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acchikocchi) wrote2011-03-30 08:55 pm
acchikocchi) wrote2011-03-30 08:55 pm
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cornerflag fic: Quedarse (Raul/Mori)
I'd been thinking a lot about Diana Wynne Jones in the last several weeks, as I wrote my story for cornerflag. One of the things she said several times about her writing process was that a story would come to her in the form of a single, vivid image; she'd start from there and try to figure out what was happening in it, and why. I was thinking of her because for the first time, that happened to me: after signing up for the AU issue I'd been letting various vague steampunk/fantasy concepts percolate in the back of my head, and then out of nowhere came this image of Raúl shattering a glass room with a single word.
Because that's unusual for me, I almost immediately remembered what she had to say on the subject. Then, once I began writing a few weeks later, I made a conscious attempt to go about it that way, to work backwards from that one moment - and, as far as anything you might call worldbuilding went, to go with whatever particular images floated up rather than trying to work out some sort of elaborate, aha, travel guide ahead of time. In other words, I got the idea that even - especially - in a fantastic world, not everything has to be explained, to the reader or the author.
The result was a setting that was a mishmash of influences from DWJ to Kouga Yun to a tiny crumb of Araki Hirohiko. I thought of The Lives of Christopher Chant in particular several times before I started writing, when it seemed like the basic story idea would go a particular direction it ultimately didn't. In the end, though, the book that had a direct influence was The Magicians of Caprona; right up until submission day there was an explicit reference to it, and though that was altered slightly, I think the specific scene - or rather, setting - that owes itself to that book is pretty clear.
So with all this in mind, it was a surreal kind of shock to read on Saturday that she'd passed away. Just a few hours later,cornerflag was posted.
This isn't meant to say that the story I ended up writing is anything like a story DWJ would have written. In fact, it's not at all: the fic is a romance in both senses of the word, and it certainly doesn't aspire to a quarter of the complexity that was DWJ's hallmark, in novels and short stories alike. It's only meant to say that if only for this one single short story, I owe her as much as a writer as I do as a reader, and I know it. The influence may not be particularly obvious from the outside, but I'll always know it's there, and I'm very grateful for it.
Proper post on some underrated DWJ favorites coming later. In the meantime, here's the story.
Quedarse
Raúl González/Fernando Morientes, implied Fernando Morientes/David Villa.
10,787 words
read
cornerflag. One of the things she said several times about her writing process was that a story would come to her in the form of a single, vivid image; she'd start from there and try to figure out what was happening in it, and why. I was thinking of her because for the first time, that happened to me: after signing up for the AU issue I'd been letting various vague steampunk/fantasy concepts percolate in the back of my head, and then out of nowhere came this image of Raúl shattering a glass room with a single word.Because that's unusual for me, I almost immediately remembered what she had to say on the subject. Then, once I began writing a few weeks later, I made a conscious attempt to go about it that way, to work backwards from that one moment - and, as far as anything you might call worldbuilding went, to go with whatever particular images floated up rather than trying to work out some sort of elaborate, aha, travel guide ahead of time. In other words, I got the idea that even - especially - in a fantastic world, not everything has to be explained, to the reader or the author.
The result was a setting that was a mishmash of influences from DWJ to Kouga Yun to a tiny crumb of Araki Hirohiko. I thought of The Lives of Christopher Chant in particular several times before I started writing, when it seemed like the basic story idea would go a particular direction it ultimately didn't. In the end, though, the book that had a direct influence was The Magicians of Caprona; right up until submission day there was an explicit reference to it, and though that was altered slightly, I think the specific scene - or rather, setting - that owes itself to that book is pretty clear.
So with all this in mind, it was a surreal kind of shock to read on Saturday that she'd passed away. Just a few hours later,
cornerflag was posted.This isn't meant to say that the story I ended up writing is anything like a story DWJ would have written. In fact, it's not at all: the fic is a romance in both senses of the word, and it certainly doesn't aspire to a quarter of the complexity that was DWJ's hallmark, in novels and short stories alike. It's only meant to say that if only for this one single short story, I owe her as much as a writer as I do as a reader, and I know it. The influence may not be particularly obvious from the outside, but I'll always know it's there, and I'm very grateful for it.
Proper post on some underrated DWJ favorites coming later. In the meantime, here's the story.
Quedarse
Raúl González/Fernando Morientes, implied Fernando Morientes/David Villa.
10,787 words
read