Thoughts about writing fiction

[anna_wing]

Any actual professional novelists reading this can ignore these doubtless obvious and jejeune thoughts....


I am currently writing what looks like a novel-length Star Wars Sequel Trilogy fic (up to over 118000 words so far, which looks quite novel-like in length). Totally by accident, it just snowballed, as serial fictions apparently tend to. I now better understand how the 160-episode Hong Kong TV serials of my youth could happen.

But in the course of writing it I have realised, to a much more explicit degree than in my previous shorter fics, how:

(a) Character and context drive action, and action reveals both character and context, and context significantly determines action and character.

(b) If you put enough details into the narrative in the early chapters, there will always be something that you can use or expand upon later on, whether for plot, characterisation, conceptual clarity, running jokes, atmosphere or just additional background detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Not so much Chekhov's Gun as the assorted items in Chekhov's Cabinet of Curiosities.

(c) I really prefer the omniscient viewpoint, with occasional brief forays into loose third-person as necessary. It makes writing comedy much easier too.

Comments

[sartorias]

Exactly. The same can be said for any work within a given frame. The whole fanfic thing is pretty arbitrary (look at centuries and centuries of Arthuriana), though that discussion borders on copyright and suchlike, which . . . if one is attempting to make a living at one's work, can become problematical. Story is story.

[anna_wing]

One thing about Star Wars as a legendarium is that its foundation is the films, rather than a text or set of texts, which adds in the element of the individual actors. In the sequel trilogy, for instance, the death of Carrie Fisher certainly derailed the development of the third film's plot, and I think it could be argued that Adam Driver, by simply having more charisma and screen presence than the rest of the cast put together, gave the role of Kylo Ren more and different weight and significance in the story than a strict look at the script might warrant. Assuming that Star Wars as a story is still culturally salient in a hundred or a thousand years' time, this could have interesting effects on how it is perceived, analysed and used in further fictions.

The after-life of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Journey To The West" shows no sign of dwindling in significance either, so I am not dismissing the possibility.

One could also argue that the former Extended Universe books/comics etc, now Legends Universe, have essentially been turned into fanfic too. Disney has created its own Silmarillion...

[sartorias]

Very true about "Journey to the West" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," I am only beginning to discover.

[anna_wing]

I recommend the 2007 film "Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon", starring Andy Lau, Samo Hung and Maggie Q (playing a female general, the entirely fictional grand-daughter of General Cao Cao, the grand antagonist of the original
'Romance of the Three Kingdoms'.

Apart from being a homage to the ineffable cool of Andy Lau, it is also a very nice illustration of many popular tropes of this genre. The ending is spectacular.

[sartorias]

Let me see if I can find it!