My unfinished tales
May. 4th, 2005 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI was looking through my abandoned bits of fic, and was curoius to see what I'd done, so thought I'd share, and hope other people might be interested in my self-analysis too. I am curious to know what other people have done; I know chess and anna have written entire novels and never mentioned it ;)
Empath Hospital
The first thing I wrote since I was at school and had to do stories for english. There's very little of it, but I did actually enjoy looking at it; it seemed surprisingly promising considering. The plot was interesting: protagonist is a touch-empath who's coerced into working for $CIA because his ex-wife, another agent, has sole custody of his son. The writing is fun in places, but his thoughts as he pretends to commit suicide, and when he's flirting with a nurse, are crashingly unsubtle. There's songfic, which sort of makes me cringe, though in my defense it was original poetry not a passing fad of an angsty pop song. I feel I'd like to have another go at this one day.
In retrospect it's indicative of the sort of fic I write: angsty, psychic, sex... I wonder whether I should embrace this or try to break out of a rut...? :)
Mablung, Damrod and the good Southron (in html here)
This started as an effort to write characterise Mablung and Damrod and write slash about them for Pip (thanks!), but spawned lots of ideas about Southron culture and legends. M, D and Faramir meet a contingent of southrons come to treat with mordor. They do their best to fight them off, but faramir is captured and M and D and a southron (Alaheda) are lost in the woods. They want to parlay with the southrons but A tells them the leader (her brother) probably wouldn't keep his word, and offers to initiate them into the $brotherhood when he'd have to, involving much bonding, shrooms, and snuggling.
Then my favorite bit is discussing old Southron legends about a blue wizard who appeared, became a great leader foudning $brotherhood which after lotr is instrumental in establishing peace with gondor, but was corrupted in valley of $bones and now stalks about omninously. Often my best work is a short insert in something else.
It worked quite well, but needed another draft, which I never actually did. Looking it over, I like the second half, though it could use a bit of fleshing out, and the battle at the start was ok, but didn't really work. And when it was written I didn't really understand A and her brother, so even when they try to explain their actiosn they're a bit jarring because they're not set up properly in the first half. Also thanks for sonicdrift for being a wonderfully sophisticated beta reader :)
Graveyard Shift, finished (in html here)
Pratchett fanfic. The guards chase a mysterious assassin across Ankh-Morpork while various intellectuals play chess with death. Note: nothing to do with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chess :)
I love this one, it was my first humour piece, and I still enjoy looking at it, though there's a few bits I cringe at, and I'd prefer the scenes to be a bit less disjointed. Several people said it was "just like pratchett" at which point I died; I think that's the highest praise of any sort I've ever received.
Empath Hospital
The first thing I wrote since I was at school and had to do stories for english. There's very little of it, but I did actually enjoy looking at it; it seemed surprisingly promising considering. The plot was interesting: protagonist is a touch-empath who's coerced into working for $CIA because his ex-wife, another agent, has sole custody of his son. The writing is fun in places, but his thoughts as he pretends to commit suicide, and when he's flirting with a nurse, are crashingly unsubtle. There's songfic, which sort of makes me cringe, though in my defense it was original poetry not a passing fad of an angsty pop song. I feel I'd like to have another go at this one day.
In retrospect it's indicative of the sort of fic I write: angsty, psychic, sex... I wonder whether I should embrace this or try to break out of a rut...? :)
Mablung, Damrod and the good Southron (in html here)
This started as an effort to write characterise Mablung and Damrod and write slash about them for Pip (thanks!), but spawned lots of ideas about Southron culture and legends. M, D and Faramir meet a contingent of southrons come to treat with mordor. They do their best to fight them off, but faramir is captured and M and D and a southron (Alaheda) are lost in the woods. They want to parlay with the southrons but A tells them the leader (her brother) probably wouldn't keep his word, and offers to initiate them into the $brotherhood when he'd have to, involving much bonding, shrooms, and snuggling.
Then my favorite bit is discussing old Southron legends about a blue wizard who appeared, became a great leader foudning $brotherhood which after lotr is instrumental in establishing peace with gondor, but was corrupted in valley of $bones and now stalks about omninously. Often my best work is a short insert in something else.
It worked quite well, but needed another draft, which I never actually did. Looking it over, I like the second half, though it could use a bit of fleshing out, and the battle at the start was ok, but didn't really work. And when it was written I didn't really understand A and her brother, so even when they try to explain their actiosn they're a bit jarring because they're not set up properly in the first half. Also thanks for sonicdrift for being a wonderfully sophisticated beta reader :)
Graveyard Shift, finished (in html here)
Pratchett fanfic. The guards chase a mysterious assassin across Ankh-Morpork while various intellectuals play chess with death. Note: nothing to do with
chess :)I love this one, it was my first humour piece, and I still enjoy looking at it, though there's a few bits I cringe at, and I'd prefer the scenes to be a bit less disjointed. Several people said it was "just like pratchett" at which point I died; I think that's the highest praise of any sort I've ever received.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 02:53 pm (UTC)And lots of fanfic. And a 3 hour play, and various playlets. And lots of poetry.
Errrm That's about it, really.
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Date: 2005-05-04 02:59 pm (UTC)I've seen some of the fanfiction on your website. What are the novels about? Have you tried to get them published, or just written them for your own satisfaction?
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Date: 2005-05-04 03:00 pm (UTC)The plays are from yonks, and I've lost them now. They were good, but stuff happened and I decided I never wanted to go there again.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 03:08 pm (UTC)I guess anything potentially publishable won't be online; if I was going to read more, where would you recommend I start?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 03:32 pm (UTC)