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kaigouI'm trying to figure this out; have been making notes into this post over several days, as I ponder. Feel free to jump in for/against my observations. Might help me clarify what I can sense in some stories, but can't articulate (yet).
[Aside: via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lilithcrow, an astute response to the 'omg fanfiction is bad!' rant, by liviapenn. Summary of argument: plenty of fanfiction has been published, professionally, and even won awards.]
I think there are two kinds of fiction available in this modern world, but three if you subdivide. There's fanfic -- ffic -- and original fic -- ofic; the second has two parts. Professional fic, published fic -- pfic -- and efic: professional-format stories regularly distributed via a dedicated site. When I refer to ofic, then, I mean everything from efic from independent one-person serialized stories to minor online publishing houses, right up to pfic and its gateways of assessing, reviewing, negotiating, editing, proofing, etc. When I say efic, I mean folks who've not made it past those gatekeepers, or who have chosen the lesser-height jumps of online publishing.
The past three or four weeks, I've set aside the stack o' TBR pfic waiting around the house, and have been focusing on efic. A few stories from Loose ID, two or three from Ellora's (which, I note, seems to have lower quality than Loose ID), and a handful via single-author sites. It took me a few novels (and 99% of what I've read has easily been in the medium-to-large novel size, that is, 120K or more), but one reaction kept surprising me, regardless of story.
With nearly every efic story -- despite clearly being ofic -- each feels like ffic.
A lot of ffic, you know you're reading ffic even without some stupid disclaimer of "not mine! no harm intended!" You know it because the story opens as all or nothing when introducing character, premise, or world. That is, when any ffic begins, you're either going to get backstory in three* or you're not going to get a single blasted bit of information, since you should know all this stuff, including eye, height, weight, middle name and favorite color. If you don't know the show/book intimately, a newcomer's baffled on page nine to find out this random guy actually has hair to his hips. If you were a real fan, you'd know that detail already. Natch.
[* Backstory-in-three is an info dump that sums up the entire canon to 'bring you up to speed'; high on my list o' peeves are those post-canon ffic which contain a backstory-in-three with 'spoiler warning!' splashed all over the A/N intro. It's the ffic version of showing your street cred.]
Okay, so efic doesn't (normally) commit that "assume you know all, or refresh for the cabbages in the audience" everything/nothing of ffic. In the opening chapter or so, the better-quality efic plays by pfic rules: it has a catchy opening, it gives you hints and peeks at the world and conflict, it has to work at coaxing your interest as much as any pfic. (Contrast: ffic often just assumes you'll want to keep reading, no matter how lifeless or cliched the opening, simply because you want to read about Harry Potter or Duo Maxwell.)
Past the opening, and for some, right then was when it started feeling like ffic, just... really-well constructed ffic. Or maybe, ffic, but with characters from a story I didn't read/watch, just characters AU'd into a new existence. There were a few times I wondered if it were an AU'd crossover or fusion, even: maybe that guy with the short blond braid, he's kinda like Edward, and the broody dark-haired fighter could be Heero, or maybe Angel (similar archetype, for that matter), and this girl might be Faith... and that girl is ... but no disclaimers other than a copyright notice, a clear declaration that these are original characters/stories... so why did I feel like I was reading ffic? What made it feel like that, if it was truly original fiction, from the ground up, world, conflict, characters, everything?
It's like efic uses an ffic-style, not pfic-style.
Voice isn't the right word; that's usually what we apply to character-presentation (where the narrator is also a character, in this sense). The variety of voices within a work can be what brings a work really to life. When we say, "it feels like a real person," it seems to me this is most common when the character's voice is distinct, individualized, in some way (from others in the same story, from others in the genre, whatever). So I wouldn't say it's a 'voice'.
It's maybe a 'style' -- if by that we agree to consider 'style' as presentation, slant, focus, emphasis.
[OMFG. Some stupid car just turned around on our dead-end street and hit its horn. Yes, folks, there are still morons out there with horns that play the first eight notes of Dixie. Where's the goddamn shotgun?]
I mean style, as opposed to genre (western, SF/F, romance). First, best word that comes to mind for ffic-style? Explicit.
Other words that came to mind:
unrestrained
uncensored
uninhibited
...although I find it annoying I can't think of any 'un' words or 'anti' words -- that is, any descriptive words that don't consist of "not-something" by definition.
An emotionally explicit moment is a... what to call it? Maybe a gimmick. It's a specific authorial move, designed to make you ache, really, with the character. It's a level of angst, it can play into wangst, but it's... well, it is angst, in the philosophical sense. It's more of a cheap trick, really, if it's an overplayed hand.
But sum is this: angst is a point when a character is anxious about events outside the character's control, and stands at the point between two or more choices, all of which are baffling and equal in terms of potential outcome (or equal in terms of outcome being unknown/unknowable). And, most crucially, when the character is isolated within this state of mind, recognizes that isolation, and is caught at that moment of dread.
Now, for an example of this, in pro-fic, from Path of Blood. (Fair use, Diana! Fair use!) I use this snippet because it's one of the more recent examples I've read, and it's quite short, too (more about that in a bit). In this scene, the scene's protag has just agreed to relay bad news to the young princess he's been wooing. It's a fair chance she won't take it well, especially since it will reveal the protag had originally mislead her and/or lied-by-omission.
The key, here, is that although the author's using the element/style of angst -- the isolation in being the one person to act, the anxiety and uncertainty about the results of doing so: the dread of outcome, of losing, of failing -- it's also a way to increase the tension. The longer Kebonsat delays, the higher the risk that his lady-love won't take the news well, and may even blame the messenger (in this case, somewhat rightly, hence the increased anxiety). As readers, we can see trouble must lie ahead, both by virtue of delaying the news and the news itself, but the reminder of Kebonsat's fear, and isolation in his duties/responsibility, increases the emotional context of the internal conflict, and the likely external one.
Okay, writerly-lecturing aside... the point is that the example above constitutes maybe, hrm, four paragraphs at most, over six or seven chapters, in the midst of a whole helluvalotta other stuff going on. The plot is damn thick on the ground. This means the momentary passages of Kebonsat's angst come and go, a single flickering light on a whole christmas tree of brightly-lit bulbs.
Here's the difference, in ffic: authors write with one single assumption as the basis for all other story-assumptions:
The reader is reading because s/he already loves the character(s).
That plays out in ffic not so much as "we want to see the character more" but as "we want to experience the character more". That demand for experience hammers on the author to deliver. And so, we have wangst: it's angst, kicked up to eleven and beaten until smooth. Or, we have its opposite & next-door neighbor, waff: it's warm fuzzies, equally kicked up to eleven and beaten until smooth.
Anxiety, happiness, etc, exist in ofic, but in ffic it's taken to the absolute hilt, it's emotion made explicit, it's investigated and explored and explained and shown and told until the wound is raw, the love is blissful beyond all human comprehension, the anger is positively electric, the fear is gut-wrenching. It's to experience the character, down to the molecular level -- because the point, in ffic, isn't the plot. It's not the bad guys, it's not the setting. Hell, the bad guys are often the only original characters added to the canon mix (assuming canon characters aren't recast as Bad Guys) and the setting can be an alternate universe (high school AU, wartime AU, archeaology AU, whatever) -- but still, fans devour the story regardless of plot or setting or conflict or even stories with none of the above. It's all about the character.
What would you call it, in ofic that doesn't have character-fascination as its cornerstone? It's a kind of restraint, I suppose, in pfic. It's not really 'a willingness to hold back', or self-censorship -- though it might be, in some cases -- so much as... hrm. Maybe it's writing without the assumption that you adore this character and thus want to get down in the nitty-gritty. The author doesn't have that ffic-certainty that this is a character you adore -- this might even be a character whose scenes get skimmed, at best (always a risk with multi-POV stories). So if there's a lot of plot, and limited space, everything gets distilled. When it's pixels, not paper -- there's no reason to distill for word count. Maybe that's one reason for efic going as deep as ffic.
