How To Write Bad FanFic
Question:
Is it possible to churn out bad fan fic of your own WIP?
Answer:
Apparently, yes.
I’ve been struggling with a scene. Not that I’m actively not writing it, exactly. Just that I keep writing 2-3,000 words of it and then having to throw it away because it sucks.
Not sucks like the prose is clunky or the dialogue is stilted or there’s too many adverbs and adjectives. The scene is tense, funny, hawt.
Too bad it makes no frigging sense.
Version 1: Heroine follows hero to his bedchamber, waits by the open door while his valet helps him from one outfit to another, then goes inside when hero calls to her and excises the other bodies from the room, exhorting them to shut the door behind them.
The problem? Uh, hello, Regency house party. Broad daylight. Servants everywhere. WTF is she doing with him in his bed chamber, watching him undress and redress, then agreeing to spend some quality time with him alone once he kicks the servants out? Stupid, stupid, stupid. All three of us. (Hero, Heroine, Erica.)
Delete button.
Version 2: No bedchamber. Too dangerous/stupid/fanfic-y. Hero sweeps heroine into a room off the main thoroughfare, conveniently stocked with sofas and just as conveniently devoid of houseguests and servantkind. He does what any other anti-marriage Regency buck would do: promptly starts to get nekkid.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrt! (That’s the sound of a screeching halt.) Although the partial nudity was ostensibly motivated by something other than the desire to get into the heroine’s skirts (checking out a wound) it’s still him with his shirt off and her right there staring at his bare chest, if a bit nervously. (As well she should.)
Version 3: After being fish-slapped by Maven Lacey (who only saw Version 2, as even I knew Version 1 was a goner) I ditched all the luscious half-nakedness of Version 2 and kept the rest. We’ll see if it works.
Clearly, my characters need to get in bed. According to the storyboard, that’s about 5 scenes from now. If I write like wildfire, maybe I’ll (er, I mean they’ll) get their love scene by this weekend…
YOUR TURN: Come on, spill. Ever been tempted to write your characters into something you wanted to see, rather than what grew logically and organically from the current plot? How did you wrestle yourself and your story back on track? Seeking all advice and confessional tales from the trenches! And if you’re a reader, not a writer–Ever read a scene you’re sure the author put in there because she wanted something to happen, not because the characters would’ve chosen to do whatever they were doing?
As a reader? Oh, yeah. All the time. Insert WTF moment here. Standing in the rain on a parapet, soon to get sexytime up against a castle turret?
WTF.
As a writer, I was really interested to read this theory on fanfic mode. I think maybe sometimes I move my scenes too slowly, instead of fast enough. Probably because of the previous reader comment. Motivate everything! No crazy behavior! My characters are logical and well-behaved!
And, sometimes, boring. Sometimes a little nekkid in the anteroom is just what they need…
I think you’re trying too hard to get five scenes ahead of yourself, Erica. Remember Keats: “If the poetry come not as naturally as the leaves to the tree, it had better not come at all.”
Same goes for your h/h – and yes, the pun is fully intended!
LOL, Lace. I don’t get it. What’s wrong with rainy sexytime up against a castle turret?
Bill: I am definitely trying to get ahead of myself. No question there. And I shall be denied, as I’m gone for most of today, and fly North to visit family tomorrow…
The way you described the different scenes and deletions made me laugh
I can remember reading books where there are scenes and you kind of go – should you really be doing that? Right there? Right now?
Hmm, I’m trying to remember if I have a scene where my characters are trying to get ahead of themselves. Or me trying to allow them to.. I can’t think of any off-hand. Well, no.. I did have some – and they didn’t make sense.. but they worked out later in the story. I remember shuffling a lot of parts of my latest MS around, and then it somehow worked out. Well, except for having to read through it and noticing suddenly that the hero is referring to an event in chapter three that now happens in chapter seven… but, well…
Maybe you should jump ahead and get that love scene out of all of your systems? LOL!
I tend to find when I can’t get the scene to move along as it should that I’m in the wrong POV. Hop over the other protag’s head and things start moving along as they should.
As a reader, I have come across that situation many, many times. For instance, I read a story written by somebody that I knew had just broken up with her boyfriend. Subconsciously, she had written this person in as one of the characters, at the start (when the relationship was still strong) as a vision of perfection, a god if you will. Suddenly, he became an absolutely obnoxious SOB with no prompting. And with your scene, if you don’t want them to get it in the manner as you described, use a little tension build up- this would work best where there ARE people about, as, in many a story, good or bad, there is usually a racy scene where the characters hop into bed, and, with the assurance of the lead male character to remove the lead female’s doubts start to get it awnnn.
You could start like this (if you haven’t done it already, just seen date of posting) but have them actually break from the mould and GET caught. This removes the need for another sexual scene (and makes the readers sweat) until you are in a situation when it is more realistic.