happydalek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydalek) wrote2009-01-12 06:21 pm
happydalek) wrote2009-01-12 06:21 pm
Entry tags:
Unfinished Fic Meme
From looking at my journal entries, you wouldn't be able to tell that 90% of my free time is spent writing fic. Seriously. It's practically my default setting: "Hmm, I'm bored. I know! I'll write a few scenes." It always has been, since even before I knew how to write. I'd dictate stuff to my parents and then draw the illustrations. The problem is, I don't finish things. Ever. Well, not ever ever. I have a few short fics, drabbles and the like that are floating around on the internets.
But for as much as I write, the proportion of it that is complete is so astronomically unbalanced that it might as well equal zero. With that track record, writing is a huge, HUGE waste of my time. So much so that I'm thinking I might give it up for lent this year as a vice. 0_o.
It's a terrifying thought, but it's either that, or I finally discover a fount of discipline somewhere and start finishing stuff. I'd very much prefer the latter to happen, but the only way it's likely to is if I become accountable to somebody other than myself. I'd like to make it a quasi-New Year's Resolution, to finish my fics.
So in that spirit, here's the Unfinished Fic Meme that some of you out there have done already. It's a simple one, to post snippets of things that are rotting away on your harddrive. Since that basically constitutes the sum total of my documents folder, the following is a very small, hand-picked sample.
First, the fanfic. More specifically, the non-Doctor Who fanfic.
Star Wars
1. A tiny scene, set between the two trilogies.
Vader slammed Osik back into the wall with a careless wave of his hand. Osik might have blacked out for a split second as he landed face-down on the cold floor, breathless.
He looked up through watery eyes to see Vader striding quickly down the corridor. Slowly, Osik drew a breath and eased into a seated position. Either Vader was a lot stronger than he used to be, or Osik was just getting old, cause that hurt. He touched the back of his head gingerly. He'd be feeling that in the morning, for sure.
"Oh, my, Captain Lutangorach! Are you alright, sir?" Ello clanked over to ask. Her anxious tone lended a startled appearance to her photoreceptors and speaker plate.
"A simple, 'not now, I'm busy' would've done the trick," Osik grumbled.
2. A longer scene from another project, set somewhere post-RotJ
"You always expect a bomb, Sekot. And there never is one," Pilot scoffed, waving a hand across the control panel, seeking in the Force for the appropriate junction. He wasn't as technically oriented as many of his peers. No time for it. He found the point he was looking for, and with a flourish of his lightsaber, plunged the weapon down through the plasteel and wires to sever it. The control room instantly plunged into darkness. The only light was in the form of a shower of sparks when Pilot wrenched his lightsaber out of the wall, leaving a fainly glowing orange hole. He allowed himself a victorious chuckle. With another artful twirl, he deactivated and holstered his saber and dug in his belt for his comlink.
Beep.
"What was that?" Sekot asked, her Force presence swelling anxiously.
"What?" Pilot turned, saber held defensively.
Beep.
"That! What's that?" Sekot demanded, pulling out her own saber.
Beep.
Pilot held up a cautionary hand, projecting a calming Force wave towards Sekot. Jittery nerves and energy blades were a bad combination for the padawan. "Something's beeping."
"Very good! So what the hell is it, a bomb?"
"Just cool your engines," Pilot snapped, sensing for an active circuit.
Beep.
Beep.
"It's getting faster, Pilot. It's a bomb, isn't it? I just know it's a bomb."
"It's not a bomb!"
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
The wiring in the walls still glowed in the Force from residual energy, but it was fading. There! Heat. Lots of energy, not fading. He moved across the floor towards it. On the fringes of his awareness he could sense Sekot projecting concentrated beams of Force energy, wildly scanning the walls. It was writhing with uncertainty and fear. He heard her breath catch at the same moment as her energy beam landed on the spot. Pilot's sensing followed. He traced the flow of energy, the composition of the components. The energy suddenly spiked.
"Oh, stang," he gasped, "It's a bomb."
