first draft: To the Rescue
Mar. 19th, 2009 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerI need to jump-start my writing muse, so it's time for another "first draft" post. And instead of trying to do these in some semblance of order -- or even some vague relationship to when the fics were written -- I'll just go ahead and reflect on the first draft of my most recently completed fic, To the Rescue.
This fic was written in only three days -- which is amazing speed for me -- although I took at least that long again to edit, and then there were some great changes suggested by my beta,brewsternorth, who also Britpicked because she's British and awesome and I'm American and apparently write like an American. Anyway, moving on . . .
The fic was of course part of The Many Lives of Sarah Jane ficathon, based on this prompt: "All the standard options have been trotted out for who picked up Sarah from Aberdeen; let's see what would have happened if it was someone completely unexpected."
I came up with the idea of Jack pretty much right away. And sincehhertzof had said that crack was encouraged, I also pretty much right away decided that the story was going to be crack. Which also fairly directly led into the idea of playing with the Sarah/Aberdeen fanfic tropes -- that Sarah needs rescuing because she has no money, no idea where she is, no way to get home, she's emotionally distraught, etc.
And now here's where I confess that I was a little nervous that people would get mad at me for poking fun at the tropes. And I'm still a little nervous about it, and I do really hope that no one took offense, because I like reading the Sarah Aberdeen!angst, I really do, and I myself in one of my stories ("Miles from Aberdeen") had Sarah break down and cry after being left (it was in chapter two, if you want to check). Nothing wrong with it at all, it was just fun to poke fun at it, if you get what I mean. And also fun to imagine Sarah as the complete opposite -- not emotionally upset, with money, able to take care of herself and really having a good time in Aberdeen. I also felt that Aberdeen as a city had started to get kind of a bad rap, and although I've never been there I see no reason to think it's not a perfectly nice place. So the fic turned into a defense of Sarah as being strong and capable, and a defense of Aberdeen as being really not that bad. In a cracky way, of course.
Originally the fic was going to be shorter, with just Jack, but when you're going for crack you've got to extend the joke as long as you can, so I sat down and tried to think of other unlikely people who I could have fail to rescue Sarah. My first title was "Five People Who Picked Up Sarah Jane from Aberdeen, and One Who Didn't," with the five being Jack, Barbara, Ian, Jo and K-9, and the one being of course Harry. Yes, I was going to have Barbara and Ian appear, but then I realized I didn't have anything funny to do with them that I couldn't do in a funnier way with Jack. So I dumped Barbara and Ian (sorry, Barbara/Ian fans). Then I was trying to figure out how to end it, and that's when I came up with the idea of Sarah going off with Romana. It was around this point that the fic really took shape, and I dumped the idea of "five things" because it didn't fit yet again (every time I try to do a "five things"-type fic it never ends up fitting -- I should stop trying).
The first draft used Sarah's POV right from the start, which was nice because I love writing Sarah's POV, and stylistically there's something to be said for keeping the same POV throughout, but it had a problem -- using her POV established too quickly that she was doing just fine in Aberdeen. I wanted the reader to discover it at the same time Jack discovered it, in a hopefully humorous way. So then I knew that the first section had to be from Jack's POV, and then of course I went for broke on the whole to-the-rescue hero schtick, which made the thing far funnier right from the start.
And now, without further ado (whew, I think this has been almost as long as the fic itself, hello, anyone still with me out there?), the first draft of the first section:
---------------------------------------------------------
It didn't take Sarah very long to figure out that the Doctor had dropped her off in Aberdeen rather than South Croydon. She whistled as she walked, then laughed, then whistled again. She looked around with interest; she'd never been to Aberdeen before. Idly she wondered how far it was to the train station. There were bound to be luggage lockers there, and it would be nice to find a place to leave her things so she could truly explore for a few hours.
In the meantime, she let her suitcase bang haphazardly against one leg as she walked. She easily balanced the stuffed owl and fake flower pot in her other arm, and she rather enjoyed the attention she drew from stunned passersby; that is, when she bothered to notice. She walked a random path, heading generally towards the center of town yet impulsively following every tempting scent and enticing sound, led through broad streets and narrow alleys by alluring glimpses of something new to be discovered at every juncture. She was standing outside a bakery and contemplating buying a scone when a black van barreled around a corner and screeched to a halt beside her.
"Sarah Jane Smith!" called the tall and overly handsome man who jumped out and ran up to her. He pulled himself up to a sudden stop, and Sarah thought for a moment that he might actually salute her. She stared at him in astonishment, and he grinned and shifted so that his greatcoat swished around him. "I'm here," he announced with confident authority. "Don't worry, I'm here."
"I noticed that," she said. She took him in from the cocky smile to the anachronistic coat to the boots that looked suspiciously similar to a pair she'd once seen at a market on a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. "You're a little hard to miss, actually. And who exactly are you, might I ask?"
The grin improbably broadened. "Captain Jack Harkness." He reached an arm around her shoulders. "There, there," he said reassuringly. "There, there."
