Question of the day to writers

[smg01]

So I've been working on my fanficcy...thing. And, as often happens when I'm writing, I get curious about other people's processes. Those of you that do fics (within the same show/fandom), do you ever try to maintain a personal canon within your own stories? Or is each story separate and complete irrespective of what you've done anywhere else?

I'm not talking about creating a series or anything, but do have events from other stories in mind and do you try to keep whatever you write consistent with what you've written in the past? I'm only on my second story ever and I've found myself almost unconsciously making a tiny little tie or two between it and my first. Not plot specific ties, just something that I know is there even if it doesn't matter to the story or if no one else sees or cares about it. I can imagine that if you've got a critical mass of stories in your portfolio it would become difficult if not impossible to have them all relate to each other.

So what say you? Is each story that you do:

A: A separate and distinct entity unrelated to your other stories?

B: A piece of an organic whole along with the other stories that you've written?

It's purely idle curiosity on my part, I just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the subject.

Comments

[aka-becker.livejournal.com]

Though I technically have only written one Buffy fanfic (I started a few more but lost them all) my cannon was the show. I tried not to do anything that contradicted what had happened (to date) on the show. With that in mind, I would be limited to how much I could do that would be new cannon. Now, my fic was written during repeats in S2 and much was quickly killed by the show, but the only things that would have been new cannon was that I had visited the exterior of Cordelia's house and established a stream or river of something behind it. (I also had a cage built in Oz' basement for when he turned, but the show contradicted that afterwards).

Some people's fics tend to go way off from the show (slash often has no choice) and they may work an internal logic through their fics, if the fics are being thought of as episodes.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

I agree that show cannon is important too. It's jarring to me if it goes out the window.

[aka-becker.livejournal.com]

I tend to be limited as I tend t try to think like a writer and always try to write it as if it is an episode of the show. And then I'm dobuly limited by usually having it as an episode in the middle of a season. Anyone doing post show stuff has a lot more freedom to mess around with things.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

Since I write just about everything, my stories are not consistent. I'll even tackle the same issue multiple times if I'm up to it.

However, I do keep a base personal canon/fanon, if that makes sense. Certain aspects about characters and events I keep for every story I write. But not all my stories can be read in the same continuity.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me. I would think a prolific writer would find it nearly impossible to have a storyline continuity across their library of work for a show. Especially writers that enjoy playing around with various ships.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I haven't written enough fic to have to really worry about this, yet, but I think I would probably prefer to do A, if only because that way when I'm writing a fic, I'm not restricting myself in future fics, and I don't have to worry about things I've written in the past and how they would affect the one I'm working on now. Unless it's a series, in which case that's the whole point, of course.

I know people in both camps. I know writers who will write three very different tags to the same episode, basically playing with what shape the fallout of some event in the ep might take. I've also known people who keep to a strict internal canon of their own fic, sometimes to the point of mentioning events from one fic in another when they might realistically come up, even though the two fics are not part of a series at all.

[suzannemarie.livejournal.com]

One of my very favorite real writers is Madeleine L'Engle. I've always love the way nearly all of her books have a subtle relationship to each other. A minor character in one may be present or referred to in a different one of her series. It's a nice added richness that she brought to it.

I was looking at the story I'm working on and realized that I'd made an attempt to draw a tiny tie to my other story and thought "huh, interesting." By happenstance, both stories are set in the same general time frame which is why I think I found myself doing that. Then I started wondering (as I am wont to do) how do others approach it?

I imagine that if I ever pass the three story mark, I'll give it up as a bad idea to begin with. It kinda seems like a potential headache factory now that I think about it. :)