This scene is from Chapter 1. My main characters have just returned from their anniversary dinner to find something not quite right about the house. They’re in the car, waiting for the police to arrive and check it out.  This story is in progress over at the NF Archive.

“Happy Anniversary,” he whispers. They are face to face, turned toward one another, as close as they can be with the center console between them.

“Happy Anniversary, baby. I love you.”

“Still?”

Serena laughs. “Still. Even more than the day I married you.”

“That was a good day, huh?”

She nods. “A really good day. But today is even better. Know why?”

He shakes his head. “Why?”

“Because,” she whispers, leaning toward him again. Her lips press into his. He closes his eyes and savors the moment. “Because there’s three of us now. We’re like… a little family.”

He smiles, mostly to hold back that one errant tear that threatens. “That’s amazing to me. You know that? You’re amazing. You’re… growing a little someone in there.”

“Yeah. And everything is going to turn out fine. Just fine. You’ll see.”

“I know. I’m just…”

“Concerned. You said that already.”

“Whatever, Serena.” He kisses her again and then pulls back. “You taste like steak sauce.”

She laughs, ready to throw a jab back at him when the driveway behind them erupts into a blaze of flashing blue lights.  ”Saved by the men in blue,” she says, opening her door and stepping out of the car.

They meet the officers in the driveway, squinting into the flashing lights. The radios clipped to their shirts send squawks of unintelligible noise into the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Down the street, darkened porches light up and front doors ease open. Nosy neighbors, wondering what’s going on at that pop singer guy’s house.

“Another break-in, sir?”

JC nods as he begins to direct the officers through the garage toward the door. Serena follows close behind. They ask JC and Serena to wait while they enter the house and walk through.  A few minutes later, they come back to the garage and open the door wide.

“There’s a pretty big mess. Someone was definitely here. Let’s walk through and see if you notice anything missing,” says the shorter officer, who whips out a notepad and begins taking notes, then grabs his two way communicator and chirps into it. ”Need a CSI unit at one-one-seven-zero-six Lookout Mountain Road, West Hollywood. Got a four-fifty-nine, possible four-eight-four.”

The dispatcher sends something back, to which the officer nods.

JC and Serena glance at each other. Serena’s eyes are wide-someone really was in their house. What if they’d been home?

JC leads the officers into the house but Serena is not far behind, her hand clasped in his. Once they reach the landing of the main floor, one 360 degree turn reveals that every room was touched. The den is a mess of pillows and magazines tossed around, couch and tables overturned, broken glass ground into the carpet. Photos have been removed from their frames and ripped in two-but not all of them. Just the ones with JC and Serena. Their wedding photo, once housed in a gilded silver frame and mounted above the fireplace is in shreds on the floor of the living room.  Several pieces look as if they have been punctured. Serena recognizes the shape of a stiletto heel.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door stands wide open, the contents appearing to have been rifled through. An empty bottle of vintage, expensive wine sits in the sink.

“Anything seem missing, here?” JC and Serena, in full shock, only shake their heads. They follow the officers up the steps. Serena’s old office, abandoned since the move to Wilshire Boulevard, is in the same state she left it in. The guest rooms are also untouched.

“Looks like they ran out of steam, maybe,” remarked the taller officer, his pen moving quickly across the page. “We’ve got a crime scene unit on the way. They’ll need to take pictures, so don’t move anything. Shall we?” He points to the third floor. After a deep breath, they keep climbing.

Serena hopes the bedroom hasn’t been sullied, but those hopes are dashed once they step inside.  JC’s jaw falls open as he takes in the damage-every drawer in each of their bureaus is open, but only Serena’s are empty.  Piles of her lingerie, socks, and t-shirts litter the floor.  Her jewelry case-a three feet tall chest with glass doors and felt-lined drawers, is empty and laying on it’s side in the middle of the floor.

