Coming soon: Meta

[hmpf]

Lots of it, if I can pull myself together. (It's kinda tough for me, producing higher amounts of quality meta. I wouldn't want it too get too rambling, and I ramble a lot if I don't stop myself.) Currently thinking - and having half-written entries - about:

- fandom anxieties
- writing fanfic as a learning experience vs. writing it just for fun
- fanfic as emotional manipulation between consenting adults / the aesthetics of fanfic
- writing Methos (and other characters insufficiently defined in canon) 'in character'

Shame that what I really should be doing is preparing a paper for uni...

***

Speaking of meta, everyone should read the comic "Shade the Changing Man". 'Cause Shade's a guy from planet Meta. Seriously. (It's also, for the most part, a really good comic. Oh, and you can't buy it anywhere - it's a series from the nineties, never been traded except for the first six issues - but you can download it in a variety of places.)

Maybe I should make myself a Planet Meta icon or something.

***

Oh, and a writing update: 'Sometimes We Believe' is 150 words shorter now than it was, and quite a bit nastier. I ended up rewriting a lot more than simply cutting stuff out. I'll have another look at it in a week or so. 'Epilogue' has also been through its first round of rewriting, and is 180 words shorter now. Considering it was only half the length of SWB in the first place, that means there was a much higher removal ratio here than in the previous story. Too much purple prose, even for my own taste (and my tolerance for that kind of stuff is fairly high - I even believe there is such a thing as 'good kitsch'). I'm also trying to get the two different characters in it to actually *sound* different, to give them each their own voice - but that's proving difficult, to say the least. There isn't a lot to work with, the whole story, and especially the parts where the characters are still distinct personalities, being so short. For that matter, I'm also trying to make Methos sound a bit more like Methos, 'cause he doesn't at the moment. Then again, it's not a situation where he would be *likely* to sound much like his usual self. I dunno... I can see this rewrite taking a while. Maybe I'll do 'Names' first, 'cause that story is fairly recent (relatively speaking) and mostly just requires some dialogue fixing, IIRC.

(And, since I mentioned fan fiction as a learning experience above: dialogue really is one area I feel I have gotten a lot better in since I've been writing fanfic. It's still very difficult, though, what with my somewhat limited active knowledge of colloquial English. Not even living in Britain for ten months changed that significantly. I don't pick up spoken language as quickly as written language. Strange, that. Isn't it supposed to be the other way round for most people?)

Comments

Re: Yeah, well, but I know a lot more non-native speakers of English who...

[ommadon.livejournal.com]

That's kinda what I meant, there are several different learning styles (you come across this kinda thing if you do courses in human-computer interaction), some people just respond better to information that they see than they do to oral cues.

It seems to be a bit extreme with me, though.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I can't remember a thing if I only hear it, usually. That's why university is - mostly - a waste of time for me. Lectures just leave *no* trace on my memory *at all*. I wish our lecturers would provide some form of written version of their lectures, so I could read it instead...