Fic repost and meta: Acheron (The Following a River Remix)

[neveralarch]

I did a remix, and it's author reveals time! First, here's the header information and so on:

Acheron (The Following a River Remix)
Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
(swearing, kissing and implied sex)
Characters: Ace/Tegan, Eight, Vicki, Victoria, Steven Taylor, Ainley!Master, Turlough, C'rizz, and a few more.
Wordcount: 3,900ish
Summary: Ace is looking for a purpose.
A/N: Written for Remix Redux 9, for livii . A remix of Whitsunday, which is awesome and which people should read. Betaed by aralias , who is also awesome.

(Link to the fic on the AO3)

Now for the talking about writing this thing (mostly for my own benefit, as I definitely want to remix again next year).

I was lucky enough to get assigned to someone whose fics I was already really familiar with. So to start with, I scanned through and picked out a few possibilities and wrote brief drabbles to see what I would do with them. I liked most of what I got out of that (except for the go at Set Yourself on Fire, which reads, in its entirety I DON'T EVEN KNOW, I just want to flail all of my thoughts at this fic. Not very helpful.) Whitsunday was the last one I tried, and I ended up really latching on to it, mostly because of Aaaace and mythology.

Here's the drabble for that, almost all of which managed to get changed or edited out of the actual fic before I was done:
Ace is a ferryman, with her motorbike and her wriststrap and her mad little grin. The Professor had given her a book a long time ago, about Greek myths and death and Charon. It hadn't had much of an impact, back then when only aliens and explosives held any fascination. But she thinks about it now and again, and she only takes up people who have the coin to pay for the ride.

Then I stalled out for a couple weeks and didn't do anything. Then I went to London and complained at aralias, who was doing much better than me on the actually writing a story part. I went back to my hostel and wrote about a thousand words, hopped up on museums and practically no sleep. It kind of just kept going like that. I don't understand how writing works. I didn't try to stick to the structure of the original, or use many lines from the fic, or any of the things I saw a lot of other remixes do. But I think it turned out okay, and I had a ton of fun. And livii liked it! Now I just have to get some sleep (this sleep deprivation thing - a running theme, with me) and then I need to go reply to comments.

Comments

[livii.livejournal.com]

Sorry to spam you with replies, I'm just trying to get through a couple of open tabs! Thanks for writing about the writing process of this - I always find it interesting to hear how other people remix, and especially how other people remix my stuff. The drabble approach is really clever and I'm going to nick that for next year.

If you ever feel like you have the time or inclination, I'd be intrigued to see what drabble you'd come up with for Set Yourself On Fire! I always like hearing that people like that one, because it's one of my own I actually am really proud of.

[neveralarch]

Spamming me with replies is fine, although now it turns out that you get a bunch of comments back as I work through my email. Hope this is okay.

I'm pretty sure I got the drabble thing from somebody else's meta - it's about the only thing I got out of any of the pieces I read when I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I found that it really helped me figure out where I would go with a fic before I committed myself to something that wasn't going to work out.

Re: Set Yourself on Fire, I might take you up on that, thank you! It'd probably be a while, but I do have lots of thoughts about it, I just have to figure out how to distill the inarticulate flailing into actual words. It's a really awesome and interesting story - I love how the Master and Leela do and don't fit together.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i also think the idea of writing drabbles for each is excellent. maybe i will try and do it next time.

also, i think it would be fair to say that if you had 100 words i was indeed doing about twice as well as you at that point (having 200 words to my name), but not better than that...

[neveralarch]

I think I got the drabble idea from somebody's meta. It definitely worked really well for me, in that I figured out which ideas were pretty much over after a paragraph and which ones I still had more to say about.