Haha! Draft finished!
Apr. 16th, 2010 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagas_isaBetween a marathon of work yesterday and today, I've basically got the rough draft of "Out of (or Into) the Blue Box" finished (a.k.a. the Animorphs fic I'm writing for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lgbtfest) It's about 7300 words.
Animorphs, any character, post-series: the effect of morphing technology on the transgendered community.
I really wanted to include the aliens in this. It's not Animorphs without them, really. Hence the trandgendered Andalites and Andalite attitudes towards them (mostly, "They don't exist"), and mentions of Yeerks as being another minority community. The Andalite bits are important, but the first part just sounds too much like a combination of a gossip column and a history book.
I also wanted to get across that the human narrators all experience the morphing technology in a different way. Lydia goes through the "official" channels, and is an activist. Nicky uses his ability unofficially and presents professionally as Nichole, but spends the rest of his time living as Nicholas. Aftran gets exploited because of zir morphing ability. Lydia ended up where I expected her to be, and Nicky ended up actually being a lot easier to write than I anticipated him being, an a lot sweeter. With Aftran, I found getting zir into the photographer's studio more harrowing, and winded up ending the story with zir and the photographer looking at a particular picture of Aftran, not with them at the exhibit opening, like I planned.
Thoughts for potential edits:
Hmm...mostly, I'm glad I'm at a point where I think I have all the information I could possibly want to convey out on the table. The main issue now is really what information I really do want to convey, and conveying it in a way that sounds personal to narrator, but still shows a view of the whole.
lgbtfest) It's about 7300 words.Animorphs, any character, post-series: the effect of morphing technology on the transgendered community.
I really wanted to include the aliens in this. It's not Animorphs without them, really. Hence the trandgendered Andalites and Andalite attitudes towards them (mostly, "They don't exist"), and mentions of Yeerks as being another minority community. The Andalite bits are important, but the first part just sounds too much like a combination of a gossip column and a history book.
I also wanted to get across that the human narrators all experience the morphing technology in a different way. Lydia goes through the "official" channels, and is an activist. Nicky uses his ability unofficially and presents professionally as Nichole, but spends the rest of his time living as Nicholas. Aftran gets exploited because of zir morphing ability. Lydia ended up where I expected her to be, and Nicky ended up actually being a lot easier to write than I anticipated him being, an a lot sweeter. With Aftran, I found getting zir into the photographer's studio more harrowing, and winded up ending the story with zir and the photographer looking at a particular picture of Aftran, not with them at the exhibit opening, like I planned.
Thoughts for potential edits:
- Combining both of the Andalite sections into just one section (?). Advantage: Lowers word count, takes out the beginning section with Escafil, which is really completely different in style and tone than the rest. Disadvantage: Makes her status as transgendered speculation (?)
- Writing the human sections emphasizing their disclosure, since all three of them do that in some way (one person in her memoirs, one person to his girlfriend, and one person to a photographer).
- Changing POV from third to first.
- Getting rid of some of the "life story" background in favor of specificity.
- Let a bit of Lydia's location seep into her narrative to match with how I treated Nicky and Aftran, who are very definitely in specific locations.
- The fan recognition bits. I seem to be heavy on emphasizing Cassie. I see where it makes sense in the contexts (in one case, it helps code a character as being black or mixed-race without making it a huge deal, in another it's about her morphing talents). But I'm wondering if I should change one of the references to another character, or leave it be.
- Formalizing the Andalite diction.
- Capturing individual voices for the human characters.
- SPAG
- Finishing my damn sentences.
Hmm...mostly, I'm glad I'm at a point where I think I have all the information I could possibly want to convey out on the table. The main issue now is really what information I really do want to convey, and conveying it in a way that sounds personal to narrator, but still shows a view of the whole.
