Expect Lockwood and Co, the Rookie and general Catholic posting. Savoirfaire on AO3. I have a podcast and many WIPs that Iām not working on. Call me Mai.
A while ago I made a post asking for advice as a Christian fic writer, and I wanted to give back some of the few things Iāve learned now that Iāve finished something myself:
Fic writing is an act of listening and thus of love. You get to call attention to small details, go looking for the underlying philosophy of the thing the way people do when they write essays; and then, like essay-writers, you get to elaborate and question and resist and make connections to the world outside the story youāre starting from.
Writing fics takes humility, of a sort that essay-writing doesnāt require. On the base level youāre meeting the original story where it is ā in the world of story ā not from up above, as literary critic. You are taking the storyās substance from a thing that already exists. You are freely admitting (or ought to be!) that it isnāt yours, that it rests on the things that came before. In a sense this is true of all our stories; they derive from the created world, what Tolkien called āsub-creation.ā But here you are engaging in a sort of āsub-sub-creationā if one may coin the word.
I used to wonder, why write a second derivative if you could write a first? Isnāt original intrinsically better? What original is, is intrinsically different. Original is a wider conversation; fanfiction is a targeted conversation. The thing to keep in mind is that what is of eternal significance is peopleās selves ā their hearts, minds, souls, bodies. Stories matter as far as they impact these selves, whether readersā or writersā.
If fanfic readers, as others have said, tend to be exhausted, then fanfic writing is an opportunity to minister to exhausted people. (Which we know Jesus cares deeply about, with his call to āall you who are weary and heavy laden.ā) We have the unique honor and privilege of such an audience, one which wants the guide rails of a known world/characters/etc. but also wants something new; and we have the new wine of the Gospel. Whether that comes through in the writing itself, or in our conversations with readers or writers, the opportunities are there.
I have heard it said that the best way to encourage Christian themes in oneās writing is to not think about them and let them come naturally; which I think is partly true, but if you canāt help thinking about things (as I canāt), itās not necessarily bad to do things intentionally either. What I think matters is the sort of intent. Fiction, including fanfic, is best at showing a story; people say to not worry about writing āChristianlyā because they are advising you to avoid showing a set of answers instead. If you set out to write something that will show a story ā letting people be wrong, as God lets you be wrong; working out some thinking of your own on the topic that you chose; finding things that will encourage yourself on your own journey with God ā then if nothing else you will have all the work that God will do in you from exercising that patient form of love he so often uses, from going through Scripture in ways you hadnāt seen coming, from considering his ways and how they might be shown in a world that was not of your forming.
When itās announced that a Bay Area middle school teacher is one of three heroes sent to save the world, San Francisco clamors to rename things to āRyland Grace.ā Grover Cleveland Middle is quick to the draw, becoming Ryland Grace Middle the very next school year. Grace also gets a street, of course, a science wing at Stanford, a state park along the coast ā by the time the Beetles return, you could probably throw a rock in San Francisco and hit a Ryland Grace reference.
Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.
And yet, light-years away, there is a beloved body of water, its surface dancing with artificial waves, that Ryland Grace wistfully refers to as The Sea of Stratt.
You gotta be really publicly passionate about things if you want your friends to text you. Bc people will forget to text you because theyāre human. But if youāre really openly the friend who loves identifying ants your friends will think of you when they see ants. And theyāll text you āwhat ant is this [blurry photo]ā. And then theyāll ask you how youāve been and we should get coffee sometime. But if they donāt know what you love theyāll never know what you like
And then when the ant convention is in town theyāll be like dudeā¦ we should go to the ant convention. But they would never think to go if they didnāt know u loved ants
Just reminding everyone that George is so good at what he does that Fittes kept him on for SIX MONTHS while he was being his fantastically honest and curmudgeonly self
underrated tumblr feature is being able to catch up to yourself on your dash. so there is an END POINT. and you can say āah, I have reached where I left off, there is no more to see! Iāll take my leave now and come back later when there are new posts.ā instead of being stuck forever in a bottomless algorithm pit digging deeper and deeper till you have to summon monumental strength to climb out
