beccastareyes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccastareyes) wrote2009-01-18 12:19 pm
beccastareyes) wrote2009-01-18 12:19 pm
The Best and the Worst of My Contest and Exchange Fiction
I've written a grand total of 14 fics for exchanges and contests where there was an actual deadline. Ignoring all the drabbles I do, I mean. I did Souvenir, Movie Night, and Ace of Serpents for Yuletide, A Break in the Cycle, Masking the Symptoms, Ripples of Change, The Changing of the Guard, Stars, Sky, Night, Borrowing Music and Takes a Jhereg for fandom specific challenges, The Properties of the Elements for a remix challenge, and Rain and Mist, Shadow and Storm and Until the Last Petal Falls for general contests. (And Trust for a rare-fandom ficathon, nearly forgot)
And, it's odd. Ace of Serpents and Until the Last Petal Falls are some of my favorite stories that I've written. Ace originally was going to be a generic Van/Hitomi shippy story, but I took over letting Hitomi explain why she did what she did at the end of the series, and it turned out to be a stronger story for it. I've gotten several comments about how I was the first person that could explain the end of Escaflowne in an emotionally-satisfying way. As for Until the Last Petal Falls, it was my attempt to do a fairy tale retelling that wasn't just a shallow recast and shoehorning of characters into their roles. It ended up touching on the Beauty and the Best tale only lightly. I had been intending to write this story 'someday', but the contest gave me the impetus.
But Masking the Symptoms and Rain and Mist are stories that I knew were missing something when I finished them -- normally my work has a grace period when I like it. In MtS, I couldn't get the antagonists' motivations across, nor was I especailly sure of how to fix this, so it seemed deus ex machina. In RMSS, I was limited by the fact I had chosen to tell a 7,500 word story for a contest that asked for 5,000 word stories, and my editing job hacked at the climax too much and not enough at the beginning. Really, I should have just saved what I had and not entered it. (And I can see I really didn't like it -- the only place it's archived is on my personal website, Mediaminer (where the contest was) and Skyehawke. I never posted it to my writing journal, or other fanfiction sites.)
A lot of my contest or exchange stories that turn out well are either things I was thinking about in advance (the two I mentioned had elements that I had thought about before I joined, as well as Movie Night, and A Break in the Cycle) or some of the ones where I didn't procrastinate. Must remember this. I also rather like a lot of my rare-fandom stuff more and the fandoms-I-write-All-The-Time less.
I guess the moral of the story is that:
1. These things work for you, but...
2. Don't procrastinate.
3. If a story isn't coming together, leave time to try a new one or edit it.
4. Use it as an excuse to write what you got if you can.
And, it's odd. Ace of Serpents and Until the Last Petal Falls are some of my favorite stories that I've written. Ace originally was going to be a generic Van/Hitomi shippy story, but I took over letting Hitomi explain why she did what she did at the end of the series, and it turned out to be a stronger story for it. I've gotten several comments about how I was the first person that could explain the end of Escaflowne in an emotionally-satisfying way. As for Until the Last Petal Falls, it was my attempt to do a fairy tale retelling that wasn't just a shallow recast and shoehorning of characters into their roles. It ended up touching on the Beauty and the Best tale only lightly. I had been intending to write this story 'someday', but the contest gave me the impetus.
But Masking the Symptoms and Rain and Mist are stories that I knew were missing something when I finished them -- normally my work has a grace period when I like it. In MtS, I couldn't get the antagonists' motivations across, nor was I especailly sure of how to fix this, so it seemed deus ex machina. In RMSS, I was limited by the fact I had chosen to tell a 7,500 word story for a contest that asked for 5,000 word stories, and my editing job hacked at the climax too much and not enough at the beginning. Really, I should have just saved what I had and not entered it. (And I can see I really didn't like it -- the only place it's archived is on my personal website, Mediaminer (where the contest was) and Skyehawke. I never posted it to my writing journal, or other fanfiction sites.)
A lot of my contest or exchange stories that turn out well are either things I was thinking about in advance (the two I mentioned had elements that I had thought about before I joined, as well as Movie Night, and A Break in the Cycle) or some of the ones where I didn't procrastinate. Must remember this. I also rather like a lot of my rare-fandom stuff more and the fandoms-I-write-All-The-Time less.
I guess the moral of the story is that:
1. These things work for you, but...
2. Don't procrastinate.
3. If a story isn't coming together, leave time to try a new one or edit it.
4. Use it as an excuse to write what you got if you can.