FAM #04

[aadler]

The Fanfiction Ask Meme (from cornerofmadness through trobadora through naye through something from Tumblr).

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What made you start writing fanfic?
Which of your own fanfics have you re-read the most?
Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.

Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?

I’m not sure my style has changed, but my approach definitely has.

(You know what? From here on, forget what I’ve previously described as ‘Phase 1’ of my fanfic writings. That wasn’t really fanfiction, but simply playing in fandom.)

For the first few years (of what I previously called ‘Phase 2’, but I’m done with that), my fanfic writing had certain basic hallmarks. Three come immediately to mind. First was a pronounced admiration for (and use of) the character of Joyce Summers; she was the central figure in my first Buffyfic, and featured favorably in several more to follow. Second was a focus on telling stories within canon; without having actually heard of it at that point, I was following the same approach as the people who wrote the ‘Below Decks’ stories for Star Trek: TNG, showing extra levels and perspectives in a narrative I had no desire to contradict. (Though one was later reassigned to my Independent Stories section, for those first several years all of my fics were what I now designate as Backstage Stories, those intended to thread within canon without ever veering away from it.) Third, I enjoyed and specialized in secondary or one-shot characters, rather than the ‘Core Four’ of the Scoobies (Buffy, Giles, Xander, Willow); in fact, it was a joke with my kids that I was a Buffyficcer who avoided actually writing about Buffy.

These were not matters of principle, but simply preference, and all of them would eventually be superseded by other practices. Joyce continues to command my respect and affection, but I’ve not paid her much attention the last several years, and my most recent treatment of her — in “Deepest, Darkest, Blackest Night, without a Single Spark of Light” — was not exactly what you would call admiring. Though I still like to use secondary/background characters, I’m doing more and more these days with the mainline center-stage crew. And, my Backstage Stories now constitute only a bit over 60% of my total output, where it used to be the entirety or at least the vast majority.

Other things happened along the way. I’ve several times mentioned that I intensely enjoy writing good action scenes (or perhaps I should just go on and call them fight scenes, because that’s what it amounts to), but for a long time I’ve seen that I’m writing more and more on the exploration and explication of feelings; action is an expression of character, but the emotions and drives are the foundation of character. I’m an enthusiastic proponent of male-female relationships, but avoided them in my writings because … well, because there was just so darn much of that already available in fandom and I wanted to see, and do, something else; now, I see more and more of my stories tending toward one kind of pairing or another (usually Xander/XFemale, but not always). And, of course, anything told within canon has to be affected to some extent by the fact that canon — not counting the comics, which I don’t — ended nearly fifteen years ago. Buffy Summers, born in early 1981 (which she would have to be, to turn seventeen in January 1998) is approaching her 38th birthday. Much as we love that world, in the same way that private eye noir tried for decades to stay in some generic 1930s-40s timeframe, the world has continued to turn, and most of these characters were active teens a full 20 years ago.

Most of the changes that have come about in my writing spring from something you can see in the beginning: I didn’t want to keep telling the same story, or the same few stories, over and over. I kept looking for different themes to address, different approaches to try. I previously noted that I re-read my own works because I write the kinds of stories I want to read; well, I didn’t want to keep reading the same thing over and over, either, which has kept me in a search for differences worth exploring.

Well, that and I discovered remixes. That came close to taking over my writing, just because I enjoyed it so much. But I can perhaps follow that one out on another day.

Still to come:

You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?
Name three stories you found easy to write.
Name three stories you found difficult to write.
What’s your ratio of hits to kudos?
What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
Name three favorite characters to write.
You’re applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?