The time has come for me to stop avoiding the task of rewriting my first fanfic. Granted I've only written 3 so far and first stories are never meant to be good, but I got to the point where I couldn't bear to have it against my name (or pseudonym). So I removed it from fanfic.net (shameless plug, sorry) and decided that I wouldn't repost it until I was happy with it. This has turned out to be an epic feat of procrastination - I was a student just last year - and it seems I haven't lost any of my skill in its practice. I've been through the story and marked the bits that need work which is the easy part. It ranges from odd words here and there to huge great swathes of prose and plot points that are disastrous. I wrote it with a vague idea of where I wanted the plot to go and from there wrote chapters at a time. This led to some 'interesting' situations with massive errors that I made in one chapter and having to rectify them desperately in the next chapter. It wasn't pleasant and meant that I have always researched EVERYTHING that I use in a story since. Thankfully the person who had noticed a massive mistake I'd made in the background to the story was kind enough to PM me about it rather than writing it on the reviews page, for once my embarrassment was avoided in public.
My idea is to work round these points and work some things into the story in a slightly different way. There are also some character points that need work. It's an interesting aspect of fanfic writing - do you write it all beforehand and post periodically or do you wait to see people's reactions and ideas in order to continue the story? For me, I wasn't sure people were even going to read my story and to be honest I really didn't know where it was really headed. I knew what I wanted to achieve with it but getting there was a whole other ball game.
I was watching the first show of Sword and Laser on the Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube this afternoon (really fun and light-hearted show about sci-fi and fantasy books) and the author Scott Siegler they were interviewing was discussing his new book. He'd originally released it as a chaptered podcast and written it week to week. He said he really enjoyed going back and working all of story into a novel as it allowed him to write in a load more foreshadowing and to play with the plot. I immediately thought of my rewrite and how it would let me tweak until I was really happy with it. If, I can move my ass into gear to DO it! The trouble is I'm not quite sure just yet how to tweak it. I'm still really happy with the length and the general feel of it (vague points I know but there has to be something positive right?) but the characterisation and background just isn't quite there and I think I'm waiting around for inspiration to strike. Which might not ever happen. Guh. But then I'm waiting to do this to get my juices flowing to write my next fic as the muse (as they say) is being particularly churlish and uncooperative at the moment. It's a vicious circle.
So I think I've said about as much as I can for this procrastination effort. I'm going to write now. Honest. Right now. This minute.
Oh look something shiny...
Frak.
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