Jed On: Writing.

Howdy. My name's Jed: I'm a fanfic writer, a fanfic reader, and consummate amateur nerd. I'm writing my first blog post on this site. That's interesting, I guess. Really I'm doing it to psych myself up for more writing, especially since I've got a massive battle scene to write. Fun times (well, fun for me: the characters might disagree with me on that).

Recently I started thinking about why I'm writing a particular fan fic - specifically, The Avatar Of Albion, the story that, should this particular blog post work, should be tagged at the bottom. The reason I'm thinking about "why" is simple: I've written nearly 75,000 words of it, and combined with the other stuff my friends have written to supplement it, it comes in at 85,000 or so words. That's insane, and it's only going to get insanerer (to quote an underrated Doctor Who episode).

I'm gonna start by saying "spoilers": not that I'm so vain as to think anyone who chances upon this will particularly care about spoilering themselves, but I'm not taking the chance so to speak.

So the truth is, I started off with The Avatar of Albion wanting to write something about a man who killed the Elements in a dying TCB world encountering the canon six. I'd read "Other Side of the Spectrum", which is awesome (hence why it's on my favourite's, once I figured out how the favourite button worked on my iPad), and I wanted to write something TCB related myself. It sort of dovetailed from that starting point into him being more than a man, then into something more like a war story that takes inspiration from, among other things, some Star Wars: Rogue Squadron ideas, Arthurian myth, notions of light and darkness, notions of historical conflict, ideas about propaganda... and now it's shaping up to be one of the longest fics I've ever written (I'm "Jed Rhodes" on fanfiction.net if you want a sample of other fan forays), and if my friends are to be believed, one of my best. But that leads me back to why I'm writing it.

I'm not writing it for people to read it. There are choices I've made in terms of content and direction that I would never have made were I attempting to be deliberately populist (for a start, I'd have trimmed the swearing and gore and general grimness well back in order to make it 'teenage'). I'm happy with the steady trickle of views I'm getting, and I seem to have a fairly satisfied audience so far (plenty of people favourite it). I'm really, however, writing it for me to read, because it's the sort of story I enjoy. But more so, I'm writing it because I want to see if I can. I want to see if I can take this idea and run with it, if I can sustain my interest and sustain an audience's interest enough to finish the thing and tell the story in my head.

So far it's going surprisingly well: if my friends RoyalPsycho and The Void (who've both written guest Chapters for me) are to be believed, I'm doing all the right things (not so certain myself but hey ho), so I'm confident about getting the thing finished, especially with their encouragement. In a way, I'm partially writing it for them too: they enjoy it and they're having a good time reading it.

I suppose there's a question of what I want to happen with the story. Ideally, I'd like it to do well, for a fanfic. Plenty of views, plenty of favourites, maybe have people put it on TVTropes or something. Really, though I just want to say when all's said and done, that it's a story I'm proud of. I've succeeded so far, at least. :-)

To sum up this ramble: I'm writing one of the best fan fics I've ever written, and I'm writing it for me.

I suppose if you're reading this, you might want some hints as to where the story's going from where it is now (which is "London's Burning (Part 3)" if I recall correctly). I used to drop hints about stuff when I was a much younger fanfic writer and still thought people gave a monkeys about my ramblings, but in the interest of giving some dramatic hints to people who do want such things (and a healthy dose of nostalgia for when I was a much less cynical man, I guess), I'll give you these hints: there's gonna be speeches, a battle, some training, some more interludes telling some pretty epic (and in some cases very sad) tales. There's gonna be crowning moments of epic, heartwarming, epic heartwarming and just plain sad, there'll be call-backs, shout-outs, fallout, cameos and extended cameos, big appearances, angst, and epic comeuppances for epic bad guys. There's thrills, spills, chills, ills (both literal and societal) and finally, there's gonna be Empress Astra Solamina Maxima herself, in all her tainted glory. No one, and nopony, is walking away from that battle unscathed...

Til next time folks.

Jed.