Topic: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

I've just published the first "chapter" on FanFiction.net and would appreciate a bit of feedback. smile It still feels a bit unfinished to me, so I suppose I consider it to be my "third draft". Any suggestions on better phrasing would be welcome, because the first chapter feels really incomplete to me somehow.

Summary: When two groups of sliders land in the same world, there's bound to be trouble; especially when one of the two is a gang of notorious criminals. Set in season 4.

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11625654/1/The-Darkslide

Author, artist, sci-fi nerd, rebel against the world, and self-proclaimed eccentric.

Re: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

The teaser is very intriguing. The content is strong with the idea of two sets of sliders on the same world, one evil, one from Season 4. Evil!Colin's behaviour is instantly disturbing.

I'd say that the main problem is the prose and perspective. The main content of your first scene -- the sliders emerging -- is just dialogue. And the dialogue is fine, but there really isn't any other meaningful information other than the banter between the sliders. Enjoyable banter, surrounded by prose that doesn't inform us about the characters or the setting or the atmosphere or the tone in any meaningful way.

This is not a unique problem in fan fiction. The reason this is happening to you: you are attempting to convert a set of television characters into prose, but your grasp of the characters is in terms of physical performance from the actors and spoken lines of dialogue, all from a detached third-person perspective. Prose, by its nature, requires delving more deeply, either in offering internal perspective within a character's thinking or in focusing on environment, atmosphere or exposition.

The only real way around this is to devise 'literature-friendly' versions of the characters and settings that are suited to the prose format -- or you could just say screw it and write a screenplay.

Or you just carry on as you are now, accepting that flaws and mistakes and material that isn't quite right is all part of the process of learning as a writer and even if this story isn't all you want it to be, you will grow from it. I can promise you that I will read it -- but right now, I have to go out, I have a hankering for potato chips.

Re: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

Oh yay, this finally went up!

I haven't read it yet, but I'll get around to it soon. Looking forward to it.

Re: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

ireactions wrote:

I'd say that the main problem is the prose and perspective. The main content of your first scene -- the sliders emerging -- is just dialogue. And the dialogue is fine, but there really isn't any other meaningful information other than the banter between the sliders. Enjoyable banter, surrounded by prose that doesn't inform us about the characters or the setting or the atmosphere or the tone in any meaningful way.

This is not a unique problem in fan fiction. The reason this is happening to you: you are attempting to convert a set of television characters into prose, but your grasp of the characters is in terms of physical performance from the actors and spoken lines of dialogue, all from a detached third-person perspective. Prose, by its nature, requires delving more deeply, either in offering internal perspective within a character's thinking or in focusing on environment, atmosphere or exposition.

I definitely feel lacking in these areas in this little introduction. Probably because I'm not used to writing for the characters right now. (That's the way it always is in my fanfiction when I first start.) I get into their different perspectives in later chapters, and those little scenes I've written are more focused in on them, which is my usual style. Definitely says why the introduction chapter feels so empty to me. I just couldn't put my finger on why it seemed that way to me! So thanks there.

The introduction is there to set up the story, and I will get into the characters' minds later on. As you say-- and this is how I start every time I try writing for a new thing-- I try to get the characters' actions, personalities, and dialogue down first before I attempt to write from their perspective. My Sliders writing box is not yet as unrestrictive as other shows I've written for. I'll get comfortable in it soon enough. smile

Thanks for the helpful critique~

Author, artist, sci-fi nerd, rebel against the world, and self-proclaimed eccentric.

Re: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

My advice -- choose one character's internal point of view, even if you continue to use third-person language. Use that one character's perspective on the characters and surroundings and his or her reactions to everything in order to tell the story. This will allow you to use more description in a way that's comfortable for a prose reader and begin the process of adapting the characters to text-description rather than live-action performance.

If you must use a completely detached perspective without an internal viewpoint to create mystery (like with the evil sliders), keep it short.

The best character to use for the internal point of view is probably Colin because his ignorance and innocence are useful for exposition.

Re: The Darkslide: My First Sliders Fanfiction

The best character to use for the internal point of view is probably Colin because his ignorance and innocence are useful for exposition.

Most of the future scenes I've got jotted down are from his POV, actually. I also have some scenes written from Dark!Colin and Dark!Quinn's viewpoints, and I will also write Quinn (though I haven't written any of these scenes yet). And depending on the scene's necessity, I may write from others' POVs as well. But the main four I'm going to focus on are Quinn, Colin and their doubles.

Getting into characters' heads is what I do best. wink So no worries there.

Author, artist, sci-fi nerd, rebel against the world, and self-proclaimed eccentric.