The Mummy
1. Would you believe there are almost no Indiana Jones/The Mummy crossover fics out there? Here's the sum total of one I tried to write.
"You ain't got a problem with bugs, do you?" Jones asked.
He could feel them, their thousands of legs through the linens, their hundreds of pinchers gnawing, clawing their way through, clustering over his face as his desperate, stale breath saturated the cloth, feeling them dig at his eyes, seeking to feed on the blood they could smell on him. In the claustrphic dark he could only wait. Wait to feel the slice of their jaws, praying that suffocation would take him first.
Imhotep didn't answer, just took the torch and entered the passageway head-first.
2. I love the idea of an Imhotep revenge fic. And ideas were about as far as I got on writing one.
His jaw dropped. "You?!"
Imhotep smiled. "Hello, O'Connell. Surprised to see me?"
"You speak English now, eh?"
"I've acquired many new skills since we last met," Imhotep responded, sending O'Connell's pistols across the room with the flick of a finger.
O'Connell startled and had the sense to look discomfited for a moment. Then, forcing a confident sneer, said, "Yeah, but you're still bald."
Imhotep flicked his finger again and sent O'Connell crashing into the wall. Imhotep held him there for a few extra seconds before lowering his hand. O'Connell, as well as the top layer of plaster behind him, collapsed to the floor. Imhotep casually walked over and relieved him of the amulet. "Goodbye, O'Connell."
Star Trek: TOS
Set during the first five-year mission, I had a complete synopsis written up for this, and then...it just kinda stalled on me.
"I don't like her, Jim. She may not have killed Reynolds outright, but I'll bet my commission she knows who did. She's a troublemaker."
"You agree, Spock?"
"On the contrary, Captain. I find Miss Grantham to be exceedingly forthright with little reservations about speaking her mind. I find it highly unlikely that she is keeping information from us."
Kirk smirked. "So you like her?"
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Miss Grantham is also abrasive, intrusive and somewhat lacking in refinement, however I must admit that I do find her emotional honesty to be what you might call 'a refreshing change of pace.'"
McCoy kept his eyes on the corridor as he muttered, "Of course you do."
The Magnificent Seven
Demonstrating my love for teensy, tiny fandoms! This thing died a quick death when I realized I was writing a Mary Sue.
The grave was humble, even for Boot Hill. But Sam's braids were soaked with sweat and her shoulders ached, and since the town's hired gravediggers had run off hours ago for fear of being shot, it would have to do. Tossing the shovel up onto the ground, Sam hesitated just long enough to eye the surroundings for others looking to take potshots. Setting her jaw firmly, it took just about the last of her strength to scramble out of the chest-high hole in the rocky desert soil. She sat beside it and eyed the wooden cross at its head. Not even big enough to fit a name on, she noted sadly.
Sam also noted that the sun was beating fairly strongly on her back. Must be near to noon. The hearse ought to have been working its way up the hill by now. Tilting the brim of her hat, she looked down into the town and saw it sitting there. Just sitting there, with a few flyspecks standing around, not doing anything. In fact, the whole street looked much the same way: quiet and empty. Frustration boiled up in the pit of her stomach. Damn this town! Her father was a drunk and a drifter with nothing but an unpaid bar tab to his name, but it was his red skin that these townsfolk objected to? She should've known it when the only help she could get to pay for the burial was from a passing salesman. Her tiredness forgotten, Sam slung her rifle across her back and started back down the hill. She'd lead the damn hearse back up here and bury the coffin herself if she had to.
The Wild, Wild West
In the last couple weeks I've dreamed up at least 3 different, full-length fic ideas for this show, two of which I promptly lost interest in. Here's a bit from one of them.
"I'll tell you, Mr. West, you sure are one lucky fella."
"How's that?"
"Oh, geez! Where to begin? You're young and handsome, you got a fascinating job and a friend you can always rely on. You've led a most charmed existence."
"Too bad it has to end this way," West quipped.
"But you see, that's why you're so extraordinarily lucky, because I got picked to kill you."
"I suppose it's too much to hope that that means you're not going to?"
