argentum_ls (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
argentum_ls) wrote2016-01-04 10:08 am
argentum_ls) wrote2016-01-04 10:08 am
Fest Roundup
I signed up for two winter exchanges this year, and ended up writing three stories for them.
For Yuletide, I matched on The Tomorrow People (1973) and wrote:
This one took a long time to pull together. With a large tagset (I think there were 10 characters nominated overall) and no preferences on the requester's part to work with, finding a viable idea was a challenge. There were a few ideas I didn't want to use: my own prompts, for example. I had also requested this fandom and left prompts for various kinds of time-travel scenarios--which naturally meant that my thoughts kept going there. Amongst other issues, though, I've never successfully written a time-travel story, and I didn't want Yuletide to be my first foray into that trope. So, since I couldn't come up with anything, I started begging everyone else for prompts.
Early on, someone suggested a Five Times setup which sounded promising, until I tried to get it off the ground. The scenario was Four Times A Fad Was an Alien Conspiracy to Take Over the World and One Time It Was Just a Bad Idea. While the canon does provide several examples of evil fads, I had trouble finding four that worked for the sake of the story and, moreso, four that I could write about without simply summarizing the canon events.
While playing with the idea, tptigger suggested a story where the Rubik's Cube turned out to be an alien conspiracy. Of all the ideas she, and others, threw at me, that one pinged the loudest--perhaps because I'd spent a great deal of my summer this year playing with a Rubik's Cube and finally learning how to solve it (except the last step. I have to look up the last step every time.) But, I couldn't find a story in it. While our canon characters did spend a great deal of time on camera playing Chess (and I did, at one point, consider a story wherein Peter the Time Guardian and TIM play Chess), having them discuss Rubik's Cube strategies instead really isn't my idea of a compelling story.
After much deliberating, a lot of twisting the sides of the idea around, and a fair bit of playing games on my Atari (actually a ColecoVision that takes Atari cartridges, if you're curious), I hit on the idea of sending the TP after a red herring. Then came the research as I tried to recall what arcades were like in the 80s--and if there's anything that I think should be revived in modern society, it's arcades. Give me all the pinball machines!--and figure out which games our characters would know and why. The story came together pretty quickly after that, allowing me to poke fun at alien conspiracies, fads, and inter-TP conflicts of opinion about how they deal with their problems.
The title was merely a play on games and gaming, generated because "Ready Player One" is taken.
For Shortcuts, I was assigned toidontlikegravy who started her list of preferred characters with Richie, which immediately sealed the question of whom I was going to be writing about. For her, I wrote:
Most of my stories are difficult to write, for one reason or another. Even when I go into them with a solid idea of what I want to do, the actual writing is often slow and involves a great deal of Solitaire. I've likened the process to carving the story from a block of stone: a chip off there, a chunk off there, and a lot of praying that the whole hunk of rock doesn't cleave in half before the process is done and the story hidden inside is revealed. There are exceptions, most of which are less than 1000 words, and none of which were written for exchanges. On getting this assignment, I assumed that this match would go the same way. Knowing that starting early wouldn't speed up the writing, I turned to canon review. I'd already been doing a lot of Highlander rewatching, so I added Raven to my list to refresh myself on the relevant requested characters, then started trying to figure out what Richie might be up to in the modern world.
Somewhere along the way, I joked with htbthomas about how I should write a Forever crossover. My recip had included the idea in her list of requests, but it's not a fandom I've written in nor, really, did I have any interest in writing in. However, htbthomas is a Forever fan of almost the same league that brightknightie is for Forever Knight (Hi, gals!), so I've been beta reading all her stories, and she jumped on my suggestion with all the enabling in her power. I thought of a potential first line. I reviewed canon some more, both Raven and Forever. I tossed around ideas that would be fun to include in an HL/F crossover (such as Richie having to behead Henry, Henry accidentally fighting a Challenge, Lucas having to explain the whole Immortal thing to Henry because he's seen the movie), and I made the firm resolution to not participate in NaNoWriMo this year because I didn't have any stories that were long enough that I wanted to tell.
Then the clock ticked to 12:01 on November 1st, and I decided that there was no harm in just typing out that first sentence. A thousand words later, I went to bed. When I woke up, I threw another thousand words at the screen. By the time I went to bed on the night of November 8th, the entire first draft of 16,000 words was done. There is nothing precedented about that for me, especially in regards to Shortcuts stories, which I've always still been writing at deadline.
