Do I continue?

[lobelia321]

Hm. It's been three days since I posted my teaser fragment from my HP fic which is normally long enough to collect a representative amount of fb. But only one person commented. Don't worry; this is not a feedback solicitation -- I've locked the post now. It is rather a sort of musing and self-questioning: What am I doing wrong? Should I continue this fic? Well, I will continue anyway, because it's become part of me now but will I be motivated to write and finish if nobody will read? It's all very well to say we write for ourselves (and I do! I have reams of stuff I never posted, reams) but to get virtual zero fb is a bit, well, sad.

However, perhaps I simply picked the wrong fragment to use as a teaser? Perhaps people are put off by a Header that reads 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley'? This is, of course, only a part of the whole fic and those who know me will also know that I am mooshball number one and mainly write romance, romance, romance -- but inevitably the final Header will still need to include the words 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley' because those things will still be occurring somewhere in there. Although 'fluff, moosh, love, lifesaving' will also be appearing.

Possibly I made a mistake in using a Dudley-centred fragment? The fic has many, many Draco-scenes, and much Draco/Harry, and perhaps I should have used one of those?

Or perhaps my writing simply doesn't entice anybody in? How can I sell the story in my head (which I love and adore, make no mistake) to others so that they may also come to love and adore?

Or does it simply not work posting teasers for huge fic? Does one just need to put up and shut up and beaver away in isolation (or go for WIP, except I'm not doing that for this particular fic) and then finally post the whole shebang and hope that people will be enticed by the prospect of a long read?

Or are people just not reading as much? I know that I've heard from others that the fb well seems to have dried up sometime around mid-2003. For lotrps, anyway. Although the fragment was not lotrps. But then again my Friends may all be leftover lotrippers who read no HP on principle (as was I until last September).

I know some of you have also given in and posted fragments of larger fics before posting the whole thing? Any thoughts on this? Perhaps you got more fb and it was thus more helpful?

Comments

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Damn the bloody italics!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I'm posting this again, it's impossible to read.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

My dear Lobes,

a) Yes of course you must continue!!!!

b) I have the teaser bookmarked, but have not got round to reading it yet, partly because reading is making my head hurt a bit at the moment, due to the bloody withdrawal symptoms. Not that this is stopping me reading, it would take actual blindness to do that. I've just found it's better if I do it in small bursts. I have a 'fic to read' folder stuffed full of stuff at this point, but yours is near the top.

c ) Perhaps people are put off by a Header that reads 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley'?

Heh, I'd say that was pretty likely, to be honest! I mean, just look at it - it's possibly the most contrary way to break into a fandom I've every seen! And that is because you are you, and you are a wonderful, unusual writer with a wonderful, unusual way of looking at the world and fandom. And personally, I looked at it, rubbed my hands (mentally) and said "Yay, Lobelia's back!" But you know that if you post something a bit obscure and less popular, you're going to get less feedback. If you had posted something with a header that mentioned the words Harry, Draco and romance, in whatever order, yes, I believe you'd have garnered more comments.

Or perhaps my writing simply doesn't entice anybody in?

Your writing entices me in! I have really no idea how to go about enticing people in. It's true that you've got a lot of lotrips people on your flist, so that may have something to do with it. If even a very, very favourite writer of mine posts something like popslash or [insert random US TV series I haven't heard of here], chances are I won't read it because there just isn't any appeal for me.

c) (I think something weird's happened to my lettering here) Lots of people don't want to read teasers because they'd rather wait for the finished fic. Personally, it depends what mood I'm in.

d) I know how upsetting and demoralising it can be not receiving much feedback for something. I'm embarrassed to say I'm still smarting slightly over a fic I posted several months ago which went down like the proverbial lead balloon. And I looked at it and thought, well, what did I do wrong? Is it really that bad? Is it terribly pretentious? Is it the pairing? Etc etc... I still don't really have any idea! Of course we want feedback, because writing fanfic is really about communication with other fans, and if our stuff meets with silence, it's disappointing.

