was more successful.
I've tried to write a dramatic story from an omniscient POV a few times, too, but I don't think either one was truly omniscient. I thought I needed an omniscient POV for The Archeology of Memory, but what I ended up writing is probably closer to a multiple limited-3rd, where the POV shifts without a clean scene break. The last time I tried this was with Non Autem Memoria (Far to Go Mix). This is my remix of your story Full of Woe, which I wrote for the Bordello Remix. I thought I needed an omniscient POV for this, too, but when fialka betaed for me, she gently informed me that what I'd written was, again, multiple limited-3rd.
She reminded me that not every story has to have a scene break when switching limited-3rd points of view, especially if you hand off the POV at times and in ways that make sense. This happens all the time in published fiction and it doesn't come off as head-jumping, but in both stories it was almost as difficult for me as writing a true omniscient POV. I think this is one of the reasons that fandom in general is so careful to make clean breaks when switching POV; it's a reaction against the rampant head-jumping so common in bad fanfic.
My best advice to anyone who wants to give it a whirl is: try comedy. Comedy is so much easier to write from an omniscient POV, because the narrative voice is not usually meant to be transparent. If you have a strong narrative voice, it's much easier to keep the story from sounding like it's head-jumping. And if you are going to try drama...well, be prepared to tweak the POV within an inch of its life.
I notice you're writing very sporadically currently. What gets you writing these days? Is there anything that sparks the mood or the inspiration?
It seems like the only thing that'll get me writing fanfic these days is a ficathon. My biggest problem is that, while I'm watching and enjoying some excellent shows, none of the fandoms are really pulling me in. Or maybe it's just that the idea of trying to gain a foothold in a new fandom fills me with dread! I'll start a story, get down a few paragraphs or a few pages, and then the desire to write or post in that fandom is gone. This has happened with The Office, Bones, House, Veronica Mars, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Wonderfalls, SGA (Stargate Atlantis), and Drive, which, alas, was canceled after only three weeks. I think the sense of community that comes from being active in a fandom is important to me when writing fanfic, and lately any of the shows that have sparked my interest have had fandoms that made me back away slowly. And part of it is just that, after the the post-campaign crazy in Farscape sucked the joy out of that fandom for me, I haven't really fallen that hard for anything since.
A ficathon, on the other hand, has an imposed deadline and often, a ready-made audience. Much to my surprise, I'm pretty good at writing to deadlines. I'm 4000 words into my entry for this year's Multiverse, and if I do say so myself, it's going to be awesome.
On the other hand, since November my writing group has been meeting regularly again IRL, and I have been working on original fiction off and on.
What do you write when you write original fiction? Is it different style-wise, tone-wise to you fanfiction?
Hmm. I think I've grown enough as a writer that I have a pretty distinctive style, whether I'm writing fanfiction or original fiction. The challenge for me is actually creating characters and worlds out of whole cloth. I struggle with this most of all, even when I have ideas that I'm excited about. I have one story I'm working on now that is set in a kind of post-apocalyptic America (I've been on an apocalypse kick lately.) I've worked out all sorts of facets and facts about the main characters, but none of them feel quite real to me, which is why the story is stalling out. However, like much of my fanfiction (and much of the fiction in any media that I tend to love best) most of my original fiction does have a speculative bent.
The story I'm focusing on most closely at the moment actually had its start as fanfiction. It was one of the few original character-POV stories I have written, and it really lended itself to making it fully my own. The story as it stands now bears very little resemblance to the piece of fanfiction I wrote all those years ago, because I've adapted and molded it to fit the new directions I want the plot and the characters to go.
I tend to use a lot of imagery, and I focus heavily on the cadence of the words and sentences. I'll often go back and read aloud bits of my stories, to make sure they sound the way I want them to. Usually my sentences are longish rather than short, unless I'm trying to convey a specific sense of urgency. At the same time, I try to keep things as simple and easy to parse as possible - having to stop and reread a sentence for comprehension interferes with good cadence, no matter how finely tuned. I think I write good dialogue, but I also enjoy writing long sections where people don't say anything. I tend to focus intimately on their actions at times like these. Tone-wise, most of my stories are bittersweet, although I do like a good sense of dread on occasion.
I think all of these things are true whether I'm writing original fiction or fanfiction. The pacing of my fanfiction is quite different, usually, because almost all of my fanfiction is short-story length. And for some reason, every time I try to write a short original story, it decides it needs to be a novel instead. I think maybe it's just that I'm so daunted by the task of world and character-buildng that I feel the need to spend more time in those playgrounds.
In a similar vein, you've been a bit of a shipper in the past, and I know it's often a pairing that gets me writing in a fandom rather than the show/source material itself. Is this true for you? Is it just not finding the right ship?