Rather than carving this story out of rock, it felt a lot more like making a balloon animal. Everything fell into place so quickly. Yeah, there were tweaks and changes. At the beginning of the story, I had no idea what the guy looking in the window was doing. I spent 9000 words working under the assumption that he was the one who blew up the building, only to find out otherwise when I got to the end. Nick Wolfe was supposed to be in the story, but every time I tried to introduce him, I couldn't make it work. Father Liam was not supposed to be in the story, mostly because I couldn't remember who he was, but then I reviewed the Raven episode "War and Peace" (which is now on my list of favorite HL episodes) and his role became mandatory. I had a really hard time setting up the beheading without the whole thing feeling completely contrived. And the ending was, as endings always are, difficult to come by. Then I sent the story off for beta reading and discovered that I had completely botched a number of Forever canon points, such as my giving Henry a cell phone and a driver's license.
Fortunately, it was easy to fix those errors. After doing that and fleshing out a few scenes--most notably the scene where Henry and Richie first talk in Henry's apartment--the story ended up at almost 20K. The easiest 20K of my writing life.
The title was originally "Something Called Forever." This is a title I've been saving from my first brush with HL fanfic, one which I really, really wanted to use for this story. However, every time I tried to talk about the story, I confused myself with the distinction between "Forever" my story and "Forever" the canon included in my story, which necessitated a change.
For the first time, I got my Shortcuts story turned in on time. Before time, even. So, when the call went out for a last minute pinch-hit, I grabbed it, because not writing a story after deadline just didn't feel right.
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mackiedockie, I wrote:
Stories that are essentially Q&A sessions are not my favorite ones to write because I have a hard time keeping both the participants active. They tend to also not be my favorite ones to read because other authors have the same problem. I've been toying with the idea behind this one for some time since, as well-noted by fans since the beginning of HL, there are a lot of consistency problems on the show with...a lot of things, really. Seriously, one second Duncan's folding his coat over his arm, and the next he's pulling a sword out of it. Taking on the subject of how the Buzz works (or, could work) meant finding a frame where the characters could have the Q&A and both be getting something out of it.
Once I found the pun that caps the story, the rest fell right into place, as it had to, given the deadline constraints.
The title is a standard poker term that's also meant as a play on how Joe is cheating.
For Yuletide, I matched on The Tomorrow People (1973) and wrote:
Gaming the System for Marien - 2385 words - Sometimes a fad is an alien conspiracy to take over the world and sometimes it's just a fad. Telling the difference is the problem.
This one took a long time to pull together. With a large tagset (I think there were 10 characters nominated overall) and no preferences on the requester's part to work with, finding a viable idea was a challenge. There were a few ideas I didn't want to use: my own prompts, for example. I had also requested this fandom and left prompts for various kinds of time-travel scenarios--which naturally meant that my thoughts kept going there. Amongst other issues, though, I've never successfully written a time-travel story, and I didn't want Yuletide to be my first foray into that trope. So, since I couldn't come up with anything, I started begging everyone else for prompts.
Early on, someone suggested a Five Times setup which sounded promising, until I tried to get it off the ground. The scenario was Four Times A Fad Was an Alien Conspiracy to Take Over the World and One Time It Was Just a Bad Idea. While the canon does provide several examples of evil fads, I had trouble finding four that worked for the sake of the story and, moreso, four that I could write about without simply summarizing the canon events.
While playing with the idea, tptigger suggested a story where the Rubik's Cube turned out to be an alien conspiracy. Of all the ideas she, and others, threw at me, that one pinged the loudest--perhaps because I'd spent a great deal of my summer this year playing with a Rubik's Cube and finally learning how to solve it (except the last step. I have to look up the last step every time.) But, I couldn't find a story in it. While our canon characters did spend a great deal of time on camera playing Chess (and I did, at one point, consider a story wherein Peter the Time Guardian and TIM play Chess), having them discuss Rubik's Cube strategies instead really isn't my idea of a compelling story.
After much deliberating, a lot of twisting the sides of the idea around, and a fair bit of playing games on my Atari (actually a ColecoVision that takes Atari cartridges, if you're curious), I hit on the idea of sending the TP after a red herring. Then came the research as I tried to recall what arcades were like in the 80s--and if there's anything that I think should be revived in modern society, it's arcades. Give me all the pinball machines!--and figure out which games our characters would know and why. The story came together pretty quickly after that, allowing me to poke fun at alien conspiracies, fads, and inter-TP conflicts of opinion about how they deal with their problems.
The title was merely a play on games and gaming, generated because "Ready Player One" is taken.