For what it's worth, I'm really, honestly looking forward to reading this fic, so PLEASE don't give up on it!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

a) Yes I will. Thank you for the spine-strengthening!

b) I feel bad for having made you read it.

c) Re the Header: I pondered not putting anything. But then you risk squicking people and it's sort of against slash etiquette not to warn. I like your point about 'breaking into the fandom'. I suppose that is what I am doing, and I carry baggage from my previous fandom with me! It's as if I've already introduced myself and done the popular pairings and don't need to go through those motions -- except all of that was in lotrps. We are back again to that eternal conundrum: quality? self-gratification? quality of feedback? amount of feedback? Ah, the mulberry bush.

c) A fair point. I have done same.

d) I'm always glad to hear from other people's woundedness at fb-lessness. I keep pathetic track of mine, knowing it's pathetic yet not being able to help myself. Well, if I wanted to write for nobody but the wall I'd not bother with the online. I do think that sometimes a pairing and a warning can put people off but I also think that good writing will get people over those hurdles so that I tend to do critical introspection as soon as the fb-level drops below at least 3,500 (yeah...) and think my writing is bad. Of course, I realise that there are other reasons why people don't fb but otoh, I do think it can be good to listen to responses -- there may be something in there. E.g. my first John/Bern fic got, I think, all of two or three responses (and one was from the beta) but my later ones got loads more -- I can't help thinking it's because my writing got better. But then they weren't fragments but whole plots.

And the communication with other fans: yes, absolutely!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

b) I feel bad for having made you read it.

No, don't! I had every intention of reading it yesterday before I went back to work and so would have less time.

Re the Header: I pondered not putting anything. But then you risk squicking people and it's sort of against slash etiquette not to warn.

Oh God, no - that would have been a terrible idea! But I think maybe you underestimated the power of squick. Rape, in particular, is always going to be extremely offputting to a lot of people. Especially when isolated like this from the context of a longer piece of work.

I do think that sometimes a pairing and a warning can put people off but I also think that good writing will get people over those hurdles

Oh yes, that's absolutely true, but it's getting them in there in the first place. As you say, your later John/Bern fics got more of a response, but this is your first time writing Dudley (as far as readers are concerned) - and sometimes it takes people a while to get over their suspiciousness about an unpopular character. But word of mouth eventually gets around. You might just have to be prepared for it to be a bit slower than you're used to, what with the new fandom and all.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you. It might also help having a finished fic to post as opposed to just a pathetic snippet. *frowns at computer, at real life and at own laziness*

[lazulus]

What I would ask is what you honestly expected back from the reader here and what you were hoping for in terms of fb?

I tend to think that posting teasers is not necessarily a good thing if all you want is to pique the reader's interest, especially when you are not a tried and tested author in the fandom. I know you now have a number of HPers on your flist, but not enough to have a ready made audience for this fic. Having said that, if any of these them are respected reccers and they like the fic, then you will probably be in luck, although I do think the pairing is going to put many people off. That's just the way it is.

If you are hoping to find out if you are going in the right direction then in this case I think you chose the wrong passage. Posting such a brutal scene of abuse against a character than few HP readers have even an ounce of sympathy with doesn't seem to me to give those readers much to work with. They may think, 'I want to know what this is about', [which may be what you are hoping for] or they may think, 'Dudley? I'm not reading a fic about Dudley from an author who has never written HP before!' or they may think, 'OMG! Lobelia's writing HP now and once again she is writing rare pairs! *much rolling of eyes*'. I also imagine a number of your readers will not read it because of the fandom.

Posting teasers can be a positive thing if you get the response you wanted from them. They can however, put people off reading the finished product. I confess to once reading a teaser for a fic that put me off actually reading the final finished story!

It's a dangerous game. I think you need to be very sure of what your expectations are before you choose to play it and then not be disappointed if those expectations are not fulfilled.

If you are at all stuck, or just want an honest opinion about what you have so far, I am always happy to read it. You have a beta, yes? I think Cal said something about it, but I may have hallucinated that!

For what it's worth, I'm very much looking forward to the fic, so you have at least one member of your audience assured!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I see your point about the dangerous game; I didn't really think this through. As so often, I just felt an impulse and hit that 'post comment' button. I wasn't hoping for concrit or anything like that (although maybe secretly, who knows) but mainly just wanting to see how many people would read. It's true that I have a beta but darling ukcalico is very elusive and I guess I was missing the constant fb drip I was on when I was still writing regularly. It's something to get used to when writing long!fic: there is a long dry period of nothing. It's too much like writing published fiction!

