99% of my solo BtVS work exists in the same fannish 'verse.
This is so interesting. It reminds me of some fantasy authors--the books they write may be about different characters, different time periods, etc, but they all have a single mythology behind them.
On the rare occasions that I do write type 2 stories, they are the stories most likely NOT to be a part of the 'verse I've created.
From the way I approach both types, this makes perfect sense to me. For me, the type 1 sort of fic is playing in canon, while the second is playing on canon--that is, I can't see myself writing a type 2 "what if" AU, because then I'd have to deal with both explaining how this AU is different, AND an intricate form. I think the reason fanfic has pushed me into sometimes experimenting with form itself as opposed to story is because with fanfic, the story is there, and what you can do is use that already-established story in a new form you want to try.
But even indulgence fics have to have a point of some kind,
I think this was one of the main things I was wondering about. I feel this way too, but then the "point" takes over, and I begin to work toward writing something unique and insightful and new, and lose the indulgence part. There are others who seem to write without a point other than pure indulgence, and often those fics are...well, pointless, though sometimes they're fabulous. But some authors can spin off a fic in a couple hours that is really all about fulfilling a whim--but it still has a point and there's still something interesting about it that makes it more than something just to throw away.
Length is no predictor of quality,
I agree completely. And there's a difference, too, between how long you spend on something in proportion to the word count, and how long something is. I mentioned fics written in hours on a whim can be self-indulgent and pointless, but that doesn't mean that all short fics are bad or "lesser" in anyway.
I've got a fairly snippy critical voice in the back of my skull informing me when I'm being sloppy or self-indulgent, and though I sometimes ignore it, I always know it's there.
You ignore it, but do you trust it? I'm wondering because I have trouble trusting mine. I have a tendency to be overly dense and purple and to stretch to hard for a metaphor, or alliteration, or rhyme. But when I ignore the voice telling me that I'm doing those things in a line of text, I sometimes get an extraordinary amount of fb saying, "God, I loved that line!" And it makes me look at it again and see that perhaps it was a good metaphor after all. I guess it's just a classic case of second-guessing.
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This is so interesting. It reminds me of some fantasy authors--the books they write may be about different characters, different time periods, etc, but they all have a single mythology behind them.
On the rare occasions that I do write type 2 stories, they are the stories most likely NOT to be a part of the 'verse I've created.
From the way I approach both types, this makes perfect sense to me. For me, the type 1 sort of fic is playing in canon, while the second is playing on canon--that is, I can't see myself writing a type 2 "what if" AU, because then I'd have to deal with both explaining how this AU is different, AND an intricate form. I think the reason fanfic has pushed me into sometimes experimenting with form itself as opposed to story is because with fanfic, the story is there, and what you can do is use that already-established story in a new form you want to try.
But even indulgence fics have to have a point of some kind,
I think this was one of the main things I was wondering about. I feel this way too, but then the "point" takes over, and I begin to work toward writing something unique and insightful and new, and lose the indulgence part. There are others who seem to write without a point other than pure indulgence, and often those fics are...well, pointless, though sometimes they're fabulous. But some authors can spin off a fic in a couple hours that is really all about fulfilling a whim--but it still has a point and there's still something interesting about it that makes it more than something just to throw away.
Length is no predictor of quality,
I agree completely. And there's a difference, too, between how long you spend on something in proportion to the word count, and how long something is. I mentioned fics written in hours on a whim can be self-indulgent and pointless, but that doesn't mean that all short fics are bad or "lesser" in anyway.
I've got a fairly snippy critical voice in the back of my skull informing me when I'm being sloppy or self-indulgent, and though I sometimes ignore it, I always know it's there.
You ignore it, but do you trust it? I'm wondering because I have trouble trusting mine. I have a tendency to be overly dense and purple and to stretch to hard for a metaphor, or alliteration, or rhyme. But when I ignore the voice telling me that I'm doing those things in a line of text, I sometimes get an extraordinary amount of fb saying, "God, I loved that line!" And it makes me look at it again and see that perhaps it was a good metaphor after all. I guess it's just a classic case of second-guessing.