Fics as short stories
Aug. 16th, 2006 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schemingreaderI had a great time writing for the recent ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
reversathon, but found it challenging to write a story about Tonks and Bill dating at Hogwarts. Why?
When I was in middle school, I learned that all short stories had to have a central conflict. A character had a problem that he had to solve. We learned to classify short story conflicts this way:
1. man against man
2. man against nature
3. man against himself
(Notice anything about these pronouns? Yeah, well, it might have only been 1978 but I noticed that, too, at the time. Twelve year old girl learning about how history is "his story, man's story, get it?" and how the central narrative of every story is about man... Don't get me started.)
Okay, so. I'm writing fan fiction, which is genre fiction. The vast majority of the stories we read and write here are romances. In a romance, what is the central conflict? Well, either it's the character in conflict with another character; the protagonist must persuade the love object to accept his or her attentions. Or sometimes, the character is in conflict with himself.
In slash stories, there is the huge advantage of characters who are not yet out of the closet. This is always good for some plot! The central narrative can be a character who must resolve the question of his sexual identity.
(Though of course, as I've written in a previous essay, some slash writers choose to evade the question of sexual identity and discrimination against people for theirs, in the fictional world. I don't approve of this evasion, but let's acknowledge that this one approach.)
In the Harry Potter universe, we have the built-in advantage of the wizarding world conflict, a conflict that is at least nominally between good and evil. There are all kinds of ways to divide the wizarding world: by ancestry, by allegiance, by contact with the Muggle world. Whether the fic is a romance or an action story, het slash or gen, we have the possibility of structuring our plot around the character's conflict with an enemy, or his moral choices.
Anyway, all this crossed my mind when I was writing a romance in which there was no Voldemort between a male and a female character. But there is still always the issue of a woman's role in society! There is always the chance for a female character to have to choose whether to conform to societal expectations for women!
There is always some conflict to explore.
Now back to writing my PWP crackfic...
reversathon, but found it challenging to write a story about Tonks and Bill dating at Hogwarts. Why? When I was in middle school, I learned that all short stories had to have a central conflict. A character had a problem that he had to solve. We learned to classify short story conflicts this way:
1. man against man
2. man against nature
3. man against himself
(Notice anything about these pronouns? Yeah, well, it might have only been 1978 but I noticed that, too, at the time. Twelve year old girl learning about how history is "his story, man's story, get it?" and how the central narrative of every story is about man... Don't get me started.)
Okay, so. I'm writing fan fiction, which is genre fiction. The vast majority of the stories we read and write here are romances. In a romance, what is the central conflict? Well, either it's the character in conflict with another character; the protagonist must persuade the love object to accept his or her attentions. Or sometimes, the character is in conflict with himself.
In slash stories, there is the huge advantage of characters who are not yet out of the closet. This is always good for some plot! The central narrative can be a character who must resolve the question of his sexual identity.
(Though of course, as I've written in a previous essay, some slash writers choose to evade the question of sexual identity and discrimination against people for theirs, in the fictional world. I don't approve of this evasion, but let's acknowledge that this one approach.)
In the Harry Potter universe, we have the built-in advantage of the wizarding world conflict, a conflict that is at least nominally between good and evil. There are all kinds of ways to divide the wizarding world: by ancestry, by allegiance, by contact with the Muggle world. Whether the fic is a romance or an action story, het slash or gen, we have the possibility of structuring our plot around the character's conflict with an enemy, or his moral choices.
Anyway, all this crossed my mind when I was writing a romance in which there was no Voldemort between a male and a female character. But there is still always the issue of a woman's role in society! There is always the chance for a female character to have to choose whether to conform to societal expectations for women!
There is always some conflict to explore.
Now back to writing my PWP crackfic...
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Ended up needing two posts for something that started out so simply....
Date: 2006-08-17 03:18 am (UTC)I do have a couple of thoughts on the evasion of the questions of sexual identity and discrimination. See, for my part, I vastly prefer to pretend that the Wizarding World is far more accepting of homo/bisexuality than the Muggle World. If not wholly accepting, then at least a place where you can tell your close friends without backlash. There may not be canon evidence for it, but there isn't exactly canon evidence against it (the lack of any visible homosexual relationships can be chalked up to a combination of homo/bisexuality being rarer than heterosexuality and Harry's blissfully unaware PoV).
As for why, well, I'm a bisexual woman living in a place where it's downright dangerous for me to come out. Fanfic is my escape from the crap of my daily life, and while I can deal with reading small doses of this sort of thing (and really, most of the fics that address it in a realistic fashion are wonderful), I just... prefer not to be the one writing it.
Now, I actually have put some thought into the way that I write the WW. I figure that JKR's reasoning behind women having equal rights all along can hold true for homosexuals -- a person with a wand is not weak (er, not that I think homosexuals are weak by nature or something, but I hope you understand what I'm saying). I can see the purebloods having some issues with it from a purely breeding standpoint, but legally, I have the idea that they would be fine with allowing homo/bisexuality to exist peacefully. (I'm up in the air whether that goes so far as to include marriage or not; so far, I simply haven't made an issue of it in anything except HSS(D)KNT and TTT, but we're talking about a stories where murder is played for laughs and a turtledove transformation is used as a cure for lycanthropy, respectively. Realism is not the first order of business in those two.) It has the potential to rid them of a few extra halfbloods, after all, and they can always exert social pressure on their offspring (or worse, as this is what Draco's Ye Olde Familye Curse became in my head in "It Was An Accident, I Swear"). Even with the purebloods, I think that it's entirely possible that the WW would have some advanced surrogacy spells which would make the breeding issues obsolete.