I also take your point about being a tried and tested author in a fandom which is why I've now locked that post to non-fandom people only (I wanted to delete it completely but some commenters had trickled in so I didn't). I suppose that's the hardest thing to get my head around: as I said to sheldrake above, I have no sense of being 'new': I've done the popular pairings, I've done my stint as rookie, I've been through the rare-pairings mill... I keep forgetting that all of that happened in a previous fandom. :-)

I suppose I've been also so immersed in this fic and its characterisations that I tend to forget people's Dudley-squicks. And I do think I made a mistake in choosing this particular teaser fragment. Or maybe not a mistake because perhaps I've learned more from this experience than if I'd just posted Draco?

I suppose I thought that people would appreciate the quality of the writing, never mind the brutality of the scene or the squickiness of its protagonist. I was forgetting what fandom is!!! But also, perhaps I was overestimating my writing. Or the power of the fragment -- I have myself in the past been put off by teasers only later to like the final fic a lot. So thanks for those points.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

personally, i don't read wip's or fragments. so even if last week hadn't been crazy no-internet access, prepping all night week, i probably would have waited for the entire thing, printed it out, and read it when i feel like hp...

but i think i may not be representative! the passage, though, was certainly a possible issue...as is the fact that lj is very slow at the moment (start of school for many?), and the usual commenter:reader disproportion!

and i still owe you email which i'll get to soon...sorry!!!!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

God, I didn't mean to solicit excuses for not sending fb because that's even sadder than getting none but reading this in the spirit of explanation is helpful, actually, because it reminds me that people don't read for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with the actual fic. Certainly that's true of me who tends to read fic months after it comes out...

And LJ is fucked at the moment. It takes me five minutes to post a one-word comment.

Don't worry about the email you owe me: I haven't been reading my email much lately, anyway. It's mostly LJ-comments, and LJ has been infuriating, so we're back to that line of argument.

[ex-lonicera600.livejournal.com]

So. Having read all your remarks about your writing and progress notes etc. I will try to read the finished product. Strongly stressing try here, because Draco/Dudley? chan? rape? NC-17? not really my cup of tea, to be honest. But what really turned me off from reading your cookie is... erm... your Draco-icon. In a very small voice: He's just sooo ugly. I don't like to imagine this guy in an even remotely NC-17, rape, chan, Draco/Dudley-situation.

Running away to saftey and hoping you won't hate me now.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your candid comment. It had honestly not occurred to me that Mackenzie Crook might be turning people off! Are you perhaps a non-Office watcher? A non-resident of the UK? Or am I just a benighted cleaver to canon and suspect of fanonish beautiful!Draco? Because Mackenzie Crook is the pointiest actor I can think of. And Draco has a pointy face. And given my Sueish inclinations: my Sue could never be a handsome man (if you have indeed read my progress notes -- which I am very flattered by). To be fair, Draco in my fic does not figure in any rape or chan although he does do NC-17. :-)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

NB have just seen Mackenzie Crook in trailer for Churchill: the Hollywood Years. I fear he is becoming typecast. But has both eyes, here, and is quite decorative (though possibly syphilitic).

[ex-lonicera600.livejournal.com]

Are you perhaps a non-Office watcher? A non-resident of the UK?

All of the above. :-)

my Sue could never be a handsome man (if you have indeed read my progress notes -- which I am very flattered by).

Yes, I know you said that. But to know it and to see... THAT... shudder... are two pairs of shoe, really. I mean, you can tell me that your Draco isn't handsome, but please leave it to my imagination what I do with that information, I beg you.

To be fair, Draco in my fic does not figure in any rape or chan although he does do NC-17.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

:-) Ah, I can't help my Draco/Mackenzie/Gareth-from-the-Office lustful confusion... Maybe I just go for the ugly guys. *g*

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I didn't really know where to start commenting. You already know you can write precisely, evocatively etc, so it would have been pointless telling you so. It's a fandom I don't know much about, so I have no idea whether this is mainstream for that fandom (though I rather suspect it isn't). It's a harrowing read, with the sort of details that anchor the reader -- semen on underpants, variation of technique, etc -- even when the reader doesn't want to be anchored. But I want it in context; I want to know who the mysterious OMCs are (I think you said they came from somewhere else, but I don't recognise them); I want to know what's happening, and why.