She sighed and sat down, pretense gone. "Well, I can't be that obvious about it, can I? But you see, I've been thinking of getting out of this operation for awhile now. You don't know me all that well, Mr. West, but I am a bit of a stickler for efficiency." She leaned in, conspiratorily. "And between you and me, this is not an efficient system Diablo's got. The man is stuck on his own cleverness, and it's cost us. If we'd been running things without all the stupid flash and ceremony, you folks up high wouldn't know anything about us," she complained, waving the tip of her pistol in a demonstrative swirl.
West eyed her gun cautiously, somewhat puzzled as to where this was going. "I take it that bothers you."
She glanced at him, as though she'd almost forgot he was there, and pushed a chair towards him with one foot, gesturing for him to sit down. West hesitated, but complied. She hopped off the desk and wandered over to the liquor cabinet, one arm still aiming her gun in his direction. "What I've come to realize is that Diablo and I have very different motives," she continued, taking out a bottle and two shot glasses. West arched an eyebrow. "He wants the attention. All these crimes, they're nothing but a stunt to get people to notice him, to make things exciting. He wants to make his mark on history, when all I ever wanted was an easier life than the one I had. You do drink whiskey, Mr. West?" she asked, glancing back at him.
West looked faintly amused, but nodded graciously. She walked over to him, glass in one hand, pistol still aimed with the other, and gave him his drink. She then retrieved her own and perched herself back on the desk. She tossed back the shot in one gulp. West waited a moment or two, then did likewise. Good Tennessee bourbon. Didn't taste poisoned or altered.
Aaaanndd...that brings us to Doctor Who
1. My only attempt at writing Martha.
The Doctor stared into the mirror. The face that looked back at him was contorted with shock and dismay. "Oh no! No, no, no, no, no. That's not right at all." He grabbed at his throat, startled. "That's REALLY not right. Can't be."
"You're telling me!" Martha spluttered.
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, feeling his scalp, trying to prove to himself that he really hadn't ended up this way. "I look...I look..." he turned to Martha. "How do I look?" he asked pleadingly. Martha stared back at him in disbelief. "Not your opinion, that can wait; I mean, what do you see? Honestly, what do I look like?" He turned to face her full-on, flinching in anticipation.
Martha chewed her bottom lip uncomfortably. She took a deep breath. "Um, middle-aged, brownish hair...thinning a bit," she added hesitantly. Her large, brown eyes swept up and down his new frame--which was a bit oversized for his trim blue suit--somewhat critically. "Not...too bad, I guess, considering..."
The Doctor gazed back into the mirror wretchedly. So he wasn't imagining it. "Considering I'm old. Older. I haven't been old since...I was young." He stared off into space, blinking confusedly.
2. I keep toying with the idea of writing a sequel to Fission, but somehow it keeps eluding me. My working title, appropriately enough, is Fusion.
"A tempting notion, Doctor, but I don't think my hearts could take it. Besides, would Nyssa even accept me?"
"You're her father--"
"No, I'm not. Tremas would have no memory, no concept of the kind of selfish desperation that leads a man to harness a black hole, and to doom his own planet for the sake of extending his own life." Tremas met the Doctor's gaze briefly. "The Eye of Harmony; the heart of Gallifrey, is it not, Doctor?" Tremas queried with a twinkle in his eye and a peculiar swagger in his tone that was frighteningly evocative of the Master. But it was gone in a flash, replaced once more with Tremas' sad smile. "Nor would he know, as I do, Gallifrey's name for the impossible thing that I am. No, Doctor, I am not Tremas, father to Nyssa, husband to Kassia, Consul of the Traken Union and once Keeper-Designate, despite his memories that I have clung to as my own, and used to convince myself that I am also not the man responsible for destroying them, for committing the atrocities that have landed me here. I'm a contradiction in terms, and I shouldn't exist. It's right that Nyssa believes her father his dead. It's the truth, and I would be doing her a grave injustice to pretend otherwise."
