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marnanightingaleHow To Identify Marna Fic at Twenty Paces, A Highly Biased List.
(of course, because I cowrite so intensively, and because we go to some trouble to blend our voices, I don't really have a big body of stuff that is all mine to work from. So this is in fact How To Identify Marna-and-Skud Fic at Twenty Paces, Part One. I'll mark things that I think are mostly me with an *. Possibly![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damned_colonial will provide corrections, and maybe even Part Two if I nudge her gently.)
* 1) Semicolons. There will be semicolons all over the place, and there will be long long sentences. I didn't go to all this trouble to learn to punctuate correctly not to push it to the limit whenever humanly possible, dammit. Especially in sex scenes.
2) Fauna. Ducks, kangaroos, horses, dogs, wombats... DEPLOY THE FAUNA! Flora I am not so good with.
3) "The characters talk. They talk a lot. They talk of TS Eliot..." well, they don't, but only because he's not 18th C. They talk. They snark. They quote. They pun. They make obscure references. They do it in the drawing room, they do it in bed, they do it in battle ... This makes Horatio and Bush challenging to write, as they are not so talky. OTOH, it makes them stand out strongly, which is nice.
4) There's a lot of bisexuality about. I write slash about men who generally are already pretty clearly aware that they like men, but who also mostly like women just fine, thank you. Their sexual personae and predelictions reflect both kinds of experience.
5) There's a lot of non-monogamy about, too, and relatively little drama about it. My characters tend to define 'fidelity' as keeping their word,and they are not in the habit of pledging their eternal troth at the drop of a pair of breeches. They are quite capable of jealousy, but when they take it as a licence to be possessive and demanding, it tends to work out badly for them. Narratorial sympathy will tend to be conspicuously absent at these times.
* 6) There is relatively little background detail. I tend to research obsessively, make sure every detail is right, and then cut a ton of it back out again because while it may be interesting, it's only allowed to stay in if it is relevant or interesting to the characters.
7) There is a lot of sex about, and it's usually explicit. Every character has his or her own collection of kinks, proclivities, turnoffs and cetera. As with background detail, I tend to edit information about this back out unless it's actually needed to drive the scene. How two (or more) characters have sex depends on their individual collection of kinks AND how they combine PLUS environment PLUS their state of mind at the time.
... and there I run out. Addition, corrections, questions, random snarkage, all welcome.
(of course, because I cowrite so intensively, and because we go to some trouble to blend our voices, I don't really have a big body of stuff that is all mine to work from. So this is in fact How To Identify Marna-and-Skud Fic at Twenty Paces, Part One. I'll mark things that I think are mostly me with an *. Possibly
damned_colonial will provide corrections, and maybe even Part Two if I nudge her gently.) * 1) Semicolons. There will be semicolons all over the place, and there will be long long sentences. I didn't go to all this trouble to learn to punctuate correctly not to push it to the limit whenever humanly possible, dammit. Especially in sex scenes.
2) Fauna. Ducks, kangaroos, horses, dogs, wombats... DEPLOY THE FAUNA! Flora I am not so good with.
3) "The characters talk. They talk a lot. They talk of TS Eliot..." well, they don't, but only because he's not 18th C. They talk. They snark. They quote. They pun. They make obscure references. They do it in the drawing room, they do it in bed, they do it in battle ... This makes Horatio and Bush challenging to write, as they are not so talky. OTOH, it makes them stand out strongly, which is nice.
4) There's a lot of bisexuality about. I write slash about men who generally are already pretty clearly aware that they like men, but who also mostly like women just fine, thank you. Their sexual personae and predelictions reflect both kinds of experience.
5) There's a lot of non-monogamy about, too, and relatively little drama about it. My characters tend to define 'fidelity' as keeping their word,and they are not in the habit of pledging their eternal troth at the drop of a pair of breeches. They are quite capable of jealousy, but when they take it as a licence to be possessive and demanding, it tends to work out badly for them. Narratorial sympathy will tend to be conspicuously absent at these times.
* 6) There is relatively little background detail. I tend to research obsessively, make sure every detail is right, and then cut a ton of it back out again because while it may be interesting, it's only allowed to stay in if it is relevant or interesting to the characters.
7) There is a lot of sex about, and it's usually explicit. Every character has his or her own collection of kinks, proclivities, turnoffs and cetera. As with background detail, I tend to edit information about this back out unless it's actually needed to drive the scene. How two (or more) characters have sex depends on their individual collection of kinks AND how they combine PLUS environment PLUS their state of mind at the time.
... and there I run out. Addition, corrections, questions, random snarkage, all welcome.
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Date: 2006-01-19 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:10 pm (UTC)#3, also, makes me appreciate certain things...
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:13 pm (UTC)*sticks something in his mouth to shut him up*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-20 12:55 am (UTC)8): Well written, with its i's dotted, its t's crossed and its colons semi'd.