Oh, yes and no. I certainly fall prey to the tendency to write a specific pairing, but it's not necessarily the rule. I tend to think of myself as more of a gen writer than anything else, although in a recent census I took of my own fanfiction, it turns out that I've written almost as much het as I have gen. The biggest reason for that, however, is that I was so active in the Farscape fandom, and almost everything I wrote had a John/Aeryn bent. Before John and Aeryn, I'd never actually had a "One True Pairing," and I don't think I've had one since.
It made sense for it to be so pervasive, though, because even onscreen, John Crichton hardly took a breath without taking Aeryn into account. I suppose that the glorious, fraught, dependent, messed-up relationship between those two was a big part of the appeal. I have such a "you and me against the world" kink, and that was the way their relationship came off most of the time, sometimes even when they were at odds with each other. That didn't account for my love entirely, though. It was the universe, the writing, the humor, the fandom, the characters. I didn't just love John and Aeryn together, I loved them each individually, and all of the other characters were either people I loved, or people I loved to hate. And the show had such possibilities. They explored many of them onscreen, but there was still a huge amount of room to play, and I think that was a big motivating factor.
Since then, I've written mostly gen, even when I like a particular pairing. I've moved away from romance and character-based vignettes and have become a lot more concerned with plot, theme, ideas. cofax7 has been a big influence on me in those terms. So I might have pairings I really like - Bones/Booth (Bones), or House/Cuddy (House), or Vala/Daniel (Stargate: SG-1), or The Doctor/Any Companion Ever (Doctor Who), even Veronica/Logan(Veronica Mars) before season 3 managed to make them boring - but none of those have really been sufficient to make me write. I mean, I just mainlined Doctor Who season 3, and I'm thinking all sorts of enthusiastic thoughts about the Doctor and Martha and Jack, but whether I'll end up writing anything is anybody's guess. If I do, I doubt it'll be overtly sexual or romantic.
I do read a lot more pairings than I write, but I think that's mainly because fanfic in general is so pairing-based. For instance, I read slash even though I don't really write a lot of it, particularly m/m slash. Of course, according to my fanfic census, I'm about 90% more likely to write from the perspective of a woman than of a man, so that's one mystery solved.
I'm curious as to why you think that is (that you write more from the perspective of a woman). I would have said this was true for me not so long ago, and then (somewhat abruptly) changed. Which also caused me to (dramatically) re-evaluate what I thought of the motivations behind m/m slash fiction. So why do you think you lean toward women?
Men are a mystery to me. *g*
I think many of us tend to write more about characters whom we identify with, and while I might have male characters whom I absolutely love, it's usually the women that resonate most strongly with me. I guess I could go into all sorts of psychological talk about my childhood and my father figures, but nobody wants to hear that story. My biggest influences - personally, emotionally, creatively - have always been women. I can't explain it beyond that.
I recall talking to you about the difficulty of titling fic and how we put more effort into titling our fic if we like the fic than if we feel ambivalent about it. Can you give an example (or two) of when you did this? Also, do you feel a lot of pressure to come up with a good title when you've written a good fic? How difficult is it to come up with the title under that kind of pressure?
I put a lot of thought into titling almost everything I write, but if I think I have a great story, I do feel like I need to be more exacting in coming up with a good title. I usually start by skimming the story for a phrase that I can use or adapt, one that encapsulates the story. A good example of this Audrey Hepburn Gets the Clues, a Veronica Mars story I wrote for thassalia's and hossgal's Gal Pal Ficathon. In it, Veronica describes watching Gia Goodman eat ice cream as "Audrey Hepburn gets the munchies." I loved that description, and after several tries I found a variation that worked great as a title. The story was about Veronica and Gia teaming up, and VM often used plays on words for their episode titles ("Wrath of Con," "Kanes and Abel.")
If that doesn't work, I fire up Google and see what I can come up with. Quotes are always good for a suggestion or two, particularly from poems or Shakespeare. I don't usually use song titles, although there are exceptions. ("A Whiter Shade" is, of course, a reference to Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale.") If it's appropriate, I might also search for a foreign word or phrase. The best example of this is Ekphugion, my Multiverse 2005 entry. The story is about the fleet from Battlestar Galactica jumping into airspace over Sergyar, from Bujold's Vorkosigan series, where they are eventually granted asylum. "Ekphugion" is an ancient Greek word I found, after much searching, that means "a place of refuge." I can't tell you how delighted I was by that discovery.
Every once in awhile I'll just agonize over a title. Strange Love, which is Gilmore Girls apocafic that I wrote on a dare from gatefiction, is one of these. I like it as a Kubrick reference, and I think apart from that it works because the story is about makeshift families, but I sometimes worry that people will think it's a story about hardcore kink or something.
I met you writing for a scifi show (Farscape) and then you showed up writing for West Wing (as many of us were doing at the time). I remember I went from X-Files to West Wing and was rather thrown by how restricting it was writing for a 'real' show where the accuracy of the political situation was very important not only to the show but to the fanfic. Did you/ do you find the transition from writing scifi (especially something as fantastic as Farscape) to a more 'reality' based show such restricting in terms of what you could write and what you could do with the characters? What was the first difference you noticed between the two and did your writing change as a result?
