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breathedoutAs I mentioned last night, throughout 2019 I wrote a cycle of 15 1000-word (or slightly less) ficlets as character and relationship studies for my larger novel project about WWI-era Canadians. I finished the last three ficlets yesterday, squeaking under the wire for the challenge that spawned this idea, so I thought I’d cross-post a little masterpost to various platforms, with links and reflections.
The ficlet cycle is structured around three F/F relationship arcs, each with four ficlets each in alternating POV, then a plus-one:
Rebecca Landry (Thompson)/Katherine Llewellyn (Murray) arc. Rebecca is my POV character for the war-front plotline of the larger novel, when she will be in her 50s and recently widowed, but these ficlets are largely set in her girlhood, before her marriage. It was extremely helpful to spend some time with baby Rebecca, since by 1916/1917 she will remember these events very differently, and they will have come mean very different things to a version of her with 30 more years life experience.
Emma Walsh Thompson/Maisie Thompson Adams arc. Emma is my POV character for the home-front plotline of the larger novel, which didn’t exist in my original outline and which I created this year explicitly because I fell so hard in love with Emma, Maisie, and their adulterous frenemies-as-lovers dynamic. (For those tracking the surnames: Maisie is Rebecca’s daughter; Emma is married to Rebecca’s elder son.) If it had resulted in nothing else, this challenge would have been MORE than worth it for the time it gave me with Emma and Maisie, and how much the Emma arc enriched the project as a whole.
Hazel Cameron/Louise Macdonald (b/w Hazel Cameron & Yves Ouellet) arc. Neither Hazel nor Louise are POV characters in the novel, but Hazel is a major character who becomes a friend and centering influence for Rebecca during her time at the front; knowing Hazel and observing Hazel’s BFF-ship with Yves and abortive passion for Louise helps recontextualize various things in Rebecca’s own life. It was super helpful to spend some time in both Hazel’s and Louise’s heads, and in particular (though this was a little tangential to the femslashficlets challenge) to start to explore the dynamic between Hazel and Yves.
I feel like writing 15 of these ficlets this year really taught me a lot about what’s possible to do in 1,000 words. IMO all the most successful of them contain a single pivot point for narrative tension. A pivot point might hinge on an event or revelation (as in “Soiree,” where Emma’s euphoria about, and understanding of, the events of the evening is changed by Annie’s revelation that she’s engaged); or on a vacillating tension between the past and the present (as in “Lost,” where post-War Hazel is remembering back to a pre-War organizing meeting; or “Shelter,” where a phrase from Katherine’s wedding has been recontextualized in her Boston marriage to Matty); or on a character’s or reader’s process of revelation (as in my possible favorite of these, “Attire,” in which Emma and Maisie appear to be role-playing Emma and her husband (Maisie’s brother) Paul, until it becomes apparent that that’s not actually what Emma’s doing, quite).
So it can live in different places, but in such a short format I found that there really does have to be one identifiable pivot, and only one. By contrast, the ficlets that I felt were less successful either have zero pivots (like “Foolishness,” the first one I wrote, in which Louise contemplates Hazel and Yves while fixing her ambulance—it doesn’t really have enough movement to work as a story, per se); or have many pivots (like “Bind,” which I actually really love but which I was sorely tempted to radically expand: there’s just so much going on that I’d like to explore, between Maisie’s relationship to Emma’s work, and Paul and Emma’s agreement about Emma sleeping with women, and the degree to which Emma is being open and honest with either sibling, and the degree to which she can, and Emma’s relationship to money and marriage and to her own parents, and the revelation that Maisie’s mother may or may not hate Emma. All of these are big themes in the novel, and I could obviously only touch very lightly on any of them in this ficlet, and as such I think it works as an intriguing snippet of something larger, but not so much on its own as a story.)
Finishing up the last three of these reminded me that this project is really where my writing heart is; this ficlet cycle isn’t the longest or most cohesive or outwardly most impressive of my writing accomplishments this year, but it is definitely the most meaningful to me. I wasn’t able to get much done on the larger novel project this year—I still have a ton of research I need to do, and between the house renovation and office move coordination and adopting a new puppy I just didn’t have the bandwidth—so I ended up writing a lot of stuff this year that was... I don’t want to say “killing time,” as a lot of it, and especially my longer Killing Eve story, were definitely more important to me than that; but which were distractions from where my emotional writing investment really lives at the moment. My big resolution/writing plan for 2020 is to carve out intentional time for research + research processing alongside drafting of smaller/easier things, so that I can get back to this project in a more in-depth way. @greywash and I were strategizing last night at dinner about some ways we might collaborate to make this happen for one another & hold each other accountable, which makes me hopeful going into the new year.
In the meantime, I feel so grateful that this little femslash challenge happened, because it had profound effects on the overall novel plan, was invaluable in helping me get a handle on my characters and help me remain in contact with their world; and was also a useful exercise in terms of learning my way around a new, ultra-short format!
The ficlet cycle is structured around three F/F relationship arcs, each with four ficlets each in alternating POV, then a plus-one:
Rebecca Landry (Thompson)/Katherine Llewellyn (Murray) arc. Rebecca is my POV character for the war-front plotline of the larger novel, when she will be in her 50s and recently widowed, but these ficlets are largely set in her girlhood, before her marriage. It was extremely helpful to spend some time with baby Rebecca, since by 1916/1917 she will remember these events very differently, and they will have come mean very different things to a version of her with 30 more years life experience.