I'm just thinking of the original fiction -- efic, that is -- I was reading last night. It was love at first sight for A and B, but then B came back to town and slaughtered most of A's friends (and apparently A was supposed to be among the dead). A survives, of course, and swears vengeance on B. So now we have hate at second sight, with B revealed a helpless pawn and still in love with A, but A of course won't believe B a pawn, and thus swears hatred, death, destruction, cats and dogs living in sin, etc. At every possible junction, A mocks/torments B, who retaliates with anger/distrust mixed with unrequited love, while A is in serious denial about love and just gets more annoyed and vicious, and it's all kicked up to eleven, and it's pages of taking the reader through Every. Single. Thing. This ain't angst doled out as a paragraph; this is angst as the entire frickin' chapter.
These are good writers, too; they do have a sense of craftsmanship. It's not just flat telling that A's determined to make B suffer: the authors are unafraid to show it to me... nineteen different ways. Each time it's varying degrees of the same isolation, anxiety, angst, the pain, fear, uncertainty, distrust and mistrust and every time a spark of hope that it'll work out okay before the author's boot coming slamming down and kicks the character back into angst, repeat, repeat, repeat, deeper and deeper each time.
The only equivalent I can think of -- in published, printed, professional, fiction -- is the romance genre.
What we love, we want to see happy... usually. Or, perhaps, what we love, we want to see happy... eventually. It's not really an issue of love, for a fan to a character, so much as... obsession? Not always. Concentration? Focus? It's just plain "want to experience" -- highs, and lows, and let's face it, the lows can be delicious. Just as we get off (in a sense) on the character's fear while trodding that dark hallway with only a butter knife, and we know the bad guy's in the house and things are going down, we love every minute of that horror, that dread... that angst. Or perhaps it's only that, in a heightened version of life itself, the joy at the end is that much sweeter if it's been denied for eighty pages, a hundred pages, a hundred thousand words.
That's the whole point of romance, after all, no matter what other trappings you lay across it, no matter the crazy obstacles you create: A, in the end, will be with B, happily ever after, warm fuzzies hyped into waff, etc, etc, and so on. Misunderstandings (from comical to tragic), mistrust, distrust... all the plot's obstacles are created for a two-fold reason. One, to continue the superficial 'plot' (eg, find the treasure, take down the bad guy, save the city/country/world). Two, to keep the true-loves apart.
It's that double-intent that means every external plot device is measured, and matched, internally.
Or so it seems, to me. Story after story, if there's an obstacle -- the bad guy wins the battle, the treasure ain't there, the danger to country/world goes up a notch -- there's equally a way that such setbacks also impact the main relationship. This circles back to the example(s) I quoted above, where the external or physical conflict will certainly have an internal or emotional result, as well -- but in efic/ffic, every obstacle has emotional impact.
It makes for a lot of introspective passages. A goddamn boatload, in some stories. Which, if you're reading ffic, you want: it's more wallowing in the experiential aspect, the head-on, hip-deep, sensations of the characters. Okay, so (like in romance) sometimes this could be solved if the characters would bloody well just open their mouths and TALK to each other -- but this is a flaw I see in pfic, too, in many genres. And I'll admit, even some of the lower-level, lesser-known, efic authors are good enough to avoid that mistake; most of the stories I've been reading do provide excellent character motivation for keeping their traps shut. That extends the teasing agony of "when will it all work out?" just as much as the old standby of the interrupted kiss, the almost-happened sex scene, carries the Unresolved Sexual Tension right along.
Y'know, maybe it's really all about the UST.
A week or so ago,difrancis had a post about soap operas as epic fantasies.
Maybe it's some of that, too -- except for efic, the 'epic' is down on the emotional level. It's certainly not in the plot-level. I've noticed efics, like ffics, tend to be extremely simple on the plot lines. Let's see. What have I read recently?
Looking over that list brings to mind another element of efic that I don't see a great deal in pfic: transparency.
What else would I call it, in one word? I'm not sure. It's the reactions, the obvious reactions, the tells, which naturally the opposing character misses completely. The tone of voice, the twitch, the flinch, the refusal to look someone in the eyes, the hitch in what's otherwise a coldly stated comment. It's the dozens of tiny ways, in describing a character's appearance, actions, voice, behavior, that an author alerts the reader to the fact that this character is saying one thing, and meaning (or wanting) something different. It's old, old, old hat in romance fiction, as I recall from my junior high days of reading everything I could bloody well get my grubby paws on, from abstract 60's drug-soaked novels to 80-pager template romances from Cartland. The more recent romance I've read -- mostly Kinsdale and Liu in the past year or so -- seems to have toned down on the noisiest "say one, mean another" tendencies, but it's certainly still in the mix. Far more than any other genre I can name, really -- I mean, if we have a bad guy threatening James Bond or Jason Bourne, and we're told the bad guy can't quite look Bond or Bourne in the eyes, and he flinches when the good guy speaks... uhm. No. Doesn't work. Giving me tells in political drama? No. Indicating the hitch in a gunslinger's voice? Unless he's just shot himself in the foot, I doubt it's done.
(Although the last western I read was Centennial, so I could be wrong... but I'm pretty sure at least that the Man With No Name don't stinkin' flinch.)
Hrm. A lot of the A/B conflicts in the efics seems to revolve around the "your mouth says no, but your body says yes," like some kind of wish-fulfillment, fantasy-driven version of the "he made me do it" protest against seduction. To have that, though, you must have an Alpha (male, or female, really), who's going to push the Other for one reason or another, until the Other gives way, gives in, changes the verbalized-no to a helplessly-verbalized-yes to match with the body's all-along-been yes.
The soap opera connection to efic is close in one way, and not in another: soap operas are essentially get-together-fall-apart storylines, but a long-lasting soap opera has eighty of these going on at once. They're together! They're apart! They're together! They're apart! Over and over... in efic, this together/apart is often based on romantic attraction; in epic, it might have tones of romance but the focus is on the external -- be that political, or social, or saving-the-world, or revenge on a business partner who kifed all the savings and took off to Tahiti. External focus, the cry is: we're ahead, we're behind, we're ahead, we're behind, oh noes!
But the transparency is a crucial part in efic/ffic. With the point being to achieve emotional explicitness, then the character's feelings must be laid out, so the reader doesn't have to work that hard on comprehending and can instead put energy into caring. The reader's willingness to care for the character(s) is heightened, played on, manipulated, and reinforced by the words upon words describing and outlining and underlining the emotional/internal conflict.
Did I mention there's a whole lotta introspection in efic? Hell, yeah. Not that far off from the soap operas I recall watching as a child, home sick from school and propped up on the sofa with flat ginger ale, saltine crackers, and the television on. (It was soap operas, or Donahue, and when you're 10, Donahue just baffles you.) But I recall being wierded out by the constant voice-overs: like some kind of onscreen novelization technique. A character says (and fully looks like she means it): "I'm going to take you down, you meanie!" and then she pauses, and we get voiceover of, "if only you loved me like you once had, I'd do anything for that again..."
(Insert picture of me staring at the screen, looking confused -- could the other person hear her thoughts, too?)
