Perri Lightfoot
Let's give it a go!
- 173
- Posts
- 16
- Years
- Seen Apr 17, 2022
I've never posted here in the Lounge before - forgive me for my sudden intrusion, but I just felt like joining the party :) I'll answer some current questions first, and then pose and answer one of my own:
Do you plan to become an author in real life?
The way I see it, I already am an author in real life! I write stories, don't I? :) Just because those stories are unpublishable fanfiction doesn't make them any less worthwhile. I have no plans to become a published author, even though I've been told a few times I could have the talent for it. My heart's just not in it. Fanfiction, and Pokémon fanfiction in particular, is where my soul and my passion lie. I have very little desire to write stories set outside the Pokémon universe; and even then, these few other ideas of mine are still based in one fandom or another. Being published would not suddenly make me a "better" writer than I already am; and besides, if being traditionally published meant that I had to give up my involvement in fandom and delete all traces that I was ever even there (as I have heard published authors who started out in fanfic, such as Naomi Novik and the infamous Cassandra Claire, have had to do), than it is so not worth it. XD I don't feel like I need a publishing contract to validate myself to the world as a writer; or that my fanfiction is nothing more than "practice" before I go and write something "original" - I already am the author I want to be, published or not, and no one can ever tell me otherwise.
Aside from Twilight or any related works, have you ever seen a Mary Sue in a published story? Was there anything notable about them?
The above mentioned Cassandra Claire has a rather epic Sue in the form of Clary (author insertion much?) in her Mortal Instruments series; but the most insufferably obnoxious Sues I've ever encountered can be found lurking within the pages of 19th century children's literature. I remember reading one such story once - damned if I can remember the author or title - about a little girl who was both beautiful in looks and in soul; perfect blond curls, bright blue eyes, always listened to her parents, was kind and giving and the whole nine yards. Her brother was a human character - an average boy who, like average boys, sometimes got into mischief and didn't always do what was right. If memory serves, one day the little boy decided to be rough to his sister while she was on a swing; she fell off and somehow that killed her. Of course, that lead to some pretty epic bathos where everyone mourned the loss of such a perfect beautiful girl and how her brother would have to live with the guilt of offing the most epically perfect Sue in the history of all Suedom for the rest of his life. Yeeeeeesh!
Author H.H. Munro wrote a wonderful parody of one of these insufferably perfect Mary Sues, whose very perfection leads her to an ironic and deserved end ;)
And here's a question of my own: Do you prefer writing more dialogue and less description, less dialogue and more description, or do you try to evenly balance it? For me, I've found that my works tend to be heavy on mood, scene-setting, and the internal thoughts of the main characters, and somewhat light on people actually speaking to each other. In the case of my fic Paws for Alarm, this is partly due to necessity born from the plot - none of the main characters are capable of even saying anything other than "pikachu" or "pichu;" so the only time true spoken dialogue appears is when humans are around. But even in other works of mine I've found myself focusing a lot on the concept of Man Vs. Self; where the action tends to be contained mostly within the main character's mind and less so among other people. Dialogue and interactions between characters are present, of course, but for some reason I find myself putting less focus on them than I do on describing the surroundings and the internal struggles of the main characters. ^^'
Do you plan to become an author in real life?
The way I see it, I already am an author in real life! I write stories, don't I? :) Just because those stories are unpublishable fanfiction doesn't make them any less worthwhile. I have no plans to become a published author, even though I've been told a few times I could have the talent for it. My heart's just not in it. Fanfiction, and Pokémon fanfiction in particular, is where my soul and my passion lie. I have very little desire to write stories set outside the Pokémon universe; and even then, these few other ideas of mine are still based in one fandom or another. Being published would not suddenly make me a "better" writer than I already am; and besides, if being traditionally published meant that I had to give up my involvement in fandom and delete all traces that I was ever even there (as I have heard published authors who started out in fanfic, such as Naomi Novik and the infamous Cassandra Claire, have had to do), than it is so not worth it. XD I don't feel like I need a publishing contract to validate myself to the world as a writer; or that my fanfiction is nothing more than "practice" before I go and write something "original" - I already am the author I want to be, published or not, and no one can ever tell me otherwise.
Aside from Twilight or any related works, have you ever seen a Mary Sue in a published story? Was there anything notable about them?
The above mentioned Cassandra Claire has a rather epic Sue in the form of Clary (author insertion much?) in her Mortal Instruments series; but the most insufferably obnoxious Sues I've ever encountered can be found lurking within the pages of 19th century children's literature. I remember reading one such story once - damned if I can remember the author or title - about a little girl who was both beautiful in looks and in soul; perfect blond curls, bright blue eyes, always listened to her parents, was kind and giving and the whole nine yards. Her brother was a human character - an average boy who, like average boys, sometimes got into mischief and didn't always do what was right. If memory serves, one day the little boy decided to be rough to his sister while she was on a swing; she fell off and somehow that killed her. Of course, that lead to some pretty epic bathos where everyone mourned the loss of such a perfect beautiful girl and how her brother would have to live with the guilt of offing the most epically perfect Sue in the history of all Suedom for the rest of his life. Yeeeeeesh!
Author H.H. Munro wrote a wonderful parody of one of these insufferably perfect Mary Sues, whose very perfection leads her to an ironic and deserved end ;)
And here's a question of my own: Do you prefer writing more dialogue and less description, less dialogue and more description, or do you try to evenly balance it? For me, I've found that my works tend to be heavy on mood, scene-setting, and the internal thoughts of the main characters, and somewhat light on people actually speaking to each other. In the case of my fic Paws for Alarm, this is partly due to necessity born from the plot - none of the main characters are capable of even saying anything other than "pikachu" or "pichu;" so the only time true spoken dialogue appears is when humans are around. But even in other works of mine I've found myself focusing a lot on the concept of Man Vs. Self; where the action tends to be contained mostly within the main character's mind and less so among other people. Dialogue and interactions between characters are present, of course, but for some reason I find myself putting less focus on them than I do on describing the surroundings and the internal struggles of the main characters. ^^'
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