Trismegistus: On Influence

[lebateleur]

sub_divided also asked about influences. And here I talk about them.

Back in the day when I was first attempting explicit slash, my influences were...other slash. And let me tell you – ten inch throbbing members, multiple orgasms, semen geysering everywhere, the older, thinner man shrieking in release, orbs of various brilliant hues – my fanfic had it all.

I don't like to talk about those days very much.

I'm also not going to talk about how my pre-Internet fanfiction featured a lot of baroque description, because it was Vampire Chronicles fanfiction, and as we all know, Vampire Chronicles fanfiction doesn't really exist.

Just like Anne Rice's vampires aren't gay.

And neither is her son.

Then there was a period of about two years where I didn't really write anything. When I got back into fandom, it was through manga, and it's had a massive effect on my writing.

Manga is by nature episodic with relatively self-contained stories, and I this has influenced the way I write fanfic. Although most of my fics are one shots, they could easily be parts of a series. They resemble single manga chapters in structure – there's build-up, a climax of some sort, and then an openish ending ready to lead into the next bit. I don't intentionally write them this way, so I think it's something that has subconsciously rubbed off on me.

The Japanese novelists I read have been the single greatest influence of which I'm consciously aware. They tell stories differently than Westerners. Western narrative has a clearly defined goal at the outset, and the events between it and the climax are directly related to the achievement of that goal. The emphasis is on the problem and how it's solved.

In contrast, Japanese narrative structure is much looser. Characters are introduced and various things happen to them, but the overarching goal is missing. This isn't to say that there aren't problems and climaxes, but rather that the emphasis is on the characters more than the quest.

I think this has definitely rubbed off on me, and you can see it in my writing – my stories certainly have problems and climaxes, but I rarely write fics with the quest as the central theme. I'm much more interested in putting characters A and B into Situation Q and seeing how they interact with one another than describing the hoops B must jump through to save A, who's been kidnapped. You can certainly see this in my one shots, but it's obvious in the longer fanfics I've written as well, where the structure of events is more like branches on a tree than an A to B to C to D progression.

So yay. Influence.


これで以上です。

Comments

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Japanese narrative structure has influenced you very much-- I find your fics very reminiscent of Japanese writing, and it's one of the reasons I found your stuff so appealing. How very interesting to learn you never wrote Vampire Chronicles. XD