Yuletide Reveal (2009, 2010)
Jan. 5th, 2011 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engThe fandom I was assigned came from my bucket list this year, so my initial reaction was a fair amount of surprise before the excitement and panic kicked in; I'd kind of talked myself into believing that there was no chance of getting anything from there and made my peace with it. I got a 1/1 match on Duke Special (Music Videos) with no assigned characters and a lot of leeway in the optional details. (Duke Special has something like five or six different official videos.)
Last year I wrote a Coupling story called Jam. My main challenges when I set out to write it were getting Jeff into a Sally/Patrick story and getting the voices right. I had major issues writing it. I went through all the source material, and then I had all of these characters wandering around in my head, but they really weren't cooperating. They just kept strolling through, saying random things. They wanted to be at a cocktail party. I just went with it, eventually.
My big challenge writing this year was just making decisions. I brainstormed story ideas for a few of the videos before choosing to write about Freewheel (I think I decided that I wanted to write about the animals but that watching the dissolution of the bears' marriage on repeat would be too depressing.) and its musicians. (I didn't want to write about the couple.) I became kind of fixated on the conductor over the course of my many viewings - he had bumblebee cufflinks and a red bow tie and a fascinating silhouette.
Where I had had four seasons of source material previously I had four minutes, so I found ways to research. I read a little bit about the various mustelids, and went on google image searches, trying to figure out what sort of animal the conductor was. Later I read animal fact pages about pine martens and foxes. I watched odd amateur youtube videos of pine martens so that I could visualise how they moved. I read non-fiction books that touched on composers. (I decided for simplicity that the conductor was also the composer.) Life Is What You Make It is a motivational self-help book, written by Peter Buffett, who is a composer and musician. The Triumph of Music by Tim Blanning is a music history book that I'd recommend reading - it's an accessible, fun read and it's really well organised. I'm not a musician, so both books were really useful to me; they gave me a look at the neuroses of a modern composer and a history of composers.
While the research gave me a grounding in the world I was writing in I still didn't have much to go on for my characters. I hadn't written anything like an original character in years and ended up making character sheets up for the conductor and the pianist, which were incredibly helpful. A few of the conductor's personality traits were pulled from traits common to a number of the individuals my recipient had icons of, and there were some things that I just knew about him.
It was interesting to be writing what is very nearly original fiction, just to see what my mind would populate that kind of blank space with. Giving the characters voices was probably the most difficult thing along with figuring out how they'd interact with each other. I can break down pretty solidly where they're drawn from. (Owen is drawn from the conductor in the video, a pine marten, myself, Peter Buffett's musical neuroses, my interpretation of some of my recipient's icon-depicted characters, and Zborowski from Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec. Rory is drawn from the pianist in the video, a fox, myself, someone a bit rude for my recipient, one of my favorite character-types, and Gabriel from Supernatural.)
Naming Owen and Rory took a ridiculous amount of time. I have this thing where I want names to mean something and end up trawling through baby name sites or books for a stupid amount of time. I tend to be drawn to distractingly uncommon names and so only let myself use names that have belonged to people I've met. (Owen is also Owen Pallett and Rory, Rory Gilmore - neither have anything to do with their character, really, it was just reassuring to have instant public name associations.)
Rory being genderqueer was one of the first character decisions I ended up making. It had a lot to do with this whole nearly blank canvas business; I could pretty much do anything I wanted. So I ended up writing a genderqueer fox pianist, (and using gender neutral pronouns, which I hadn't done before,) an arabic male name, a female violinist, a niece, and a sister and brother-in-law. It was interesting to see where the pauses came, what were choices and what just was. Gender was always evaluated and often a choice, names were a choice but their origin wasn't, I had to decide on how many spoons there were and what type of tea, whether hir sister and partner were married but not whether or not there was a partner.
I feel like the only decision I had to make last year was the type of jam, so this year's assignment was drastically different and challenging in different ways. I learned things writing it.
