How not to write fanfic

[shivver]

There's this:









Yes, that's a total of 6 hits in 48 hours, one of which is romanajo123 being a supportive friend. That'll go up by as much as 5 soon, when some of you reading my journal will go check the story out. It absolutely made me laugh, how much joy I can get out of writing a story that no one will ever read. I am forever doomed by my obsession with guest characters.

This was totally expected. The story has no Doctors in it, is concerned entirely about a guest character, and has no ships, so it can't possibly be interesting. It also doesn't have any common tags for people to accidentally find it with. I remember at the Raleigh Comic Con in 2014, I was in line for the David Tennant panel, chatting with some fellow fans, and when they found out I wrote fanfic, they wanted to check out my work and asked me what ships I wrote. I told them that I don't write ships, and they actually turned away and started talking to someone else.

But I loved working on this story, creating the character of Becca Postlethwaite and giving her her own obstacles to overcome, as well as weaving the canon events into her story. When I wrote about her difficulties with her husband, I thought to myself, "Omg, my husband is going to totally think this is him," and I was right. I told him about her husband, and he immediately went, "This isn't autobiographical, is it?" despite the fact that he's been excited about my writing from the very first, from the moment I sheepishly showed him "The Man in the Fireplace" and admitted my dirty secret of writing it on my iPad in the darkness the night I first saw "The Girl in the Fireplace". Sigh. No, dear, Pete is not at all patterned on you, not in the slightest bit.

What I really wanted was to express the drive to write, the obsession with putting a story on paper, that I felt when I started watching Doctor Who. It feels silly, and most other people are going to not understand and are going to mock you for it, but you still have to do it, because the world and the characters - whatever world and characters, not just DW, but whatever fandom or whatever original universe you're creating - are just demanding to be heard. Jon and Donna have so many more supervillains to defeat. David and Will have so many more adventures to have. And of course, the Doctor and his companions have all the worlds in the universe to explore.

Of course, this story took a lot of research, and I can't tout AHistory enough as the essential resource for writing canon. I also had to create Becca's entire family, from Joan Redfern down to the present day and figure out where they all fit throughout the twentieth century. After I completed and posted the story, I looked back at my notes of who was related to who and when they lived, and I got the idea to put it into a family tree.



And then I thought, "Why the hell didn't I do this before I wrote the story?" I spent so much time referring back to my notes and trying to make heads or tails of it (they weren't the best organized), and this would have been so much easier to work with. But it looks really cool all laid out.

But damn I'm happy with this story and its 6 views.

Comments

[romanajo123]

:3

It is an interesting idea. And you definitely did your research.

(...how did you create that, flow chart?)

[shivver]

I used an online family tree tool - familyecho.com. It's free and basic, but good enough for my purposes. You can go there and start adding your stuff, but if you want to save your work, you have to create an account (which is still free). So now that site thinks I'm Rebecca Postlethwaite. :) It has a lot more features than what I needed - like the ability to add images and background info - but probably not enough if you're really into geneaology.

[arcanetrivia]

6 in a mere 48 hours? Count your blessings! I'm currently doomed by 1. writing in a tiny (if not actually dead) fandom and 2. writing explicit fic in a fandom where it seems people are not so into that: