My schedule doesn't actually have much room for stuff outside of: project work, Adeline Season 2 (yes! Season 2! Link to come as soon as it launches!), and then chorish stuff like sanitizing my bathroom and emptying out my stinky fridge. And yet, I decided (after
Cory Doctorow visited our program to give an interesting talk about the problems with copyright law) that I would forgo sleep if I needed to do this years
NaNoWriMo.
Why??? (you might ask; I'm certainly asking). I dont really know. I just feel like it would be a good exercise in time management and functioning on less sleep than normal. I think I've just read one too many cheap (and by cheap I mean less than 2.99) amazon kindle books. (Hint: for the most part they're TERRIBLE - ESP "YA" aka: Craptastic Paranormal Romance). So in rage-not-stroke I decided I would resurrect an old idea, spice it up with some new direction, and actually pound it out with the help of NaNoWriMo. Obviously I wouldn't use a good idea (that I have strong attachements to) as NaNoWriMo is fun but normally produces terrifyingly bad writing. (Which even NaNoWriMo admits, is kind of the point).
Originally I was going to do a totally-not-sherlock-fanfiction-I-swear! I read a kindle book (again, less than 1.99) called
The Devil's Grin and it was totally-not-self-insertion-sherlock-fanfic-I-swear! It wasn't bad (when we
weren't in the presence of Sherlock) and as a stand alone non-fanfic (aka, if they took out Sherlock) it would have been a decent book. Not good, mind you, for I found the writing too sparse. I know its a plague of modern books to
overwrite (I'm looking at you Twilight and all other Paranormal Romances!!!) but this did a complete 180 and ended up on the other end of the spectrum. Too little is shown. What little is written tends to err on the side of telling. Like the introduction of Sherlock. Because he's a well known literary figure, the author didn't need to show too much, but she missed out on adding a new dimension to him.
Or, rather, a believable new dimension to him. I dont care how she explained it in the book, I'm a big fan of Benny Cumberbatch's Sherlock and absolutely love his "I'm a high-functioning sociopath! Do your research!" Because in my mind, Sherlock is a sociopath. He's the actual manifestation of a misanthrope. Instead of being a "misanthrope" as many Romance Books (and I mean Romance as in from the early 19th century) characters were (which was an affected state of mind instead of an actual one). And there's a great quote from Sir Arthur Cannon Doyle how Sherlock was about as likely to fall in love as Babbage's computing machine was.
My point is: as much as I love Sherlock, Self-Inserted-Romantic-Sherlock-Fanfiction doesn't work for this very reason. You cant change his character to make it work, or else he stops being Sherlock and starts being a guy who just happens to share some major quirks and the same name as Sherlock.
I have to admit, quite a few of my story ideas stem from some other story I read. Usually where I toss the book into the wall and go: NUH-UH. And then repetitively tell everyone I know that I could write a better story. Probably in my sleep. So, for NaNoWriMo I decided I'd do a Not-Sherlock-Fanfic where I'd do it "better". And I use "better" loosely because it didn't come to pass at all. I was going to set it in the 1920s. The Heroine was going to be an opium addicted show girl, whose sister winds up on a slab in the morgue. And how she goes all vigilante detective and solves the case herself. Except she meets the Sherlockian character, who really solves the case. Anyway, it didn't happen because I couldn't pin down the Sherlockian character. And I couldn't pin down their relationship (not romantic at all) and I couldn't get his reactions right.
Which leads me to the second (and final) idea I'm running with: "a Poppyseed affair". Just like "Ash in the Shadows,"
Affair stemmed out of a .99 cent kindle purchase. But it had more than 40 reviews! And they were all pretty positive! 4+ stars! ... Which means I should just stick to my gut and learn from my mistakes (except I'm a sucker for punishment). I ended up reading ... oh, maybe up to Chapter 6 before metaphorically throwing it across the room and dramatically "ugh"ing. (For those curious its called
Blood and Snow - but you've been warned). I think the major thing it has going against it is: WHO THE HELL PUBLISHES AN E-BOOK ENTIRELY IN PAPYRUS FONT??? WHO??? WHY??? AURGH!!!!
Its eye-gougingly bad, but thats because the typeface is a bitch to read. Whoever published it in that format should be taken out back and forced to (clockwork orange style) watch
Helvetica. At least a hundred times.
Typeface aside, the story fluctuates between decent, almost tongue-and-cheek (but not quite), and craptastically angsty. The character spends an entire chapter moping and monologuing complete in passive voice and TONS of TELLING. (insert Eye-Roll here). UGH. Whats interesting is how blatantly sexually charged this book is, in comparison to say, Twilight. Unfortunately, it also leads the heroine to "flush" "blush" "burn crimson" and "bloom red" in almost every page. Can I not read a single Teen Book without the heroine bursting into flames??? (Or rather, could she just burst into flames, like, literally? Cause that would be an interesting twist on the rather tripe trope).
...
Where was I going with this? Oh, right. So after getting to chapter 6 and nearly vomiting I decided to write (not for the first time, I'll mention) a little satirical one page about Craptastic Paranormal Romance Tropes. Which managed to flesh out to an entire story. I'm as shocked as you are. And it even has a decent skeleton to build off of, because I took an old idea (A Poppyseed Affair used to be a sketch comic, high-school drama story about a girl named Avery) and then mixed it with the Paranormal genre. And now it actually has a place to go!
