Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business The Writers' Discussion/Ideas Thread

oh is she? I hadn't noticed...

*innocent whistle*

Oh, is Kinetix in your story Raz, I must have missed that. Maybe you should tell IB as I think he may like her, I could be wrong though...

Oh, Kinetix is okay... she has a pretty useful power, and has a nice visual. I like green, and red hair, and her power lust and obsession with being perfect is something that I am sure a lot of people find relatable...

And I kind of had her come back from being absorbed by Mordru AND restore the entire Reboot universe in my fic because why not...

Whereas when I was brainstorming ways to go with the postboot Legion immediately post-DnA, I somehow ended up with her evil & dead

(And it wasn't even to wind up iB!)

I welcome most interpretations of her character

..." Invisible Brainiac typed quickly, glad the other posters could not see his gritted teeth.

IB carefully added the word "most" to keep his statement from being an outright lie.

Question: Have any of the rest of you gone through phases where the fanfic writing feels less like a fun hobby and more like a dreary job? I know I have, and it usually happens after I've completed the opening installments of whatever new project I'm working on. That's one of the reasons why I have so many unfinished stories. I really want to see my current project, the Retro-Postboot Legion, at least through LSH 100, but right now I'm stuck on LSH 82. How do the rest of you deal with this?

Hey Fanfie, this is something I get when I'm writing something I'm either not entirely convinced by or I know I really want to write the next bit (or whatever fun idea is percolating around my mind). From my experience it also depends if I'm following the over arching plot line or just making it up following some vague idea of where I'm going.

If I'm following a plot through then I go back and work out why I'm stealing; is it rubbish? Does it need tweaking to make it more fun/exciting/intimate etc? Am I just not convinced so should scrap it and work out another way to get to the end.

If I'm just making it up then I just get silly, add random plots and work out some way to entertain myself as I firmly believe that if I'm not entertained then I can't expect anyone else to be.

If I really want to write out that cool idea that's bugging me so much it's interrupting whatever I feel I should be writing then I just stop doing what I'm doing and get on with the fun bit. I've found once I've done that there's more headspace to complete the boring bit I was working and stalling on.

If I'm not convinced then I stop and work out what is missing or what is too much, or what is generally wrong.

If none of them then I look to see how I can foreshorten the peice to get it over and done with.

Or I stop entirely, drink wine, watch tv and think about something else. Actually, this is my preferred solution though I've found that unfortunately its the least productive.

Hope this helps.

Thank you, Harbi, it definitely does help.



^^This is the part of your post that I could relate to the most in my current situation. There's this all-female JLA story that I started a year or two ago, but gave up on halfway through. Recently, in trying to find something to occupy my mind, I re-read what I did finish of that story and I think it's actually quite good and I was really on to something with that project. I just didn't realize it at the time.

So I think what I'm going to do is take a break from the Legion and work on finishing that story.

Thanks again, Harbi.

I have only finished a handful of stories I have written here due to boredom. I find that I have more fun developing the settings and characters than writing the actual story. I usually do best if I have a collaborator or if the story is short. On the positive side, I also enjoy helping others with their stories and my creativity does well in RPGs.

Thanks, Emily. Yes, I can relate to most of what you said. Maybe we should both edit and/or co-plot other people's stories.

I have a rather different perspective.

In my youth, for about a decade or so, I was an aspiring short-story writer. I submitted tales to "Analog", "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction", "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction", and even "Omni".

My rule at the time was, work a little every day, no matter what. Get something down on paper, then later re-write, revise, and edit.

I never got anything published.

I was a bit more successful with fanfic, with a few items published in a Star Trek zine called Federation, and one small submission to Klordny.

I now write for my own amusement. If I get bored, I quit. Sometimes I go a long time without picking up a pencil or touching the keyboard. But I find creating these little worlds and seeing where the lives of these little characters will go is relaxing and satisfying, and I always come back to it.

It is only on these boards that I have posted my fanfiction, and I feel no obligation to anyone here to keep doing so.

(You may have discerned that I do not play well with others.)

I am considering-- if I can finish it-- finding a Harry Potter fanfiction site to post my novelette, "Malcolm Dursley and the Goblin Wand". But if I don't? There are plenty of others posting their fanfiction. I write for my own recreation.

What helps me is knowing where I want to take my story. Having a definite ending in mind. My stories tend to be long, but the ones I've finished (the collaborative Lord of the Oval novella, and Volumes 1-3 of my fanfic, and a collab with Emily on Raltvee) had a definite end point, and had a definite ending.

I actually worked faster as I got closer to the ending because I felt there was a story in me bursting to get out.

I guess it's all about being inspired. Sadly I can't quite explain how I inspire myself, but it helps to have a clear ending in mind. I do best with stories that have a definite endpoint. I can't imagine myself doing an indefinite ongoing - I have to break it down into manageable "chapters", with each feeling like a complete story in itself.

Klar, the way I look at it is, since I'm seemingly incapable of doing any creative work for a living, then the fanfics I have completed -- and whichever ones I complete in the future -- will be the backbone of my legacy when I'm gone. I like the idea that I help people escape the harsher side of life for a little while, and that's my principal goal. But I also think that by doing fan fiction, I'm contributing something to the ongoing discussions regarding the characters and settings I write about. Unlike a lot of people, I have little or no respect for canon, and I think every take is valid, even the ones which are not to my personal taste.

