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This is a bit of rambling about fic reading and writing and about inspiration. I've poked at it, trying to make it flow coherently. Instead, it keeps sprouting new distractions that I want to chase down, too. I guess I've never learned disciplined, non-narrative writing. (I have trouble with disciplined, non-narrative reading, too.)
Every once in a while, I wander around online, looking for fics to read, and find stories that could push all my buttons but utterly don't. That is, the blurb sounds like it could go somewhere I'd enjoy or the elements in the story's skeleton sound fascinating and full of possibilities. Then I look at the actual fic and discover that focus is on aspects of the story that annoy me or that the plot doesn't hang together or that the writing isn't good enough to carry things off. When I close the window or click the back button on those stories, I generally feel a sense of loss for the story that I wanted that wasn't there.
This is not to say that those stories are always actually bad. Sometimes they are, but often they aren't. The things that interest those authors aren't the same things that interest me. I am attracted to that character dynamic off in the corner, to that theme that isn't explored, to the underlying construction of the AU and so on. I'm most likely to run into this disconnect with stories that cater to kinks (sexual or narrative) that aren't mine or with stories that are very short.
Sometimes, I'll start turning the story that I wanted to read over in my head, thinking about how one could get there within the parameters of canon (which includes a reasonable divergent AU) and characterization. I don't, as a rule, go any further. I don't need more in progress fics, after all. I'm also not sure how I feel about taking inspiration from someone else's fic as a starting point. Well, that's not quite true. I feel icky about the idea of taking a badly written story that pushes my buttons and rewriting it and more okay about taking a good (or even mediocre) story that didn't focus on what interested me, starting with some of the same premises (and chucking others out the window) and going in quite different directions. I think the latter feels more like normal fanfic inspiration than the former does.
There are different ways of taking inspiration from another story. There's remixing (which I still regret that I'm unlikely ever to be able to do. I don't have enough completed stories in any fandom and don't really expect that I ever will. I flit too much). That focuses hard on a single story, on reimagining it while keeping some fundamental (and variable) pieces the same or at least recognizable. When I read remixes, I tend to find the ones that are a lot different more interesting than the ones that don't change many things. Of course, for something to be a remix, the author of the original story has to have consented to the process. I occasionally feel an urge to remix, but it's generally not a strong one, definitely not strong enough to prompt me to ask a stranger if she'd be okay with it.
And I certainly wouldn't ask if I don't want to remix but rather want to 'fix' the story. That impulse is understandable but kind of ugly. It's the impulse that makes it hard for me to watch my daughter struggle to form letters or to draw people Sometimes, she screams in rage when the pen won't go where she wants it to. Sometimes, she's pleased by what she produces. I know that I could do better, but that's not the point. Admittedly, when I'm talking about reading something, I'm not so interested in the author's process or growth. I'm interested in the story being enjoyable-- more enjoyable-- for me to read. (This whole thing is why I regret that I'm a crappy beta reader. I can rewrite things quite well, but I can't offer advice, proof read or explain why changes are necessary with any skill at all. I can't help another person create a better story. I wish I had that ability, but I don't.)
There're also stories that start from common fandom tropes. These are the stories that start from similar givens-- Characters M and N should be a romantic pair. Character A doesn't die or gets resurrected. If character Z were a vampire, the canonical story would change. People can start from the same base statement and go in wildly different directions. Looking at a story that introduces a base assumption that one hasn't considered before can inspire a writer with plot bunnies, but those tend not to have much to do with the other story. The resulting stories are about the same idea and how it interacts with the canon, but they're not about each other. They may be in dialogue with each other, but that's not the same thing.
I'm not sure it's possible to write in a fandom in which one's read fic without being somehow in dialogue with the other fics. I'm simply not quite sure of the lines between dialogue, remixing and-- for want of a better term-- ghost writing.
Is this an experience other fic readers and writers commonly have? If you do, what do you do about it? I'm curious.
This almost always happens to me when I'm reading fandoms that I don't know particularly well or that I know well but had never thought about writing for. I suspect that, in fandoms I've already written or thought about writing, I'm less likely to stumble on something that surprises me and makes me look at the canon or the characters from a new angle. I don't tend to consider writing for any fandom until and unless a story bites me or until I match on it in a fic exchange like Yuletide. (That's why I can offer so many different fandoms when I sign up for Yuletide. If I worry at a fandom enough, I'll find *something* hanging loose that will let me write. Of course, it's also why, when I write in a new fandom, I often end up writing something that's not in line with what the fandom generally produces.)
Every once in a while, I wander around online, looking for fics to read, and find stories that could push all my buttons but utterly don't. That is, the blurb sounds like it could go somewhere I'd enjoy or the elements in the story's skeleton sound fascinating and full of possibilities. Then I look at the actual fic and discover that focus is on aspects of the story that annoy me or that the plot doesn't hang together or that the writing isn't good enough to carry things off. When I close the window or click the back button on those stories, I generally feel a sense of loss for the story that I wanted that wasn't there.
