Monday, September 19, 2011

In the beginning....

Right, in the beginning of me being a writer, I wrote and published things that were maybe not entirely my own. That is to say, I wrote fanfiction, and I'm not ashamed to say I did.  (Now keep in mind, I won't tell you which fandoms I wrote in or where these stories may or may not be published.)  But deep within some else's imagination I got my start in creating stories.

Now, I'd written some things up to that point in my life, but most of them were in journals that I buried in my room.

I should and do credit fanfiction with my formation as a writer because the sites I visited were invested in making their writers better.  By the time I left the site, it required at least 1000 words a chapter and they needed to see a semblance of story within the chapter.

I enjoyed writing fanfiction because like most kids who read I didn't want to leave the characters at the end of the story.  I wanted to know what happened next, and more importantly I wanted to be in control of what happened next (yes, I admit I have some control issues).

Fanfiction taught me how to grow characters, taking them on journeys to become the characters I wanted them to become.  Like what obstacles could I put in their way to  make them change.  What would they change for? It was a balancing act between reading and looking for clues within the published novel, and my own imagination.

I can't remember the day I started making my own stuff up. I think it was around the time, I found these pre-created worlds confining.  I wanted to go in another direction but the world wouldn't let me... So I scrapped the fanfiction thing and tried my hand at my own novel.

This has pretty much stuck with me.  Not that I rip off other people's text, but the research part.  I'll comb through huge volumes and webpages looking for some small insignificant detail that could spark a story.  Or I wait for a world to creep inside my head and place characters into it to see how they react.

Currently, I'm splitting my time between my dystopian novel (stick around for Wednesday to hear more about my crazy half fantasy half dystopian love child) and a sci-fi screen play (this is me having fun, because I've never done full screenplays before--sort of like a side project [and no, this will probably not be discussed yet])

Yup, that's my beginning, what's yours?

4 comments:

  1. Oh I totally did fan fiction at first. I wrote LJ smith spin offs back before the nightworld existed and it was just her SC and VP series. But I think the important thing is- fan fiction happens when someone or something inspires you to write. When the story is over and you're not ready for it to be. You create what it is you want to experience and this is what passes over from fanfiction. Soon you've got your own world,characters and premise and you'll always be a fan, but you begin to create you're own fiction. Great post! And welcome to the club!

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  2. Hear heear!
    I was quite afraid of making fanfiction... actually, I was petrified of writing at all despite my passion for it.
    But one day, during music class with an absent-minded teacher, I said to myself, "it's time to get over this anxiety. You can do it."

    Not the best domestic abused chronicle, but I'm glad I smacked away the demons that prevented me from story writing

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  3. Actually, I began writing my own stories - at a very young age. I wrote dark and partially disturbing things involving death by a broken neck from tumbling down attic stairs at the age of 8. My teachers were worried, my mother wasn't - and I loved it.
    But as I grew older and came up with more and more involved stories, I found my characters tended to bleed into one another.

    So when I was a young adult I started to write fanfiction. I wrote in anime fandoms, I mostly wrote Alternate Universe stories (so my stories with the anime characters) and I forced myself to keep the characters well... in character.

    This helped me be able to develop a character (through watching the anime) and maintain it in my writing.

    If I look back now I wrote well over my million words in fanfiction, not to mention all the words that went before. But it helped me a heap!

    Now - my readers can differentiate my characters as they don't bleed into each other after five or six chapters.

    I find that was my beginner as a serious writer. I honed what I knew I wasn't good at, and improved vastly.

    Loved this post. Thank you for sharing

    Now? I'm working on the 3rd first draft in my current WIP trilogy. I think that'll make book seven...

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  4. Creep Querry Girl--thanks! It's a great club to be a part of. And I hear ya you get sucked into fanfiction and when you come out there is your own world.

    Mytrickster--it can be scary because you are putting your stuff out there for fans and who knows what they'll tell you?

    KT-I never thought of looking at it like that but it's totally true you can learn a TON about character development from Fanfiction.

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