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internalizing stories
Feb. 22nd, 2005 03:02 amLast night I was reading one of my WIP's to my boyfriend, who's familiar with the canon (Narnia) in the sense that he read two of the books about ten years ago. So not very. And he said something interesting to me.
We were talking about writing and fic and my fic in particular, and he remarked on how so much of the fic that I read to him is completely internalized, an inner monologue, unconscious thoughts and feeling and stream-on-consciousness. He said that in original fiction the challenge is to find the right mixture of that sort of thing with externalized action and interaction. And I realized something.
Fic works totally differently. Whe you click on a fic link, chances are you're familiar with the source canon. That's the primary audience that I would wager most ficcers write for. And so you go into the fic with the externalized part already in your head. Narnia canon is nearly all adventures, and very rarely ventures into anyone's head for any great length of time. So the fic is intended to balance with that: the severely internal with the severely external. We already know what happens. The fic is about poking into the corners that the text doesn't cover. And in many cases that's going to be thoughts and feelings.
None of this holds true for long, plotty fic where the author goes and makes a whole new adventure, but then again I've never written anything even remotely like that, and I have a feeling that the two forms of fic both work totally differently and are motivated by different desires. Not sure what those are, but meh. Chances are this epiphany of mine is something you all've known about for ages and I'm just being silly.
In other news, does anyone know how to change the date on one's lj? Mine's all screwy and keeps telling me that this afternoon was last night.
We were talking about writing and fic and my fic in particular, and he remarked on how so much of the fic that I read to him is completely internalized, an inner monologue, unconscious thoughts and feeling and stream-on-consciousness. He said that in original fiction the challenge is to find the right mixture of that sort of thing with externalized action and interaction. And I realized something.
Fic works totally differently. Whe you click on a fic link, chances are you're familiar with the source canon. That's the primary audience that I would wager most ficcers write for. And so you go into the fic with the externalized part already in your head. Narnia canon is nearly all adventures, and very rarely ventures into anyone's head for any great length of time. So the fic is intended to balance with that: the severely internal with the severely external. We already know what happens. The fic is about poking into the corners that the text doesn't cover. And in many cases that's going to be thoughts and feelings.
None of this holds true for long, plotty fic where the author goes and makes a whole new adventure, but then again I've never written anything even remotely like that, and I have a feeling that the two forms of fic both work totally differently and are motivated by different desires. Not sure what those are, but meh. Chances are this epiphany of mine is something you all've known about for ages and I'm just being silly.
In other news, does anyone know how to change the date on one's lj? Mine's all screwy and keeps telling me that this afternoon was last night.