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

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.