Yuletide Reveals!
Jan. 1st, 2015 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
metaphasiaI was assigned baroqueriot for Yuletide this year, which made me super excited, since I've read their WoWP stories, and I'm a huge fan of their work. I wound up writing:
Close Your Eyes, Count to Three (4952 words) by metaphasia for baroqueriot
Fandom: Round and Round - Selena Gomez (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Female Spy, Male Spy
Summary: The thing about spies, the most important thing to remember about spies, is that they lie.
I feel really excited about this, since it's by far the longest story I've ever written (which, yes, only 5k words, which is nowhere near the length of some epics out there but I'm gradually working on writing longer stories, so I am treating this as a success). I didn't wind up writing any treats or other stories this year because I was pretty busy, but I still out-word counted last year's three stories I wrote, put together. What I did differently for this story was instead of trying to write the entire thing in order, I mapped out the general outline of scenes that I wanted to include, and any time I got some writer's block while working on one scene I would jump to another and continue writing there. This helped a lot because I think it's easier to write the first 90% of a scene than the last 10%, and allowed me to get more of the story down before gettign stuck, which meant filling in the missing parts was much easier, since they were surrounded by story. It also meant that I continued to write instead of bashing my head agains the screen, which allowed me to be more productive as well. By far the hardest part of writing this (aside from the length) was trying to find the character's voices; since the fandom was only a single music video that had no real dialogue, it was challenging to hear the characters in my head well enough to be able to write them. The characters came out sounding differently than I had initially intended, but I think I managed to maintain consistent voices in the story and I'm very proud of how it turned out.
I tried to fit in as much of the music video as possible, as well as the song lyrics, and put in a lot of references to little things that I wanted to mention here, little details that I'm particularly proud of.
The video cuts back and forth between the spy footage and Selena and the band performing on stage; the background of their performance has constellation like decorations on the walls behind them, which is where the idea for the Zodiac Lounge came from. I was also struck by how while the video is very spy themed, Selena's character performs all the different roles of spies, not only acting undercover and engaging in car chases, but also listening to recordings and developing film, which is how the plot of the other spies being forced out of the city came about. The match scenes at the beginning and end of the music video set up the frame story of being debriefed. I also chose to go with a framing story and alternating when the flashbacks take place to reinforce the idea of "going round and round" from the lyrics. The lyrics also influenced the double-agent plot and how she's not sure who she can trust. The rendezvous point at the train station was a reference to Monte Carlo. "Luna" as a codename came from the fact that it is the name of the Roman goddess of the moon, while the Greek counterpart is Selene. "Laszlo Gabor" on the other hand, was not chosen for any specific reason but rather to be as generically Hungarian a name as I could come up with.
Close Your Eyes, Count to Three (4952 words) by metaphasia for baroqueriot
Fandom: Round and Round - Selena Gomez (Music Video)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Female Spy, Male Spy
Summary: The thing about spies, the most important thing to remember about spies, is that they lie.
I feel really excited about this, since it's by far the longest story I've ever written (which, yes, only 5k words, which is nowhere near the length of some epics out there but I'm gradually working on writing longer stories, so I am treating this as a success). I didn't wind up writing any treats or other stories this year because I was pretty busy, but I still out-word counted last year's three stories I wrote, put together. What I did differently for this story was instead of trying to write the entire thing in order, I mapped out the general outline of scenes that I wanted to include, and any time I got some writer's block while working on one scene I would jump to another and continue writing there. This helped a lot because I think it's easier to write the first 90% of a scene than the last 10%, and allowed me to get more of the story down before gettign stuck, which meant filling in the missing parts was much easier, since they were surrounded by story. It also meant that I continued to write instead of bashing my head agains the screen, which allowed me to be more productive as well. By far the hardest part of writing this (aside from the length) was trying to find the character's voices; since the fandom was only a single music video that had no real dialogue, it was challenging to hear the characters in my head well enough to be able to write them. The characters came out sounding differently than I had initially intended, but I think I managed to maintain consistent voices in the story and I'm very proud of how it turned out.
I tried to fit in as much of the music video as possible, as well as the song lyrics, and put in a lot of references to little things that I wanted to mention here, little details that I'm particularly proud of.
The video cuts back and forth between the spy footage and Selena and the band performing on stage; the background of their performance has constellation like decorations on the walls behind them, which is where the idea for the Zodiac Lounge came from. I was also struck by how while the video is very spy themed, Selena's character performs all the different roles of spies, not only acting undercover and engaging in car chases, but also listening to recordings and developing film, which is how the plot of the other spies being forced out of the city came about. The match scenes at the beginning and end of the music video set up the frame story of being debriefed. I also chose to go with a framing story and alternating when the flashbacks take place to reinforce the idea of "going round and round" from the lyrics. The lyrics also influenced the double-agent plot and how she's not sure who she can trust. The rendezvous point at the train station was a reference to Monte Carlo. "Luna" as a codename came from the fact that it is the name of the Roman goddess of the moon, while the Greek counterpart is Selene. "Laszlo Gabor" on the other hand, was not chosen for any specific reason but rather to be as generically Hungarian a name as I could come up with.