- Cusp (1875, Rebecca POV)
- Hue (1877, Katherine POV)
- Fête (1878, Rebecca POV)
- Pearls (1882, Katherine POV)
- +1: Shelter (1924, Katherine POV, Katherine/her artist co-teacher Matty)
Emma Walsh Thompson/Maisie Thompson Adams arc. Emma is my POV character for the home-front plotline of the larger novel, which didn’t exist in my original outline and which I created this year explicitly because I fell so hard in love with Emma, Maisie, and their adulterous frenemies-as-lovers dynamic. (For those tracking the surnames: Maisie is Rebecca’s daughter; Emma is married to Rebecca’s elder son.) If it had resulted in nothing else, this challenge would have been MORE than worth it for the time it gave me with Emma and Maisie, and how much the Emma arc enriched the project as a whole.
- And sympathy (October 1915, Emma POV)
- Attire (November 1915, Maisie POV)
- Bind (February 1916, Emma POV)
- Lorn (June 1916, Maisie POV)
- +1: Soiree (May 1907, Emma POV, Emma/her pre-War live-in girlfriend Annie)
Hazel Cameron/Louise Macdonald (b/w Hazel Cameron & Yves Ouellet) arc. Neither Hazel nor Louise are POV characters in the novel, but Hazel is a major character who becomes a friend and centering influence for Rebecca during her time at the front; knowing Hazel and observing Hazel’s BFF-ship with Yves and abortive passion for Louise helps recontextualize various things in Rebecca’s own life. It was super helpful to spend some time in both Hazel’s and Louise’s heads, and in particular (though this was a little tangential to the femslashficlets challenge) to start to explore the dynamic between Hazel and Yves.
- Foolishness (March 1917, Louise POV)
- Barynya (May 1917, Hazel POV)
- Flight (June 1917, Louise POV)
- Return (September 1917, Hazel POV)
- +1: Lost (September 1912, Hazel POV, Hazel/her pre-War political organizing comrade Geneviève)
I feel like writing 15 of these ficlets this year really taught me a lot about what’s possible to do in 1,000 words. IMO all the most successful of them contain a single pivot point for narrative tension. A pivot point might hinge on an event or revelation (as in “Soiree,” where Emma’s euphoria about, and understanding of, the events of the evening is changed by Annie’s revelation that she’s engaged); or on a vacillating tension between the past and the present (as in “Lost,” where post-War Hazel is remembering back to a pre-War organizing meeting; or “Shelter,” where a phrase from Katherine’s wedding has been recontextualized in her Boston marriage to Matty); or on a character’s or reader’s process of revelation (as in my possible favorite of these, “Attire,” in which Emma and Maisie appear to be role-playing Emma and her husband (Maisie’s brother) Paul, until it becomes apparent that that’s not actually what Emma’s doing, quite).
So it can live in different places, but in such a short format I found that there really does have to be one identifiable pivot, and only one. By contrast, the ficlets that I felt were less successful either have zero pivots (like “Foolishness,” the first one I wrote, in which Louise contemplates Hazel and Yves while fixing her ambulance—it doesn’t really have enough movement to work as a story, per se); or have many pivots (like “Bind,” which I actually really love but which I was sorely tempted to radically expand: there’s just so much going on that I’d like to explore, between Maisie’s relationship to Emma’s work, and Paul and Emma’s agreement about Emma sleeping with women, and the degree to which Emma is being open and honest with either sibling, and the degree to which she can, and Emma’s relationship to money and marriage and to her own parents, and the revelation that Maisie’s mother may or may not hate Emma. All of these are big themes in the novel, and I could obviously only touch very lightly on any of them in this ficlet, and as such I think it works as an intriguing snippet of something larger, but not so much on its own as a story.)
Finishing up the last three of these reminded me that this project is really where my writing heart is; this ficlet cycle isn’t the longest or most cohesive or outwardly most impressive of my writing accomplishments this year, but it is definitely the most meaningful to me. I wasn’t able to get much done on the larger novel project this year—I still have a ton of research I need to do, and between the house renovation and office move coordination and adopting a new puppy I just didn’t have the bandwidth—so I ended up writing a lot of stuff this year that was... I don’t want to say “killing time,” as a lot of it, and especially my longer Killing Eve story, were definitely more important to me than that; but which were distractions from where my emotional writing investment really lives at the moment. My big resolution/writing plan for 2020 is to carve out intentional time for research + research processing alongside drafting of smaller/easier things, so that I can get back to this project in a more in-depth way. @greywash and I were strategizing last night at dinner about some ways we might collaborate to make this happen for one another & hold each other accountable, which makes me hopeful going into the new year.
In the meantime, I feel so grateful that this little femslash challenge happened, because it had profound effects on the overall novel plan, was invaluable in helping me get a handle on my characters and help me remain in contact with their world; and was also a useful exercise in terms of learning my way around a new, ultra-short format!
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Date: 2020-01-09 09:13 pm (UTC)One thought I had, which sort of matches what you wrote about "Bind", is that reading it felt a bit like reading fic in a fandom I don't know - which is actually something I love because I enjoy having to work at picking up context clues and figuring out what I'm missing, but it's definitely not the same experience as reading for example "Soiree", which really stands on its own, and which kind of story I like the most depends on what kind of reading experience I want at the moment.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the novel now, not just because Emma/Maisie became my unexpected Frenemies OTP but also because I want more of older Rebecca. (I usually can't read things set in wartime but for these characters I will do my best!)
Good luck with all your writing during 2020!