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Nov. 1st, 2004 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaSomeone on a writing list just asked what we win if we complete NaNoWriMo.
You win . . . (ta daa) another stack of pages that constitutes an unsold manuscript that you now have to decide whether to revise, send out, or dance naked on top of. Third option is usually easiest, but may draw unwanted crowds, especially if you have pets. ;)
I *think* they just list those who type out 50K words on a particular "winnners" page. This is sufficient validation for some writers who are in it for the camaraderie--and I'm not TRYING to upset ppl by saying so, because I don't even have to try; it comes naturally--and these are usually the kids who are writing a fantasy/SF epic and have main characters who are Mary Sue/Gary Stus of their own idealized selves, etc., and who have taken so much time in worldbuilding and so little time in honing their craft. But they have FUN with it, which is a really good thing and not to be discounted.
Some writers also spend a lot of time on fanfic, which is fine for them. But not for me. When I was a school child, a really great teacher gave me the only "B-" I ever got on a language arts assignment. When I went up to protest, she pointed out that I had just taken the characters from a novel I'd read (and it was so obscure that I've now forgotten it) and changed the ending of the novel (which I didn't like and which didn't make sense--I used to do this, close a book and say, "No, that's not what REALLY happened. Here's the way it went") and gone on from there to tell a different incident with a dumb "twist" ending. She said she had marked me down on that because she'd expected better from me (that was in the pre-self-esteem days, when they said, "I expect more from you because you have more potential"). She said those characters had already TOLD their important story.
Yeah, that actually made sense all of a sudden to a fourth-grader. Wow.
She told me that I would have to bring out my OWN characters, that the author had done what he or she could with those characters (which is why you love them) and now it was time for a different crew to illuminate that facet of the human condition. (I can't recall how she actually phrased this so that I could grok it. I never heard anyone say, "the eternal human condition," until I was in high school. I glommed on to it instantly, but it was that late.) Yet this is what she essentially MEANT, and that's how it is stored in memory. For a teacher, sometimes "my voice will go with you," and other times, "something of what I said stuck and made sense, though you remember it in different words.")
It took me a while to figure this out, since it SEEMED at first easier to begin with characters someone else had created/brought out, but soon it became obvious that it was not easier, because they didn't come out of ME and I never could make them real again. But I could ask for characters "like" them to come out of ME, and that worked. Perhaps this means I am a schizzie, but I don't want to take pills for it (as fondly as Mama has always wished that I could be "medicated down to be like other people" and want to be a cheerleader and a ChurchLady or a Junior Leaguer, eh).
But I think often these fanfic and/or "joined for the hell of it because the teachers said I write well" writers spin in circles (and I just said that can be fun--after all, the more of them who waste their efforts, the fewer who are real competition for me! Bwaa-ha-ha!) because they don't understand the point of a story (or they understand it to be different from what I believe it to be), which is that you chronicle the most important event-chain in the main character's life along with the character arc of change from child to adult, immature selfishness to mature balance, evil to good (or some shade-of-degree thereof), and so forth. That makes the sequel always lack something, because the character's next arc won't be so high. If you do a sequel with a different POV character who is ready to change, though, you can succeed with a good book. I feel that many sequels are lacking because the authors try to fulfill the readers' demands for "more of this same stuff," but that's all gone away because there was a character change. Note that in series books, the "first book" may be made up of a trilogy or duality, because there were two phases to the character's arc as well as to the story arc. I am thinking somewhat of books like the Narnia books, where Lucy and Edmund change and then we follow Eustace Clarence Scrubb (who was almost mean enough to deserve the name) for a couple of books . . . you get the drift. We have the similar cast, but it's another set of characters who arc in the significant ways. Sometimes a story is retold from a different viewpoint.
Arguments can be made for different points of view. I'm simply presenting mine for those with whom it may resonate.
You can like fanfic if you want, of course. But I have seen it, over the past few years, nearly destroy the potential of two of the finest natural writers (meaning prose style, smoothness, the turn of a friendly phrase, eloquence, etc.) that I've ever met on the 'net. I don't know whether they'll ever go back to their own work. The world will be a little less rich than it would've been had they done so.
