blamebrampton

No, that is not an H/D title, it's one of my crazed ways of explaining How Things Work.

The wacky world of fandom is a richly imaginative one, with a lot of talent leaping about, but not a whole lot of input on the craft of writing. As I mentioned in a friend's journal, this is crazed, because for any other craft, we're all about teaching the technique, yet for some reason we just expect people to make their own way with writing.

Writing fiction is something that comes very naturally to some people and is hard-wrung from others, but it's a natural imperative. We're a narrative-based species. When we talk about ourselves we do it in terms of our personal stories, when we meet people, we judge them on theirs.

But although narrative is one of our most basic human impulses, written narrative is not something that comes without a raft of issues. It's analogous to running: some people head off like a gazelle in bare feet, others need corrective shoes, others look like ducks, and others sprain their ankles after three paces. Yet with an awareness of why problems come about, most people can run happily. Some just need to spend more money at the shoe shop, others need a trainer to show them style, others need glasses to spot the pot holes.

The issues that plague narrative writing are more complex, but they can similarly be fixed with a bit of awareness and effort. I like to think of them all as a series of fairies, good and evil, that flutter around our sweetly bowed creative heads as we scratch nib to paper [which may have started off as an original idea for me, goodness knows, but certainly wasnt a unique one; it's like the lightbulb ...]. You should probably be warned at this point that I'm also the woman who began a description of how hair dye sticks to hair with: "Imagine a lettuce dipped in melted chocolate ..."