“My jewelry is gone!” Serena gasps, on the verge of tears as her eyes crawl the floor, looking for anything that might have been left behind. There is nothing. Not even the pieces that obviously had no monetary value, but meant the most to her-gone. She feels faint.  “I can’t believe this!”

She marches toward the closet and is faced with more of the same-her purses, shoes, dresses, slacks, blouses, all are sitting on the floor of the closet. JC’s side is perfect. Through the closet and into the bathroom, it is the same story. The room reeks, since her bottles of perfume have been smashed into the sink. Her cosmetics, her mirror, her hair tools… everything has been cast from the counter and onto the floor. JC’s side is perfect; his aftershave, lotion, cologne, electric toothbrush and hair brush sitting exactly where he’d left them that morning.

“Aside from the jewelry, did you have any other valuables? Computers, music players, cell phones, instruments, the like? Looks like all of the TVs and the stereo equipment made it.”

Serena glances at JC, her eyes wide. “The studio,” they say in unison, and fly down the stairs again. JC doesn’t do much work out of the house anymore, but he still has millions of dollars in equipment and unreleased songs of immeasurable value housed in a small room in the basement of the house.

The door to the studio, which is almost always locked, has been forced open with something that violently bent the door frame. The officers take note and start giving orders to the crime scene unit that has just arrived. The snapsnapsnap of photos being taken add to the squawk of radio gibberish and side conversation of the officers and technicians.

JC stands in the middle of his studio, shaking his head. The equipment and instruments sit where he left them last. The music-a tall stack of unmarked CDs that he usually leaves in the studio-is gone.  He heaves a sigh and drags a hand down his face.

“Anything missing here, sir?”

JC nods. “Yeah. Some CD’s. My music. They took my music.” There are backups in the computer, which seems intact, but that doesn’t ease any worries about his unfinished songs being leaked. “This is a nightmare.”

“Is that it? Some CD’s?”

He sighs, bracing both hands against the console. Breathe, he tells himself. “Those CD’s are unreleased songs. My music is… it’s my life. They’re very important to me.” He steadies himself and stands. “My wife’s jewelry and my music. We want them back.”

This week, I’ve been posting the lessons I’ve learned about writing from Fan Fiction. Not only has it been great practice but it has taught me some things about writing.

1: Take your writing seriously. Even if it’s for fun. Just because it’s fan fiction doesn’t mean it isn’t real writing.

2: Take the good with the bad, and invent a strategy that helps you deal with either situation- fawning fans or booing boors.

3: Stay on task. Figure out what method works for you. Plan it, schedule it, do it!

Today I want to talk about characters, because this, besides the “world” is probably the crux of most fan fiction.

Lesson #4: How to Establish and Maintain Consistent Characterization

I don’t honestly read much fanfiction outside of my own fandom. On occasion I have read some Criminal Minds fan fiction, so let’s use this as an example. If you’re a fan of the show, you know the characters are well-defined. My friends and I talk about Hotch, Reid, Morgan, and Garcia as if they are actual people and not roles for actors. Actors “get into the skin” of the character they portray and to us, the viewing public, they almost ARE those characters. When you take Derek Morgan, for example, and write him into a fictional situation borne of your mind, readers want him to resemble Derek Morgan. There are very few circumstances in which it would be okay to change a well-known character’s personality without a very good, plot driven reason.

Viewers, readers and fans fall for (and in love with) personalities, characteristics, traits and mannerisms. Vocabulary, diction, dialect, even how s/he might shake the hair out of their eyes or stretch their muscles after long, hard day are things our minds subconsciously pick up. When  writers “borrow” these characters, it is of utmost importance to stay true to these minute details.

How do I “Stay In Character”?

Study. Study study study. Read other fan fics. Watch video, read interviews. Any piece of material that you can get your hands on that will aid you, use it. For me, audio and video are the best. On occasion, photos help as well, especially if I have to include a description or I have to describe a particular stylistic era in their career.