Ibby, while I don't have a definite end point in mind (yet) for any of my iterations of the Legion, including the one we've collaborated on, I do know exactly at what issue I want to come to the ultimate climax, and that will be L* 100, after which I'll do a few more issues tying up loose ends. So if right now, we're at LSH 82 and L* 38, that's...my Gods, that's a long, long way to go. Point being, if I reach that goal, great, and if not, at least I entertained some people along the way.

Haha, I definitely get this

When I know I've got a cool scene coming up but I need to do the legwork to get there, it can occasionally feel a bit tedious. I know that at some point I'll come around though so I'm happy to wait for that to happen, even if it's a few weeks to a month before I feel inspired to pick up where I left off. I find that forcing it leads to resentment, and resentment isn't why I started writing this series

To be honest, I only actually started writing my own Legion series as an exercise to get myself to commit to putting something out regularly as I have a tendency to lose interest in stuff after a few weeks/months and it fizzles out. I am a bit surprised at myself that I've been writing this series for so long to be honest, and it's really taken on a life of its own in that I would miss it if I wasn't continually updating this world that I have put my own spin on Like Klar said though, at the end of the day I'm doing this for my own recreation - I cross-post to a livejournal but that's only so I have a backup record of it in case anything ever happens to it here, I don't actually have any readers on my LJ....and every now and then I've considered cross-posting to an actual fanfic site, but I feel like I'd really need to start from the beginning and I'm not in a hurry to copy and paste 4 or so years worth of instalments...if it ever stops being fun for me though I'll know it is time to stop and focus on something else.

(Which is perhaps why I loved The Saga of Superman Red and Superman Blue so many years ago.)

Well said.

I love that story, too!

I want to write a short story (so I can finish it for once), but unsure how to condense my thoughts. Would it be best just to focus on one idea, and if I have more, to write other short stories later?

Yes, I think it would be best to just focus on one idea. And if the other ideas have organic connections to the first one, all you have to do is make sure that each short story stand on its own. Then the stories can either be enjoyed separately, or joined together into a tapestry.

I cannot say this enough.

(1) Open a Tumblr account
(2) Follow AmandaOnWriting
(3) Follow WritersYoga
(4) Follow Neil-Gaiman

http://writerswrite.co.za/five-10-minute-fixes-for-your-short-story

Thank you both for your advise. I might end up retooling my idea into a chart, sort of what Exnihil did for the LMB Family Tree.

A little background for my latest musings on the craft of writing:

My favorite auntie, who is not only a lovely person but whom I also consider a role model (she abandoned the corporate rat race at age *sixty-two* to become a small-town school librarian; over a decade later, she's still plugging away at a job she loves far more than any she had in youth or in middle age. Inspiring, or what?) visited me back in June and told me she wanted to get me a belated birthday present. We went to my local comic shop, and I chose a used copy of "Titans Companion 2."

Among the many informative and amusing interviews with various Titans creators that the book offered, the standout for me was the interview with Jay Faerber, who candidly admitted that, while his much-criticized Titans run was overall a good learning experience for him, he only rarely saw any of his original plans for the comic come to fruition -- in fact, after his first few issues, he was pretty much ordered what to plot by the incoming Titans editor, Andy Helfer. None of this was particularly surprising, but Faerber's refreshing honesty and articulate explanations were downright educational.

The final piece of the puzzle came when Faerber compared his experience as the writer of Titans (a gig he had fervently wished for ever since he read his first issue of NTT as a grade-schooler) with his experience as the writer of Marvel's Generation X, which turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable for him, precisely *because* he had no familiarity with, or emotional investment in, the main characters!

That's when a light bulb went off in this lady's head! Why should I fantasize about writing the canon versions of my favorite superheroes when I can write them as fan fiction with no editorial interference? And by the same token, why should I worry about editorial meddling *if* I were to get my supposed dream gig, when I could make good money writing other IPs that I'm far less passionate about for the sheer joys of polishing my craft *and* being able to pay the bills and maybe even have a little bit left over for mad money?

I am well aware that it is quite possibly naïve and overly optimistic on my part to believe that I can start a new career as a freelance writer at age forty-two, but, really I've got nothing to lose -- no kids, no partner, no siblings, no dependents of any kind -- and lots to gain, especially if I do succeed at making at living out of doing something I genuinely enjoy.

But whether or not I succeed at it, fan fiction *will* remain a constant. To reiterate, why would I want to risk getting my heart broken over not getting to write a beloved IP the way I want to, when I can do the same thing any way I want to, just so long as I don't try to profit from it?

So now, we finally arrive at my question (and if you've managed to hang in there, Gods bless you and thank you for your patience.) The question is:

Would anyone here be interested in attempting a little fanfic exercise, where we would make a random list of superheroes and superhero teams, and we each pick one that doesn't mean that much to us, and then we each write a done-in-one fic with the character or team in question? I think it'd be both fun and a good way to polish our craft.

Thoughts?

I've been tossing around this alternate-version of Emerald Twilight in my head for about a year now, but school and internship apps have just kept me from sitting down and writing it.

It's cool, Kappa, it will happen when it is meant to happen. One question, though: I know you're a dyed-in-the-wool Hal fan. Would your alternate Emerald Twilight end in a similar way to what Gerard Jones had plotted before he was shit-canned off the GL book, with Hal going solo as the Protector and Kyle still replacing him as GL?