WIP challenge: April 16 check-in

[insignia]

It's already tomorrow where I am, but nevermind that! ^^; How awesome have you been today?

• I have written!
• I made plans!
• I did research!
• Something else!

Discussion: When trying to keep your fics canon-compliant, how much do you care about information from outside the original source? I mean things like author interviews, character profiles in artbooks, references made in spin-offs and so on. Are these things important, or is complying with the actual show/story good enough?

Comments

[linaewen]

I've been pretty awesome this afternoon. ;-) I'm still doing planning, but it's productive planning. I'm filling in details of my outline, figuring out the order of events and what to include (or not include), and researching anything that comes to mind that I haven't already made a note of. This is my regular routine when starting a new chapter, and though it takes awhile, once I start writing, I have everything I need in front of me and don't have to worry about missing any details. I'm at a place in the story where a lot happens and a lot of characters are involved, so I need my outline to keep everything moving along in order.

Outside information is good, especially if it helps me understand a character better or looks at something from a different angle that I haven't considered. Canon compliance is important, so everything needs to complement what I know from canon, but I'm also willing to stretch canon if makes my story work better, so I like having extra info from outside sources to help me when that is necessary.

[juliet316]

I've written commentfic here and there. Other than that, not much thus far.

[crowdog66]

I've only written about 300 more words on "Lethe's Curse", but every little bit helps, amirite? :)

I enjoy outside source material but will, if it suits my purposes better, stick to canon itself rather than relying on secondary sources if they contradict the interpretation I feel will result in the best story. For example, in writing ReBoot fanfic set in the canonverse I tend to refer to the original series bible for Season One, which was completely contradicted by later developments in Seasons Three and Four, because I like that version of Megabyte's origin better and feel it has the potential for more dramatic tension. And in ST:DS9 I, like many other Garak/Bashir fans, make great hay from the revelation by both the actors in question that they played their first scene together as a seduction and were willing to make a go of being written as Star Trek's first gay couple before the suits at Viacom had screaming fits and closed the whole possibility down. But again, it comes down to what will result in telling a better tale.

[bay_alexison]

Yesterday and today had been working on a fic for a writing fest of sorts. Had turned it in to a beta and now waiting for her to finish looking through it and making corrections. Now trying to decide if I should do Pokemon Big Bang or back to help_japan, lol.

I think information from outside the original source are important. The original creator isn't able to fit in every detail he/she wanted that could be important to the story, so other sources are ways of doing that.

[barbayat]

I have written something today - albeit for a fanfic not on my list, does that count?

For Canon-compliance, it depends, sometimes I use broader information, sometimes I leave it out. Especially for AR stories or fandoms were later events/statements contradict established canon. Sometimes it takes a lot of sorting through to decide which canon version to use. For Van Helsing it took a lot of thinking that through since the movie is such a mess and for Moonlight *rollseyes* I love that show but the writer's apparantly were all high when the wrote this stuff.