The other side of this characterization is a supporting cast. Unless your piece is a monologue, you will have other characters that weave into and out of the pages of your story. Some will be recognizable like your borrowed character. Some will be original. They still must be believable. If you write a love interest (for Derek, for example), you want to write a woman that he would be attracted to, that you could “see” him going for. He seems to like pretty ladies with long hair who have a little sass. If, in your story, he falls for the complete opposite, this will be a hard sell for readers, especially if their investment is in Derek and not your original character.

As an aside, never EVER go all Mary Sue (characterized as a female lead who resembles the author in many ways, except she is perfect and does no wrong). Make your characters, especially your female leads strong and well-rounded. They have lives and back stories and plot points all on their own. At some point, their story arc crosses your main character’s, and that’s where the story gets interesting. Give them faults. Give them conflict. Put some chinks and weaknesses in the armor– this makes your character entirely more interesting. A perfect female lead who does not bring spark to the table is just boring.

No matter what you choose to write, believability is tantamount. I have to be able to buy what you’re selling. My belief has to be suspended in order to get lost in your words. I wrote a story about a pop star who falls in love with a groupie. Believable and predictable on the surface, but my main character is the laid back type… he’s not really going to work hard to keep her, to jump through hoops to make her happy. I had to give her something that he would hook onto, something they had in common that would get his attention, and because she had his attention, he would be more invested in carrying on a relationship with her, even though she was pretty darned flawed. I mean, REALLY. She had ISSUES.

Chinks in the armor. Conflict. An original character that is a match for my main character and someone my reader could sink their teeth into.

 Bottom Line: If you don’t “Buy It”, your readers won’t, either.

He said (paraphrasing) that it was lazy and and unimaginative to borrow a world and put those characters in different situations than the author intended– and frankly that is why I never did a REMIX, where people take your stories and do exactly that: put your characters in different situations, with your permission, even changing the story line and outcome. If I wanted it written that way, I would have done that!

So how can I feel that way about my stories but still write fan fiction?  Well, for one there is a difference between ficcing a fantasy story in which the author has worked hard to create an alternate universe, such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, etc and RPF.  RPF (or Real Person Fiction) borrows the public image of a person and writes them in fictional situations.

I’m trying to make that sound the least creeptastic as possible. Trust me, it was hard.

Since the persona is public and writers try very hard to maintain the “us & them” (i.e. there are some things we just don’t touch) wall, there really isn’t a ‘world’ to borrow, except the one they ‘work’ in. If they’re an actor, a singer, or have some other public job, that tends to carry over into stories because that is what is familiar to fans.

I read his post and nodded along and sure, I understand his point. He also admitted to never writing any fan fiction and except for a few bad apples, never really explored the fan fic world. Of course, down here in the amatuer ranks, there are good writers and there are “Uhmmm,  I don’t understand the point of the story, and have you ever heard of punctuation” writers.  I remember when I discovered fiction based on my favorite member of a music group and  feeling like it was pretty creepy and I refused to even entertain the notion. Then I wanted to see if I could do it. Three years later,  I am still writing.

Why?  Because it taught me some things about writing.

That post about an author’s hate dislike of fan fiction brought to mind the bad fic I’ve read and how I’ve tried to avoid being that writer that people avoid. It also spawned an idea  –Writing Lessons Taught by Fan Fiction.

A simple Google search will net you authors who got their start in fan fiction. It’s great practice to hone your skills, to cut your teeth on something you’re really interested in. The more you write, the more you learn about writing, and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve asked a few of my fellow writers at various story archives to weigh in on this topic with any lessons they’ve learned along the way. At the end of the week I’ll compile and post them as, hopefully, a long list of things that writers can look forward to learning from writing fan fiction.

Lesson #1: Fan Fiction is real writing.

We create original characters, backstory, an effective arc, plot, setting, dialogue… the whole bit. There is no script to mimic.   Typically, stories carry a character in name and a few recognizable characteristics. The rest is invented and whether the story is 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 words, it is a new creation. Words appear on paper and from beginning to end, tell a story. That’s writing.

And that isn’t fake.

