Subject: Workshop 4A: Mission Pre-Writing
Author:
Posted on: 2015-03-18 18:23:00 UTC
It's complete!
I intended this to be out in January, but a combination of rewrites and a real life promotion put some serious delays on this. I intend to put out the other mission-related workshops by May (fingers, toes, and eyes crossed).
Responses may be posted here or on the wiki blog page, as per usual. I hope this is helpful to some of you!
To complete this, the final version of my Outline and Notes for a mission into “Rose’s Visit" is here.
HG
Since I don't intend to keep this private, I posted Part 2 on the promotion thread, where there is a grater chance that somebody will see it.
HG
Pick your Poison
Okay, I tried to skim the pit, looking for blurbs that catch my eye. But I found that I have neither the time, nor the patience, to do this. So here is a question for all you gals and guys who post in badfic threads. How do you find this stuff? Do you stumble over it by chance, because you read just so many fanfiction? Are there some filter tricks for finding badfiction?
I may be able to recognize badfiction when I see it, but considering that I don’t really like to read fanfiction much, I will probably never find bad fanfiction unless it pokes me in the eye or something. So, to make this going, I checked the preselected badfiction on the Unclaimed Badfic page, Harry Potter division.
"Becoming Female": 55 chapters, although short, are probably too much for a workshop.
"Christmas Cuppa": Short, but eek, not my kink; and Androia is predestined to be an assassin.
"Harry Potter and the Gift of the Basilisk": Looks interesting but is nearly as long as "Becoming Female".
"Ival Pythonica": Definitely too long for a workshop (113.706 words).
"The Last War": Harry and Hermione soon find themselves wondering what they ever saw in the Weasleys. But will they finally recognize their love for one another? And what devastating consequences will happen when they do? H/Hr Don't like it? DON'T READ IT.
I may follow this advice; this thing makes me too angry.
"The Love of Severus Snape": Marauder era? Another twenty-thousand words fic, probably too long.
"My Boys": After a quick skim through I’m not sure whether I can do much with this, but at least it’s short, and there may be some fun to have with the flashbacks.
"Potter and Riddle": Looks like a great waste of good ideas. I would like to do something with it, but I don’t dare to touch it. Not until I have improved my skills.
"The Real Us": Definitely too long for a workshop (157.527 words)
"Rose's Visit": This may be a "short and easy" first mission for my agents, if I can convince them that Rose is a Replacement and a Matchmaker Sue. But with only one chapter it may be too short for the purpose of this workshop.
"Someone To Love Me": Another one I would like to do something with, but for the time being it may be too "complex" for me.
So I’m going to thoroughly read "My Boys", "Rose's Visit" and, if neither of them fits, "Harry Potter and the Gift of the Basilisk" and "The Love of Severus Snape", and I will try to come back with an outline for at least one of them. But this may take some days.
HG
Well, it's usually not that hard to find, since it's all over the place, but here are some things I sometimes do.
I usually start by setting the filters to search for English fics, and to search for OCs under the Romance genre. And if I'm in the mood for specific characters, I search for those as well.
Or, in the 'Search Fanfic' bar, I type in a few keywords, like 'daughter Remus Tonks' or 'transfer student Hogwarts'. You know, generic badfic story premises. Suethors are surprisingly uncreative with their summaries.
From there, I just kind of browse through the selections (usually with the TV on in the background for something interesting to occupy me) and look for summaries that make me want to bang my head against the wall. If I find one that looks promising, I'll read through the first three or so chapters. If I like (or, I guess, don't like) what I see, I keep reading. And if it looks mission-worthy, I copy the link to the first chapter into my phone's notes.
There you have it. :)
This has some good advice and very good points on how missions could be improved.
I like to make my notes directly on the badfic, either in Gdocs or a hard copy if it's not too long, but otherwise it seems we work in much the same way. I'm more pro-cutting off the badfic early, though, it sounds like. With anything above two or three chapters, it's practically necessary unless you want all your missions to be novels. Mine have gotten long enough as it is.
Plus, there's the fine art of picking your kill point to consider. Unless the fic is really mediocre, chances are you/your agents will have worked up plenty of enthusiasm for taking it down long before the end, and forcing the story to go on risks losing that energy, which is bad.
One piece of nitpickery for you—a bit of redundant phrasing here:
Blurbs are a good place to start. Obviously they can't tell you anything, but if you see misspelled words or ridiculous scenarios touched upon in the summary, that's obviously a good place to start.
Oh, and you probably meant "everything," not "anything." I actually hadn't noticed that until I looked at the passage out of context.
I look forward to the next part!
~Neshomeh
I'll correct those ASAP.
That's a good point about considering where to cut off the story. I am admittedly approaching mission writing from a different perspective, as most of the badfics I've previously chosen to spork have not been particularly long. I chose shorter badfic in part to avoid the enthusiasm decline that you mentioned. I'll consider that while working on the mission-writing workshop.
PC
I know that the example might not make much sense from an in-universe standpoint, as Laura and James are in the DMS Video Game Division but their mission is in a cartoon show. Don't worry about that too much. It was just to illustrate my methodology.
PC