first draft: Match Point
Sep. 12th, 2008 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerNot sure if anyone else is even remotely interested in these, but personally I enjoy going back and looking at snatches of my first drafts, which is why I keep them. It helps me be reflective as a writer and reminds me that good things can come from inauspicious beginnings. And as I am still having issues with my current story-in-progress, I am going to publicly post the first draft of "Match Point".
"Match Point" is a little different in that once I decided to write the story itself, it did come out pretty much like the final version, with only the usual edits for grammar and word tweaking. But the genesis of the story came from
"Miles from Aberdeen". In that story I was struggling with how I should deal with Sarah's rant at the end of "Hand of Fear." One early idea I had was that the Doctor would say her rant was a contributing factor to why he never came back for her -- that while he knew she didn't mean it, he felt that she wouldn't have said what she said if there wasn't a part of her that truly did want to go back to having a normal life on Earth. But I then decided I didn't like that idea, for three reasons. First, it would have required a lot of backstory explanation for people who hadn't seen the classic SJS episodes. I wouldn't just have to quote the rant from "Hand of Fear," I would have to also put the rant in context, because it's only when you know that there's this whole history of Sarah threatening to leave (and not meaning it) that you really understand what's going on. (And of course, that whole history is precisely what "Match Point" is about.) Second, I didn't like where that put Sarah mentally; I didn't want to have her start thinking "if only I hadn't said that." And finally, if I did start going down that road, it would have made that scene and its consequences a major focus of the story, and I didn't want that. So in the end I decided to deal with the rant by never even bringing it up.
But here's the passage I first wrote for "Miles" where I began to try to deal with it. Even though I ended up throwing it out, I liked the ideas here enough to spin them out into their own story, which is why I call this passage my first draft for "Match Point":
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But then voicing feelings wasn't the type of thing that she and the Doctor had ever done; that's not how they were. They hadn't even told each other that they both wanted to keep traveling together. In fact, how many times had she said the exact opposite and told the Doctor that she wanted him to take her home? How many times had she been back in her own time on Earth, faced with the choice of re-entering the TARDIS or not, and teased him about going home by train, or by taxi? And each and every time he had looked her in the eyes and solemnly sworn that he would take her home in the TARDIS instead, take her straight there, or else on just a little trip, a small diversion, and really truly honestly, he meant it. Except that he hadn't meant it, and neither had she, and both of them had known but neither had ever said. It had been a game that the two of them had played, tossing the words back and forth like a rally in tennis to see who would be first to miss the ball. To break.
She had almost broken, but in the wrong direction, just after they left Kastria and right before the end. She had been genuinely fed up and angry with him, and words had come out that she hadn't meant but didn't mind saying because they helped her to vent and he wasn't even listening to her anyway.
["I must be mad," she had said as he lay there tinkering with the TARDIS, body half under the console. "I'm sick of being cold and wet, and hypnotized left, right and center. I'm sick of being shot at, savaged by bug-eyed monsters, never knowing if I’m coming, or going, or been. I want a bath! I want my hair washed, I just want to feel human again!" "Forget the Zeus plugs," he had said, "I'll have the sonic screwdriver." "And boy," she had replied, "am I sick of that sonic screwdriver!"]
"Match Point" is a little different in that once I decided to write the story itself, it did come out pretty much like the final version, with only the usual edits for grammar and word tweaking. But the genesis of the story came from
"Miles from Aberdeen". In that story I was struggling with how I should deal with Sarah's rant at the end of "Hand of Fear." One early idea I had was that the Doctor would say her rant was a contributing factor to why he never came back for her -- that while he knew she didn't mean it, he felt that she wouldn't have said what she said if there wasn't a part of her that truly did want to go back to having a normal life on Earth. But I then decided I didn't like that idea, for three reasons. First, it would have required a lot of backstory explanation for people who hadn't seen the classic SJS episodes. I wouldn't just have to quote the rant from "Hand of Fear," I would have to also put the rant in context, because it's only when you know that there's this whole history of Sarah threatening to leave (and not meaning it) that you really understand what's going on. (And of course, that whole history is precisely what "Match Point" is about.) Second, I didn't like where that put Sarah mentally; I didn't want to have her start thinking "if only I hadn't said that." And finally, if I did start going down that road, it would have made that scene and its consequences a major focus of the story, and I didn't want that. So in the end I decided to deal with the rant by never even bringing it up.
But here's the passage I first wrote for "Miles" where I began to try to deal with it. Even though I ended up throwing it out, I liked the ideas here enough to spin them out into their own story, which is why I call this passage my first draft for "Match Point":
--------------------------------------------------------
But then voicing feelings wasn't the type of thing that she and the Doctor had ever done; that's not how they were. They hadn't even told each other that they both wanted to keep traveling together. In fact, how many times had she said the exact opposite and told the Doctor that she wanted him to take her home? How many times had she been back in her own time on Earth, faced with the choice of re-entering the TARDIS or not, and teased him about going home by train, or by taxi? And each and every time he had looked her in the eyes and solemnly sworn that he would take her home in the TARDIS instead, take her straight there, or else on just a little trip, a small diversion, and really truly honestly, he meant it. Except that he hadn't meant it, and neither had she, and both of them had known but neither had ever said. It had been a game that the two of them had played, tossing the words back and forth like a rally in tennis to see who would be first to miss the ball. To break.
She had almost broken, but in the wrong direction, just after they left Kastria and right before the end. She had been genuinely fed up and angry with him, and words had come out that she hadn't meant but didn't mind saying because they helped her to vent and he wasn't even listening to her anyway.
["I must be mad," she had said as he lay there tinkering with the TARDIS, body half under the console. "I'm sick of being cold and wet, and hypnotized left, right and center. I'm sick of being shot at, savaged by bug-eyed monsters, never knowing if I’m coming, or going, or been. I want a bath! I want my hair washed, I just want to feel human again!" "Forget the Zeus plugs," he had said, "I'll have the sonic screwdriver." "And boy," she had replied, "am I sick of that sonic screwdriver!"]