Fan Fic writers don’t write for publication or money or notoriety. We’re not trying to sell a book or hook an agent or find out how to get published. We write purely for fun, for recognition, and to be part of a community. And, if you have talent and can weave a great story, you can achieve a small following of people who read and respect your work and offer honest feedback and criticism. It’s a built-in critique group and, over time, this singular focus on writing alone  is what builds better writers.

Stay tuned this week for more lessons from Fan Fiction’s Knee. If you are or know a Fan fic writer, I hope you’ll pass along this week’s posts!

Are you or have you ever written Fan Fiction? What are some of the things you learned from writing it? 

Here’s a snippet from that story, which will be posted in its entirety at the fanfiction archive and my personal archive.

“Your mom, she’s okay?”

“More than okay. It was just me and her for a long time, you know? She put herself through nursing school, put me through school. She made it work.”

“She must have given you your spunk.”

“If that’s what you want to call it, yeah. I’m proud of her. When I graduated, she went back for another degree. And then she married one of her doctors, so…” Gabby stopped to laugh.

A knowing smile broke across his face. He nodded. “So she’s doing just fine, huh?”

“Just fine,” she said, nodding back.

“So your… stepdad? Is he a good guy?”

“He’s the best thing to ever happen to her. He’s why she’s always after me to date and meet new guys. She wants me to be as happy as she is.” Gabby snorted a laugh. Like she could subscribe to the fairytale her mother tried to plant in her head.

“You sound like you don’t think that’s possible. People find love everywhere. Anywhere. You never know.”

Even on the Sunset Strip. Wait. What? 

Et Voila. I hope you’ll read the rest later on today!

This is from Rescue Me, Originally posted August 8, 2010:

He gave her a devilish half grin and rolled to his side. “So there’s a part in that movie, which we‘re probably missing right now, where Edward climbs the trellis outside Vivian’s place, like the Prince in her story. And when he gets to the Princess, he asks her, what happens after he climbs the tower and rescues her?”

“She rescues him right back.”

He smiled, stroking her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “I didn’t want to be here by myself, so I went out last night. I was in a room full of people but I was alone, and I was coming back to a house where I’d be alone.  I probably wouldn’t have made it home, but then you came and rescued me. And I know you’re leaving town and all, but– ”

Barely audible, Gabby said, “You could rescue me right back.”

He laughed aloud, scooting closer to her. “That’s exactly what I was thinking I would do.”

You can find the entire story posted at my archive here or at the NF archive here.

I need a new name for this feature. Calling it Snippet Sunday for now. Suggestions?

Anywhoozle, on to my sentences for today! They’re from the project I’m currently working on for Awesome August, a summer writing challenge at the NF archive. It is a sequel to the story I wrote last year, a cute little ditty that’s reminiscent of Pretty Woman. Enjoy, and please check out last year’s story and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the new one! I haven’t decided what day I’ll post it but I’ll let you know when it’s up!

(BTW, Loyal Readers, YES I am quite evil, teasing you all like this, and YES I do plan to tease you with snippets until I post the entire story. It’s just the way I am!)

“You don’t have to try to impress me. I’ve already slept with you.”

“You sound awfully cocky, Mister.”

“Uh, if I say so myself, I am awfully cocky.”

“Oh, I walked right into that.”

“You sure did,” he said.

That’s it! That’s all you get! See you next week!

It’s another Six Sentence Sunday, where writers post six– yes, only six– sentences to showcase their work.

Today’s sentences come, by request of a very faithful reader,  from my most recent finished story entitled Nowhere Man, about a man who is homeless and is befriended by a woman who seems to have been watching over him for quite some time. Part angel, part rebel, this woman (Nix) takes her new friend on an outing. On this outing, he meets her gaggle of friends, some rough-and-tumble guys from the “South Side”. One friend in particular doesn’t take too kindly to the new guy sniffing around his friend.