The problem is, as far as my fics to date are concerned, that's all extraneous information. People don't sit around pondering things that are normal to their existence -- I have never spent much time thinking "the sun is hot, the grass is green, the rain is wet, all's right with the world, yessireebob" -- so a writer who is going with the idea that homosexuality is accepted in the WW is at a severe disadvantage for showing that s/he isn't simply evading the issue. And while there are exceptions, most people are going to have figured out what gender(s) attract them by their thirties -- particularly in an environment that allows all orientations to be treated equally. So once again, someone who is writing from this vantage point isn't likely to have closeted characters of Snape or Lupin's (canon) age to work with the issues of sexual identity.
Of course, I don't write Marauders era, and in that instance, I would be more inclined to have Severus and/or Remus experiencing some initial issues because they're half-bloods. (For instance -- oh, grr, I can't talk about that out in the open. You'll see.)
Re: Ended up needing two posts for something that started out so simply....
Date: 2006-08-17 03:20 am (UTC)Anyhow, the reason that I popped over to this post in the first place was the fact that I had a similar problem in my own reversathon story. I was plopped into the situation of having an established relationship (no inherent romantic conflict) with a pairing that almost had to be post-war (no inherent Voldemort conflict) and a request for humor/crack (reducing my wiggle-room for conflict in general, since it's just not funny after a certain point), on a prompt that didn't give much direction for the plot.
And I ended up solving it by introducing a second romantic confict. I am so weak. :/ (I really do consider plotting to be my weakest point -- I have ideas by the truckload and nowhere to go with them -- but that's no excuse.)
Re: Ended up needing two posts for something that started out so simply....
Date: 2006-08-17 03:42 am (UTC)Now about not actually stating that homosexuality is accepted in the wizarding world. Here is my theory. If you have a well-constructed reasoning about how the wizarding world deals with sexual identity, then your stories will reflect that even if you don't spell it out. It doesn't matter to me what that theory is. But if you just fake it, the reader can tell. So my position is, take a position on how the wizarding world sees sexuality, and then make your writing reflect that, even if you don't spell it out.
Re: Ended up needing two posts for something that started out so simply....
Date: 2006-08-17 03:41 pm (UTC)Just wanted to chime in and say, one, that I completely respect and understand the desire to create worlds in which the sexuality issues is less daunting, and, two, I think
Sorry to interrupt! Maggie
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 04:07 pm (UTC)One of the interesting things about genre writing is that it's so frankly social--it embraces and even depends on the reader's expectations of the text for its effects. (This is as oppposed to "high" fiction, which tends to reconstruct the world anew in every story and often tries to operate outside our expectations.) "Plenty" works not because it has any of the conflicts you cite here, but because you've taken a group of characters your readers already know and love and placed them in a situation very different from the situations we're used to. The delight of the story is watching to see they ways in which they act differently in this new situation and the ways in which their character shines through despite everything. The "conflict" driving the plot--such as it is--is between the reader and the text more than between characters within the text.
I can see your other conflicts working this way, too. The coming-out/getting together story is usually about confirming for the reader that slash fanfic is a safe place for gay characters, in which the best scenario is always the one in which characters realize they need to be true to themselves and are rewarded with a love interest in the end. And the use of the war-with-Voldemort plot is either about the triumph of good over evil or about the tragedy of loss in the fight against evil, in which we can see that the decision to do the right thing is rewarded--or that it should have been.
Fanfic sounds morally simple and reductive in this explanation, but I don't mean to criticize it on these grounds. One of the things I like most about fanfic is that by accepting a ready-made imaginary world and your readers' expectations and a fairly standard and conventional set of moral lessons (be true to yourself, do the right thing, confirm these lessons for the reader), we can experiment and play with other parts of the stories. Mostly this experimentation comes in the form of character development--the characters in fanfiction are really wonderful--but occasionally it's canon exploration or parody or the development of imaginary worlds in AUs. And it's fun, which is not rated highly enough in the world of literary criticism.
Hm, I'm in a theoretical mood this morning, aren't I? *smile* Always love reading your thoughts. Maggie
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 04:19 pm (UTC)I wasn't sure that was clear in the story, but I realized that it didn't matter, that the point was that I had that as my structure. Kind of like my idea that the author has to have a backstory about sexuality, even if they don't spell it out in the story.
I like this so much! Especially the part about how coming-out stories are all about characters learning to be true to themselves. Sexuality stands in for a lot of things, doesn't it? Not that sexuality isn't important and interesting itself. Just that it's also somehow about selfhood and that means so many other things.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 04:30 pm (UTC)Hmm...Severus and his ability to share was definitely there and very clear. Maybe I haven't developed a good vocabulary for this, but it seemed like a minor conflict instead of a major one--on a par with Remus and Tonks working out a post-relationship relationship, Neville taking his place among the adults, the Weasleys relaxing and enjoying themselves after a period in their lives that was dominated by children. Does that make any sense? That Severus sharing was a plotline instead of a major conflict? And that the major conflict was the way you let each character relax into post-war identities and relationships? M.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 04:51 pm (UTC)I must admit that I am a sucker for happy endings in HP fan fic, because of the sense of impending doom hanging over the canon version of the characters between the 6th and 7th books. If I could draw fan art, i would draw Remus Lupin with Harry and Ginny's little redheaded baby James in a purple sling, looking goofy and happy. To make it even better--Snape in there too.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 05:00 pm (UTC)I'm a sucker for happy endings, too, especially if all the characters have been through as much as these characters have. No, not everything works out in real life, but a story should allow you to detach emotionally enough at the end to take a message from it, and too much catastrophe in this world is...well, too much.
I like the image! M.