A nice, tidy collection that doesn't even begin to cover all the stuff that's molding away in my dozens of notebooks. My one consolation here is that my collection of unfinished original fic is even bigger. Which really isn't much of a consolation at all, come to think of it. *facepalm*
But for as much as I write, the proportion of it that is complete is so astronomically unbalanced that it might as well equal zero. With that track record, writing is a huge, HUGE waste of my time. So much so that I'm thinking I might give it up for lent this year as a vice. 0_o.
It's a terrifying thought, but it's either that, or I finally discover a fount of discipline somewhere and start finishing stuff. I'd very much prefer the latter to happen, but the only way it's likely to is if I become accountable to somebody other than myself. I'd like to make it a quasi-New Year's Resolution, to finish my fics.
So in that spirit, here's the Unfinished Fic Meme that some of you out there have done already. It's a simple one, to post snippets of things that are rotting away on your harddrive. Since that basically constitutes the sum total of my documents folder, the following is a very small, hand-picked sample.
First, the fanfic. More specifically, the non-Doctor Who fanfic.
Star Wars
1. A tiny scene, set between the two trilogies.
Vader slammed Osik back into the wall with a careless wave of his hand. Osik might have blacked out for a split second as he landed face-down on the cold floor, breathless.
He looked up through watery eyes to see Vader striding quickly down the corridor. Slowly, Osik drew a breath and eased into a seated position. Either Vader was a lot stronger than he used to be, or Osik was just getting old, cause that hurt. He touched the back of his head gingerly. He'd be feeling that in the morning, for sure.
"Oh, my, Captain Lutangorach! Are you alright, sir?" Ello clanked over to ask. Her anxious tone lended a startled appearance to her photoreceptors and speaker plate.
"A simple, 'not now, I'm busy' would've done the trick," Osik grumbled.
2. A longer scene from another project, set somewhere post-RotJ
"You always expect a bomb, Sekot. And there never is one," Pilot scoffed, waving a hand across the control panel, seeking in the Force for the appropriate junction. He wasn't as technically oriented as many of his peers. No time for it. He found the point he was looking for, and with a flourish of his lightsaber, plunged the weapon down through the plasteel and wires to sever it. The control room instantly plunged into darkness. The only light was in the form of a shower of sparks when Pilot wrenched his lightsaber out of the wall, leaving a fainly glowing orange hole. He allowed himself a victorious chuckle. With another artful twirl, he deactivated and holstered his saber and dug in his belt for his comlink.
Beep.
"What was that?" Sekot asked, her Force presence swelling anxiously.
"What?" Pilot turned, saber held defensively.
Beep.
"That! What's that?" Sekot demanded, pulling out her own saber.
Beep.
Pilot held up a cautionary hand, projecting a calming Force wave towards Sekot. Jittery nerves and energy blades were a bad combination for the padawan. "Something's beeping."
"Very good! So what the hell is it, a bomb?"
"Just cool your engines," Pilot snapped, sensing for an active circuit.
Beep.
Beep.
"It's getting faster, Pilot. It's a bomb, isn't it? I just know it's a bomb."
"It's not a bomb!"
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
The wiring in the walls still glowed in the Force from residual energy, but it was fading. There! Heat. Lots of energy, not fading. He moved across the floor towards it. On the fringes of his awareness he could sense Sekot projecting concentrated beams of Force energy, wildly scanning the walls. It was writhing with uncertainty and fear. He heard her breath catch at the same moment as her energy beam landed on the spot. Pilot's sensing followed. He traced the flow of energy, the composition of the components. The energy suddenly spiked.
"Oh, stang," he gasped, "It's a bomb."
The Mummy
1. Would you believe there are almost no Indiana Jones/The Mummy crossover fics out there? Here's the sum total of one I tried to write.
"You ain't got a problem with bugs, do you?" Jones asked.
He could feel them, their thousands of legs through the linens, their hundreds of pinchers gnawing, clawing their way through, clustering over his face as his desperate, stale breath saturated the cloth, feeling them dig at his eyes, seeking to feed on the blood they could smell on him. In the claustrphic dark he could only wait. Wait to feel the slice of their jaws, praying that suffocation would take him first.
