things that make me go "um..."

[edenfalling]

Recently I got a very long and thoughtful review for a little Harry Potter 15-minute fic I wrote ages and ages ago, which segued from agreeing with the meta point I was trying to make and praising my characterization and use of humor, to saying, "But it's so short, and you could flesh it out into something richer, with other perspectives added as contrasting voices, and also maybe toss in this and that and the other thing, because I love world-building and long, plotty stories, and have you thought about how the approaches to this issue might be different in the wizarding world and the Muggle world, and..." etcetera, etcetera.

Which is flattering in a way -- the reviewer clearly thinks I could write such a difficult story and do it justice -- but...

Um...

If I'd wanted to write that story, don't you think I might have already done so? Instead of writing the story I did write?

Also, you can try writing your awesome ideas yourself! Yes, you may not do them justice, but it's fun to try! Or failing that, you can find a writing community and offer your idea as a prompt in a setting explicitly geared toward giving people ideas for new stories to create, instead of in a setting geared toward talking about the stories that actually exist in front of you right now.

Just saying. :-)

Comments

[branchandroot]

*wry* Yeah, moments like that I want to get out the "not a fandom gumball machine" sticker.

[edenfalling]

The reviewer clearly understood my story -- which is always nice, since I often get the feeling people are reading something completely different from what I tried to write -- and just as clearly had a long, complicated Ideal Story on that same theme stuck in hir mind. To be fair, hir description of this phantom story does sound pretty awesome. I would read it myself! But it's not a story I am interested in writing, certainly not now, and probably not when I wrote the 15-minute fic in question either.

And also, yeah, I am not a machine to produce hir wished-for stories on demand. I don't know why people move from "I like this thing you wrote" to "Therefore you must immediately write this other thing I would like to read." :-(

[krait]

Heehee! Maybe they felt their 'awesome idea' was too close to yours to count/to be comfortable writing under their name? (You said "fleshing out", which suggests to me they specifically wanted a longer version of Story X, rather than something merely similar to Story X. I've run into this myself, when I'm particularly inspired by something, so...)

But yeah, "save it for prompts comms or kink memes" is generally what one finds oneself thinking at those sorts of comments. :D

[edenfalling]

Given that my story is only 500 words long and their story would require a minimum of, say, 25,000, I think it would be quite easy to say "This idea inspired by [Story] by Elizabeth Culmer" and just go from there. There were so many other elements tossed in on top of my simple meta argument that it would not have been remotely stepping on my toes. :-)

There are times when I explicitly ask people for prompts, because I am bored by or angry at all my existing WIPs. Outside of those times, I generally have more than enough ideas of my own to deal with and don't need to borrow other people's inspiration. *sigh*

[krait]

Wow, yeah, 500:25,000 is quite a stretch! o.O

angry at all my existing WIPs

Hee! I thought I was the only one who did this. :D I feel a little better now about nourishing spadecrushes on my own works...

I generally have more than enough ideas of my own to deal with

Hahaha, I feel you! I have an 85-page Word document in 10-point type full of Ideas, Things I'm Working On, Things I'm Noodling Around With, and Things That Make Me Want To Write But I'm Not Sure What Yet (poetry, lyrics, anon meme prompts...) and that's just for one fandom! Last thing I need is moar inspiration; I can't even finish the ideas I've already had.

[edenfalling]

25,000 is just my estimate of the length needed to deal thoughtfully with the various things the reviewer suggested should be included in hir expanded take on my idea. It's possible someone more talented and a lot more concise than I am could condense it down to, say, 10,000 words. Someone else could probably get a 100,000 word novel out of the reviewer's suggestion. But even 10,000 words is a massive stretch from 500!

I frequently lose all patience with my projects. If I'm writing something that has a deadline, my journal tends to degenerate into a series of frustrated posts wondering how all my stories invariably expand on me, why isn't such-and-such plot point working, goddamnit, and what the hell I was thinking when I decided to write this horrible thing anyway. But I love writing as much as I hate it (and secretly I love hating it as well), so I guess it all works out. :-)

Ideas are easy. Writing is the hard part.