In the reams o' pfic I've read, this transparency is toned down, or even non-existent. If a character is saying no, and the author chooses to focus on this no, then you don't get many contradictions. You certainly don't get scene after scene after scene reminding you again and again in eighteen ways that this character holds any inconsistency and/or uncertainty. If the character reveals later that s/he was conflicted, either the author's warned us via extremely subtle clues -- minute things that could be intuited, in hindsight, to see the conflict -- or we're startled and shocked, right there with the POV character finding out about the internal conflict.
if your focus is on the plot, the external conflict, then this internal conflict is tangential -- but not the focus. If your focus is on the people in the story, and the plot is secondary (if not outright gratuitous), then this internal conflict is the story. Then, I think, you're writing in an efic style, a ffic style, a borderline romance-novel style, maybe.
There seems to be a lot of "we're bound together by fate" plotlines in efic, too. Yes, I read predominantly urban/contemporary fantasy, but when I compare the "we're fated" plot devices in pfic against the number in efic/ffic, it seems the latter maxes out the quota pretty much regularly. I'm trying to remember the last time I read a "we're fated" plot device in a pfic. Hrm. I know Sharon Shinn used it in the one archangel book I read -- which, yes, also felt like I was reading ffic, come to think of it.
The other writers I've read in the past year -- won't name them, though -- who wrote with an efic/ffic style... were also ones of whom I discovered, after reading, were former fanfic authors. Hmmm. These are published authors, but they're using the efic/ffic style, and I have to say: it's not something that you really recognize, not at first. In the pfic world, that efic style creeps up on you -- you're not expecting it, and if it's done well, it sort of rides along just under the radar. Only after finishing the books did I feel like... hard to explain, it was a sensation, a taste in my mouth, like I'd perhaps stumbled onto an excellent author -- but a fanfic author nonetheless.
It's a wallowing. That's part of the transparency, and the explicitness.
The author, really, wallows in the character -- not the plot, not the (external) conflict, and not even secondary/tertiary characters -- but in the main characters, the ones who get the focus, the OTP. Err, I use the 'one true pairing' concept broadly; this can extend to friends, siblings, family -- I use it here in the sense that the author has slapped a "will get along and care for each other above everyone else" label on two characters, be this purely emotional-platonic or all the way up to obsessive/possessive love/sex/fate etc. So the main foci, the members of the OTP, get pages and pages and pages -- either reviewing their own feelings, reliving their own pains... or the author uses them to detail endlessly the aches and pains and angst of the character who is a focus.
That's another way transparency shows up, used to boost the OTP. The POV character has conversation with OTP character; during this conversation, the OTP-protag flinches, looks away, crosses his arms, says no but his body leans forward and his eyes are bright with -- gasp, could it be? -- tears, blah blah blah. Yeah, the reader's saying, it's so obvious! All the signs, right there! He's totally into A or B or whomever is the Other in the OTP... And our POV character? Well, if he's not in the OTP, he sees it all, knows exactly what it means (and may even call the OTP-half on it). If the POV character is any part of the OTP...
He won't see a damn thing.
That's the author wallowing, I think. The author's trying to play both games: have the POV character notice things but not notice -- or notice and willfully (or stupidly) misinterpret -- while dumping so many frickin' ANVILS on the reader's head about the OTP-protag's true feelings. So not only do we get to experience the OTP-protag's pain in his/her own POV scenes; we also get to experience a strange echo of pain/anxiety on behalf of the OTP-protag, thanks to the POV character missing all of it. Oh, the anguish, the borderline too-stupid-to-live!
Hrm, though, isn't that a huge part of comedy? The character who does something stupid, that's going to put him/her in a situation to be humiliated, and we laugh because otherwise we'd be too uncomfortable, it'd hit too close to home. We have to exorcise the embarrassment through laughter. Except that these aren't comedies. The pain and humiliation is all there, and it's oh-so-serious, and the authors damn well wallow.
All the pain, humiliation, agony, anxiety, fear, joy, hope, uncertainty, exhilaration, ecstasy, laid bare. These things, these internal reactions to external stresses, are transformed into further obstacles -- internal obstacles -- creating a yes/no conflict on top of (or in place of, even) the overall plotline's drive towards resolution.
It does seem as though ffic/efic style(s) are hugely reliant on the romance genre, but I think there's one big difference: the outcome is (more likely to be) in question. That is, in the romance I've read, pretty much without exception -- *thinking* -- yeah, pretty much entirely without exception, stories in which you meet A, then B, and you know... it's A and B. Okay, so C and D might show up, but the authorial slant is clearly in B's favor. Maybe A dallies with C and D, maybe A is kidnapped and forced against his/her will to enjoy the company of C or D (or both!), maybe C or D genuinely comes across as worthwhile guy/gal and possibly even a better quality 'person' than B... but no, the author is determined that A and B will end up together, and the focus in A's mind remains B, just as the focus in B's mind remains A, constantly.
There are plenty of ffic where the OTP is unquestionable (hell, it'll even say so in the warnings what the pairing is), but there are others, like efic, where it's entirely possible that B, C, or D just might win the day. I'd say -- based on my own writing experience -- that nearly every author does walk into a story with at least a pretty good clue as to where A will end up (if with anyone), although sometimes this changes over the course of draft-to-final. But going for the subtle, playing B, C, and D as equally possible, giving them all good reasons to be attractive... I can't really say I saw any of that in the romance I've read. In those, it's like, well, reading a low-grade mystery novel. You know exactly whodunit, pretty much; any interest you can salvage will come from watching the detective figure it out.
Then again, the more competition there is, the more opportunities for confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, momentary exhilaration followed by the sudden crash of the author's boot slamming down on the plotline.
Let's see.
Explicit. Transparent. Detailed.
Emphasis on internal/emotional conflict, which drives external conflict, and in turn influences internal turmoil. What else?
Oh. Yeah. Lest we forget: the author, in love with the characters.
Now, I'm not saying that adoring your characters is necessarily a bad thing. Most pro-authors on my flist are quite firm that they find even their bad guys sympathetic, or at least intriguing, if not necessarily the kind of person you'd want to invite over for tea. That's not really what I mean, though. I think it's more related to the authorial assumption -- by ffic authors, that is -- that these characters are adored. That's a far cry from hoping the reader likes even one of your characters. It's more of a simple, unspoken, never-questioned assumption that -- of course -- you, the reader, and we, the authors, all are in agreement that this character drives everything, that scenes with this character sparkle more, that this character is just... consuming.
I think that, in fact, might be the biggest danger of learning-to-write via the world of ffic: because it's the simplest, most basic assumption you could possibly make as an author. Every single ofic I've read that 'feels' like ffic has this in common: the absolute focus on a character, almost to the detriment of the rest of the story. I'm not saying Mary Sue -- though that sort will warp a story, too -- but that even characters with foibles and flaws and issues can still take a story and warp every scene they're in.
How to tell? I don't know if I can articulate. Hrm. For starters, scenes without that character feel rushed; scenes with that character feel like we're getting either way too much information or way too many details. That one character gets more word-time for foibles, for quirks; something that for another character is mentioned once and dropped, gets mentioned multiple times for the focus-character (even if the focus-character isn't the story's actual official protagonist). There's a loving fascination with the character, and if you agree with the author, if you've fallen into the honey-trap, then you want all the -- let's call it what it is -- fan service. Because that's what it is. It's giving you what you want, the details, the extra time, the camera's eye staying just a few minutes longer on this character. But if you're not happy in the honey-trap? Boy, do you skim those scenes; you notice every single mention -- yet again -- of the character being vegan, or begin a crack shot, or feeling so blissfully happy with his new girl and/or stuck in the depths of unrequited passion, whatever.
A fan's response: Ohhhh... *deep sigh* He's so in love, and no one else knows! How much he suffers!
A regular reader's response: Someone make the character shut up, or I'll do it myself.