I *think* they just list those who type out 50K words on a particular "winnners" page. This is sufficient validation for some writers who are in it for the camaraderie--and I'm not TRYING to upset ppl by saying so, because I don't even have to try; it comes naturally--and these are usually the kids who are writing a fantasy/SF epic and have main characters who are Mary Sue/Gary Stus of their own idealized selves, etc., and who have taken so much time in worldbuilding and so little time in honing their craft. But they have FUN with it, which is a really good thing and not to be discounted.
Some writers also spend a lot of time on fanfic, which is fine for them. But not for me. When I was a school child, a really great teacher gave me the only "B-" I ever got on a language arts assignment. When I went up to protest, she pointed out that I had just taken the characters from a novel I'd read (and it was so obscure that I've now forgotten it) and changed the ending of the novel (which I didn't like and which didn't make sense--I used to do this, close a book and say, "No, that's not what REALLY happened. Here's the way it went") and gone on from there to tell a different incident with a dumb "twist" ending. She said she had marked me down on that because she'd expected better from me (that was in the pre-self-esteem days, when they said, "I expect more from you because you have more potential"). She said those characters had already TOLD their important story.
Yeah, that actually made sense all of a sudden to a fourth-grader. Wow.
She told me that I would have to bring out my OWN characters, that the author had done what he or she could with those characters (which is why you love them) and now it was time for a different crew to illuminate that facet of the human condition. (I can't recall how she actually phrased this so that I could grok it. I never heard anyone say, "the eternal human condition," until I was in high school. I glommed on to it instantly, but it was that late.) Yet this is what she essentially MEANT, and that's how it is stored in memory. For a teacher, sometimes "my voice will go with you," and other times, "something of what I said stuck and made sense, though you remember it in different words.")
It took me a while to figure this out, since it SEEMED at first easier to begin with characters someone else had created/brought out, but soon it became obvious that it was not easier, because they didn't come out of ME and I never could make them real again. But I could ask for characters "like" them to come out of ME, and that worked. Perhaps this means I am a schizzie, but I don't want to take pills for it (as fondly as Mama has always wished that I could be "medicated down to be like other people" and want to be a cheerleader and a ChurchLady or a Junior Leaguer, eh).
But I think often these fanfic and/or "joined for the hell of it because the teachers said I write well" writers spin in circles (and I just said that can be fun--after all, the more of them who waste their efforts, the fewer who are real competition for me! Bwaa-ha-ha!) because they don't understand the point of a story (or they understand it to be different from what I believe it to be), which is that you chronicle the most important event-chain in the main character's life along with the character arc of change from child to adult, immature selfishness to mature balance, evil to good (or some shade-of-degree thereof), and so forth. That makes the sequel always lack something, because the character's next arc won't be so high. If you do a sequel with a different POV character who is ready to change, though, you can succeed with a good book. I feel that many sequels are lacking because the authors try to fulfill the readers' demands for "more of this same stuff," but that's all gone away because there was a character change. Note that in series books, the "first book" may be made up of a trilogy or duality, because there were two phases to the character's arc as well as to the story arc. I am thinking somewhat of books like the Narnia books, where Lucy and Edmund change and then we follow Eustace Clarence Scrubb (who was almost mean enough to deserve the name) for a couple of books . . . you get the drift. We have the similar cast, but it's another set of characters who arc in the significant ways. Sometimes a story is retold from a different viewpoint.
Arguments can be made for different points of view. I'm simply presenting mine for those with whom it may resonate.
You can like fanfic if you want, of course. But I have seen it, over the past few years, nearly destroy the potential of two of the finest natural writers (meaning prose style, smoothness, the turn of a friendly phrase, eloquence, etc.) that I've ever met on the 'net. I don't know whether they'll ever go back to their own work. The world will be a little less rich than it would've been had they done so.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-01 09:54 pm (UTC)I've felt like fanfic is useful to a point... it's a lot easier to get responses to fanfic than it is original work. I feel like fanfic played a role in my improvement as a writer. But at a certain point, I might get ideas, but never wanted to work with them, because it didn't profit me as a writer. I've known a lot of talented writers who never got to that point, and just kept writing fanfiction and lost any interest in their original work. They also tend to get ticked off when anyone criticizes their work. In my view, they've pretty much stunted their growth as a writer.
I have respect for anyone who can complete 50,000, but I can't imagine not really having the option of doing anything with it, afterwards.
And hey, my main character is an Anti-Sue, even WITH having one of the biggest deductions on there. So I feel good about myself for a few minutes. =p