The Cellar - View Single Post

Snakeadelic · 02-27-2017, 08:44 AM

Gunsmoke fanfic actually sounds kinda fun! I bet my biker neighbor, who has a MASSIVE collection of westerns on DVD, would love it. It's not the kind of source material that routinely gets noticed these days, so kudos for creativity there!

I suppose some of my (not for publication) writing could be considered fanfic here and there. The core characters are mostly musicians and their support networks, both personal and professional, and since I've avoided letting the timeline include any fixed points from actual history, once in a while I throw moments with actual live musicians into the mix.

As for the One True Pairing part, I read maaannnnnnnyyyyyyy things about the Twilight series of books, one of which was about the 'Mary Sue' character trope. This is when your protagonist is so good at everything in life but like 1 or 2 things--they're clumsy, they have no fashion sense, their friend-making skills suck, whatever. I started wondering if my own fictitious leading lady was a Mary Sue, because in the original story I started working on 25 years ago she is part of the OTP.

So I started alternate storylines, just to see if I could broaden her spectrum of flaws. She's socially naive at the beginning, believes firmly in free will but refuses to consider or respect her own, and sets aside her own wishes and desires for the good of others often enough to have a minor martyrdom issue. Now I have, lemme think...a total of 6 differing storylines in the same setting (Los Angeles, roughly 1980-something at the start). First thing I did was kill the other half of her OTP. Twice. The original storyline begins Act II with the death of a different major character, so I wrote storylines where he survives but others do not.

And that is why, when I decide to sit down for a day of writing to blow off stress, I tell my nearest & dearest "I'm gonna go beat the hell out of my imaginary friends for a while." So far, the female protagonist is the only major character I haven't killed, since she's the origin of the entire story and I haven't yet had an epiphany about what might happen to the other characters without her to be the constant point of connection.

02-27-2017, 08:44 AM	#3
Snakeadelic Banned Join Date: May 2015 Posts: 660	Gunsmoke fanfic actually sounds kinda fun! I bet my biker neighbor, who has a MASSIVE collection of westerns on DVD, would love it. It's not the kind of source material that routinely gets noticed these days, so kudos for creativity there! I suppose some of my (not for publication) writing could be considered fanfic here and there. The core characters are mostly musicians and their support networks, both personal and professional, and since I've avoided letting the timeline include any fixed points from actual history, once in a while I throw moments with actual live musicians into the mix. As for the One True Pairing part, I read maaannnnnnnyyyyyyy things about the Twilight series of books, one of which was about the 'Mary Sue' character trope. This is when your protagonist is so good at everything in life but like 1 or 2 things--they're clumsy, they have no fashion sense, their friend-making skills suck, whatever. I started wondering if my own fictitious leading lady was a Mary Sue, because in the original story I started working on 25 years ago she is part of the OTP. So I started alternate storylines, just to see if I could broaden her spectrum of flaws. She's socially naive at the beginning, believes firmly in free will but refuses to consider or respect her own, and sets aside her own wishes and desires for the good of others often enough to have a minor martyrdom issue. Now I have, lemme think...a total of 6 differing storylines in the same setting (Los Angeles, roughly 1980-something at the start). First thing I did was kill the other half of her OTP. Twice. The original storyline begins Act II with the death of a different major character, so I wrote storylines where he survives but others do not. And that is why, when I decide to sit down for a day of writing to blow off stress, I tell my nearest & dearest "I'm gonna go beat the hell out of my imaginary friends for a while." So far, the female protagonist is the only major character I haven't killed, since she's the origin of the entire story and I haven't yet had an epiphany about what might happen to the other characters without her to be the constant point of connection.