But because it's such a fundamental assumption one makes, in ffic (that you're reading because you also love the characters as much as the author), I think this transfers over into ofic without being questioned. It's become something positively ingrained in the author's style, and unless there's a way to point it out, substantively, it gets missed... and then it either delights readers who have joined the honey-trap, or it annoys those who haven't. Meanwhile, the author's boggled as to why, or why not. The author's blind to this one, single, bottom-line assumption, and that in turns creates a massive blindspot in the entire story.
For a ffic author, it's inconceivable that anyone would read a story if lukewarm about the pairing and/or story and/or world and/or characters and/or whatever. For the ffic writer, it is taken for granted that you (a) know the story/world/etc, (b) you want to be here. Otherwise, you'd shut down this window and carry onto the next result in your fanfiction.net search window, right? If I take it for granted that you're reading because you want to read -- not just a story but this story -- then I don't need to spend my time convincing you of this character's charisma. I can get on with wallowing in the character, digging deep into explicit internal conflicts, flaying the character open for all of us to enjoy the wallow.
Re charisma: I find it amusing that every now and then I see ffic critiques where readers complain the author treated them like idiots. That is, the author attempted to explain why the character is so charismatic, enough to carry the story. For ffic readers, this is such a big huge DUH that it's a waste of pixels, and I've seen some get truly irked, indignant even, at an author 'wasting time' telling them or showing them all over again why Angel is so awesome, or why Lex is so complex and so on. They're reading ffic because they already agree, and they don't want their story-time wasted on something that's old hat. "I liked the story but the beginning was really slow, because the author wrote like we didn't know these guys" and "it's not an AU, you don't have to be all mysterious and crap when you're introducing the characters, it's not like we don't know who they are."
Hrmph. The only times I've seen fan-readers willing to permit an author the grace of introducing/characterizing an ofic-introduction style is when two conditions are met: first, the reader is open to considering a new pairing (or has no preferences or has not yet developed any preferences), and when the pairing itself is not a major setup in the fandom (thus the author knows convincing is in order). I mean, if you plan to pair Buffy and Angel, well, that's not too hard; there's a massive number of folks behind that setup. You want to pair Buffy and Willow? That's going to take work, just as much as it would to convince fan-readers that Harry Potter grows up to be a serial murderer or that all along the Joker's been the good guy.
(Then again, that kind of twist -- provided the author works at it -- can also be a pretty powerful upside-down to pull on readers. Wicked is probably the top example I can think of, right off the bat.)
Given there are published authors using this ffic/efic style, it's safe to say -- I think -- that there are probably agents & editors out there (if you hit the right combination) who are easily able to fall into the fan-reader mindset. It's a pretty big assumption: you are as much in luuuurve with this character as its creator, and thus, the fan service doesn't grate on you, it pleases you and thrills you and makes you want more. Those gatekeepers who don't or won't or can't adapt this mindset -- who are willing or able to refrain from 'falling' for the author's focus-character(s) -- aren't going to let the author's work pass. But there are gatekeepers willing and able, and so we have published books out on the shelves which gleefully embrace this ffic/efic assumption.
I suspect this is where my own writing suffers, thanks to the ffic exposure -- where I weaken, as an author, is where I take a jump to the left and find myself knee-deep in the ffic/efic quagmire: where I begin taking it for granted that of course, now, you are reading not because you want to know what happens, not because you like the world, not because you're responding to the work I've done to convince you to keep reading -- but that you're reading because you're actively invested.
Which isn't a bad thing (what author wants non-invested readers, anyway?) but that the ffic-style response is not to take your active investment and keep building on it... but to slide into the lazy, wallowing discourse of fan service. If I forget that scenes must exist for the purpose of plot movement, if I forget that information exchanged in scenes must be new or a reinterpretation of existing info, if I forget that your reason for reading might not be solely because you're enamoured of the focus-character(s), then taking your investment for granted will only cause a sudden and abrupt loss of investment: because it's too much of one thing, and a slacking on all the other things that might've kept you going. It's turning off the persuasion of the pfic, and falling into the "we're all here for X" group-happiness of the ffic.
I'm not sure I ever would've realized this had I not sat down and tried to figure out what had me somewhat annoyed, in the efic & pfic I've purchased. If I spend money on something, I have expectations that I don't apply to the world of ffic and efic freebies. The explicit elements, the transparency, the overt romance, the thin plotlines, the somewhat simplistic characterizations -- I can put up with that in ffic, because it's not like I had to pay for it, and hell, I already like those characters & that world. But in pfic, it's hard to forget I'm holding a printed novel, so when it starts feeling like the author went from ofic to... some bizarre kind of ffic-without-being-ffic, I feel... well, cheated, for one thing. Maybe like I got a switch-and-bait, too, in some ways, when the tone changes.
And maybe I feel just a bit uncomfortable, too -- the way I do when reading someone's attempt at writing a character's explicit, transparent, flayed-out emotional internal turmoil -- and it's from a fandom I don't like, or it's for a character I'd never believe could behave like that in canon. I feel embarrassed on behalf of the author, that s/he can't seem to realize just how moronic this adulation looks to an outside observer. I find myself squirming, the way I would if someone had a massive crush and insisted on spending the entire lunch hour just raving about how wonderful the guy is, while I know he falls asleep at his desk and screwed up the last project and maybe he's okay in general but believe me, baby, he ain't all that and the goddamn cake. Rather than laugh and burst the bubble, it's easier to just step away, change the subject -- or put the book down and find no interest in picking it back up.
Damn, that was long.
[Aside: via
lilithcrow, an astute response to the 'omg fanfiction is bad!' rant, by liviapenn. Summary of argument: plenty of fanfiction has been published, professionally, and even won awards.]I think there are two kinds of fiction available in this modern world, but three if you subdivide. There's fanfic -- ffic -- and original fic -- ofic; the second has two parts. Professional fic, published fic -- pfic -- and efic: professional-format stories regularly distributed via a dedicated site. When I refer to ofic, then, I mean everything from efic from independent one-person serialized stories to minor online publishing houses, right up to pfic and its gateways of assessing, reviewing, negotiating, editing, proofing, etc. When I say efic, I mean folks who've not made it past those gatekeepers, or who have chosen the lesser-height jumps of online publishing.
The past three or four weeks, I've set aside the stack o' TBR pfic waiting around the house, and have been focusing on efic. A few stories from Loose ID, two or three from Ellora's (which, I note, seems to have lower quality than Loose ID), and a handful via single-author sites. It took me a few novels (and 99% of what I've read has easily been in the medium-to-large novel size, that is, 120K or more), but one reaction kept surprising me, regardless of story.
With nearly every efic story -- despite clearly being ofic -- each feels like ffic.
A lot of ffic, you know you're reading ffic even without some stupid disclaimer of "not mine! no harm intended!" You know it because the story opens as all or nothing when introducing character, premise, or world. That is, when any ffic begins, you're either going to get backstory in three* or you're not going to get a single blasted bit of information, since you should know all this stuff, including eye, height, weight, middle name and favorite color. If you don't know the show/book intimately, a newcomer's baffled on page nine to find out this random guy actually has hair to his hips. If you were a real fan, you'd know that detail already. Natch.
[* Backstory-in-three is an info dump that sums up the entire canon to 'bring you up to speed'; high on my list o' peeves are those post-canon ffic which contain a backstory-in-three with 'spoiler warning!' splashed all over the A/N intro. It's the ffic version of showing your street cred.]
Okay, so efic doesn't (normally) commit that "assume you know all, or refresh for the cabbages in the audience" everything/nothing of ffic. In the opening chapter or so, the better-quality efic plays by pfic rules: it has a catchy opening, it gives you hints and peeks at the world and conflict, it has to work at coaxing your interest as much as any pfic. (Contrast: ffic often just assumes you'll want to keep reading, no matter how lifeless or cliched the opening, simply because you want to read about Harry Potter or Duo Maxwell.)
