Fic Talk > General Discussion
Question of the day thread number 2!
mare:
Tonight's question:
Do you enjoy reading and or writing AU fics? What is it about them you like or dislike?
julilly:
--- Quote from: mare on July 06, 2012, 05:49:43 PM ---Tonight's question:
Do you enjoy reading and or writing AU fics? What is it about them you like or dislike?
--- End quote ---
AU is my absolute favourite genre. I just feel like there is so much freedom to break outside the "same old plot". I love reading a good AU fic, too.
Canon is fine, too but sometimes I just like to read/write something a little different.
RokofAges75:
Going back to what I posted earlier about rewriting, the only fanfic I've rewritten is Code Blue, and I will never do that again! When my original co-author quit, the new co-author and I decided to go back and make some changes in the characters' roles that we thought would make the rest of the story stronger, so we ended up rewriting a lot of the beginning from scratch. We were going to rewrite the whole thing, but it got to be so tedious that we ended up just using a lot of the old story and just correcting the inconsistencie s caused by the details we'd changed in the first few episodes. I do think the second version of the story was better, but the rewrite took so long that it killed our momentum, and we never quite did get it back. I will never make that mistake again!
I do want to rewrite Broken as an original novel, but I think of that project as a complete separate entity from Broken. I would never change the fanfic Broken or take it down in place of the OF one (unless I got it published and had to, but to be honest, they would be so different I'm not sure anyone would even know!). I'm all about the nostalgia; that's why all my old crappy stories are still online, so the few people who actually enjoyed reading them back then can still find them if they ever want to revisit them, and so I can go back and laugh at myself and relish in how much I've grown as a writer since then. I would never change those.
From the reader point of view, it would drive me nuts if someone constantly changed their story, like the people Steph and Tracy were talking about. If someone wants to rewrite an old story and post it alongside the original, that's fine, but don't go all George Lucas and REPLACE the original. I'm such a nostalgic person that I still have all my old Disney movies on VHS and have refused to buy certain ones on DVD because they've added in new songs and stuff that weren't in the original. As a special feature, that's fine, but don't stick it into the original movie. I like things to stay just as I remember them!
Sakabelle:
I generally don't write AU in any fandom that I write in. I don't know why that is! I've never really branched out and tried it. I think I might have for a challenge once, but in all of my stories, BSB are still BSB. I guess the timeline might be a little altered, obviously, because it is fiction, but I try to keep my stories as true to life as possible.
Oh actually, I was writing an AU BSB story, but then I scrapped it from being BSB and started re-writing it as original fiction and got a lot further.
I don't think I've actually read that many AU stories. I'm not against reading them or anything, just haven't found many that have looked overly interesting. I was reading On The Rails and that one was really good. I also read Satin and Silk, which was also really good. Maybe I need to try reading more AU historical fiction for BSB? I'm cool with reading AU as long as the guys still act like the guys and have the same personality/looks etc. Those two stories were really good for that, as I recall.
RokofAges75:
As far as AUs, I've learned to appreciate them. I originally didn't want to read anything that wasn't about The Backstreet Boys being "The Backstreet Boys," but I read a couple of good ones for Mare's old fanfic discussion group, Between the Lines and On the Outside, that changed my mind. I loved those two stories because, even though the Boys weren't "The Backstreet Boys," they still seemed like themselves, in terms of personality, and the brotherly bond was there or developed through the story. To me, that characterizati on is crucial in an AU. They don't have to be famous singers, but they should still seem like Brian, Nick, AJ, Howie, and Kevin.
I wrote my first AU back in like 2001 at the request of someone who gave me the idea; it was one of those "Brian has a long lost sister" types (except he was actually the long lost brother who'd been abducted), and I hated it. Code Blue really opened me up to writing AUs; I hated the idea of it at first, too, but I gave it a shot and ended up loving writing that story. 00Carter and Song for the Undead have been some of the most fun stories to write, and they did so much for my opinion of AUs that I'm now writing one on my own, Secrets of the Heart, and enjoying that too.
What I love about writing AUs is the complete creative freedom it allows. It's definitely a bridge between fanfic and original fiction, because even though you're still using the same characters, you can make them seem more like original characters by putting them in different lives. I will always prefer writing the guys as BSB, but it does sometimes get tedious writing about the music business, touring, recording, being famous, and all of that. Sometimes it's nice to put them in a world where all of that isn't part of their lives, where they can be doctors or secret agents or survivors of the zombie apocalypse or just normal people. It's like playing dress-up.
In terms of reading, I still much prefer canon BSB stories, but I've read enough good AUs to not be turned off by a story simply because it's AU. If I can still recognize the guys as themselves, and the plot sounds good, then I'll give it a shot.
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