Colin, the bear of a man that had greeted Phee first, exploded into the bathroom and before JC realized it, he was pinned to the wall by Colin’s enormous hand and his feet dangled a good half inch off of the floor. He could breathe—barely—but his heart thumped out of his chest and he was starting to panic.

“You fuckin’ around with Nix?” A snarl replaced his playful demeanor from earlier in the day, accompanied by dark, beady eyes and bushy eyebrows knit together in fury. “Answer me, fucker!”

Eyes desperately large and earnestly round, JC shook his head and clawed at Colin’s hand, squealing, “N-N-No, swear to God, I’m not!”

Et voila! Visit the other Sunday Sixers at SixSunday.com

Oh. Gawd.

I have been writing since I was a teenager, but I don’t have any of that material. I took a long, LONG hiatus from writing and only picked it back up a few years ago in the form of Fanfiction. *cough* NSYNC fanfiction*cough*

The first story that I wrote was really, really bad. It was never posted anywhere and I abandoned it pretty early on. It was reincarnated as my longest. story. evar and I ended up finishing it in January of this year. The first story that I posted at the archive, however, was a ditty called “Let’s Start Over“, about a spoiled, petulant brat of a popstar who is forced to work with one of the “Kings of BubbleGum Pop”. Despite her innate need and want to dislike him, his easy going nature and ability to prove that he was more than a soft pop song writer wins her over. 

“Hi, Jason Walsh, nice to meet you JC. This is Callie,” said Jason, shaking his hand and gesturing in her direction. Callie intended to skip the pleasantries and took a seat opposite the tall man with blue eyes, a perfect coiffure of dark hair and a day’s growth of beard.

“Great to meet you, Callie. I enjoy your work,” JC said, his voice smooth and his smile friendly, his hand outstretched to shake hers. Callie stared into eyes electric blue, then let her gaze travel down  to his plain t-shirt under a zippered jacket and loose blue jeans. He stood like a fool, his hand still reaching for hers, and cocked his head at her, his smile fading slightly.

Jason coughed and glared at her. She sucked her teeth and sighed, then limply shook his hand.

“You, too,” she lied. “Thank you.”

He sat and took a sip of coffee, then reached into a bag and pulled out a folder, a notebook, and a pen.

‘Nerd,’ she thought. ‘This won’t take long.’

“That coffee smells good. Did you get that here?”

“Uhm, yeah there’s a… like a… espresso machine thing down the hall. It’s like a dollar for a cup–I could… do you want me to get you some?” He started to stand and stopped when Callie lifted a hand. She dug a dollar’s worth of quarters out of her wallet and handed them to Jason, who darted out of the room and down the hall.

“That’s what I have a lackey for. I don’t want to delay you. Let’s get this show on the road. What am I doing here?”

JC cleared his throat and jumped in head first. “Uhm, well the label asked me if I would, you know, work with you on some songs for your next album. I should really be asking you what you’re doing here, what do you, like… want to do with your next album?”

“What do I want to do? I want to record some songs and release them. What do you mean, what do I want to do?”

He chuckled lightly at her response. “Uhm, I guess what I mean is that… what message do you want to send? What part of you do you want to put into your music? The label just thought you might need some perspective on uhm… another message, another direction.”

“I don’t have another message. I write what I feel, what others feel. People relate to that, obviously. The message is fine, why does it need changing?”

Jason returned with her coffee and set it in front of her, whispering that it was hot. Callie rolled her eyes. ‘Duh, it’s coffee?’

“Well, ok, let’s not think of it as changing your message, as sending out a DIFFERENT message.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t have a different message.” Callie paused and took a sip, wrinkling her nose at the bitter taste. “Look, I’m not interested in becoming some weak, lovesick ballad singer. I’m not one of those cheesy pop singers who can’t sing anything but ‘ooh boy I love you so’. I don’t KNOW why I’m here, except I’m told I don’t have a CHOICE but to be here. I didn’t pick you.”