I'd like to thankreadbystarlight, sinesofinsanity and sobluethesky for putting up with yuletide me again, and fran of #yuletide for the beta and reassurance. The story I wrote this year is called Duke Special.
Last year I wrote a Coupling story called Jam. My main challenges when I set out to write it were getting Jeff into a Sally/Patrick story and getting the voices right. I had major issues writing it. I went through all the source material, and then I had all of these characters wandering around in my head, but they really weren't cooperating. They just kept strolling through, saying random things. They wanted to be at a cocktail party. I just went with it, eventually.
My big challenge writing this year was just making decisions. I brainstormed story ideas for a few of the videos before choosing to write about Freewheel (I think I decided that I wanted to write about the animals but that watching the dissolution of the bears' marriage on repeat would be too depressing.) and its musicians. (I didn't want to write about the couple.) I became kind of fixated on the conductor over the course of my many viewings - he had bumblebee cufflinks and a red bow tie and a fascinating silhouette.
Where I had had four seasons of source material previously I had four minutes, so I found ways to research. I read a little bit about the various mustelids, and went on google image searches, trying to figure out what sort of animal the conductor was. Later I read animal fact pages about pine martens and foxes. I watched odd amateur youtube videos of pine martens so that I could visualise how they moved. I read non-fiction books that touched on composers. (I decided for simplicity that the conductor was also the composer.) Life Is What You Make It is a motivational self-help book, written by Peter Buffett, who is a composer and musician. The Triumph of Music by Tim Blanning is a music history book that I'd recommend reading - it's an accessible, fun read and it's really well organised. I'm not a musician, so both books were really useful to me; they gave me a look at the neuroses of a modern composer and a history of composers.
While the research gave me a grounding in the world I was writing in I still didn't have much to go on for my characters. I hadn't written anything like an original character in years and ended up making character sheets up for the conductor and the pianist, which were incredibly helpful. A few of the conductor's personality traits were pulled from traits common to a number of the individuals my recipient had icons of, and there were some things that I just knew about him.
It was interesting to be writing what is very nearly original fiction, just to see what my mind would populate that kind of blank space with. Giving the characters voices was probably the most difficult thing along with figuring out how they'd interact with each other. I can break down pretty solidly where they're drawn from. (Owen is drawn from the conductor in the video, a pine marten, myself, Peter Buffett's musical neuroses, my interpretation of some of my recipient's icon-depicted characters, and Zborowski from Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec. Rory is drawn from the pianist in the video, a fox, myself, someone a bit rude for my recipient, one of my favorite character-types, and Gabriel from Supernatural.)
Naming Owen and Rory took a ridiculous amount of time. I have this thing where I want names to mean something and end up trawling through baby name sites or books for a stupid amount of time. I tend to be drawn to distractingly uncommon names and so only let myself use names that have belonged to people I've met. (Owen is also Owen Pallett and Rory, Rory Gilmore - neither have anything to do with their character, really, it was just reassuring to have instant public name associations.)
Rory being genderqueer was one of the first character decisions I ended up making. It had a lot to do with this whole nearly blank canvas business; I could pretty much do anything I wanted. So I ended up writing a genderqueer fox pianist, (and using gender neutral pronouns, which I hadn't done before,) an arabic male name, a female violinist, a niece, and a sister and brother-in-law. It was interesting to see where the pauses came, what were choices and what just was. Gender was always evaluated and often a choice, names were a choice but their origin wasn't, I had to decide on how many spoons there were and what type of tea, whether hir sister and partner were married but not whether or not there was a partner.
I feel like the only decision I had to make last year was the type of jam, so this year's assignment was drastically different and challenging in different ways. I learned things writing it.
I'd like to thank
readbystarlight, sinesofinsanity and sobluethesky for putting up with yuletide me again, and fran of #yuletide for the beta and reassurance. The story I wrote this year is called Duke Special.