Okay then.

I am going to start using this page to give a heads up to those people who don't frequent the forums I do.

As hopefully people will check this page before clogging up my email with PM's. I don't mind questions, just answering the same one 50 times :)

.xXx.

Derelict.

I've been getting a lot of...pointed messages asking when I'm going to get the next chapter out. My first reason for delaying was because of Razor, I wanted to see it before really getting into writing the Pegasus backstory...but then I decided to say screw it and write it anyway, then had to kill most of it when I really DID see Razor and the way More went.

After that, I found an old Eva fanfic I had written about 10,000 words for on an old HDD...and well, the rest is history.

I DID keep trying to write it...but this chapter has been hell. All up, I'll estimate I've written about 50-60K words for it, though its only about 15K words long, I just keep trying and failing to get it to WORK. The annoying fact is that AFTER this chapter, I've got it all planned out really really well, I know exactly what is going to happen, all the major plot points are lined up, such as Aphosis returning as the Cylon God...

That WAS a joke BTW.

But I promise to keep trying...I do feel like I'm getting closer, I just have to keep at it. In the end I might just say 'good enough' and put out whatever I come up with to just get past this roadblock...

Suffice to say, Once More with Feeling is something far easier to write and has stolen about 80 of Derelicts time since I started...

Once More with Feeling

Why oh why do I keep getting people PMing and (thankfully rarely) posting reviews bemoaning that the fic has died, if I don't post 50,000 words each month?! I'm not an author people, I don't get paid to write!

Still, its a lot of fun. On one hand, I want to write enormous giant robots duking it out (because NERV are too foolish to build Bane blades or Bolo's to smite the Angels under their glorious treads) but I learned some time ago that explosions, fights, sex...all of it is utterly immaterial, EXCEPT as a vehicle for the characters. A good fanfic is one where the characters take center stage. Not the technology, not their bra size, but the PEOPLE. Its one of the reasons Evangelion is one of the few animes I can take seriously, because as fucked up as they are, the people in the show come off HUMAN, they are REAL, with depth to them you almost never find in any other anime, depth that drives the way they interact, recoil and move with each other.

I'm sorry to say that I had these great ideas for a 'joke' chapter for April 1st that would have utterly screwed with everyones head, but I never got around to finishing it...I might keep it in reserve for later though :)

Characters or Bust.

I learned this lesson from a couple of authors on Stardestroyer.net and its fanfic forum. One, I guy I know from the old days on Usenet (cookie if you know what that is without having to goggle it) named Chuck and his 'Worlds without End' saga. A Star-Trek / Star-Wars crossover. And more recently from another author named Stravo, who wrote another ST/SW crossover, but also many more stories, all of them about the CHARACTERS.

If you are ever -for some insane reason- looking for advice from me on writing fanfiction, just keep this lesson in mind.

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CHARACTERS. Everything else is expendable. EVERYTHING. You can have a great idea, a fantastic plot...and it will be utterly useless if the Characters come off as so utterly alien to be unrecognizable. You can have awesome technical knowledge, but turn a fic into a lethal weapon that bores someone to death through the characters standing next to each other and citing technical readouts. You can have brilliant prose and style, but you'll end up writing a completely new universe...which means you should go back, change all the names and locals and publish the book!

Its not easy, but just try. Try to stop and when you write a character saying something, ask if that is REALLY who the character is, look beyond the superficial. Its easy to say, for example, that Asuka is a bitch, Shinji is a Whimp and Rei is a doll, but those are just lazy labels. If you want to write them, especially if you want to CHANGE them, look for what DRIVES this behavior and start there. Eva helps out a lot in this respect as a lot of the later episodes go into heavy introspection to examine this. Death and Rebirth does a lot as well, as do the last Evangelion TV episodes. And pretty much any time Shinji gets stuck inside, or absorbed by his Evangelion...

Oh and proof read. For the love of God, proof read by printing out and looking at it on paper. Trust me when I say it makes catching errors way easier...as well as improving the writing in general.

From Sydney, Crazy-88
-22 / 04 / 2008