fandom/fic length musing
Sep. 29th, 2005 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynneRain! Whee!
I so shouldn't be getting excited about it, as I'm sure I'm going to see a lot of rain over the next four years, but still. Whee!
Random thing I was thinking yesterday...do some fandoms give you longer plot bunnies than others? It's like, HP is so my short story fandom. Most of my fics there were between three and ten pages, because that's what kind of bunny usually bit. Only Time was the exception, but since I've been really lazy about finishing that, I'm not sure it counts--the plot bunny didn't sustain me throughout the writing, since I'm blocked and some parts of it were forced and are really crappy.
Star Wars, on the other hand, seems to be turning into a longer story fandom, because the bunnies I've been getting are ones for plots more complicated than "Remus and Sirius are friends and in this way decide to become more". The shortest SW fic I've got (though admittedly the only finished one) is 11,000 words, and it's spawned sequels; in fact, I currently finished chapter three of the first sequel, and I'm at 15,000 words. That's a bloody lot, for me, since I'm used to short one-shots with HP. Even the fic I'm writing that's a romantic plot, like most of what I've written in HP, rather than a general/action/adventure/drama/whatever plot I can't imagine ending up at less than 20,000-30,000 words. And I think that I might actually be able to do NaNoWriMo this year, with a SW fic rather than an HP one. SW just gives me bigger bunnies.
This happen to any of you, who write in multiple fandoms?
I so shouldn't be getting excited about it, as I'm sure I'm going to see a lot of rain over the next four years, but still. Whee!
Random thing I was thinking yesterday...do some fandoms give you longer plot bunnies than others? It's like, HP is so my short story fandom. Most of my fics there were between three and ten pages, because that's what kind of bunny usually bit. Only Time was the exception, but since I've been really lazy about finishing that, I'm not sure it counts--the plot bunny didn't sustain me throughout the writing, since I'm blocked and some parts of it were forced and are really crappy.
Star Wars, on the other hand, seems to be turning into a longer story fandom, because the bunnies I've been getting are ones for plots more complicated than "Remus and Sirius are friends and in this way decide to become more". The shortest SW fic I've got (though admittedly the only finished one) is 11,000 words, and it's spawned sequels; in fact, I currently finished chapter three of the first sequel, and I'm at 15,000 words. That's a bloody lot, for me, since I'm used to short one-shots with HP. Even the fic I'm writing that's a romantic plot, like most of what I've written in HP, rather than a general/action/adventure/drama/whatever plot I can't imagine ending up at less than 20,000-30,000 words. And I think that I might actually be able to do NaNoWriMo this year, with a SW fic rather than an HP one. SW just gives me bigger bunnies.
This happen to any of you, who write in multiple fandoms?
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Date: 2005-09-30 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 03:31 pm (UTC)I wrote one longish story in my second fandom, some multi-chaptered stories (none exceeding 15,000 words, though, I think), and a lot of shorter pieces.
Almost all my HP fics are short - with the exception of "Three Weeks Outside Time," which is about 26,000 words. O_o (That surprises me every time I see the figure, because I remember flying through that one. I can't believe I wrote 9,000 words in about two days!)
Anyway, I think part of it is fear. Heh. I've a tendency to bite off more than I can chew - I have a lot of unfinished novels - and I hate that. I'm trying to curb it here. Also, I expect my perception of the Potterverse to change after the last book, whereas my previous two fandoms were closed. We had all the canon we were ever going to get, so we could take the characters and do whatever we wanted without much fear of contradiction.
With my first fandom, I spent a lot of time revising what I thought was a stupid move on the part of the writers. My first story (book, really) was basically a "This is how it should have been!" piece. I introduced a lot of new things that required explanation and exploration.
With HP, I like things as they are (except for Sirius's death, which requires correcting - hence all my resurrection fics!) and prefer to write about the moments that we're not going to see in canon. I have one longish story in the works (it's been in the works since April 2003 - I suck!) and there was TWOT, but that's it.
Some people lament the lack of long stories in the Potter fandom, but I wouldn't have time to read or write them.
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Date: 2005-10-04 06:55 am (UTC)Ohhh, me too. *winces at Only Time*
We had all the canon we were ever going to get, so we could take the characters and do whatever we wanted without much fear of contradiction.
That's a good point. It's hard to write novel-length things when you aren't sure how some of your plots or characterizations will be changed later by the whim of the author. Much easier with one-shots that don't require much plot.
With HP, I like things as they are (except for Sirius's death, which requires correcting - hence all my resurrection fics!) and prefer to write about the moments that we're not going to see in canon.
Me too, really. Canon is interesting enough as it is, and there's still so much room to play around with. But the funny thing is, I love Star Wars the way it happened too, but I keep getting these cool AU plot bunnies. It's not a "this is the way it should have been" kind of thing, like your first fandom. It's more that there's tons of alternate scenarios I want to explore, but they keep getting...much longer than almost everything I've written in HP.