"Um, what are you doing, Captain?" asked Sarah.
"Consoling you," he replied.
"You're what?" said Sarah.
This fic was written in only three days -- which is amazing speed for me -- although I took at least that long again to edit, and then there were some great changes suggested by my beta,
brewsternorth, who also Britpicked because she's British and awesome and I'm American and apparently write like an American. Anyway, moving on . . .The fic was of course part of The Many Lives of Sarah Jane ficathon, based on this prompt: "All the standard options have been trotted out for who picked up Sarah from Aberdeen; let's see what would have happened if it was someone completely unexpected."
I came up with the idea of Jack pretty much right away. And since
hhertzof had said that crack was encouraged, I also pretty much right away decided that the story was going to be crack. Which also fairly directly led into the idea of playing with the Sarah/Aberdeen fanfic tropes -- that Sarah needs rescuing because she has no money, no idea where she is, no way to get home, she's emotionally distraught, etc.And now here's where I confess that I was a little nervous that people would get mad at me for poking fun at the tropes. And I'm still a little nervous about it, and I do really hope that no one took offense, because I like reading the Sarah Aberdeen!angst, I really do, and I myself in one of my stories ("Miles from Aberdeen") had Sarah break down and cry after being left (it was in chapter two, if you want to check). Nothing wrong with it at all, it was just fun to poke fun at it, if you get what I mean. And also fun to imagine Sarah as the complete opposite -- not emotionally upset, with money, able to take care of herself and really having a good time in Aberdeen. I also felt that Aberdeen as a city had started to get kind of a bad rap, and although I've never been there I see no reason to think it's not a perfectly nice place. So the fic turned into a defense of Sarah as being strong and capable, and a defense of Aberdeen as being really not that bad. In a cracky way, of course.
Originally the fic was going to be shorter, with just Jack, but when you're going for crack you've got to extend the joke as long as you can, so I sat down and tried to think of other unlikely people who I could have fail to rescue Sarah. My first title was "Five People Who Picked Up Sarah Jane from Aberdeen, and One Who Didn't," with the five being Jack, Barbara, Ian, Jo and K-9, and the one being of course Harry. Yes, I was going to have Barbara and Ian appear, but then I realized I didn't have anything funny to do with them that I couldn't do in a funnier way with Jack. So I dumped Barbara and Ian (sorry, Barbara/Ian fans). Then I was trying to figure out how to end it, and that's when I came up with the idea of Sarah going off with Romana. It was around this point that the fic really took shape, and I dumped the idea of "five things" because it didn't fit yet again (every time I try to do a "five things"-type fic it never ends up fitting -- I should stop trying).
The first draft used Sarah's POV right from the start, which was nice because I love writing Sarah's POV, and stylistically there's something to be said for keeping the same POV throughout, but it had a problem -- using her POV established too quickly that she was doing just fine in Aberdeen. I wanted the reader to discover it at the same time Jack discovered it, in a hopefully humorous way. So then I knew that the first section had to be from Jack's POV, and then of course I went for broke on the whole to-the-rescue hero schtick, which made the thing far funnier right from the start.
And now, without further ado (whew, I think this has been almost as long as the fic itself, hello, anyone still with me out there?), the first draft of the first section:
---------------------------------------------------------
It didn't take Sarah very long to figure out that the Doctor had dropped her off in Aberdeen rather than South Croydon. She whistled as she walked, then laughed, then whistled again. She looked around with interest; she'd never been to Aberdeen before. Idly she wondered how far it was to the train station. There were bound to be luggage lockers there, and it would be nice to find a place to leave her things so she could truly explore for a few hours.
In the meantime, she let her suitcase bang haphazardly against one leg as she walked. She easily balanced the stuffed owl and fake flower pot in her other arm, and she rather enjoyed the attention she drew from stunned passersby; that is, when she bothered to notice. She walked a random path, heading generally towards the center of town yet impulsively following every tempting scent and enticing sound, led through broad streets and narrow alleys by alluring glimpses of something new to be discovered at every juncture. She was standing outside a bakery and contemplating buying a scone when a black van barreled around a corner and screeched to a halt beside her.
"Sarah Jane Smith!" called the tall and overly handsome man who jumped out and ran up to her. He pulled himself up to a sudden stop, and Sarah thought for a moment that he might actually salute her. She stared at him in astonishment, and he grinned and shifted so that his greatcoat swished around him. "I'm here," he announced with confident authority. "Don't worry, I'm here."
"I noticed that," she said. She took him in from the cocky smile to the anachronistic coat to the boots that looked suspiciously similar to a pair she'd once seen at a market on a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. "You're a little hard to miss, actually. And who exactly are you, might I ask?"
The grin improbably broadened. "Captain Jack Harkness." He reached an arm around her shoulders. "There, there," he said reassuringly. "There, there."
"Um, what are you doing, Captain?" asked Sarah.
"Consoling you," he replied.
"You're what?" said Sarah.
