Assorted things including REMIX META (sort of)

[shah_of_blah]

1) I am still way behind on fic reading, but I am working on my own and I also discovered more Things To Post on my hard drive.  So there will be bsg-related stuff.  When I get around to it.

2) There's a lot of cool stuff over at karathracelives  (and even more cool prompts just waiting for people to show them some love).  I myself have contributed two ficlets, To Call Your Own and Father's Day.

3) This may be ancient history, but here you can watch Buffy rebuff Edward Cullen.

4) Remix meta!  That I wrote ages ago and have been waiting to post.  This will not make much sense if you haven't read The Other Side (of This Life) or Hic sunt dracones.

Let’s be clear on one thing: I’m not going to tell you how to write a remix.  I don’t really know.  Just from what I’ve read, there are many different approaches to remixing.  I’ve done it twice, and had vastly different experiences both times.  Since the first one was easy, I’m here to talk about the second.

But anyway.  Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?  I was so excited when I got my assignment, as elly427  is a fantastic writer.  I immediately headed over to the list of her fic and was astonished by how short it is!  So actually choosing the fic was almost a process of elimination.  First I eliminated the drabbles/PWP.  Circumstance was out because it was a remix (of elzed ’s amazing Decline and Fall).  Song of the Open Road was out because wisteria_  was in the midst of Reality and Immortality..., so that was just too much awesome for me to handle.  I was left with Hic Sunt Dracones, which I was perfectly happy with—it’s amazing, and conveniently from Lee’s POV, leaving me with the simple (heh, simple) option of telling it from Kara’s eyes.

But it didn’t take long for me to realize that this would not be like my previous remix.  That time, I was remixing a drabble that dealt with ideas/emotions in a relatively abstract manner.  I made the story concrete, which is a pretentious way to say that I expanded the ficlet.  But Hic Sunt Dracones was 5000 words long, longer than the longest bsg fic I’d ever completed.  And there were so many details!  I almost dreaded the lengthy, emotionally significant scenes between Lee and Kara in which I had to not only note the dialogue but every single movement, and then find a way to restate it that wasn’t just paraphrasing elly.  [Sidenote—apparently one approach to remixing involves discarding dialogue intentionally; this astonishes me!  My general approach is that the facts of the original fic have to be treated as just that, fact.  In other words, every move, every touch, and every word has to happen in both stories (although it should be understood that this doesn’t all have to be shown, i.e. dialogue can be replaced with narration and you do not have to remix every scene).  Internal action, style, structure...these are the things I am comfortable remixing.]

Normally I feel 100% comfortable with Kara, and I never doubt what she’s feeling at any given moment.  But suddenly I was all, “oh wait, she can’t reach this point yet because in the next scene she’s still like this!”  Also Lee is quite perceptive and elly is very skillful with illuminating Kara through his eyes, so there was an added struggle of trying to find an untapped angle.  Trying to find what Lee hadn’t seen.  Because nobody likes paraphrasing, but people do like twisted remakes.

The first step I took towards owning the story I was writing was the framing, with the present-tense scenes on Earth and the past-tense recollections of all the other shit that went down.  What happened to Kara after she left Lee was the most important black hole that I had to fill, since ‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ didn’t detail that for obvious reasons.  I knew that Kara had to survive her little jaunt because, well, the story was to be from her perspective and stories from the afterlife are a whole different ballgame.  Then I wanted there to be the hint of regret/need/longing.  Because if she doesn’t want to be rescued then Lee’s inability to rescue her doesn’t matter so much.  But if she does—even on a subconscious level—and he can’t...well now, I think that’s interesting.

This might be a good time to mention that two of my stories had been remixed before.  “Horizon” was a drabble (expanded by daybreak777  in the gorgeous “Sunrise, Sunset”) but it was the remix of “Kara Thrace and her Special Destiny” that weighed heavily on my mind while writing “The Other Side (of This Life)”.  lunar47  took my story (which was from Lee’s POV, observing Kara) and showed me something I hadn’t even realized (because Lee hadn’t realized it, and I’d been thinking very much in his frame of mind) about the story I had written.  I wanted to do that with elly’s fic.  I wanted my version to not just be a reflection from another POV, but to draw upon something unnoticed (and untold) in the original story.  Because I do think that a good remix has to have that—an element that feels new but also true in the original context.

