that perfect sentence
10 Nov 2004 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouI can't recall now who I was fussing at (oh, I do it so often) but sometimes the most aggravating thing about a good fic is knowing that in a chapter, there will be a sentence that makes me almost squeee in happiness. Alright, that probably sounds egotistical, but hey, us writers need our little moments of "yeah, that's exactly it." There are lines like that in nearly every story, that just stand out, and when I reread to revise or just refresh my memory, I always find myself just a little down that no one else ever noticed or commented on that throw-away line, that description, whatever.
"Doctor J," Duo realizes, tracking the words, inserting the lead frame between the bright words of Heero's stained-glass speech.
That's definitely one of them. Wrote that and had to stop and stare at the screen and think, wah. That's exactly what it'd be like, to parse aphasic speech patterns. Getting the nouns and verbs, not an, the, a, and, if, you, are... Just the bright parts. And for once (yay) I've gotten back maybe nine or ten comments that point out that single line as being one that stood out for the readers. I don't know if this means I'm getting better as a writer (though I hope so), but it does strike me as a beautiful symmetry, that I'm coming up with more lines that are memorable to me and memorable to readers.
So, I was regaling CP with the details of aphasia, the various types of head injuries - explaining if I didn't research this stuff and use it properly,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sevenall would hunt me down and hurt me - and he just got this depressed look on his face. He says, "I don't get why you spend time on this, putting energy into this when you could use that in an original piece, instead."
Man.
I had to explain - and am I the only one who has to say this? tell me I'm not - that it's not like I can't use this plotline, or the style, or the ideas, or even the sentence itself, elsewhere. I wrote it, I own it. But the original fiction board I'm on, if I were to do a short piece like this and post for review...well, the response would be: "look, if you want to experiment, go take a class or something." And I hate taking classes in creative writing. Not because I hate writing on demand - but because I always feel like an idiot. "Oh. We were just supposed to write 500 words? I got kinda caught up, here's the first 20,000 words...and I'm halfway through the next chapter..." Teachers seem to dislike students like me, because the time required to read/crit such a length is, well, pretty intensive. I suck at short stories, too.
But fanfic is so much safer (if that's the right word?) for going completely into a different style, like I did with Kingfisher. Lesson learned? Writing an entire novel in this style would be damn hard, and my name is definitely not Eudora Welty. I'm rather proud I managed it for 10,000 words, damn it! I guess my point is that the requirements of an original piece - that not only do I present information, characters, plot, surroundings and get you to give a damn abou them - are somewhat alleviated. I don't have to make anyone care about Heero, Duo, or the rest - you already do, or you wouldn't be reading. That much work is already done, and it frees me to play around with the rest.
Just pondering. I still can't think of any story currently in my head for aphasia and that stained-glass description of speech patterns, but hey. Maybe someday. It's not like - as CP fears - that the line will be "gone," lost once it's used, like I'll forget about it. Hell, I suspect it'll be ten years from now and GWA will still be around. Woo! Scavenge my own work, way down the road...
*wanders off, pondering weiss kreuz*
"Doctor J," Duo realizes, tracking the words, inserting the lead frame between the bright words of Heero's stained-glass speech.
That's definitely one of them. Wrote that and had to stop and stare at the screen and think, wah. That's exactly what it'd be like, to parse aphasic speech patterns. Getting the nouns and verbs, not an, the, a, and, if, you, are... Just the bright parts. And for once (yay) I've gotten back maybe nine or ten comments that point out that single line as being one that stood out for the readers. I don't know if this means I'm getting better as a writer (though I hope so), but it does strike me as a beautiful symmetry, that I'm coming up with more lines that are memorable to me and memorable to readers.
So, I was regaling CP with the details of aphasia, the various types of head injuries - explaining if I didn't research this stuff and use it properly,
sevenall would hunt me down and hurt me - and he just got this depressed look on his face. He says, "I don't get why you spend time on this, putting energy into this when you could use that in an original piece, instead."Man.
I had to explain - and am I the only one who has to say this? tell me I'm not - that it's not like I can't use this plotline, or the style, or the ideas, or even the sentence itself, elsewhere. I wrote it, I own it. But the original fiction board I'm on, if I were to do a short piece like this and post for review...well, the response would be: "look, if you want to experiment, go take a class or something." And I hate taking classes in creative writing. Not because I hate writing on demand - but because I always feel like an idiot. "Oh. We were just supposed to write 500 words? I got kinda caught up, here's the first 20,000 words...and I'm halfway through the next chapter..." Teachers seem to dislike students like me, because the time required to read/crit such a length is, well, pretty intensive. I suck at short stories, too.
But fanfic is so much safer (if that's the right word?) for going completely into a different style, like I did with Kingfisher. Lesson learned? Writing an entire novel in this style would be damn hard, and my name is definitely not Eudora Welty. I'm rather proud I managed it for 10,000 words, damn it! I guess my point is that the requirements of an original piece - that not only do I present information, characters, plot, surroundings and get you to give a damn abou them - are somewhat alleviated. I don't have to make anyone care about Heero, Duo, or the rest - you already do, or you wouldn't be reading. That much work is already done, and it frees me to play around with the rest.
Just pondering. I still can't think of any story currently in my head for aphasia and that stained-glass description of speech patterns, but hey. Maybe someday. It's not like - as CP fears - that the line will be "gone," lost once it's used, like I'll forget about it. Hell, I suspect it'll be ten years from now and GWA will still be around. Woo! Scavenge my own work, way down the road...
*wanders off, pondering weiss kreuz*