Sixteen Rules?

[Prismatic Avatar]

This is a lot of fun to read. It also underlines why I don't publish my fiction any more, as I break most of the rules. (Big surprise, right? ). I like lots of description. I go mad when I reach the end of a story and realise that I have absolutely no idea what the characters look like. I hate like hell when I'm in a story where the author assumes I know what the heck s/he's talking about so doesn't explain. And I've never really recovered from being edited and told to take out every scene that wasn't essential to the story. Okay, so the squabble over the last choccie biccie didn't contribute anything to the murder-mystery, but I was very fond of that squabble. <sniffle>

Part of the lure of fan fiction net is the finding of the jewel amongst the dross. The sense of achievement! The thrill of the hunt! And there are jewels there. The thrill of the hunt on this site is finding the dross amongst the jewels!

(That's a joke, just in case anyone takes me seriously. )

[chrisbishop]

P.A. - can I call you P.A.? - seeing the way you write your posts, I kind of find it a real shame that you don't publish anymore anything that you write! Would you be interested in showing me and the site beta-reader your stuff? I'm pretty sure it's not as bad as you pretend it is!

And if you want - there might be a place for you in the fanfic section!

[Prismatic Avatar]

P.A. - can I call you P.A.?

<LOL> Yes, you can call me P.A. or Prissy or Ava or whatever. I was so busy being artistic in creating my UserName that I sort of forgot that ‘Prismatic Avatar’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue!

When I said publish I meant that I don’t submit stories to fanzines any more as I couldn’t take the headache. (Examples being that I was told to get rid of my biccie scene but was told to give a blow-by-blow description of an aeroplane crashing, or that I couldn’t describe my hero’s eye colour but had to make sure that my audience understood that the character had entered the room using a door.) I still post stuff on the Net, but make sure my friends read it first to catch any glaring errors. Such as killing a character off on page 3 and have him saving the hero on page 18. Yes, I actually did that once.

My Scarlet stories tend to be different because I’ve evolved my own little universe – yes, I am a god! – and added all manner of original characters (5 Captain and 3 Angels). Plus small little things like freeing Black from Mysteron control, killing off Symphony and making her the chief agent of the Mysterons… Small stuff, you understand! Plus it should be renamed ‘The Ochre and Magenta Show’ <cough>. I tend to think that it’s best that they stay in the folder in my bedroom.

For a very silly sample, look under the Halloween Challenge 2006 subject in this forum. No offence intended but I'm in one of my moods...

[Elentari]

You evolved your own little universe too??? And here I was thinking it was just me who'd done that... Mind you, mine is a Fireball based world - well it originally was. It's expanded a bit nowadays.

I've had to seriously rein in my GA World to actually write stories down, otherwise no-one would have a clue what I was talking about.

[Prismatic Avatar]

Exactly my point, Elentari. It's addictive and a lot of fun, but it does make it difficult for the poor beggar coming in from the cold!

(BTW, Elentari is pretty - where does it come from?)

I was very isolated from fandom while growing up. I didn't even know Fanderson existed, or that things such as fanzines existed, but I used to play with the Scarlet and Thunderbirds universes, adding a bit here and there. Well, okay, a lot here and there when it came to Scarlet. Thunderbirds got off relatively lightly by comparison.

I went to a couple of Fanderson conventions but I don't really recall seeing Fanzines for sale. (That doesn't mean they weren't there - just that I didn't spot them!) I didn't even know Mary's stories existed until a few years ago, when someone was showing me their fanzine collection and the POWERSTAR issues were amongst them. What little Scarlet fiction I did come across in the intervening years was focused exclusively on Scarlet and Blue and since they weren't my favourite characters, it didn't occur to me that I should be writing to a less mucked-about-with template.

It's a lot of fun being in charge of your own universe, though. Heh, heh, heh.

[Sage]

I am always so impressed when people go with whole 'own universe' thing. Whole diffrent challenge really.