Imhotep didn't answer, just took the torch and entered the passageway head-first.
2. I love the idea of an Imhotep revenge fic. And ideas were about as far as I got on writing one.
His jaw dropped. "You?!"
Imhotep smiled. "Hello, O'Connell. Surprised to see me?"
"You speak English now, eh?"
"I've acquired many new skills since we last met," Imhotep responded, sending O'Connell's pistols across the room with the flick of a finger.
O'Connell startled and had the sense to look discomfited for a moment. Then, forcing a confident sneer, said, "Yeah, but you're still bald."
Imhotep flicked his finger again and sent O'Connell crashing into the wall. Imhotep held him there for a few extra seconds before lowering his hand. O'Connell, as well as the top layer of plaster behind him, collapsed to the floor. Imhotep casually walked over and relieved him of the amulet. "Goodbye, O'Connell."
Star Trek: TOS
Set during the first five-year mission, I had a complete synopsis written up for this, and then...it just kinda stalled on me.
"I don't like her, Jim. She may not have killed Reynolds outright, but I'll bet my commission she knows who did. She's a troublemaker."
"You agree, Spock?"
"On the contrary, Captain. I find Miss Grantham to be exceedingly forthright with little reservations about speaking her mind. I find it highly unlikely that she is keeping information from us."
Kirk smirked. "So you like her?"
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Miss Grantham is also abrasive, intrusive and somewhat lacking in refinement, however I must admit that I do find her emotional honesty to be what you might call 'a refreshing change of pace.'"
McCoy kept his eyes on the corridor as he muttered, "Of course you do."
The Magnificent Seven
Demonstrating my love for teensy, tiny fandoms! This thing died a quick death when I realized I was writing a Mary Sue.
The grave was humble, even for Boot Hill. But Sam's braids were soaked with sweat and her shoulders ached, and since the town's hired gravediggers had run off hours ago for fear of being shot, it would have to do. Tossing the shovel up onto the ground, Sam hesitated just long enough to eye the surroundings for others looking to take potshots. Setting her jaw firmly, it took just about the last of her strength to scramble out of the chest-high hole in the rocky desert soil. She sat beside it and eyed the wooden cross at its head. Not even big enough to fit a name on, she noted sadly.
Sam also noted that the sun was beating fairly strongly on her back. Must be near to noon. The hearse ought to have been working its way up the hill by now. Tilting the brim of her hat, she looked down into the town and saw it sitting there. Just sitting there, with a few flyspecks standing around, not doing anything. In fact, the whole street looked much the same way: quiet and empty. Frustration boiled up in the pit of her stomach. Damn this town! Her father was a drunk and a drifter with nothing but an unpaid bar tab to his name, but it was his red skin that these townsfolk objected to? She should've known it when the only help she could get to pay for the burial was from a passing salesman. Her tiredness forgotten, Sam slung her rifle across her back and started back down the hill. She'd lead the damn hearse back up here and bury the coffin herself if she had to.
The Wild, Wild West
In the last couple weeks I've dreamed up at least 3 different, full-length fic ideas for this show, two of which I promptly lost interest in. Here's a bit from one of them.
"I'll tell you, Mr. West, you sure are one lucky fella."
"How's that?"
"Oh, geez! Where to begin? You're young and handsome, you got a fascinating job and a friend you can always rely on. You've led a most charmed existence."
"Too bad it has to end this way," West quipped.
"But you see, that's why you're so extraordinarily lucky, because I got picked to kill you."
"I suppose it's too much to hope that that means you're not going to?"
She sighed and sat down, pretense gone. "Well, I can't be that obvious about it, can I? But you see, I've been thinking of getting out of this operation for awhile now. You don't know me all that well, Mr. West, but I am a bit of a stickler for efficiency." She leaned in, conspiratorily. "And between you and me, this is not an efficient system Diablo's got. The man is stuck on his own cleverness, and it's cost us. If we'd been running things without all the stupid flash and ceremony, you folks up high wouldn't know anything about us," she complained, waving the tip of her pistol in a demonstrative swirl.
