Yuletide Reveal
Jan. 2nd, 2015 08:56 amFor Yuletide this year I wrote a Bugs Potter fic. Who Is Bugs Potter? and its sequel are comic novels by Gordon Korman about a teenaged rock and roll drummer and his adventures.
Bugs Potter and the Otters of Doom (6740 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bugs Potter - Gordon Korman
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Bugs Potter, Adam Webb, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Screenplay/Script Format, Documentary, Rock and Roll
Summary:
As I think I mentioned, my plan this year was to try to write my Yuletide assignment as my NaNoWriMo story, an idea I called Worst Idea Ever or WIE for short. I got my assignment two days before November began and I hastily started outlining and notetaking to write a Bugs Potter novel thing over the course of November. And then I dove in. Over the course of November, I ended up writing 26K of Bugs Potter fic, unstructured and mostly bad and definitely without an ending. NaNoWriMo isn't actually conducive to writing good fic- you're writing so fast that you don't have time to think about how it fits together. This is especially true when you only had two days to brainstorm and consequently don't have a very clear outline.
In any case, I regrouped in December. I had a huge amount of raw material, including a number of scenes and storylines that I thought worked well or could work well with some rework. I decided to refocus the work I'd already done by recasting it in screenplay format as a documentary about the events of my erstwhile novel. Very much in the mode of Spinal Tap, a fact I lampshade in the first scene of the fic.
It was an unusual way to write the fic, for me. It was very pleasant to have so much material to work with. It let me be ruthless in cutting the stuff that didn't work, because no scenes were really essential to carrying the plot and if I removed a massive section, I still had plenty of story to play with. From the original 26K, I ended up with nearly 7K in the final fic.
I also taught myself a small amount about CSS on AO3 in order to create a workskin to simulate standard screenplay format. Which I think mostly worked out okay, though I'm sure if I actually knew CSS for real I would have done a bunch of things differently.
Humor is hard, but I think my story is funny. It certainly had me laughing as I wrote, and I think my recipient liked it, too.
I'm sure it will come as no great surprise to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
morbane that the two Danger 5 fics she received were also by me. (Even though she didn't actually request Danger 5, I didn't think she would mind getting the fics)
Заткнись (319 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Danger 5
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Ilsa (Danger 5), Tucker (Danger 5), Jackson (Danger 5), Pierre (Danger 5), Claire (Danger 5), Alligator Artillery
Summary:
The Furried Frenzy of the Fuhrer (1115 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Danger 5
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Tucker (Danger 5), Ilsa (Danger 5), Jackson (Danger 5), Pierre (Danger 5), Claire (Danger 5), Adolf Hitler (Danger 5)
Summary:
The first, the one about alligator artillery, was written early on Christmas morning as the rest of the people at the Jewmas party were still sleeping. As they woke up, I showed them the fic to get feedback, and after I integrated the feedback, we decided it would be fun to write a Danger 5 fic together. So we wrote a fic about Danger 5 and Bigfoot.
It was fun. I've never written a fic quite like it before, the passing the laptop around to let someone else take over when they got an inspiration, the reading a piece of dialogue aloud and workshopping it on the fly, the oneupsmanship of passing an idea around the room and seeing it get polished and refined on the spot. ("-Someone should put on a sasquatch costume. -It should be Jackson, he's the most gung ho about the sasquatches. -No, it should be Pierre, because he's Pierre. -Pierre should be mixing a perfect cocktail in costume. - Perfect!")
None of my co-authors has ever ficced before, I think, though Alai and I have written a very good outline of a ST:TNG fic that we should really buckle down and write some day. They all took so much pleasure in the mechanics of posting it to AO3, to checking for the reveal and then to looking for comments and kudos. And they insisted on doing a group read of their fic at New Year's. Maybe I have infected them... we'll see.
Bugs Potter and the Otters of Doom (6740 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bugs Potter - Gordon Korman
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Bugs Potter, Adam Webb, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Screenplay/Script Format, Documentary, Rock and Roll
Summary:
Behind the scenes with legendary rock and roll drummer Bugs Potter on tour.
As I think I mentioned, my plan this year was to try to write my Yuletide assignment as my NaNoWriMo story, an idea I called Worst Idea Ever or WIE for short. I got my assignment two days before November began and I hastily started outlining and notetaking to write a Bugs Potter novel thing over the course of November. And then I dove in. Over the course of November, I ended up writing 26K of Bugs Potter fic, unstructured and mostly bad and definitely without an ending. NaNoWriMo isn't actually conducive to writing good fic- you're writing so fast that you don't have time to think about how it fits together. This is especially true when you only had two days to brainstorm and consequently don't have a very clear outline.
In any case, I regrouped in December. I had a huge amount of raw material, including a number of scenes and storylines that I thought worked well or could work well with some rework. I decided to refocus the work I'd already done by recasting it in screenplay format as a documentary about the events of my erstwhile novel. Very much in the mode of Spinal Tap, a fact I lampshade in the first scene of the fic.
It was an unusual way to write the fic, for me. It was very pleasant to have so much material to work with. It let me be ruthless in cutting the stuff that didn't work, because no scenes were really essential to carrying the plot and if I removed a massive section, I still had plenty of story to play with. From the original 26K, I ended up with nearly 7K in the final fic.
I also taught myself a small amount about CSS on AO3 in order to create a workskin to simulate standard screenplay format. Which I think mostly worked out okay, though I'm sure if I actually knew CSS for real I would have done a bunch of things differently.
Humor is hard, but I think my story is funny. It certainly had me laughing as I wrote, and I think my recipient liked it, too.
I'm sure it will come as no great surprise to
morbane that the two Danger 5 fics she received were also by me. (Even though she didn't actually request Danger 5, I didn't think she would mind getting the fics) Заткнись (319 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Danger 5
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Ilsa (Danger 5), Tucker (Danger 5), Jackson (Danger 5), Pierre (Danger 5), Claire (Danger 5), Alligator Artillery
Summary:
The Fic Was Written with the Power of Google Translate and Sleep Deprivation
The Furried Frenzy of the Fuhrer (1115 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Danger 5
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Characters: Tucker (Danger 5), Ilsa (Danger 5), Jackson (Danger 5), Pierre (Danger 5), Claire (Danger 5), Adolf Hitler (Danger 5)
Summary:
An American national treasure is threatened by the Nazis. Good thing Danger 5 is on the case.
The first, the one about alligator artillery, was written early on Christmas morning as the rest of the people at the Jewmas party were still sleeping. As they woke up, I showed them the fic to get feedback, and after I integrated the feedback, we decided it would be fun to write a Danger 5 fic together. So we wrote a fic about Danger 5 and Bigfoot.
It was fun. I've never written a fic quite like it before, the passing the laptop around to let someone else take over when they got an inspiration, the reading a piece of dialogue aloud and workshopping it on the fly, the oneupsmanship of passing an idea around the room and seeing it get polished and refined on the spot. ("-Someone should put on a sasquatch costume. -It should be Jackson, he's the most gung ho about the sasquatches. -No, it should be Pierre, because he's Pierre. -Pierre should be mixing a perfect cocktail in costume. - Perfect!")
None of my co-authors has ever ficced before, I think, though Alai and I have written a very good outline of a ST:TNG fic that we should really buckle down and write some day. They all took so much pleasure in the mechanics of posting it to AO3, to checking for the reveal and then to looking for comments and kudos. And they insisted on doing a group read of their fic at New Year's. Maybe I have infected them... we'll see.