Past the opening, and for some, right then was when it started feeling like ffic, just... really-well constructed ffic. Or maybe, ffic, but with characters from a story I didn't read/watch, just characters AU'd into a new existence. There were a few times I wondered if it were an AU'd crossover or fusion, even: maybe that guy with the short blond braid, he's kinda like Edward, and the broody dark-haired fighter could be Heero, or maybe Angel (similar archetype, for that matter), and this girl might be Faith... and that girl is ... but no disclaimers other than a copyright notice, a clear declaration that these are original characters/stories... so why did I feel like I was reading ffic? What made it feel like that, if it was truly original fiction, from the ground up, world, conflict, characters, everything?
It's like efic uses an ffic-style, not pfic-style.
Voice isn't the right word; that's usually what we apply to character-presentation (where the narrator is also a character, in this sense). The variety of voices within a work can be what brings a work really to life. When we say, "it feels like a real person," it seems to me this is most common when the character's voice is distinct, individualized, in some way (from others in the same story, from others in the genre, whatever). So I wouldn't say it's a 'voice'.
It's maybe a 'style' -- if by that we agree to consider 'style' as presentation, slant, focus, emphasis.
[OMFG. Some stupid car just turned around on our dead-end street and hit its horn. Yes, folks, there are still morons out there with horns that play the first eight notes of Dixie. Where's the goddamn shotgun?]
I mean style, as opposed to genre (western, SF/F, romance). First, best word that comes to mind for ffic-style? Explicit.
ex-pli-cit adj.I wouldn't apply 'explicit' to efic only in the sexual sense (although efic's quality and quantity is almost as high as harder-level ffic). Yes, efic is more explicit in terms of sex (it's hard to miss that most of the efic, like ffic, would get an NC-17 rating). But as I read more, with large swathes (or sub-swathes, for those stories that are full-length 'novels' creating one long piece) in which it's probably no more than PG based on the sex-level, I still couldn't shake the sense of explicitness. The violence, the emotion, the description, and, yes, the sex, are all explicit.
1.a. Fully and clearly expressed; leaving nothing implied.
b. Fully and clearly defined or formulated: "generalizations that are powerful, precise, and explicit" (Frederick Turner).
2. Forthright and unreserved in expression: They were explicit in their criticism.
3.a. Readily observable: an explicit sign of trouble.
b. Describing or portraying nudity or sexual activity in graphic detail.
Other words that came to mind:
unrestrained
uncensored
uninhibited
...although I find it annoying I can't think of any 'un' words or 'anti' words -- that is, any descriptive words that don't consist of "not-something" by definition.
An emotionally explicit moment is a... what to call it? Maybe a gimmick. It's a specific authorial move, designed to make you ache, really, with the character. It's a level of angst, it can play into wangst, but it's... well, it is angst, in the philosophical sense. It's more of a cheap trick, really, if it's an overplayed hand.
1. A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.Okay, minor philosophy tangent over, now. Mostly.
2. A troubled or anxious state of mind: anxiety, anxiousness, care, concern, disquiet, disquietude, distress, nervousness, solicitude, unease, uneasiness, worry.
3. A kind of fear or anxiety; Angst is German for “fear.” It is usually applied to a deep and essentially philosophical anxiety about the world in general or personal freedom.
Angst is a Dutch, German, and Scandinavian word for fear or anxiety. It is used in English to describe an intense feeling of emotional strife.
A different but related meaning is attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Kierkegaard used the word angst (Danish, meaning "dread") to describe a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair in the free human being. Where the animal is a slave to its God-given instincts but always confident in its own actions, Kierkegaard believed that the freedom given to mankind leaves the human in a constant fear of failing its responsibilities to God. Kierkegaard's concept of angst is considered to be an important stepping stone for 20th-century existentialism.
While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst is broadened to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God). Still, the angst in alternative music may be more accessible to most audiences than existentialism. The term "angst" is now widely used as a theme in many great modern writers. Often, as in the Catcher in the Rye the expression is used as a common adolescent experience of malaise; in this sense it has become one of the most central themes used in the fiction of modern novelists like Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace and others.
But sum is this: angst is a point when a character is anxious about events outside the character's control, and stands at the point between two or more choices, all of which are baffling and equal in terms of potential outcome (or equal in terms of outcome being unknown/unknowable). And, most crucially, when the character is isolated within this state of mind, recognizes that isolation, and is caught at that moment of dread.
Now, for an example of this, in pro-fic, from Path of Blood. (Fair use, Diana! Fair use!) I use this snippet because it's one of the more recent examples I've read, and it's quite short, too (more about that in a bit). In this scene, the scene's protag has just agreed to relay bad news to the young princess he's been wooing. It's a fair chance she won't take it well, especially since it will reveal the protag had originally mislead her and/or lied-by-omission.
He gritted his teeth and marched up the muddy street, gripping the hilt of his sword with iron fingers. He had time for weapons practice before joining Emelovi for dinner. .They would be alone this night. Metyein would see to it. A romantic evening, and no one to interfere in his wooing. Or his confession. And after she knew the truth, they'd never have a meal together again. He doubted he'd even be allowed to empty her chamber pot.That's on page 48, and about the extent of his unhappy recognition that Things Will Go Down. It's another ten pages before we reach the dinner scene, and two more before we get more of the protag's isolation and anxiety. He's working up the nerve to break the news, and alarm bells sound. Talk about being saved by the bell:
It was no more than he deserved.
"Kebonsat hesitated. He should tell her. He licked his lips. The bells clanged louder.It's been nearly thirty-something pages since the POV character first realized he's got to deliver the news, and in that time, we've gotten about two paragraphs of his turmoil. It'll be almost another 20 pages before we see the character again; in this plot, his news is crucial, so it makes sense to raise the question again -- which in turn touches off another spark of angst for the character. Again, though, the 'spark' is at most a paragraph, if that.
"I will send word as soon as I know something," Kebonsat said. Without another word, he snatched up his cloak and strode out the door. You are a coward, he told himself bitterly as he broke into a jog. And you will surely pay the price for not telling her when you had the chance.
The key, here, is that although the author's using the element/style of angst -- the isolation in being the one person to act, the anxiety and uncertainty about the results of doing so: the dread of outcome, of losing, of failing -- it's also a way to increase the tension. The longer Kebonsat delays, the higher the risk that his lady-love won't take the news well, and may even blame the messenger (in this case, somewhat rightly, hence the increased anxiety). As readers, we can see trouble must lie ahead, both by virtue of delaying the news and the news itself, but the reminder of Kebonsat's fear, and isolation in his duties/responsibility, increases the emotional context of the internal conflict, and the likely external one.
Okay, writerly-lecturing aside... the point is that the example above constitutes maybe, hrm, four paragraphs at most, over six or seven chapters, in the midst of a whole helluvalotta other stuff going on. The plot is damn thick on the ground. This means the momentary passages of Kebonsat's angst come and go, a single flickering light on a whole christmas tree of brightly-lit bulbs.
Here's the difference, in ffic: authors write with one single assumption as the basis for all other story-assumptions:
The reader is reading because s/he already loves the character(s).
That plays out in ffic not so much as "we want to see the character more" but as "we want to experience the character more". That demand for experience hammers on the author to deliver. And so, we have wangst: it's angst, kicked up to eleven and beaten until smooth. Or, we have its opposite & next-door neighbor, waff: it's warm fuzzies, equally kicked up to eleven and beaten until smooth.
