On reasons for writing
Jan. 30th, 2010 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been trying to figure out why I'm so totally stuck with this 'pitch for 5 and Nyssa' thing.
I mean, I've written something, but it's a rubbish something that would be embarrassing if they made it.
Part of it is that I'm just not that good. I want to write something good, it's never good, I get fed up with it. Simple enough.
But it's not just that. When I look at what I write, why I write fanfic, and the kind of thing I notice in other people's work, I think it doesn't add up to wanting to write more of what they're already doing. I'm not a more-of fanfic writer, I'm a more from. I want to write things that canon isn't giving me. Or else I'm just not inspired to write.
I want at least equal numbers of women, some characters of color, not killing them all off, women who save the day and have thoughts and goals of their own, women talking to each other about something other than a man, stories with queer people sometimes dating and sometimes saving the world, and a few bits about mental illness, self control, and second chances in general or adult education and late life career changes in particular. And sometimes other stuff about disability that isn't mental illness or being neuroatypical. That's a bit of a list, really. So I find things to pull apart in most everything I watch.
I could write a Nyssa and 5 story where Nyssa has her own goals and skills and saves the day, talks to a woman, who happens to be a character of color who survives the whole story (though in audio I fear the ways to make that immediately apparent are going to be clunky), has something about second chances, and helps people end up less depressed. My pitch covers all that, actually, and also has proper DW adventure stuff in it. So that should be alright.
But I can also already listen to stories where Nyssa is independent with her own personality and helps save the day a bit and there's quite a lot of my usual list in already. So no actual pressing need to fix most of those things.
Plus I cannot write slash. At least there are more than 120 stories and I've listened to a bazillion of them and I can't recall having heard any slash yet. Het, yes, but even Ace seems to mostly get chatted up by boys. Which is weird.
And I'd be fine with writing gen for Doctor Who because stories where it's not actually about all that are fine by me. People getting on with doing things for the win.
But most of the stories I've written are because something needed fixing, in particular that there were two characters who clearly should be doing something about their mutual attraction, and canon didn't seem to be doing it. Yes, I've written Jack/Ianto, but in their case the missing bit wasn't the PWP or the hothouse stuff, it was the being in an actual relationship. I've also written Owen, and in his case the problem wasn't getting him to have sex, it was getting him to notice the times he really shouldn't have had it. Whole different thing. Still untangling a relationship.
Sometimes though I just write people running around with swords killing bad guys and staking vampires and all that. That works out too.
So, I could write a story where the Doctor and Nyssa go and fix something that needs fixing.
I even quite like my story idea.
I just... don't feel a need to write it.
So add that to the thing where I'm not all that good at writing and I feel like just leaving it be and letting someone else play.
Because when I say I want to write Doctor Who, what I'm realising is, I don't want to write more of what we're getting. That stuff is plenty good in the areas it is good and, by now, unlikely to change much. I want to write where the Doctor is a woman, or black, or disabled again (the first Doctor walked with a stick, and with the recent emphasis on running I want to do something with that). I want to write where the companion has their own agenda, doesn't think he's the whole shining universe, just their gateway to it, and why the Doctor would put up with that, or how he wouldn't. I want to write a companion who is disabled or black, and we usually get a woman so the character lodged in my brain keeps complicating that by being a woman who aspires to being Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the wide universe and the whole future to jump around in, there's things they could do out there that are greatly desired by some people around here. 8 in one of the audios tries to get his companion out of hospital to take her for proper medical attention somewhere stellar. Only his companions? And you could do a whole arc about disability and how much can be fixed with futuretech and how much you actually want fixed and what, when you get down to it, the definition of fixed is, and how much you really don't like the word applied because you're not in fact broken. And, yeah, sometimes I wish the Doctor would turn up and we could go visit a future where they could fix my brain so the depression would bugger off and never come back, but there's story in that. There's a story with the Master, at that, with psychiatric help being the most complicated kind, and people trying to 'fix' him and neither he nor the Doctor agreeing with their definitions. Free Will vs medical model, sort of thing.
That's all specifics. I can think of a lot of them. What it comes down to is I want to write stories where the characters involved end up changed.
Otherwise, has anything really happened?
And I can't do it in the fill-in-the-gaps audios, and I probably can't do it in other people's media properties at all.
But if I want to get good at it I need to learn and practice the skills involved in writing more-of. Don't I?
And shouldn't I at least try for opportunity when it's there?
So I don't know.
The other thing is, if I just write this story, the only difference will be not getting actors to read it out. Also, not getting money, but I'm kind of vague about money.