It's so long since I've read any of your fic (is this me being horrible and inattentive? or have you really not posted anything for a while?) that I don't feel at all connected with you-as-writer. But I do also know what you mean about wanting some sort of signal about what you're writing (having abandoned several long Lotrips WIPS for lack of same, and likely about to abandon a piratey one) and so I hope you'll forgive this rather abrupt and unfriendly reintroduction.

Executive summary: from what I know of your writing, this will work; but I can't see where, why, how, at the moment. And I'd be interested in how you make it work.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

adding to this: posting unfinished WIPs is not a good thing. I'm heartily sick of having devoted attention to stories that their authors couldn't be bothered to finish. Not that I think you'd do this -- would you? -- but it's always a reader's fear.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I very much take your point about not wanting to read unfinished WIPs (made in your comment below). I think I will be more cautious with posting fragments in future; I hadn't thought this one through at all and just pressed that 'post comment' button in impulse, as I tend to do.

No, you have not been horribly inattentive: I haven't posted fic for months, perhaps even a year. Certainly I've posted nothing since I started on the HP fic. It's a new lonely business of writing, after the constant drip of fb when posting regularly.

You say that I already know I write evocatively, precisely etc. but I don't! I am beset by horrible self-doubts all the time over whether I can communicate what I want to say. Sometimes I am pleased by a bit I have written (which is why I ended up choosing the rape fragment because it seemed to me to be the most cohesive bit of all the HP bits I've written so far) but then I do want to please more people than just me; I want to communicate what's in my head into others' heads. I worry more about prose style now than I ever did before, perhaps because it's such a long fic and because I went so badly wrong in my previous, aborted long Karl/Dom fic.

And I absolutely take your point about the not knowing how it will work. This is the burden of the fragment, I am now realising. They simply cannot do the kind of work a short fic or the entire long fic can do.

Btw, this is not at all mainstream for this fandom. It is very, very rare. And the crossover-characters are from Lindsay Anderson's film If... (where they do the whipping though not the buggery); Galloping Foxley is from Roald Dahl, based on his own boyhood memories (again, sans the buggery though who knows?). I just got a little kick out of finding crossover bullies rather than just making them up myself. I don't know why I'm so coy about revealing these things.

Thanks so much for commenting. Thoughts from you are always appreciated.

(And I have been horribly inattentive to your piratish doings myself...)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

You say that I already know I write evocatively, precisely etc. but I don't!

Well, be told! You do; your precision (and the wonderfully surreal notions which you convey so precisely) is what I have always admired most about your writing. Which is not to say that there are not other admirable aspects (your ability to make me believe the most unlikely pairings; + orcs; + olives; + spatial stuff).

for what it's worth, I did not think you went 'badly wrong' in the K/D epic; but then I only saw edited excerpts, which made it more of a tease than anything. I don't think I saw enough to own up to a proper opinion, but I'm not clear why you thought it was badly wrong.

Re WIPs; I tend to post the happy feel-good bits rather than the more harrowing bits, if I post anything at all. (Have posted nearly all the sex scenes out of piratey!WIP as birthday gifts, feedback snippets etc; no one will care when I finally finish it!) I had 25,000 words of Viggo/Sean/Miranda thing, and stopped writing it (and ultimately Lotrips) because of adverse comments. Now I wish I'd either posted it in instalments to a wider audience (positive feedback would've kept me writing, negative feedback from more than one person might've been constructive) or not shown any of it to anyone until I'd finished. I don't really know the answer -- but part of the reason we're here, surely, is because of the feedback and community and all that. It has to be something that can be used for betterment of writing.

Am intrigued as to your sources (unrecognised by me) of bullies. Also intrigued as to why you've borrowed them.