Anxiety, happiness, etc, exist in ofic, but in ffic it's taken to the absolute hilt, it's emotion made explicit, it's investigated and explored and explained and shown and told until the wound is raw, the love is blissful beyond all human comprehension, the anger is positively electric, the fear is gut-wrenching. It's to experience the character, down to the molecular level -- because the point, in ffic, isn't the plot. It's not the bad guys, it's not the setting. Hell, the bad guys are often the only original characters added to the canon mix (assuming canon characters aren't recast as Bad Guys) and the setting can be an alternate universe (high school AU, wartime AU, archeaology AU, whatever) -- but still, fans devour the story regardless of plot or setting or conflict or even stories with none of the above. It's all about the character.
What would you call it, in ofic that doesn't have character-fascination as its cornerstone? It's a kind of restraint, I suppose, in pfic. It's not really 'a willingness to hold back', or self-censorship -- though it might be, in some cases -- so much as... hrm. Maybe it's writing without the assumption that you adore this character and thus want to get down in the nitty-gritty. The author doesn't have that ffic-certainty that this is a character you adore -- this might even be a character whose scenes get skimmed, at best (always a risk with multi-POV stories). So if there's a lot of plot, and limited space, everything gets distilled. When it's pixels, not paper -- there's no reason to distill for word count. Maybe that's one reason for efic going as deep as ffic.
I'm just thinking of the original fiction -- efic, that is -- I was reading last night. It was love at first sight for A and B, but then B came back to town and slaughtered most of A's friends (and apparently A was supposed to be among the dead). A survives, of course, and swears vengeance on B. So now we have hate at second sight, with B revealed a helpless pawn and still in love with A, but A of course won't believe B a pawn, and thus swears hatred, death, destruction, cats and dogs living in sin, etc. At every possible junction, A mocks/torments B, who retaliates with anger/distrust mixed with unrequited love, while A is in serious denial about love and just gets more annoyed and vicious, and it's all kicked up to eleven, and it's pages of taking the reader through Every. Single. Thing. This ain't angst doled out as a paragraph; this is angst as the entire frickin' chapter.
These are good writers, too; they do have a sense of craftsmanship. It's not just flat telling that A's determined to make B suffer: the authors are unafraid to show it to me... nineteen different ways. Each time it's varying degrees of the same isolation, anxiety, angst, the pain, fear, uncertainty, distrust and mistrust and every time a spark of hope that it'll work out okay before the author's boot coming slamming down and kicks the character back into angst, repeat, repeat, repeat, deeper and deeper each time.
The only equivalent I can think of -- in published, printed, professional, fiction -- is the romance genre.
What we love, we want to see happy... usually. Or, perhaps, what we love, we want to see happy... eventually. It's not really an issue of love, for a fan to a character, so much as... obsession? Not always. Concentration? Focus? It's just plain "want to experience" -- highs, and lows, and let's face it, the lows can be delicious. Just as we get off (in a sense) on the character's fear while trodding that dark hallway with only a butter knife, and we know the bad guy's in the house and things are going down, we love every minute of that horror, that dread... that angst. Or perhaps it's only that, in a heightened version of life itself, the joy at the end is that much sweeter if it's been denied for eighty pages, a hundred pages, a hundred thousand words.
That's the whole point of romance, after all, no matter what other trappings you lay across it, no matter the crazy obstacles you create: A, in the end, will be with B, happily ever after, warm fuzzies hyped into waff, etc, etc, and so on. Misunderstandings (from comical to tragic), mistrust, distrust... all the plot's obstacles are created for a two-fold reason. One, to continue the superficial 'plot' (eg, find the treasure, take down the bad guy, save the city/country/world). Two, to keep the true-loves apart.
It's that double-intent that means every external plot device is measured, and matched, internally.
Or so it seems, to me. Story after story, if there's an obstacle -- the bad guy wins the battle, the treasure ain't there, the danger to country/world goes up a notch -- there's equally a way that such setbacks also impact the main relationship. This circles back to the example(s) I quoted above, where the external or physical conflict will certainly have an internal or emotional result, as well -- but in efic/ffic, every obstacle has emotional impact.
It makes for a lot of introspective passages. A goddamn boatload, in some stories. Which, if you're reading ffic, you want: it's more wallowing in the experiential aspect, the head-on, hip-deep, sensations of the characters. Okay, so (like in romance) sometimes this could be solved if the characters would bloody well just open their mouths and TALK to each other -- but this is a flaw I see in pfic, too, in many genres. And I'll admit, even some of the lower-level, lesser-known, efic authors are good enough to avoid that mistake; most of the stories I've been reading do provide excellent character motivation for keeping their traps shut. That extends the teasing agony of "when will it all work out?" just as much as the old standby of the interrupted kiss, the almost-happened sex scene, carries the Unresolved Sexual Tension right along.
Y'know, maybe it's really all about the UST.
A week or so ago,
difrancis had a post about soap operas as epic fantasies. Maybe it's some of that, too -- except for efic, the 'epic' is down on the emotional level. It's certainly not in the plot-level. I've noticed efics, like ffics, tend to be extremely simple on the plot lines. Let's see. What have I read recently?
- A is obligated/guilted/bound in some way (usually involving painful physical or emotional abuse); B realizes and tries to save/protect A
- A is captured, tortured (about 80% of time includes non-con); B saves the day
- Corrollary to #2: B saves the day but only after getting trapped in same non-con; ie, both A and B suffer
- A is extremely possessive and over-protective; when someone wants/traps/kidnaps B, A goes nuts to rescue
- A is helpless, lost, clueless, naive about Big Bad; B misinterprets A's pawn-status as being willing accomplice
- A is kidnapped/bound unwillingly to B, insert circular adventures + B's seduction + lots of denial/protest; A ends up in love with B
Looking over that list brings to mind another element of efic that I don't see a great deal in pfic: transparency.
What else would I call it, in one word? I'm not sure. It's the reactions, the obvious reactions, the tells, which naturally the opposing character misses completely. The tone of voice, the twitch, the flinch, the refusal to look someone in the eyes, the hitch in what's otherwise a coldly stated comment. It's the dozens of tiny ways, in describing a character's appearance, actions, voice, behavior, that an author alerts the reader to the fact that this character is saying one thing, and meaning (or wanting) something different. It's old, old, old hat in romance fiction, as I recall from my junior high days of reading everything I could bloody well get my grubby paws on, from abstract 60's drug-soaked novels to 80-pager template romances from Cartland. The more recent romance I've read -- mostly Kinsdale and Liu in the past year or so -- seems to have toned down on the noisiest "say one, mean another" tendencies, but it's certainly still in the mix. Far more than any other genre I can name, really -- I mean, if we have a bad guy threatening James Bond or Jason Bourne, and we're told the bad guy can't quite look Bond or Bourne in the eyes, and he flinches when the good guy speaks... uhm. No. Doesn't work. Giving me tells in political drama? No. Indicating the hitch in a gunslinger's voice? Unless he's just shot himself in the foot, I doubt it's done.
(Although the last western I read was Centennial, so I could be wrong... but I'm pretty sure at least that the Man With No Name don't stinkin' flinch.)
Hrm. A lot of the A/B conflicts in the efics seems to revolve around the "your mouth says no, but your body says yes," like some kind of wish-fulfillment, fantasy-driven version of the "he made me do it" protest against seduction. To have that, though, you must have an Alpha (male, or female, really), who's going to push the Other for one reason or another, until the Other gives way, gives in, changes the verbalized-no to a helplessly-verbalized-yes to match with the body's all-along-been yes.
The soap opera connection to efic is close in one way, and not in another: soap operas are essentially get-together-fall-apart storylines, but a long-lasting soap opera has eighty of these going on at once. They're together! They're apart! They're together! They're apart! Over and over... in efic, this together/apart is often based on romantic attraction; in epic, it might have tones of romance but the focus is on the external -- be that political, or social, or saving-the-world, or revenge on a business partner who kifed all the savings and took off to Tahiti. External focus, the cry is: we're ahead, we're behind, we're ahead, we're behind, oh noes!
