Be Excellent To Each Other

Thinking of starting a creative writing thread. ("What, like this one?" - ed.) Anyone get any done round here? I recall that Curiosity does. I've got a lovely moleskin pad that I enjoy filling with vingettes, ideas and the occassional recipie and I'd quite like to spew stuff I write onto a thread, now and again, either for comment or just to get it down somewhere.

I've got a couple of short stories and a novel on the go, but I'm rubbish at finishing things. Having a thread may remind me to stop hanging round here so much and actually get some bleedin' writing done, too.

Deja-vu. Didn't we already ask you for a pdf of what you'd done so far?

I think I'm capable of writing, being awesome and all, but I haven't put pen to paper.

Actually that's a slight lie. A couple of years ago I had a couple of hours burst where I wrote 3 pages of Chapter 1, and then stopped, realising it would be like a Mike Gayle book and not being sure I could bring myself to write such a thing.

Erk, you probably did. PDF though? Aieee! *Hurls self through window*

Yeah, I'll post stuff I've done here. Not sure I can stomach them PDF's though, I hate Adobe. (Cue someone telling me about a handy non-bloatware alternative to Adobe. Ahem.)

I did METRIC FUCKTONS of creative writing when I was younger. Now I no longer have the time or inspiration, as the modern workaday world has crushed my gentle, creative spirit. *whimpers*

I find fanfiction of any kind a bit pathetic, not worthy of any form of publishing. Sorry

I did some Batman fan fiction a few years back.

My secret shame.

I don't understand it.

You like, say, Buffy the vampire slayer, but the show ends. For some reason you take it upon yourself to make up a load of new stories about the character which you, and possibly a couple of other people enjoy. But what's the point?

The major drawback is that any fanfic will never become canonial, rendering it ultimately pointless.

I have done two instances of Fan Fiction, both were weird. Amusingly, I chose things to fan-fic that I didn't like and really watch in the first place. Things I could play with in an insane Grant Morrison/Warren Ellis sort of way.

Notoriously I did a Captain Planet fan-fic which I never finished, but was based in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and had none of the original cast apart from Blight and um, that was as far as I got. It was all about revolution-by-proxy and how having heroes negates personal responsibility. About how the planeteers were a corporate publicity campaign writ large and their battles with equally fake 'eco villains' were to distract humanity into thinking something was being done merely through helping out by turning off taps and purchasing energy-saving insulation, instead of accepting radical and uncomfortable life-style changes. In a sort of Fatherland stylee a lowly UN Peacekeepers worker uncovers some bad truths, and has to decide whether the newly appeared Doctor Blight is another manifestation of a big-deception to distract from a more subtle threat or a psychotically dangerous woman in her own right building up to be the next Hitler. Captain Planet was going to appear later on, but completely unlike the cartoon version and more of a terribly dangerous Alan Moore/Swamp Thing/Black Orchid creation that is completely alien in thought, and who has no compunction about pruning the human species.

The Erotic Adventures of Buffy and EVIL VAMPIRE Willow!. NSFW!!!!

Surely the point is "you and possibly a couple of other people" enjoy them?

And I think there's a wider audience than you thing. The Batman fan fiction part of web site is now buried and isn't updated, but people still seem to be reading it - or, at least, loading the pages.



No, I don't think canon has anything to do with. For example, there are plenty of Batman comics published by DC that aren't part of the regular continuity - and plenty that are meant to be that are later retconned. That doesn't make them bad stories.

The main problem with fan fic is that so much of it is shite.

At Uni, in my Research & Scriptwriting course, we once had a project where we had to write a treatment for the pilot of a TV series. The plot had to be set in Britain immediately following the end of WWII and had to be a drama of some description, but everything else was left up to us. Everyone came back with soap operas, except for me who came back with what was essentially a British version of Quantum Leap, though for a more adult audience since it was intended to contain a degree of psychological horror. My tutor absolutely loved it, and told me if I completed the script he'd hand it in to some contacts he still had in the BBC (he occasionally wrote episodes of various TV shows himself). Not actually completing that script is one of my big regrets and I fully intend to go back to it one day.

I don't think canon in fan-fic is the point either, it's the last thing I thought about when I attempted it. Fan-fic is good for two things (three if you count mind-boggling erotic fiction):

1: Training wheels for budding creative writers. There's no shame with getting into writing through fan-fic, but you won't ever find your voice as long as you stay in that mode.

2: Saying something new by using something old. Massively twisting established concept and characters to create something wholy new. Basically like how classical composers riff on older works, and how good jazz works. This doesn't include merely writing new plots, but making people think differently - like looking through a prism or something.

