The 'Ah!' moment, the 'Whoah!' sentence, and writing as wrestling.

[hmpf]

Well, looks like I've been linked at quickquote. Which is kinda cool. It's also freakin' hilarious, 'cause I'm still not a HP fan, and yet HP fandom seems determined to love me back like no other fandom has before. (Standard disclaimer: 'I am not a HP fan' does not mean that I dislike HP. I enjoyed the books well enough. They just didn't hit enough of the right buttons for me to become obsessed with them. Sirius did, but being a Sirius fan is not quite the same as being a HP fan, just as being a Methos fan did not make me a HL fan.)
Not that I'm *dis*liked in my other fandoms, I'm just sort of really, really peripheral there. In six years in HL fandom and three+ years in Farscape fandom I haven't gotten the kind of feedback I got for my short forays into HP fandom. I mean, look at the track record: I write one measly little fic, and it actually gets recced on someone's recs page! In all my years of writing fanfic, that has never happened to me! (Maybe I've just gotten a hell of a lot better recently. I must admit that some of my earlier efforts were kind of crap. Compared to what I'm doing now, that is. *g*) Well, and it's not just the fic – 'cause, you know, I decide to post, like, two Harry Potter related things in my LJ – the first ever, apart from the occasional 'I like Sirius' – and, hey presto! I get pimped again!

So, while my 15 minutes of fame last and I'm sitting here munching the best curry dish I ever made, some fodder for discussion... although I really shouldn't... I don't have time... I really don't.... Arrrgh.

Oh, and btw, if you've never been here before: welcome. Watch Farscape. Read Finder. Science Fiction starting with an 'F' rocks.



Soooo... topic no. 1: The 'Ah!' Moment:

I love that moment. The moment when you realise, when reading a fic, that it's not just any fic, it's *fan*fic. Of course, you know that anyway, otherwise you wouldn't be there reading it, but there is nevertheless something delicious about that moment. Many fics – not all – have it. An inoccuous beginning that could be from any 'normal' story or novel, and then, the sudden moment of recognition, the winking understanding created between the author and you, that this is set in this-and-this pre-existing universe. It's a kind of 'coulda fooled a mundane reader, but *you* and I know!' thing. For some of my favourite fics, that moment is delayed until almost the middle of the fic or so – Analise's 'The Delitescent Doorway' (Farscape) comes to mind. I really like that. It's a little bit like fanfic in drag – dressing it up as a 'legitimate' story, and then suddenly taking off the wig, and ta-daah, it's fanfic! *g*

Anybody know that feeling, or is this just me being weird?



No. 2: The 'Whoah!' Sentence (or paragraph):

It is my opinion that one of the main aims of writing fanfic is not just to tell a good story, but to produce what I call the 'Whoah!' Sentence. Preferably not just one, but many of those, in fact. (There are different kinds of fanfic, and not all try to do that, but those that I love most do.)
So, what the frell am I talking about here? Well, I'm talking about sentences that give you something akin to what AICN's Harry Knowles once termed a 'geekgasm' and what I call, sometimes, a 'fangasm'. That shudder you get when a fic gives you just *exactly* what you're in the fandom for in the first place – panders *exactly* to your obsession, so to speak.
I am not talking about the intellectual appreciation of a beautifully crafted sentence, although that, too, is and should be a goal of writing fanfic. What I'm talking here is a gut feeling, something that has little to do with reason or art.
I'd love to give you examples, but I really don't have the time to go looking at dozens of favourite fics again. But if you know what I'm talking about, if this isn't just me, you know what I'm talking about, anyway. (Now there's a sentence that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.) Ah, frell, let me give you an example from my current fic ('cause, you know, I know what gives *me* a fangasm so I put it all in there). I need to give you a little more than one sentence because the sentence itself is unremarkable out of context:

***

Sirius eats hastily, like a man trying to get a necessary but unpleasant chore done as quickly as possible. His hair, not long, not short, slightly greasy, hangs like a curtain. He has turned slumping, making himself smaller than he is, looking down and evading your gaze into a fine art. Hiding, always hiding. Remus watches him hungrily.

"Eat," says Sirius, hidden. Not looking up.

Remus eats.

***

The 'Whoah!' sentences in this, for me, anyway – everybody has their own reactions, their own buttons – are 'Remus watches him hungrily.' and '"Eat," says Sirius, hidden. Not looking up.' Kinda sums up their relationship for me, in a way. (S/R are the only ship I've ever actively shipped in any fandom, yet I can't see them happy, or even interacting normally. Too much psychological baggage by far – especially in the kind of AU that I'm writing right now.) So, whenever I write them (and I thought I never would again...), they have a really bad relationship, really. They have a serious communication problem, at least in my fics. Of course, part of the challenge is to get past that. *g*)

So... do you know what I mean? Feel free to quote your own 'Whoah!' sentences here, I'm curious to see what 'gets' other people. I may post my own from some of my favourite fics, later, if I can find some time. Tomorrow, maybe.



And lastly, a short one:

Writing as wrestling. – This is for the people out there who, like me, write in a second language – selenak, dunkle_feuer, bimo, and many others:

Why do you write in English? Is it because the audience is larger? Is it because the source text is in English? These factors certainly come into play to some degree for me (particularly the second one), but the main reason, I think, is that I love the feeling of having to wrestle with the language a bit. Oh, it was a pain, in the beginning, when I was still lacking so much vocabulary, as well as the finer points of grammar and other things that con't come easy even if you have a high level of proficiency in a second language. But now, I'm at just the right level to feel comfortable with the language, even allow myself to play with it to a degree, and yet still preserve that valuable feeling of being essentially a stranger to it, looking at it from outside. I am much more aware of how I use language when I write in English than I am when I write in German (same goes for reading, really). And as a result, I love English a lot more than I love German. Even though I still need more help from a beta to polish my stories than I would in German.