West eyed her gun cautiously, somewhat puzzled as to where this was going. "I take it that bothers you."
She glanced at him, as though she'd almost forgot he was there, and pushed a chair towards him with one foot, gesturing for him to sit down. West hesitated, but complied. She hopped off the desk and wandered over to the liquor cabinet, one arm still aiming her gun in his direction. "What I've come to realize is that Diablo and I have very different motives," she continued, taking out a bottle and two shot glasses. West arched an eyebrow. "He wants the attention. All these crimes, they're nothing but a stunt to get people to notice him, to make things exciting. He wants to make his mark on history, when all I ever wanted was an easier life than the one I had. You do drink whiskey, Mr. West?" she asked, glancing back at him.
West looked faintly amused, but nodded graciously. She walked over to him, glass in one hand, pistol still aimed with the other, and gave him his drink. She then retrieved her own and perched herself back on the desk. She tossed back the shot in one gulp. West waited a moment or two, then did likewise. Good Tennessee bourbon. Didn't taste poisoned or altered.
Aaaanndd...that brings us to Doctor Who
1. My only attempt at writing Martha.
The Doctor stared into the mirror. The face that looked back at him was contorted with shock and dismay. "Oh no! No, no, no, no, no. That's not right at all." He grabbed at his throat, startled. "That's REALLY not right. Can't be."
"You're telling me!" Martha spluttered.
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, feeling his scalp, trying to prove to himself that he really hadn't ended up this way. "I look...I look..." he turned to Martha. "How do I look?" he asked pleadingly. Martha stared back at him in disbelief. "Not your opinion, that can wait; I mean, what do you see? Honestly, what do I look like?" He turned to face her full-on, flinching in anticipation.
Martha chewed her bottom lip uncomfortably. She took a deep breath. "Um, middle-aged, brownish hair...thinning a bit," she added hesitantly. Her large, brown eyes swept up and down his new frame--which was a bit oversized for his trim blue suit--somewhat critically. "Not...too bad, I guess, considering..."
The Doctor gazed back into the mirror wretchedly. So he wasn't imagining it. "Considering I'm old. Older. I haven't been old since...I was young." He stared off into space, blinking confusedly.
2. I keep toying with the idea of writing a sequel to Fission, but somehow it keeps eluding me. My working title, appropriately enough, is Fusion.
"A tempting notion, Doctor, but I don't think my hearts could take it. Besides, would Nyssa even accept me?"
"You're her father--"
"No, I'm not. Tremas would have no memory, no concept of the kind of selfish desperation that leads a man to harness a black hole, and to doom his own planet for the sake of extending his own life." Tremas met the Doctor's gaze briefly. "The Eye of Harmony; the heart of Gallifrey, is it not, Doctor?" Tremas queried with a twinkle in his eye and a peculiar swagger in his tone that was frighteningly evocative of the Master. But it was gone in a flash, replaced once more with Tremas' sad smile. "Nor would he know, as I do, Gallifrey's name for the impossible thing that I am. No, Doctor, I am not Tremas, father to Nyssa, husband to Kassia, Consul of the Traken Union and once Keeper-Designate, despite his memories that I have clung to as my own, and used to convince myself that I am also not the man responsible for destroying them, for committing the atrocities that have landed me here. I'm a contradiction in terms, and I shouldn't exist. It's right that Nyssa believes her father his dead. It's the truth, and I would be doing her a grave injustice to pretend otherwise."
A nice, tidy collection that doesn't even begin to cover all the stuff that's molding away in my dozens of notebooks. My one consolation here is that my collection of unfinished original fic is even bigger. Which really isn't much of a consolation at all, come to think of it. *facepalm*
no subject
Note that I cunningly avoided doing this meme myself. I started to think of how many unfinished stories I have and it was not a great thought.
no subject
Supposing I did get around to doing it, care to beta? ;-)
no subject
Also, you should console yourself at least a little with the knowledge that you don't write crappy stories, and then write multiple crappy sequels to them.