#space rewrite

[cosette141]

Before and After: a Rewrite of a 9-Year Old Fic :)

Comparing my 2015 writing (from a Psych fic called "Space") to my 2024 writing as I revise this old fanfic!

When I found a 9-year-old fanfic of mine again and couldn't stop cringing, I decided to give it a makeover, and here's a before and after of a section :D

ORIGINAL (2015):

"Get him up."

Shawn woke with a start. He winced as his head erupted in pain and his eyes cracked open. Someone had just dropped him onto solid concrete. Shawn shut his eyes, cringing from the throbbing headache. What happened? Everything was a painful blur.

"Get up."

Shawn felt a sharp kick to his back and he opened his eyes again. He was lying in the middle of an empty parking lot, the cold concrete almost soothing his pain. Everything hurt. The world was spinning.

NEWLY REVISED (2024):

Shawn’s eyes shot open, sharp agony thrusting him gracelessly into a world of pain.

A groan caught somewhere in his throat as he blinked, but his vision was a blurred kaleidoscope of gray and black— concrete? —yet the daylight only made the his pounding head more excruciating. He screwed his eyes shut, barely holding in another groan. Even with his eyes shut, the world was spinning, and Shawn desperately tried not to be sick.

“Wake up.”

The sudden voice from above him, male and unfamiliar, made Shawn’s eyes snap back open. And suddenly he realized what caused the fresh pain and the abrupt wakefulness—he’d been dropped or thrown to the ground. Yes—this cold, hard, unforgiving thing was, in fact, the ground.

That didn’t yet explain why the world was still spinning. (Other than the scientific fact that the world was spinning constantly that Gus would remind him of if he were here.) Was Gus here? Was this the Mexican border? Is this payback?

Better question: where was here?

Shawn shut his eyes again, cringing from the vicious headache. Upgrade that mild concussion from the Elin case to… whatever came after severe.

-.-.-.

AO3 link (but I'm not done revising it yet so if you read it, I'd suggest marking for later until about July 2024 to get a better reading experience haha)

My thoughts about the revision:

Back in 2015, this was my 2nd fanfic I'd ever written, my first for Psych, and I definitely can see now how much more I leaned toward "telling" than showing. Also, how little descriptiveness I used when it came to emotions.

Ultimately the biggest change I think in my writing is how nowadays I try my best to write "through a character", as if the narrative is through their eyes, feeling what they're feeling through all five senses, telling the story through their filter of what the character is currently going through. So these days if I have a concussed or confused character, I'd want to lean more toward having the narrative describe the situation in more of a roundabout way, so that the reader themselves are struggling to understand what's going on along with the character. I love stories where the reader feels like they're literally the character, or feeling exactly what they're feeling, and that I feel was really missing from the original version.

Instead of just saying "his head erupted in pain", describing the visceral experience of it was missing. A head injury is more than just pain--it's confusion, dizziness, lack of focus and memory, and a lot of that description was missing too. Rambling narratives are great for showing a confused or panicked character, and this character in particular is already known for yammering on a lot so I definitely had to add some of that in, haha.

This has been such a fun thing to do to revisit, haha. :D