darkemeralds (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darkemeralds) wrote2020-03-23 09:49 am
darkemeralds) wrote2020-03-23 09:49 am
Masterwork Experiment
I'm writing a new story.
It began as an experiment. Shawn Coyne, my editing mentor, wanted to find out whether an accomplished writer (me) could create a fresh story by borrowing the deep structure of a masterwork, but changing the setting.
If I could, he would publish it.
The masterwork he chose was Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," and my task was to transpose it to Regency England.
The experiment was a success in that it did inspire me to start a new story, something I haven't been able to do for more than three years.
It was a failure, however, in that all Shawn's rules blocked me for almost nine months, and I wasn't able to break the blockage till I broke most of the rules.
Once I finally let my story diverge--from "Brokeback," from Shawn's idea of its meaning, from the scenes I'd written in the first days of the experiment, and at last, from the experiment itself--it was no longer the thing Shawn wanted. Which means Story Grid probably won't publish it.
It is the story of two lower-class men (servants) who meet on the job and fall in love. But that's where the "Brokeback" scaffolding ends. I'm changing everything else. Above all, I am not going to kill one of them. I don't think we need any more buried gays.
Instead I borrowed other stories' scaffolding: the devoted but deluded servant in The Remains of the Day. The relationship dynamic from The Untamed. Part of the ending of The Song of Achilles.
And the true-life history of Matthew Tomlinson whose 1810 diaries were recently uncovered.
I'm submitting the first act of this no-longer-anything-like-Brokeback story to a writing partner in a couple of days, and we'll see how it goes.
It began as an experiment. Shawn Coyne, my editing mentor, wanted to find out whether an accomplished writer (me) could create a fresh story by borrowing the deep structure of a masterwork, but changing the setting.
If I could, he would publish it.
The masterwork he chose was Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," and my task was to transpose it to Regency England.
The experiment was a success in that it did inspire me to start a new story, something I haven't been able to do for more than three years.
It was a failure, however, in that all Shawn's rules blocked me for almost nine months, and I wasn't able to break the blockage till I broke most of the rules.
Once I finally let my story diverge--from "Brokeback," from Shawn's idea of its meaning, from the scenes I'd written in the first days of the experiment, and at last, from the experiment itself--it was no longer the thing Shawn wanted. Which means Story Grid probably won't publish it.
It is the story of two lower-class men (servants) who meet on the job and fall in love. But that's where the "Brokeback" scaffolding ends. I'm changing everything else. Above all, I am not going to kill one of them. I don't think we need any more buried gays.
Instead I borrowed other stories' scaffolding: the devoted but deluded servant in The Remains of the Day. The relationship dynamic from The Untamed. Part of the ending of The Song of Achilles.
And the true-life history of Matthew Tomlinson whose 1810 diaries were recently uncovered.
I'm submitting the first act of this no-longer-anything-like-Brokeback story to a writing partner in a couple of days, and we'll see how it goes.
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My own entry into fanfic was on a much less conscious path. For years, I couldn't articulate my (often guilty) attraction to it, most of which was slash.
I was interviewed on the Big Gay Fiction Podcast a while back, and they asked me why I write M/M. By then I was able to explain that as an outsider to heterosexuality myself, I find solace in depictions of queer relationships, and as an asexual person I like those relationships to be away from bodies like mine, if that makes sense.
It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, frankly, but I sounded good on the podcast!
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Honestly, it makes sense. I'm not asexual, but - I don't really like to be touched, and i don't like or want sex probably 99% of the time. I find it just...uncomfortable to watch heterosexual (or lesbian) sex scenes (or read them), because, I guess, it's assumed i'll be interested, turned on, want to do that, whatever.
M/M sex puts no expectations on me of any kind, so it's much more freeing, interesting and...a turn on. Which i guess might be weird? WHO KNOWS.
I know i was slashing book characters for years before I even found same-sex books (I think the first time ever was Colin/Dickon in The Secret Garden).
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That's brilliant. Despite many problematic elements inherent in her century-old novels, she's a storytelling idol of mine. I've read several of her lesser-known works, and I'm, like, an expert on A Little Princess, which I adore. Though it is sadly short of boy characters and I've never been much for femmeslash.
The more I'm open about my asexuality (I really need an icon--I'll use my Sherlock one for now), the more I hear accounts like yours, which make me think the sexuality spectrum isn't NEARLY as weighted towards the Hollywood horny-het middle as Harvey Weinstein would have had us believe all those years.
Your description of your own relationship to M/M is just about perfect, including "Which I guess might be weird? WHO KNOWS." That, exactly.
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*twirls you*
YES! Secret Garden and A Little Princess were and are favorites - i've read and read and read them - still do!
Oh, man - Weinstein et al's 'vision' of women, men, and sexuality is so skewed, so forced, so *boring*. OMG. I think that's the biggest factor there. It's DULL. Predictable, cliched and tropey in all the worst ways.
I think the more open we are, the easier it is to figure out just *who* we are, and what we like.
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