But the transparency is a crucial part in efic/ffic. With the point being to achieve emotional explicitness, then the character's feelings must be laid out, so the reader doesn't have to work that hard on comprehending and can instead put energy into caring. The reader's willingness to care for the character(s) is heightened, played on, manipulated, and reinforced by the words upon words describing and outlining and underlining the emotional/internal conflict.
Did I mention there's a whole lotta introspection in efic? Hell, yeah. Not that far off from the soap operas I recall watching as a child, home sick from school and propped up on the sofa with flat ginger ale, saltine crackers, and the television on. (It was soap operas, or Donahue, and when you're 10, Donahue just baffles you.) But I recall being wierded out by the constant voice-overs: like some kind of onscreen novelization technique. A character says (and fully looks like she means it): "I'm going to take you down, you meanie!" and then she pauses, and we get voiceover of, "if only you loved me like you once had, I'd do anything for that again..."
(Insert picture of me staring at the screen, looking confused -- could the other person hear her thoughts, too?)
In the reams o' pfic I've read, this transparency is toned down, or even non-existent. If a character is saying no, and the author chooses to focus on this no, then you don't get many contradictions. You certainly don't get scene after scene after scene reminding you again and again in eighteen ways that this character holds any inconsistency and/or uncertainty. If the character reveals later that s/he was conflicted, either the author's warned us via extremely subtle clues -- minute things that could be intuited, in hindsight, to see the conflict -- or we're startled and shocked, right there with the POV character finding out about the internal conflict.
if your focus is on the plot, the external conflict, then this internal conflict is tangential -- but not the focus. If your focus is on the people in the story, and the plot is secondary (if not outright gratuitous), then this internal conflict is the story. Then, I think, you're writing in an efic style, a ffic style, a borderline romance-novel style, maybe.
There seems to be a lot of "we're bound together by fate" plotlines in efic, too. Yes, I read predominantly urban/contemporary fantasy, but when I compare the "we're fated" plot devices in pfic against the number in efic/ffic, it seems the latter maxes out the quota pretty much regularly. I'm trying to remember the last time I read a "we're fated" plot device in a pfic. Hrm. I know Sharon Shinn used it in the one archangel book I read -- which, yes, also felt like I was reading ffic, come to think of it.
The other writers I've read in the past year -- won't name them, though -- who wrote with an efic/ffic style... were also ones of whom I discovered, after reading, were former fanfic authors. Hmmm. These are published authors, but they're using the efic/ffic style, and I have to say: it's not something that you really recognize, not at first. In the pfic world, that efic style creeps up on you -- you're not expecting it, and if it's done well, it sort of rides along just under the radar. Only after finishing the books did I feel like... hard to explain, it was a sensation, a taste in my mouth, like I'd perhaps stumbled onto an excellent author -- but a fanfic author nonetheless.
It's a wallowing. That's part of the transparency, and the explicitness.
The author, really, wallows in the character -- not the plot, not the (external) conflict, and not even secondary/tertiary characters -- but in the main characters, the ones who get the focus, the OTP. Err, I use the 'one true pairing' concept broadly; this can extend to friends, siblings, family -- I use it here in the sense that the author has slapped a "will get along and care for each other above everyone else" label on two characters, be this purely emotional-platonic or all the way up to obsessive/possessive love/sex/fate etc. So the main foci, the members of the OTP, get pages and pages and pages -- either reviewing their own feelings, reliving their own pains... or the author uses them to detail endlessly the aches and pains and angst of the character who is a focus.
That's another way transparency shows up, used to boost the OTP. The POV character has conversation with OTP character; during this conversation, the OTP-protag flinches, looks away, crosses his arms, says no but his body leans forward and his eyes are bright with -- gasp, could it be? -- tears, blah blah blah. Yeah, the reader's saying, it's so obvious! All the signs, right there! He's totally into A or B or whomever is the Other in the OTP... And our POV character? Well, if he's not in the OTP, he sees it all, knows exactly what it means (and may even call the OTP-half on it). If the POV character is any part of the OTP...
He won't see a damn thing.
That's the author wallowing, I think. The author's trying to play both games: have the POV character notice things but not notice -- or notice and willfully (or stupidly) misinterpret -- while dumping so many frickin' ANVILS on the reader's head about the OTP-protag's true feelings. So not only do we get to experience the OTP-protag's pain in his/her own POV scenes; we also get to experience a strange echo of pain/anxiety on behalf of the OTP-protag, thanks to the POV character missing all of it. Oh, the anguish, the borderline too-stupid-to-live!
Hrm, though, isn't that a huge part of comedy? The character who does something stupid, that's going to put him/her in a situation to be humiliated, and we laugh because otherwise we'd be too uncomfortable, it'd hit too close to home. We have to exorcise the embarrassment through laughter. Except that these aren't comedies. The pain and humiliation is all there, and it's oh-so-serious, and the authors damn well wallow.
All the pain, humiliation, agony, anxiety, fear, joy, hope, uncertainty, exhilaration, ecstasy, laid bare. These things, these internal reactions to external stresses, are transformed into further obstacles -- internal obstacles -- creating a yes/no conflict on top of (or in place of, even) the overall plotline's drive towards resolution.
It does seem as though ffic/efic style(s) are hugely reliant on the romance genre, but I think there's one big difference: the outcome is (more likely to be) in question. That is, in the romance I've read, pretty much without exception -- *thinking* -- yeah, pretty much entirely without exception, stories in which you meet A, then B, and you know... it's A and B. Okay, so C and D might show up, but the authorial slant is clearly in B's favor. Maybe A dallies with C and D, maybe A is kidnapped and forced against his/her will to enjoy the company of C or D (or both!), maybe C or D genuinely comes across as worthwhile guy/gal and possibly even a better quality 'person' than B... but no, the author is determined that A and B will end up together, and the focus in A's mind remains B, just as the focus in B's mind remains A, constantly.
There are plenty of ffic where the OTP is unquestionable (hell, it'll even say so in the warnings what the pairing is), but there are others, like efic, where it's entirely possible that B, C, or D just might win the day. I'd say -- based on my own writing experience -- that nearly every author does walk into a story with at least a pretty good clue as to where A will end up (if with anyone), although sometimes this changes over the course of draft-to-final. But going for the subtle, playing B, C, and D as equally possible, giving them all good reasons to be attractive... I can't really say I saw any of that in the romance I've read. In those, it's like, well, reading a low-grade mystery novel. You know exactly whodunit, pretty much; any interest you can salvage will come from watching the detective figure it out.
Then again, the more competition there is, the more opportunities for confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, momentary exhilaration followed by the sudden crash of the author's boot slamming down on the plotline.
Let's see.
Explicit. Transparent. Detailed.
Emphasis on internal/emotional conflict, which drives external conflict, and in turn influences internal turmoil. What else?
Oh. Yeah. Lest we forget: the author, in love with the characters.
Now, I'm not saying that adoring your characters is necessarily a bad thing. Most pro-authors on my flist are quite firm that they find even their bad guys sympathetic, or at least intriguing, if not necessarily the kind of person you'd want to invite over for tea. That's not really what I mean, though. I think it's more related to the authorial assumption -- by ffic authors, that is -- that these characters are adored. That's a far cry from hoping the reader likes even one of your characters. It's more of a simple, unspoken, never-questioned assumption that -- of course -- you, the reader, and we, the authors, all are in agreement that this character drives everything, that scenes with this character sparkle more, that this character is just... consuming.
I think that, in fact, might be the biggest danger of learning-to-write via the world of ffic: because it's the simplest, most basic assumption you could possibly make as an author. Every single ofic I've read that 'feels' like ffic has this in common: the absolute focus on a character, almost to the detriment of the rest of the story. I'm not saying Mary Sue -- though that sort will warp a story, too -- but that even characters with foibles and flaws and issues can still take a story and warp every scene they're in.