Am also rambling. Sorry!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you again (though I guess I myself don't tend to find my own notions surreal but there we are, *g* -- well, I guess, Dom's puppy was a bit surreal, and the arthropods -- but apart from that!! All very real. *g*)

The K/D epic felt badly wrong to two betas which doesn't mean it was, I suppose, but it then also felt badly wrong to me so I couldn't bring myself to post. I liked some of the individual parts a lot but I think that was one of my main downfalls with that fic: I fell in love with the prose too much and couldn't kill my darlings, as they say. I didn't have an overall plot. But I did learn from that fic that for a long fic you *need* a plot; it's not enough to have beautiful words: you need the scaffolding to hang them on, and the art I truly admire is when to know to use a doggone ordinary word at just the right moment.

Sources for the bullies (so glad you asked!): Three of them are from Lindsay Anderson's film If..., and Galloping Foxley is from Roald Dahl, based on his boyhood memories.

Reason for doing x-over rather than origchar!bullies: I just really liked that. I remembered seeing them and I base my bullying scene on scenes from films and books and memoirs so I found it fun to use some of those fictional characters. They seemed more fully-fledged, jumping into the fic fully-formed and real. I could have made up some posh names but I loved using these existing ones and hiding them in here.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I don't read WIPs or fragments in general, but I would have considered reading your story (because I've not read anything HP by you before) had it not been for the combination of warnings in the header. It's not that I object to Dudley, but I'm not fond of chan, and the biggest offputting came from "2nd person POV", which I find incredibly irritating.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I think we've had a conversation about your aversion to 2nd person pov! Or was that with someone else? You're not the only one who hates that person. However, I have thought about this and decided to go ahead because a) I've never written 2nd person and want to try it (not that this is a good enough reason but it was *a* reason), b) I wanted to hide the person it refers to and this is an efficient way of doing it, c) I used to think that 2nd person was interchangeable with 1st person (see my narratological analysis) but I've since come round to the idea that it invites stronger reader identification than 1st person, and I liked and needed that for this particular character, d) from a writer point of view, it feels as if I'm directly addressing the 'you' character, also manipulating him -- and I like that, too.

All of the above, I concede, not sufficient for using in the fic. The finished fic has to be the proof whether it works. So I will finish the fic with 2nd person (I can't abandon it now; I tried writing him in other persons and it just didn't feel right) and then see if I need to change it during revision. It is also an efficient way of alternating pov. I haven't written many alternating pov fics and when I did it, I just switched names (that was my first fic) or tense (that worked quite well but not sure it would work here) or address (for want of a better word: person A wrote a diary, person B wrote letters). It's also nice not to have to use names all the time; 2nd person means you can use 'he'! What a relief. Well, that goes for 1st person as well but I can't write this character in 1st person because he's not my Sue.

But thanks for the word of caution. I had planned to lead the reader into the fic with a 2nd person prologue but I may change that now and introduce the 2nd person a bit later in order not to put off readers but to lure them in wilily. :-)

[ukcalico.livejournal.com]

See email!

xxx

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Will do!

[yellow-oranges.livejournal.com]

I was v. excited to see a fragment; I just haven't had time to read it yet!! Hope to catch up some later this eve!!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it's been zapped. :-( Patience! But thanks for wanting to read it.

Darling, you know I love you...

[pecos.livejournal.com]

but I AM a left-over LOTRipper who doesn't read HP on prinicple. My loss.

Re: Darling, you know I love you...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, *pets you* But hold onto those principles!

[tvillingar.livejournal.com]

Perhaps people are put off by a Header that reads 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley'?

In short, yes. Dudley isn't among my favourite characters and I've read perhaps two fics where his actions seem understandable and not repulsive. I think canon is too strong an influence for me in this one.

Secondly, rape? While I've read rape fics (or rape-recovery fics), they're not something I actively seek. In fact, I usually steer clear from them. Same thing with chan.

Looks like you chose an unusually difficult fragment to post since I had to deviate from my policy of reading anything you write. In case you finish the story (I hate to sound so suspicious but I've been lured to follow WIPs that end up unfinished), I'm not entirely sure I'll read it. Because, Dudley? I think he's the hardest one to get over, anything else I'd probably survive.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've come round to accepting that posting this particular fragment was a bit of a mistake! Although, on second thoughts, not that much of a mistake because I learned quite a lot from people's adverse comments, perhaps more than I would have learned if I'd posted a shmoopy bit. So thanks! :-)