oakstone730

Okay, I've been feeling a few pangs of guilt because every so often I post on Goodreads a not-complimentary review for published books that I've read. Sometimes I just give them one star but if something is truly awful I've said as much. This is NOT something I would ever do on a fanfiction story. And TBH I never really thought about it until an author 'liked' one of my complimentary reviews of their books - and I had an immediate flash of guilt as I realized it was likely that the other authors whom's books I've panned are likely seeing them.

Should that they are professional published authors change the courtesy that is shown to 'amateur' fanficiton writers?

For the record these are two sample 'bad comments - not horrible but not supportive concrit comments:
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I know on Goodreads you can mark your reviews as just viewable to friends, and maybe I should do that, but I like reading other people's comments and so kind of don't want to do it - but I also cringe at the thought of authors reading what I write about their books. Is there a -not viewable by Goodreads authors- setting?

It was two-years ago this month that I wrote my first fan-fiction story, written sitting at my desktop computer while my children played blocks and Little People on the floor behind me. In August, 2011, I did not know that fan-fiction existed, I was writing simply because I'd spent the summer re-reading the books and found myself reading the last couple chapters of Deathly Hallows again and again (already I was completely ignoring the Epilogue) trying to read between the lines and find more answers than the words on the pages were providing. I contemplated ordering the UK books to see if they provided more closure, but I knew they wouldn't, the answers weren't there.

My writing place

At the playground, driving to school and work, I started composing what I thought happened next. When these thoughts became jumbled, I scribbled them down on an envelope in my purse. When I lost the envelope, I sat down at my computer and wrote out my thoughts, but then I started adding dialogue, and it started to build. My little bit of closure grew to be 22,000 words, and I was immensely proud of it, because it put a neat little bow to the seven books, and of course reflected what I wanted to see happen.

Still, I was embarrassed, I'd just spent two or three weeks writing a conclusion to someone else's story, and I couldn't really justify why. In a rare bit of honesty I confessed doing this to a virtual friend (the only kind I have) and she typed back: Oh, you wrote a fan-fic. I gave a virtual nod and immediately went to Google and searched fan-fic and got over six million hits as a return.

This was my first clue that the world was not flat.

( Click for the rest of the story... )

I've been debating all week about writing stories that switch POVs. Is it acceptable, generally, to switch POVs within a story? Not every paragraph, which I find terribly distracting, but from one chapter to the next. Or is it a sure sign of novice-writer?

In my shorter stories, I always write from the same POV, but in the longer ones I do, on occasion, switch perspectives when I need to show the other person's view. Is it a sign of poor writing skills that I can't convey that while maintaining the 'main' character's point of view? I admire writers who are able to tell entire stories from one side, but when I'm writing a scene I sometimes feel the need to show the other character's side of the events that are occurring. Is this a bad thing? I know I've spent hours writing and re-writing scenes because I can't decide whose perspective that scene needs to be told from...

Let me know what you think, please!

Stolen from marianna_merlo my year of fanfiction writing summed up
Calendar Year: 2012
Total Stories Written: 15 (including current WiPs)
Total Words Written: 315,000 (aprox)
Average Words Per Story: according to FF 24,925
Shortest Story: DragonLover (300)
Longest: Twist of Fate (312K)

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Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Indigo Girls

There are passages in books that can sear into one's memory - perfectly turned phrases that continue to haunt long after the book has been returned to the library or the bookshelf. This summer, I am continually thinking of this beautiful passage from Robert Hellenga's Sixteen Pleasures. The protagonist's mother, dying of cancer, alone on her bedroom records hours of memories into a tape player. After her death the family discovers that the tapes are blank - her voice had not been recorded through some mechanical error. This is Margot's thoughts on the loss of her mother's last communications:

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there's a little interval--between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts--during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother's voice, still waiting for the tape to begin. -- Robert Hellenga, Sixteen Pleasures.

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