This is not to say that those stories are always actually bad. Sometimes they are, but often they aren't. The things that interest those authors aren't the same things that interest me. I am attracted to that character dynamic off in the corner, to that theme that isn't explored, to the underlying construction of the AU and so on. I'm most likely to run into this disconnect with stories that cater to kinks (sexual or narrative) that aren't mine or with stories that are very short.
Sometimes, I'll start turning the story that I wanted to read over in my head, thinking about how one could get there within the parameters of canon (which includes a reasonable divergent AU) and characterization. I don't, as a rule, go any further. I don't need more in progress fics, after all. I'm also not sure how I feel about taking inspiration from someone else's fic as a starting point. Well, that's not quite true. I feel icky about the idea of taking a badly written story that pushes my buttons and rewriting it and more okay about taking a good (or even mediocre) story that didn't focus on what interested me, starting with some of the same premises (and chucking others out the window) and going in quite different directions. I think the latter feels more like normal fanfic inspiration than the former does.
There are different ways of taking inspiration from another story. There's remixing (which I still regret that I'm unlikely ever to be able to do. I don't have enough completed stories in any fandom and don't really expect that I ever will. I flit too much). That focuses hard on a single story, on reimagining it while keeping some fundamental (and variable) pieces the same or at least recognizable. When I read remixes, I tend to find the ones that are a lot different more interesting than the ones that don't change many things. Of course, for something to be a remix, the author of the original story has to have consented to the process. I occasionally feel an urge to remix, but it's generally not a strong one, definitely not strong enough to prompt me to ask a stranger if she'd be okay with it.
And I certainly wouldn't ask if I don't want to remix but rather want to 'fix' the story. That impulse is understandable but kind of ugly. It's the impulse that makes it hard for me to watch my daughter struggle to form letters or to draw people Sometimes, she screams in rage when the pen won't go where she wants it to. Sometimes, she's pleased by what she produces. I know that I could do better, but that's not the point. Admittedly, when I'm talking about reading something, I'm not so interested in the author's process or growth. I'm interested in the story being enjoyable-- more enjoyable-- for me to read. (This whole thing is why I regret that I'm a crappy beta reader. I can rewrite things quite well, but I can't offer advice, proof read or explain why changes are necessary with any skill at all. I can't help another person create a better story. I wish I had that ability, but I don't.)
There're also stories that start from common fandom tropes. These are the stories that start from similar givens-- Characters M and N should be a romantic pair. Character A doesn't die or gets resurrected. If character Z were a vampire, the canonical story would change. People can start from the same base statement and go in wildly different directions. Looking at a story that introduces a base assumption that one hasn't considered before can inspire a writer with plot bunnies, but those tend not to have much to do with the other story. The resulting stories are about the same idea and how it interacts with the canon, but they're not about each other. They may be in dialogue with each other, but that's not the same thing.
I'm not sure it's possible to write in a fandom in which one's read fic without being somehow in dialogue with the other fics. I'm simply not quite sure of the lines between dialogue, remixing and-- for want of a better term-- ghost writing.
Is this an experience other fic readers and writers commonly have? If you do, what do you do about it? I'm curious.
This almost always happens to me when I'm reading fandoms that I don't know particularly well or that I know well but had never thought about writing for. I suspect that, in fandoms I've already written or thought about writing, I'm less likely to stumble on something that surprises me and makes me look at the canon or the characters from a new angle. I don't tend to consider writing for any fandom until and unless a story bites me or until I match on it in a fic exchange like Yuletide. (That's why I can offer so many different fandoms when I sign up for Yuletide. If I worry at a fandom enough, I'll find *something* hanging loose that will let me write. Of course, it's also why, when I write in a new fandom, I often end up writing something that's not in line with what the fandom generally produces.)
no subject
I like writing in dialogue with other texts, and
I think it's also interesting when a writer - I don't want to say "rejects" dialogue, but perhaps, "focuses on an unexpected part of the conversation". When someone, perhaps takes fanon and does something totally unexpected with it, like
When it comes to the common fandom tropes, I think it's not just the trope but also the genre - Character X is a vampire will become something different in the hands of the same writer, let alone different writers, if it's written as comedy, tragedy, adventure and so on. Which may also be a function of dialogue - how does this trope interact with genre?
no subject
I, too, like the unexpected directions for fanfic. They don't all work, but it's a lot of fun thinking about the pieces of canon in different ways. I find myself with ideas of the characters that sort of... how to put it? The different versions aren't sharply distinct. It's sort of like multiple images of the same thing but all smeared together so that it's hard to know where one bit ends and another begins. There are bits of character interpretation that can't be true at the same time but that don't necessarily contradict canon (or that contradict canon but work better than canon or didn't contradict canon when they were created but got jossed or...).
I think the interaction of trope with genre is one reason that it remains possible to write things that are new.