Jason interrupted. “I… I think what Callie is saying, JC, is that—“

Callie’s eyes flashed and she whipped around to face her manager.  “I can speak for myself. Do you have to be here? Why don’t you have your nose removed from JC’s ass and park yourself in the lobby?”

Jason looked from Callie to JC and back to Callie, and back to JC. JC shrugged at him. It’d be ugly if they got into it; Callie had no shame. Jason packed himself up and quietly stepped out of the room.

Callie watched Jason leave and turned back to JC, who was fidgeting with a pen and slightly pink.

“Jason is my step brother. My mom made me hire him so she could keep an eye on me. We rarely get along, but he’d rather do this than go get a real job, so…” she shrugged.

So the point of this exercise is to explore how our writing has changed and improved. In some ways, I wish I still wrote this way. It was a time when I didn’t know what I didn’t know and at the time I thought it was the best thing ever written. I poured myself into writing, and I wrote for ME. I discovered the archive where other fans were posting their stories and talked myself into joining and posting a story.  That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and all I could think about was me, bare naked in front of the world. I’d never shared anything I wrote on that magnitude before.

I got up in the middle of the night and deleted the story. And felt relieved. Until the next morning when I got several messages. Some people were in the middle of reading it when it disappeared. Some had hoped to come back the next day and finish it. I reposted it and promised to leave it, and although I bit my nails and had to sit on my hands not to do it, it’s still there. It means something to me, to still have it up.

It reminds me of how far I have come and how much I have changed and how much better my writing is today than it was years ago. I started reading in earnest, to get books and language and an author “voice” to come out. I developed a style and a tone that was patently “me”. And I learned to share my work and not be embarrassed. I made myself write sex scenes so I could get rid of hangups and they wouldn’t be so Pollyanna.  Soon after I finished the longie, I wrote another story which was entirely different from anything I’d ever written and was yards and miles better than the story I’d just finished.

This goes to teach me that no matter how much I think it sucks while I’m writing it, the end product always turns out better than something I might have written a mere weeks or months before. Also that reading other authors feeds me in a way nothing else can. The day  I stop reading is the the day I stop writing. Writing well, that is.

Today’s sentences come from a shorter story  that I wrote for the fiction archive. I recently re-read some of my work to get back into some kind of writing groove. I actually really love this story– not to toot my own horn but it came out really well, in my opinion. I was a little surprised that it didn’t get much of a reception, but oh well. At least I liked it? The story is titled Haunted By a Song and it is about a man who has a recurring dream about a life that is contrary to the perfect, Rockwellian-like one he is living. Turns out that the dream is about a song that he must write and a dream that he must live out. In this scene, Josh has come into contact with a man who says he wants to take Josh– and the song– to New York and make him a star.  But is Josh ready to start living the dream?

“So all he said was that he wanted to make you a star, and then walked away?” Celeste pulled the covers back on the bed and slid between the sheets, then laid down to watch her husband pace the length of the room, staring at the card in his hand as he’d been doing for the last 45 minutes, at least.

“That’s all he said, and gave me the card and said to call him if I was interested. I’ve never even heard of this guy–he could be anybody. I mean… I just… what do I do?”

“Well, first you get naked and then you get in the bed, and then we talk. Come on, move it.”

I am not writing tonight because I finished my story! Yay. It ended up being a little over 40,000 words. It is posted at the Fiction archive and also at my archive here.

I’ve also updated my word count for March, since I don’t plan to do any more writing this week. I ended up at 105,742 words so far for the year. My goal is 350,000 for 2011, so uhm… I have a lot more writing to do.

I’ll be getting ready to fly to New York tomorrow and Wednesday! So excited! I hope I can make it to WORD in Brooklyn– I just really want to go there. Until then, I’ll be mentally prepping myself for my next adventure. I promised my writer friend that I wouldn’t write any more fan fiction until I wrote something original. SIGH. So I am going to spend April mapping things out and trying to start something new.  Original never comes as easily to me as fan fic does, but I have to get off the easy train. No one is going to publish my fan fiction.