I don't know that I found it more restrictive, but I certainly found myself writing very different stories. I never got the urge to write sprawling epics for The West Wing, and I wasn't particularly interested in seeing just how much I could break the characters while still remaining realistic. In that sense, I suppose that was the first difference I noticed: my approach to the text changed. To be honest, I've never been interested in real politics, so it wasn't that aspect of the show that drove me. (And from my perspective, it never looked like the accuracy of the political situation was all that important to Aaron Sorkin, either, so.) I didn't write very much for The West Wing, and the stories I wrote were a on a much more intimate scale. In addition to "you and me against the world," my other bulletproof kink is unrequited love, or love on both sides that's a half-step out of sync. CJ and Toby had that written all over them, although sometimes I think we as fans built their history into something much more than Sorkin ever intended.
My West Wing stories tended to be bittersweet, full of fraught silences and philosophical reflection and quiet conversation. I started writing in the fandom because of the mind-blowing greatness of Pene and August's Retina Burn, and it always felt like it was hard to live up to a story that good. I had a few things that I wanted to say about CJ and Toby, and when I felt like I'd finally gotten it right, I wasn't inspired to write any more stories about them.
I don't think I found it more restricting because in a setting like The West Wing, there were just different things you could do with the characters. You couldn't get John and Aeryn in a room drinking and debating gender politics any more than you could get CJ and Toby blowing things up to escape from a crazed dictator with a personal grudge.
At the same time, I think there's a theme that runs through a lot of what I write. I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the same person who wrote my West Wing stories also wrote my Farscape stories. Anna and I used to talk about how sometimes it felt like we only had one story to tell, and we kept telling it over and over again in different ways and in different fandoms. I suppose it comes as no surprise that my universal story is about unrequited love between two people united against larger outside forces. Sometimes the rest of it seems a bit like window dressing, and a lot of my writing lately has been trying to grow beyond that tendency.
You say you have one story to tell, which is something that has come up in other interviews, what changes then from story to story? The beginnings? The ends?
The details, I think. I don't usually write unabashedly happy endings, but I don't normally write tragic ending either. As for the beginnings...I think that changes from story to story, of course, because the impetus for each story will be different. Two stories can have completely different characters and settings and even plots, but still have the same types of themes. I write a lot about guilt, about absences and enforced parting, about those times when love can't save you. I also write about the kinds of redemption and hope that you aren't expecting, rather than the ones you are.
For example, in the story "Strange Love," Lane and Lorelai dance around the subject of Rory's absence, but never address it directly. Luke and Lorelai in this story are portrayed as leaning on one another, but it's still not enough to make a difference in a world at nuclear war. When Lane finally goes home to her estranged mother, it's for a variety of reasons, but none are because they have forgiven one another for not being what the other would have wanted.
In "The Archeology of Memory," on the other hand, John Crichton goes searching for Aeryn Sun after learning that she's pregnant. In this story, he finds out that this was a prophecy, not an absolute truth: Aeryn is pregnant, but the baby isn't his. She decides to leave her resistance group and go with him to rescue Moya, but this is mainly because she didn't find what she was looking for in the Peacekeeper resistance, either.
So these two stories have very different plots, settings and characters. Yet there are similarities that even I didn't notice until I started comparing them just now. They both have adults in a relationship based on shared history and a shared mission and lingering passion. They both have people reunited for reasons that aren't ideal, but are, in the end, enough. It's just that in "Strange Love," the first pair and the second pair are two different sets of people, whereas in "The Archeology of Memory," John and Aeryn fulfill both roles
What story of yours would you like to pimp out, and why?
Normally the story that I point out as the best example of my writing is "A Whiter Shade", but we've covered that one. As an alternate, I'll point to my Multiverse entry from last year: The Monster in the Closet, a Firefly/SGA crossover about being imprisoned by Reavers. It's probably the only thing I've ever written (or ever will write) that qualifies as horror.
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Shaye's discussion of her backwards fic, A Whiter Shade (Farscape,should have tempted you to take a look. If not, let me say, it's well worth it. A fine piece of writing and a fantastic use of a novel narrative device. I also particularly like Ekphugion (Battlestar Galactica/ the Vorkosigan Series) which not only has a clever title but is a wonderful example of a crosssover in the 'worlds collide' tradition. Great characters meet great characters, and a certain resemblance between two amazing women will have you shouting, "Yes!" to the rooftops.
Lastly, I recommend I Don't Know Why Sometimes I Get Frightened (Gilmore Girls) because it's funny and sweet with great dialogue and great characterisations and it's so reminiscent of the show, you'll want to get out your dvds and do the whole seven seasons all over again.
That's the show, ladies and gentlemen, you've been a wonderful audience. On the menu tonight we've got dahl with Turkish bread and I know that's a lot of culture clashing but what the fuck, it's whatever the chef finds in the fridge these days. Thank you, come again.