For Shortcuts, I was assigned to
idontlikegravy who started her list of preferred characters with Richie, which immediately sealed the question of whom I was going to be writing about. For her, I wrote:Something Called Living" - 19,535 words - Of all the morgues in all the world, Richie Ryan just had to wake up in Henry Morgan's.
Most of my stories are difficult to write, for one reason or another. Even when I go into them with a solid idea of what I want to do, the actual writing is often slow and involves a great deal of Solitaire. I've likened the process to carving the story from a block of stone: a chip off there, a chunk off there, and a lot of praying that the whole hunk of rock doesn't cleave in half before the process is done and the story hidden inside is revealed. There are exceptions, most of which are less than 1000 words, and none of which were written for exchanges. On getting this assignment, I assumed that this match would go the same way. Knowing that starting early wouldn't speed up the writing, I turned to canon review. I'd already been doing a lot of Highlander rewatching, so I added Raven to my list to refresh myself on the relevant requested characters, then started trying to figure out what Richie might be up to in the modern world.
Somewhere along the way, I joked with htbthomas about how I should write a Forever crossover. My recip had included the idea in her list of requests, but it's not a fandom I've written in nor, really, did I have any interest in writing in. However, htbthomas is a Forever fan of almost the same league that brightknightie is for Forever Knight (Hi, gals!), so I've been beta reading all her stories, and she jumped on my suggestion with all the enabling in her power. I thought of a potential first line. I reviewed canon some more, both Raven and Forever. I tossed around ideas that would be fun to include in an HL/F crossover (such as Richie having to behead Henry, Henry accidentally fighting a Challenge, Lucas having to explain the whole Immortal thing to Henry because he's seen the movie), and I made the firm resolution to not participate in NaNoWriMo this year because I didn't have any stories that were long enough that I wanted to tell.
Then the clock ticked to 12:01 on November 1st, and I decided that there was no harm in just typing out that first sentence. A thousand words later, I went to bed. When I woke up, I threw another thousand words at the screen. By the time I went to bed on the night of November 8th, the entire first draft of 16,000 words was done. There is nothing precedented about that for me, especially in regards to Shortcuts stories, which I've always still been writing at deadline.
Rather than carving this story out of rock, it felt a lot more like making a balloon animal. Everything fell into place so quickly. Yeah, there were tweaks and changes. At the beginning of the story, I had no idea what the guy looking in the window was doing. I spent 9000 words working under the assumption that he was the one who blew up the building, only to find out otherwise when I got to the end. Nick Wolfe was supposed to be in the story, but every time I tried to introduce him, I couldn't make it work. Father Liam was not supposed to be in the story, mostly because I couldn't remember who he was, but then I reviewed the Raven episode "War and Peace" (which is now on my list of favorite HL episodes) and his role became mandatory. I had a really hard time setting up the beheading without the whole thing feeling completely contrived. And the ending was, as endings always are, difficult to come by. Then I sent the story off for beta reading and discovered that I had completely botched a number of Forever canon points, such as my giving Henry a cell phone and a driver's license.
Fortunately, it was easy to fix those errors. After doing that and fleshing out a few scenes--most notably the scene where Henry and Richie first talk in Henry's apartment--the story ended up at almost 20K. The easiest 20K of my writing life.
The title was originally "Something Called Forever." This is a title I've been saving from my first brush with HL fanfic, one which I really, really wanted to use for this story. However, every time I tried to talk about the story, I confused myself with the distinction between "Forever" my story and "Forever" the canon included in my story, which necessitated a change.
For the first time, I got my Shortcuts story turned in on time. Before time, even. So, when the call went out for a last minute pinch-hit, I grabbed it, because not writing a story after deadline just didn't feel right.
For
mackiedockie, I wrote:Ace in the Hole - 3195 words - A stormy night stuck in the bar with Methos gives Joe the chance to find out something he’s wanted to know for a long time.
Stories that are essentially Q&A sessions are not my favorite ones to write because I have a hard time keeping both the participants active. They tend to also not be my favorite ones to read because other authors have the same problem. I've been toying with the idea behind this one for some time since, as well-noted by fans since the beginning of HL, there are a lot of consistency problems on the show with...a lot of things, really. Seriously, one second Duncan's folding his coat over his arm, and the next he's pulling a sword out of it. Taking on the subject of how the Buzz works (or, could work) meant finding a frame where the characters could have the Q&A and both be getting something out of it.
Once I found the pun that caps the story, the rest fell right into place, as it had to, given the deadline constraints.
The title is a standard poker term that's also meant as a play on how Joe is cheating.