Incidently many great sci-fi authors started with published Star Trek fan-fic, Greg Bear, David Brin, David Gerold etc.

Still, it's telling that I don't actually READ fan-fic. Unless someone points me to something mind-buggering. And who remembers the excellent site 'Godawful Fan Fiction' eh?

I have written numerous short stories and chapters for books, and various character stuff that I won't go into.

Some of it is quite good (or so I am told by a wide variety of people).

One day I will complete a novel, get it published, and consider myself awesome.

Oh and the most chilling fan-fic ever is Neil Gaiman's 'The Problem of Susan', which is a Narnia fan-fic. Brr.

Would you class collections of stuff set in an established universe (such as the Man-Kzin Wars books, which were a variety of authors writing stories about the Known Space universe) as fanfics?

Alright Owen, but it would upset *me* that none of it could ever be considered canon. It'd just be idle musings by some random person and I personally can't integrate speculation like that into my brain.

Good question. I really can't decide. I'm forced to think of Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert's Dune books as fan-fiction, bad at that. I guess if the original author is overseeing and considers it cannon, then you can consider it as like episodes by other writers for a TV series.

http://24forum.net/sutra17178.php

This is the very greatest fan-fiction ever written.

There's more of it somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

Kevin J Anderson is one of the worst writers in history. Not just in terms of his stories, but his actual ability to put down thoughts in English.

I hate him so very, very much.

I was about to 'this is the very greatest anti-climax ever' FTFY, until you added that.

Also, given this is degenerating into a 'disturbing erotic fanfiction' comparison, I once read a dodgy one where Shaggy and Scooby-Doo get stoned and rape Daphne and Velma. Fred is off fellating a boy scout leader (really).

Like don't love. I fear the fan-fic of it. If I were to do some, it'd be the point of view of an outsider looking in, a muggle minister trying to helplessly cope with the mad shit being thrown about by Voldemort's hi-jinks.

I shall have a look at your stuff after work, Shin!

Okay, here is an example of my Batman fan fic.

http://www.inverty.com/bbb/fiction/death.htm

There are more on the site, if you can stomach it, which I very much doubt. I know I can't face reading any more than that.

It's to nice to know that my writing style has changed over the years, at least. Short sentences. I was fond of them. Not so much now. But sometimes.

Oh, I like Harry Potter.

There, I said it.

Don't kill me.

In grade 7 our teacher encouraged us to do creative writing (on a pair of ancient-even-at-the-time C64s) and didn't really censor us. The result?

DODGINESS CITY.

X-Men erotic fanfiction, written by hormone-addled 12 year olds. All I can remember is something about Gambit firing a cumshot at Wolverine (but Wolverine was too quick for it and then said 'come on, Frenchy'), and 'Storm was being pumped by Collossus' steel cock'.

Untouchables fanfiction, in which gruesome tortures were carried out by Al Capone's men, including someone writing the teacher into the story as one of Ness's men. He breaks his ankle, so Capone's men tear out his toenails, put fishhooks through his eyes, and hang him out the window by his eyes.

Stories set in Vietnam, stories with vampires, we were trying to out horrible each other.

The crowning glory was the Jurassic Park story, in which the author sat down with the class list and ensured that everyone was in it (on a class trip to Jurassic Park, natch). He ticked names off as he gave everyone a gruesome death, inevitably with the lines 'he watched in horror as a thousand compys ate him alive' or 'and the last thing he saw was...'

HMMM.

Anyone? Sounds neat to me. Also, I have seen the Nanowrimo, always forget to do it though.

NaNoWriMo is the reason I finished my novel. I got over 50,000 words done in the month, but didn't finish the story. Needed another 20,000 written later to finish off. Still that 50,000 word start gave me a very, very good start.

My trick for it is to write a chapter every day and leave each chapter on a cliffhanger. Not only does it make for an exciting read, but it gives you something to follow up on the next day, so you don't find yourself staring into space wondering where to go.

(The year before I started my novel using NaNaoWriMo I actually wrote a complete 50,000 word story in the month. It was, however, pretty shite. There's something in there, but it needs a hell of a lot of work to be decent. That one was about a guy who thought he has a super power that let him see the evil in everybody, so he tracks down and kills "murderers" and the like, thinking he's doing good. Except he's just a nutter. Oh no! However, he sees a girl and can't see any bad in her at all, so spends the story trying to track her down. While killing people, obviously. There's a particularly nasty chapter where he goes to an old couple's house and kills them both, mostly because the woman was a bit short with him when he called her house by mistake.)

Ahh, so it's a ComicGnomes fanfic then?

Pretty much.