How to tell? I don't know if I can articulate. Hrm. For starters, scenes without that character feel rushed; scenes with that character feel like we're getting either way too much information or way too many details. That one character gets more word-time for foibles, for quirks; something that for another character is mentioned once and dropped, gets mentioned multiple times for the focus-character (even if the focus-character isn't the story's actual official protagonist). There's a loving fascination with the character, and if you agree with the author, if you've fallen into the honey-trap, then you want all the -- let's call it what it is -- fan service. Because that's what it is. It's giving you what you want, the details, the extra time, the camera's eye staying just a few minutes longer on this character. But if you're not happy in the honey-trap? Boy, do you skim those scenes; you notice every single mention -- yet again -- of the character being vegan, or begin a crack shot, or feeling so blissfully happy with his new girl and/or stuck in the depths of unrequited passion, whatever.
A fan's response: Ohhhh... *deep sigh* He's so in love, and no one else knows! How much he suffers!
A regular reader's response: Someone make the character shut up, or I'll do it myself.
But because it's such a fundamental assumption one makes, in ffic (that you're reading because you also love the characters as much as the author), I think this transfers over into ofic without being questioned. It's become something positively ingrained in the author's style, and unless there's a way to point it out, substantively, it gets missed... and then it either delights readers who have joined the honey-trap, or it annoys those who haven't. Meanwhile, the author's boggled as to why, or why not. The author's blind to this one, single, bottom-line assumption, and that in turns creates a massive blindspot in the entire story.
For a ffic author, it's inconceivable that anyone would read a story if lukewarm about the pairing and/or story and/or world and/or characters and/or whatever. For the ffic writer, it is taken for granted that you (a) know the story/world/etc, (b) you want to be here. Otherwise, you'd shut down this window and carry onto the next result in your fanfiction.net search window, right? If I take it for granted that you're reading because you want to read -- not just a story but this story -- then I don't need to spend my time convincing you of this character's charisma. I can get on with wallowing in the character, digging deep into explicit internal conflicts, flaying the character open for all of us to enjoy the wallow.
Re charisma: I find it amusing that every now and then I see ffic critiques where readers complain the author treated them like idiots. That is, the author attempted to explain why the character is so charismatic, enough to carry the story. For ffic readers, this is such a big huge DUH that it's a waste of pixels, and I've seen some get truly irked, indignant even, at an author 'wasting time' telling them or showing them all over again why Angel is so awesome, or why Lex is so complex and so on. They're reading ffic because they already agree, and they don't want their story-time wasted on something that's old hat. "I liked the story but the beginning was really slow, because the author wrote like we didn't know these guys" and "it's not an AU, you don't have to be all mysterious and crap when you're introducing the characters, it's not like we don't know who they are."
Hrmph. The only times I've seen fan-readers willing to permit an author the grace of introducing/characterizing an ofic-introduction style is when two conditions are met: first, the reader is open to considering a new pairing (or has no preferences or has not yet developed any preferences), and when the pairing itself is not a major setup in the fandom (thus the author knows convincing is in order). I mean, if you plan to pair Buffy and Angel, well, that's not too hard; there's a massive number of folks behind that setup. You want to pair Buffy and Willow? That's going to take work, just as much as it would to convince fan-readers that Harry Potter grows up to be a serial murderer or that all along the Joker's been the good guy.
(Then again, that kind of twist -- provided the author works at it -- can also be a pretty powerful upside-down to pull on readers. Wicked is probably the top example I can think of, right off the bat.)
Given there are published authors using this ffic/efic style, it's safe to say -- I think -- that there are probably agents & editors out there (if you hit the right combination) who are easily able to fall into the fan-reader mindset. It's a pretty big assumption: you are as much in luuuurve with this character as its creator, and thus, the fan service doesn't grate on you, it pleases you and thrills you and makes you want more. Those gatekeepers who don't or won't or can't adapt this mindset -- who are willing or able to refrain from 'falling' for the author's focus-character(s) -- aren't going to let the author's work pass. But there are gatekeepers willing and able, and so we have published books out on the shelves which gleefully embrace this ffic/efic assumption.
I suspect this is where my own writing suffers, thanks to the ffic exposure -- where I weaken, as an author, is where I take a jump to the left and find myself knee-deep in the ffic/efic quagmire: where I begin taking it for granted that of course, now, you are reading not because you want to know what happens, not because you like the world, not because you're responding to the work I've done to convince you to keep reading -- but that you're reading because you're actively invested.
Which isn't a bad thing (what author wants non-invested readers, anyway?) but that the ffic-style response is not to take your active investment and keep building on it... but to slide into the lazy, wallowing discourse of fan service. If I forget that scenes must exist for the purpose of plot movement, if I forget that information exchanged in scenes must be new or a reinterpretation of existing info, if I forget that your reason for reading might not be solely because you're enamoured of the focus-character(s), then taking your investment for granted will only cause a sudden and abrupt loss of investment: because it's too much of one thing, and a slacking on all the other things that might've kept you going. It's turning off the persuasion of the pfic, and falling into the "we're all here for X" group-happiness of the ffic.
I'm not sure I ever would've realized this had I not sat down and tried to figure out what had me somewhat annoyed, in the efic & pfic I've purchased. If I spend money on something, I have expectations that I don't apply to the world of ffic and efic freebies. The explicit elements, the transparency, the overt romance, the thin plotlines, the somewhat simplistic characterizations -- I can put up with that in ffic, because it's not like I had to pay for it, and hell, I already like those characters & that world. But in pfic, it's hard to forget I'm holding a printed novel, so when it starts feeling like the author went from ofic to... some bizarre kind of ffic-without-being-ffic, I feel... well, cheated, for one thing. Maybe like I got a switch-and-bait, too, in some ways, when the tone changes.
And maybe I feel just a bit uncomfortable, too -- the way I do when reading someone's attempt at writing a character's explicit, transparent, flayed-out emotional internal turmoil -- and it's from a fandom I don't like, or it's for a character I'd never believe could behave like that in canon. I feel embarrassed on behalf of the author, that s/he can't seem to realize just how moronic this adulation looks to an outside observer. I find myself squirming, the way I would if someone had a massive crush and insisted on spending the entire lunch hour just raving about how wonderful the guy is, while I know he falls asleep at his desk and screwed up the last project and maybe he's okay in general but believe me, baby, he ain't all that and the goddamn cake. Rather than laugh and burst the bubble, it's easier to just step away, change the subject -- or put the book down and find no interest in picking it back up.
Damn, that was long.
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Date: 12 Apr 2007 10:30 am (UTC)I do hate when an author insults my intelligence. No, they don't have to spell out, in excruciating detail,every clue to the resolution of the plot, like some bad dime store detective novel. No, I don't need a room described to me, down to the doily on the desk, what someone's bedroom looks like. I especially don't need certain points of the plot repeated, over and over again, as if I might forget it before the resolution of the book. I would much rather see, 'Sam stretched out on the hotel bed and tossed his keys aside, onto a side table.' Than, 'In a hotel bedroom, with shaker furniture, a throw rug, a ratty desk, and an old phone, Sam stretched out on the single bed, covered in a cheap blanket, with a fluffy pillow, and tossed his keys, with his car alarm, six keys in total, from a porsche, onto a small, scratched, brown, two drawer desk.' Give me some credit for imagination.^_^
You have made me wonder if my original story, Catalyst, reads like fanfiction. I'll have to go back and re-read it. ^_^
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Date: 12 Apr 2007 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Apr 2007 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Apr 2007 04:59 am (UTC)