My stories aren't that much of a derviation from canon. For me part of the challenge of fanfic is working with what's already there, and doing the research. Making stuff up is more time consuming and I get paranoid that'll be wrong/stupid (even my original stories are historical).
That said my fics are starting to look more like 'the Ochre & Magenta show', and umm yeah there's slash [though not between O & M - tried but nah they're straight]. Have also killed off Symphony. Hmm few OCs lurking around. Can't think of anything else.

Part of the lure of fan fiction net is the finding of the jewel amongst the dross. The sense of achievement! The thrill of the hunt! And there are jewels there. The thrill of the hunt on this site is finding the dross amongst the jewels!

(That's a joke, just in case anyone takes me seriously. )

LOL ah yes the pit of voles
It is so true though; especially with the Thunderbirds fandom, frigging thing is crawling with Mary-sue's. CS has got off quite lightly. You're all excellent writers and too decent to flame anyone [which is bugging me, getting flamed is like a right of passage ... want to get one and keep it for posterity ].

[Elentari]

PA, when I was a child there were no fanzines in Oz - and certainly Fanderson wasn’t remotely around – but there was TV21 thank goodness. It courageously, not to mention rather optimistically, tried to make the whole GA universe mesh as each TV series up to and including CS was made – often with very confusing results!! It never worried me though. I’d say I probably went along with most of it. The bits I couldn’t quite reconcile, I either conveniently discarded or thought up some very convoluted reasons why whatever-it-was would work. I might add I haven’t wavered from these elaborate (and probably silly) ideas since. They are ingrained in my soul! From there it didn’t take much for me to add to - and at times move slightly away from – TV21’s GA universe into a version of my own.

I’ve never been to any GA scifi conventions and probably never will (I’m not fond of crowds), but in the early 1980s I discovered some Australian Star Trek and UFO fanzines in a scifi bookshop. I didn’t know about other fan fiction or just how big it was until I had access to the net 20 years later. I was amazed, especially when I read stories that followed ideas that I thought were mine alone. (Clearly I was not quite as bright - or as original - as I thought I was. What a let-down!) Then I discovered ‘the rules’ of fanfic (such as they are) – particularly those relating to canon. I found it quite hard to accept the concept that TV21 was not canon. I still don’t like that idea! To me it’s all part of the GA world I grew up with and therefore all good. (Many may disagree but no-one will ever change my thoughts on that subject!)

To keep on the straight and narrow in regards my CS efforts, any ideas put on paper either have some grounding from the TV series or they fit into a category I define as ‘humorous bits of nonsense’ where you have to tweak an idea left-of-centre anyway to make it work. There’s actually little correlation between what I’ve written down and the GA world that I’ve created for myself over the decades. I agree it can be a lot of fun being in charge of your own universe because there’s no need for long explanations if you don't feel like it, or sensible rationalisations, or any of that stuff that people will tell you you have to correct otherwise the story won’t make any sense (in fanfic or real life). In my GA world everything works because I say so. (That’s why I really like that quote from J.M. Straczynski about the White Stars in Babylon 5. It’s also a reminder not to get obsessed over technical details for something that doesn’t actually exist). You also don’t have to fuss over grammar, spelling and punctuation either. Mind you these are things that I happen to think are very important in writing fanfic - but fortunately they are also completely unnecessary in a storyline that has evolved a great deal over time...but has never actually been committed to hard copy.

I never found Thunderbirds all that inspiring even though I liked the series. Captain Scarlet was another matter! The original series is just marvellous and from the day I discovered Spectrum HQ I’ve really enjoyed reading the fanfic. I liked it so much it inspired me to try and write too, something that decades of inventing my own GA universe never ‘sparked’. (Weird but true). Given the standard of the CS stories I was reading I rather naively thought all fanfic on the net must be good. I know better now! That’s the trouble really, as time has gone by I read less and less of it, put off by the sloppy proofreading (…or none at all). I guess I can put that down to being of a certain age (as you’ve probably guessed, fairly oldish!) and all those years of schooling under some really picky English teachers.