Ha! My CG fanfic's online!

http://www.inverty.com/fiction/faultlines.htm

Typo-ridden shite, but I do think there's an idea in there, somewhere.

The only good fanfic I've ever read.

And even then bits of it annoy me.

That NaNoWriMo thing looks good. I've got a good idea on the go and that might force me into actually doing something about it.

Well, if you feel like a read, here are two Word Docs (okay, one in this post, one in the next post) containing short stories. I've linked to the first one here before. The second needs a little cosmetic work too, but, meh, I'll get round to it one day.

I have more if by chance someone likes 'em.

...and here's the other.

Actually, the best one is neither of these, but it's a bit longer than these, which are short enough to be read quickly.

I do like that very much - but made up swear words drive me mad

Oops... that's in odt format. Here's one in Word format (and with the later title instead of the working title)...

If I ever post the third one, it gets explained.



Oh, and thanks.




EDIT - Also, these were all written for a little contest on a little website. Each round had a theme... 'Chance' was my take on science fiction. 'Transition' was my take on drama.

Oh do smeg off.

Didn't know where to put this, seemed the best place. Short sub-900 word story I wrote this evening. I may be attempting nanowrimo again this year, not sure yet.


Riverside

Let me tell you a story about what kind of place this is. When I was a young lady and living back in the city I made my home in a place that looked out over a sidewalk by the river. I'd sit in the window and watch people walk by at night. There was one security light next door that would blink on sometimes and hit folk just so, casting their shadow real big up on a wall on the other bank. Sometimes they'd freeze when it jumped them, like they were caught by a searchlight during a jailbreak. I loved to watch that. I'd sit with a cigarette and watch it. My ex he called me crazy and would say, 'come to bed', but I just liked to watch the city at night, you know?

So my new place is in this backwoods little mining valley, someplace in Virginia. Don't ask me how I got here but I guess I like alright. And happily my new bedroom looks over the river too, which runs at the bottom of a this small but steep sided gully. Remote as we are around here you don't get so many street lights around to brighten things up, nor people to walk past and cast shadows, so I figured my window watching days were over. I mean, I'd enjoy the sound of the river rushing by from my bedroom window but to poke my head out at night, well I'd see nothing 'cept the times when the full moon was out and free of cloud and I cared to look, which was rare enough. But to get to the story; one time 'round midnight I'm sitting in the dark by the window taking in the limited view, what with that full moon being out and making a fine vista of the gully sides and the branches and the rushing water and what-not below me.

This is not because I'm enjoying the view so much as I can't get to sleep on account of something someone said to me that day at the barbershop. A nasty thing a real mean bitch would say, might I add.

So there I am just sitting and staring for no real reason, listening to the water, watching the branches swaying gently in the wind. And ever so slowly I begin to hear this sound coming from outside, from up hill and back of me. This sound of something grinding the dirt and gravel of the track. Sound carries far out in these lonely valleys and I frown and lean forward, listening to it get nearer and nearer, wondering what it is. And then I figure that it's somebody pushing a car because I hear muttering and swearing and grunting and it turns out I'm right, as next thing these bright beams from swing around in front of me and headlights splash over the trees and then there's the sound of a car door slamming and feet running and branches snapping and this big beat up old car rolls over the edge and just clatters down the embankment, flinging light and shadows and noise all over the place as it bulldozers its way down to the river. There's this almighty crash and the sound of birds cawing and flapping and then finally nothing but that river flowing by.

The headlights are still on. The car slid and jammed somehow, and its illuminating the far bank. And I can see right there, on the other side of the river below a whitewashed house, the rusting hulk of an old Model T broken on the rocks. Don't know why I never saw it before, though its skin was red and brown now as the dirt. Probably I'd gotten used to the sight of cars choking the river bed up and down these valleys, it's something they do round here when cars are so beat up they don't run no more. Like taking a sick dog out back and shooting it rather than paying for a vet. But to stretch a similie there's still life in this one, the way he sent it down with its lights still running. Its laying down there like some wounded animal, legs broken yet light still blazing from its eyes. And in this light I look up from that smashed up old car on the far bank, look up to the house. There's movement there from behind the lace curtains. There's a moment of tugging from a thin silhouette that's behind them and then they part to reveal an old lady. She stands at the window and looks into the bright lights, full beam, lancing straight at her. She holds a hand up to shield her eyes and backs away. I can see the entire thing real good, lit up like a theatre stage and I can see the hard shadows dance behind her upon her pale pink wallpaper.

I think, "She ain't getting any sleep tonight," and then I draw my curtains and go to bed. And I guess that's why people pay more to live by the river.

Excellent work Pete.