A few months ago, when she was first flirting with the hanfic world, I did somewhat of an interview for an article Paola was writing on fan fiction in general. Now, the tables have turned, and I’m interviewing her!
As she’s still new to hanfic, she currently only has one story in progress, but it’s quite the story. Called The Innocents, it’s a dystopian tale featuring cults, incest and more. You can read it at her LiveJournal, here.
Why did you start writing hanfic? How long have you been writing?
Let me reverse that question. I’ve been writing hanfic for less than six months, although I have been writing non-fiction since 2005 first with a blog, then book reviews. Currently I have a blog dedicated to reviewing and interviewing emerging writers, and I also collaborate with a site covering pretty much all arts – music, TV, film, books. In fact, it was while researching an article on fan fiction for that site that I first thought of writing my own.
Why hanfic? Up until that point, the FF I’d come across had been consistently bad. I’d read fics from various fandoms – House M.D., My Chemical Romance and, of course, Lord of The Rings, but the quality of the writing was always terrible. When I stumbled across ‘Truth is a Whisper’ via Tumblr, I found the first part very original and I was impressed by how accurately an online relationship had been portrayed, down to the actual formatting of the dialogue and character’s screen names. Can I call it post-modern? Then I found Tyanne B’s ‘Hammer Price Verse’ – a crossover J2/Hanfic; I was surprised to learn that Tyanne had English as a Foreign Language (EFL) like me because her writing was excellent. I got in touch with her and she encouraged me to try.
What’s it like being part of a mostly American fandom when you aren’t?
Most of my favourite TV shows, bands and writers are American. This is pretty normal for us in Europe! What I do have to contend with is the language – English is not my first language and it was a pretty scary experience to post the Prologue of The Innocents knowing that it would be read by a mainly native-English speaking audience. Although I was pretty confident about my writing skills in non-fiction, I had never written a single line of fiction before, not even in my own language. I can honestly say that without Tyanne’s example and encouragement, it would never have crossed my mind to even try.
What are your favorite hanfic stories and authors?
I love ‘The Listener’ by Sarah – one of the first long hanfics I ever read was ‘Flawed Design’ which is still one of my favourites. I’m a fan of Morgan’s Album Series; she does an amazing job at going beyond the literal meaning of the lyrics and interpreting it in unexpected ways.
Frances’ ‘A Secret Shared’ and ‘A Secret Unleashed’ portray a great Isaac, and Onlybonesremain’s ‘If I Fall’ keeps breaking my heart. I’m also following Iwontbeafool’s ‘Anger, Lust & Love’ – she’s another EFL writer and we support each other a lot in our struggles with the English language. The ‘Lindsey’ stories by Daisynala87 deal very sensitively with the issue of disability and last but definitely not least, ‘The Breeders’ by Jaerie is an absolutely brilliant dystopian story which has gripped me from the first chapter.
What is your writing process like?
As well as a general outline for the whole story, I outline each chapter. I also have info sheets for every main ‘aspect’ of the story: the cult, the medical stuff, the ‘Outside’ – I update them as I go along and constantly refer to them. It’s surprisingly easy to forget the details of something you made up yourself!
Unfortunately, I’m a very slow writer and on average it takes me about two weeks for a chapter of 5-7k words. And possibly because of having EFL, I feel that my work must be as good as it can possibly be in terms of grammar, spelling etc, so each chapter goes through two re-writes and a final proofreading before posting. Formatting takes me ages too because I cannot bear wrong spacing, typos, fonts that go wrong etc. I’m incredibly fastidious with presentation.
Where do your ideas and inspiration come from?
I began researching cults in 2005 – oddly enough at exactly the same time as I discovered Hanson with ‘Underneath’ – although the two things were certainly not connected! I read a lot of first person accounts by former cult members, survivors from Scientology as well as Christian-type cults and it’s a very, very fascinating area to explore. I’m also a huge fan of dystopian fiction and film, such as ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood and the TV series ‘Jericho’ to name but a few. So with TI I am attempting to combine the two.
The genre you write is rather controversial. What draws you to it?
There is a certain element of taboo which undoubtedly makes incest between three extremely attractive brothers very sexy; and this is probably why a lot of ‘cest fics are so sexually explicit. But what really draws me to it is the idea of a love that knows no boundaries, that refuses to comply with society’s diktats. It inevitably involves characters who are forced to live outside of the mainstream and who will probably never be ‘normal’. But define ‘normal’, anyway?
Favorite songs to listen to while you write or which inspire your writing?
Music is a big source of inspiration for me and every chapter of TI has a soundtrack – a song or piece of instrumental music which complements the story. But I can’t write to anything with lyrics as I find it too distracting, so I tend to listen to soundtracks or classical. So far I’ve written most of TI to the score for the HBO show Carnivàle, but Chapter 9 has been fuelled by a Dvorák composition which is actually featured in the story. Hopefully readers will click on the YouTube link and listen to the piece, because it will really complement the scene.
Thank you, Paola, for being the November spotlight! I really admire your thoughtfulness and thoroughness, and the way you’ve brought a whole new genre to hanfic.