I think until I'm really actually good I can live without getting read out.
I mean, I've written something, but it's a rubbish something that would be embarrassing if they made it.
Part of it is that I'm just not that good. I want to write something good, it's never good, I get fed up with it. Simple enough.
But it's not just that. When I look at what I write, why I write fanfic, and the kind of thing I notice in other people's work, I think it doesn't add up to wanting to write more of what they're already doing. I'm not a more-of fanfic writer, I'm a more from. I want to write things that canon isn't giving me. Or else I'm just not inspired to write.
I want at least equal numbers of women, some characters of color, not killing them all off, women who save the day and have thoughts and goals of their own, women talking to each other about something other than a man, stories with queer people sometimes dating and sometimes saving the world, and a few bits about mental illness, self control, and second chances in general or adult education and late life career changes in particular. And sometimes other stuff about disability that isn't mental illness or being neuroatypical. That's a bit of a list, really. So I find things to pull apart in most everything I watch.
I could write a Nyssa and 5 story where Nyssa has her own goals and skills and saves the day, talks to a woman, who happens to be a character of color who survives the whole story (though in audio I fear the ways to make that immediately apparent are going to be clunky), has something about second chances, and helps people end up less depressed. My pitch covers all that, actually, and also has proper DW adventure stuff in it. So that should be alright.
But I can also already listen to stories where Nyssa is independent with her own personality and helps save the day a bit and there's quite a lot of my usual list in already. So no actual pressing need to fix most of those things.
Plus I cannot write slash. At least there are more than 120 stories and I've listened to a bazillion of them and I can't recall having heard any slash yet. Het, yes, but even Ace seems to mostly get chatted up by boys. Which is weird.
And I'd be fine with writing gen for Doctor Who because stories where it's not actually about all that are fine by me. People getting on with doing things for the win.
But most of the stories I've written are because something needed fixing, in particular that there were two characters who clearly should be doing something about their mutual attraction, and canon didn't seem to be doing it. Yes, I've written Jack/Ianto, but in their case the missing bit wasn't the PWP or the hothouse stuff, it was the being in an actual relationship. I've also written Owen, and in his case the problem wasn't getting him to have sex, it was getting him to notice the times he really shouldn't have had it. Whole different thing. Still untangling a relationship.
Sometimes though I just write people running around with swords killing bad guys and staking vampires and all that. That works out too.
So, I could write a story where the Doctor and Nyssa go and fix something that needs fixing.
I even quite like my story idea.
I just... don't feel a need to write it.
So add that to the thing where I'm not all that good at writing and I feel like just leaving it be and letting someone else play.
Because when I say I want to write Doctor Who, what I'm realising is, I don't want to write more of what we're getting. That stuff is plenty good in the areas it is good and, by now, unlikely to change much. I want to write where the Doctor is a woman, or black, or disabled again (the first Doctor walked with a stick, and with the recent emphasis on running I want to do something with that). I want to write where the companion has their own agenda, doesn't think he's the whole shining universe, just their gateway to it, and why the Doctor would put up with that, or how he wouldn't. I want to write a companion who is disabled or black, and we usually get a woman so the character lodged in my brain keeps complicating that by being a woman who aspires to being Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the wide universe and the whole future to jump around in, there's things they could do out there that are greatly desired by some people around here. 8 in one of the audios tries to get his companion out of hospital to take her for proper medical attention somewhere stellar. Only his companions? And you could do a whole arc about disability and how much can be fixed with futuretech and how much you actually want fixed and what, when you get down to it, the definition of fixed is, and how much you really don't like the word applied because you're not in fact broken. And, yeah, sometimes I wish the Doctor would turn up and we could go visit a future where they could fix my brain so the depression would bugger off and never come back, but there's story in that. There's a story with the Master, at that, with psychiatric help being the most complicated kind, and people trying to 'fix' him and neither he nor the Doctor agreeing with their definitions. Free Will vs medical model, sort of thing.
That's all specifics. I can think of a lot of them. What it comes down to is I want to write stories where the characters involved end up changed.
Otherwise, has anything really happened?
And I can't do it in the fill-in-the-gaps audios, and I probably can't do it in other people's media properties at all.
But if I want to get good at it I need to learn and practice the skills involved in writing more-of. Don't I?
And shouldn't I at least try for opportunity when it's there?
So I don't know.
The other thing is, if I just write this story, the only difference will be not getting actors to read it out. Also, not getting money, but I'm kind of vague about money.
I think until I'm really actually good I can live without getting read out.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 07:37 pm (UTC)