BTW I think Elentari (in Elvish: Elentári) is rather nice too. It comes from JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. It’s another name for Elbereth and means Star Queen, but I also had some personal reasons for choosing it.

[Prismatic Avatar]

I don't really mind when someone chooses to take TV21 as canon, sinply because TV21 (at least in th early yeards) did a damn good job - as you said - of dovetailing the universes together. They also came up with some fine stories. Seat of the pants stuff, where I used to go mad waiting for the following week's issue to find out how the heck they were going to get out of the mess they were in!

True, I don't agree with trying to fit all the universes together, but that's just me. I remember coming across a suggestion about the Mysterons retrometabolising Thunderbird 2 and (apart from having the world's greatest hissy-fit over the idea of Virgil as a Mysteron) I thought that would make a damn fine story. Never actually tracked it down, but I still remember the idea every now and then.

Sounds like you were in a similar situation to me while you were growing up. I still remember my intense delight at finding the John Theydon books and I did my paper round in exchange for two comics (one of which was TV21) and some chocolate. Plus a bonus of one paperback per month. I thought I had the best 'job' in the world!

I also have the problem of constantly rewriting my stories. I came across one I'd written about ten years ago the other day and practically had hysterics over how bad it was. It's not going through a revamp which looks like it will double it in length. (Has anyone else noticed that rewrites always lengthen a story??)

I liked Thunderbirds because it had to be one of the most altruistic TV series ever. A family devoted to rescuing other people, for no profit or recognition. That still presses all the right buttons for me. I used to like to come up with impossible situations and then try and write myself out of them!

So Elentari is Elvish? That probably explains my looking at it and thinking I should know where it came from. I only read The Silmarillion the once and most of the Elvish tended to blur together after a while.

Another Ochre and Magenta fan? Cool! I just loved the idea of cop and criminal working together. Ont the one hand it's a cliche but on the other ir has soooo much scope for playinga round.

[Sage]

re: rewrites
Ugh yes, even stuff from five years ago near slays me with embarrasment [well I was 16].

re: Ochre & Magenta
Umm yeah that was probably why I slashed them; it's just so [hypothetically] good for hate sex (not that I seriously though anyone else would read it, but still). Alas it ended up as a drunken fumble which didn't come to anything... just have to console myself with Destiny/Magenta smut.

Anyway, to stay on topic, more 'writing rules' inspired by fanficrants ...

1) A story set in the future allows for a certain degree of flexability; but the developments, technological or otherwise, still has to be viable (eccentricities of canon not withstanding).

2) Far as I can see CS fic has managed to avoid 'fangirl Japanese', let's keep it that way

3) Your beta-reader is not psychic. Therefore, do not expect them to understand why your character is saying or doing something if the information is not in the text. Which goes double for the reader, who presumably won't be scutinising the text to the same degree as a beta would.

4) 'The first five seconds of your reader's attention you get for free. The rest you have to earn.'

5) Not all of your protagonists have to have the exact same beliefs that you do -- especially if your beliefs aren't the norm. In fact, that can make writing much more interesting. As long as you don't make all disagreeing characters into strawmen.

I could mention sex scenes, but that's a whole other rant, and actually you all seem to write those very well.

[Marion]

Sage said: Your beta-reader is not psychic. Therefore, do not expect them to understand why your character is saying or doing something if the information is not in the text. Which goes double for the reader, who presumably won't be scutinising the text to the same degree as a beta would.

Yep. I'd be in serious bother without my long-suffering beta-readers! All Hail the Beta Queens...

[Sage]

*bows down*

I doubt they're any more long suffering than mine, . Some how giving acknowledgements never feels like a enough. I've learnt more about grammar from my betas than we were ever taught in school; and I'm a media writing undergraduate. Really fills you with faith for the future of humanity, does it?