So the first words that I wrote came from that desire.  “Kara Thrace needs no one,” I wrote, and then I wrote the paragraphs following that line (i.e. the last scene).  In this moment Kara does need Lee, and she can only admit it now that she’ll never see him again.  She needs him and he’s not there; it’s not his fault but there’s still that absence.

I started with the end of the fic, and then followed a mostly (though not totally) linear approach to all of the past-tense scenes (most of which had been part of HSD, with the exception of Sam’s reveal).  This was stressful not only because of all the details and aforementioned issues, but also becomes the emotions were so volatile.  Kara’s moods were fluctuating like crazy, and how the hell do you write about finding out your husband is a Cylon?  How could I do that justice?  [I really should not read Revelations fic while I am writing Revelations fic.  I don’t remember the specific fic off the top of my head, but I read something involving Kara and Sam after she finds out he’s a Cylon, and I was wringing my hands and crying that I could not write it when it had already been written so well.  This is just a general rule of thumb.  I did not read any pre-mini fic while I was writing my own.]

Having a deadline was also quite significant, and while it was a source of stress, it was the good kind.  The motivational kind.  The kind where I devised a schedule, wrote every day even when I was struggling, and ended up finishing well ahead of time.

One of the last things I wrote was the very beginning.  While I had been writing the majority of the story, I had also wrestled with the overwhelming feeling that the fic still was not mine and that it just wasn’t coming together.  The words didn’t have enough pop, Kara was (as I mentioned earlier) all over the frakking place, and the opening (I had “Kara Thrace has always been more comfortable with dead men” as the opening line) was really sucktastic.

At some point when I was close to finishing (I think I was working on the sex scene, which I consistently referred to as “tehsex” in my notes because I am just that mature, you’ll be pleased to know) I went back and decided that I just could not live with that opening.  Then I wrote about Kara’s crashes and all that fun stuff.  That was the turning point.  I had a beginning and an ending that I was proud of, and suddenly the middle stuff didn’t seem so incoherent.

Everything after that was easy.  As I am writing this, the story has been done for a few days and I have not yet sent it in.  Only one person besides me has read this story.  I love my story.  This is very important to me.  I love my stories; I have to because when I don’t I fret and wallow and am just no fun.  So it was a much longer road to reach this point than I expected, but I have reached it.  I love my story.  I hope that you do too (especially elly), but honestly I’m just glad I came up with something that I liked.

Comments

[taragel.livejournal.com]

This was really fascinating to read! I'm so glad you shared it.

I loved your story. Elly's too. I think they're a beautiful complement to each other.

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Thanks girl! I'm glad other people are interested in my ramblings about writing, because I do so love, well, rambling about writing. And hey, you posted a commentary a couple weeks ago, right? It's on my list of Things To Read When/If I Finally Catch Up.

[latteaddict.livejournal.com]

The process sounds tough and quite harrowing, and yet your story reads seamlessly off of Elly's. I guess it really paid off just how much care and hard work you put into the remix. I loved your story. I thought you did Kara's side beautifully.

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Thanks latte! I'm glad it paid off. And in retrospect, I could have had an infinitely rougher time.

[cosetteferaud.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing all those insights with us! It is really interesting to know how you approached this story... I am not a writer at all, but I believe elly's story was a difficult one to remix, and you did an excellent job, imo. I love both stories and, as Tara says, they beautifully complement each other.

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm kind of impressed that as a reader you get into all this technical writing stuff. Very cool.

[cosetteferaud.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have a degree in journalism and my hub is an English major (I love all these sort of writing stuff, I have always found it fascinating *g*)

[rdave1.livejournal.com]

That was really a great insight! I never really know how much goes into putting out those fics that I so enjoy. You have such beautiufl way with words.

[shah-of-blah.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you! In a way, the process is different with every story, but this one was pretty damn involved (more so than my usual fare).