So, what's *your* reason?


Oh, and totally unrelated: today I met a fellow student I occasionally (too rarely) have tea/coffee/breakfast with - and after we'd exchanged our latest news, she looked at me sort of strangely for a moment and then said, in a thoughtful tone, "You know, I just realised that you're living in a whole different world."

I replied, "Well, now you know how I feel when I'm talking to, well, basically, anybody." *g*

Comments

lj language

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Practicalities and the source text. The same goes for the fanfiction. I originally started the lj so I wasn't restricted to anonymous comments anymore, and commenting English entries in German does not make sense, nicht wahr?

Brilliant icon!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I was wondering more about why we choose to write our fic in English, though.

Re: Brilliant icon!

[bimo.livejournal.com]

I was wondering more about why we choose to write our fic in English, though.

Interesting question. However, I fear that I'm not exactly the right person to answer it, since I actually happen to be one of those few authors, who, despite sufficient language skills, still prefer writing in German. As much as I love English, using my mother tongue feels way more comfortable for me; especially when I'm experimenting with different stylistic means and narrative approaches. Apart from an extremely short Farscape vignette called "Floating" all of my English fan fiction stories are mere translations.

As for the reasons why I'm relatively immune to the temptations of a larger audience and the easier accessibility of the source material, I believe dunkle_feuer makes an excellent point when hinting at the influential power of the first encounter. When I discovered the English speaking fan world in 1996 (that's about the time I finally got myself access to the internet and an e-mail account) I had already been in fandom for several years and had already made very positive experiences with German fanzines.

[dunkle-feuer.livejournal.com]

I replied, "Well, now you know how I feel when I'm talking to, well, basically, anybody." *g*

Hehe. That sounds very familiar. Then again, there are enough people who share your different world, so you are not entirely alone ;-)

Writing in English: I think, part of the reason is certainly that the first fanfics I read were in English. It never even occurred to me to that time that I could write it in German as well. Well, and later, once I discovered that people were indeed writing fanfic in German, just not as many, it was already too late. I was firmly set on English for fanfic. Though, the larger audience started to come into the game then, too. Plus, I barely knew German slashers or even fanfic writers to that time. Now I know a few, but most of them write in English as well and it would just feel wrong writing fanfics in German now. And I like to play with the language. It gives me a bliss to see just how much I have improved during the years.

But to make up for that, all my original stories are written in German. There it was never a question in which language to write them, but I have no clear idea why either. Maybe it was the challenge of suddenly writing (and playing with) my own language again.

I have a firm separation there. English is for all kind of fanfic (including RPS) whereas German is for my original stuff. And I think that allows me to see English and German with the objectivity I need to play with (and write in) both languages efficiently (of course, it helps that in RL I am quite often talking in a completely different language again) --- if that makes sense now. Well, it does to me, but that doesn't mean much, and I am not completely awake yet *g*

HP fandom and feedback: The fandom is amazing in that regard. I've never gained more feedback/reaction/recommendations in any of my other fandoms. It is known for the high rate of it, even if most are just one-liners and such.

But apart from that: You are good and you deserve it. It's a shame that you and your stories don't get more recognition.

Oh, and btw, if you've never been here before: welcome. Watch Farscape. Read Finder. Science Fiction starting with an 'F' rocks.

Now you've got me thinking what else starts with F (of my favorite 'Sci-Fi's'), but I really can't think about anything apart from Farscape. V, E, H, and probably quite a few others as well, but not F. Hmm ... :-)

And that got much longer than I intended to, but you asked for it ;-)

F

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Now you've got me thinking what else starts with F (of my favorite 'Sci-Fi's'), but I really can't think about anything apart from Farscape. V, E, H, and probably quite a few others as well, but not F. Hmm ... :-)

Hmm... Firefly... Forever Knight? (well, okay, not SF)... Futurama!

But Finder does rock mightily - now that I have almost the complete series (only missing the latest three issues, becaus I figured they would probably be collected in a trade paperback soon and it would be reasonable to wait for that) it's even better than before... Know a lot more about Jaeger now, as well, though he's still mysterious enough to be interesting... As one character says: "The man's an open book. No telling if it's fiction or nonfiction, though." Hehee...

Why Englisch?

[(Anonymous)]

For me there's always been a distinction between narration and poetry. For narration I used to prefer German over English simply because I used to be better in German. Now that my English is about par with my German, I usually go for English because of the larger audience.
Poetry is a different thing. When I started writing poetry (I think I was 16 at the time) I would not even consider German as an option. Writing poetry in a foreign language may seem more difficult, but English is IMHO an exception. Writing poetry in English is much easier than in German, because English has more words that rhyme (Call me old-fashioned, but if it doesn't rhyme, it's not a real poem in my eyes.) and more short one-syllable words which makes it easier to get the rhythm right. Now that my skills have improved over the years I do write poetry in German, too, and in fact some of my best works are in German, but back when I was a teenager I found English to be much easier.
BTW, despite English being the easier language for poetry, Shakespeare somehow never managed to write a good poem.

MSB