Wanting More

 

“You’re cheating.”

“Me?” Tenny pressed a hand to his heart, expression one of comically overwrought disbelief. “Slander.”

“I just watched you slip two-hundred dollars up your sleeve,” Raven insisted. “You dirty, rotten cheat.”

He feigned affront. “How dare you? I would never!” He’d put on this poncy, antiquated accent that brought to mind a dowager from a Jane Austen novel, and Cassandra was fast losing the battle against a case of the giggles.

Raven felt her own laughter simmering, but kept it together. “Fine. Show us your sleeve, then.”

He lifted his nose in the air, furthering the dowager impression. “And why should I? After such vile accusations? I never–” When he lifted his hand to gesture, Cass rocked forward and snatched the edge of a bright pink Monopoly bill from his cuff and pulled it out victoriously.

“Ha!” she crowed.

“Ha!” Raven echoed.

Tenny whipped a scowl toward Cass – but the twitch of his lips betrayed a barely-restrained smile.

Cass was laughing openly, eyes scrunched up, delighted with herself.

“You’re an evil little shit,” Tenny told her.

Cass stuck out her tongue and laughed some more.

Tenny twisted around toward the sofa, where Reese and Toly sat watching an American football game, of all things. “Babe, they’re slandering me,” Tenny complained.

Reese lifted his hand and patted the air in a there-there gesture, which was Raven’s final undoing. She tried to smother her laugh in her hand, and wound up snorting in unladylike fashion anyway.

Tenny picked up his empty Coke can and tossed it – it landed harmlessly on the floor in front of the sofa.

In a dry voice, Toly said, “We’re trying to watch the game.”

“Neither of you two idiots knows a bloody thing about American football,” Tenny shot back. “Who’s even playing?”

A pause.

“Green versus blue,” Reese finally said, which set Raven and Cass off in fresh peals of laughter.

Tenny, grinning wickedly now, said, “What are the names of the teams?”

Another pause, then Toly said, “The Bulls. And the…Mockingbirds.”

“Fucking idiots,” Tenny swore, grin so wide it looked like it hurt. 

From Nothing More, Lean Dogs Legacy Book V

Despite the drama and melodrama of my books, my favorite bits to write are usually the quiet, fluffy, world-building bits that allow the characters to do something mundane, like have a meal, or play a game of Monopoly, and which peel back the onion layers a little farther and offer a deeper glimpse at who the characters are when they're not fighting bad guys or having tense strategy meetings. I enjoy those moments as a reader, and so I always work them in while writing. They're scenes viewed as "filler" by the Get to the Point crowd, but I feel like the slow beats are what help us arrive at the point. Also, the journey IS the point. If you want to speed-read a book to find out the ending, you've come to the wrong author, I'm afraid. I like writing books for people who want to snuggle in, kick their feet up, and get good and stuck in. It's a writing style that stems from a lifetime of wanting more. 

I started writing fanfiction before I even knew what it was. The very first story I ever penned - at age four, with ballpoint pen in a spiral-bound notebook, complete with hideous spelling and sloppy illustrations - was a story about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I wasn't satisfied with the transition from taunting to that fateful, foggy Christmas eve, and wanted to know what happened in between. Did Rudolph train? Did he make other friends? It was my own, alternate riff on the claymation special, minus the casual sexism. 

Going forward, I wrote my own stories, but I wrote a lot of "filler" scenes for movies and TV shows I liked, too. I squirreled them away in a box at the top of my closet, and pulled them out, sometimes, to read them, or add to them. I always wanted more. I wanted to know what happened after the big bad was defeated; after the world didn't end. I wanted to know who wound up with whom, and who had children, and what those characters' world looked like five, ten, fifteen years down the line. I wrote so many Star Wars tidbits in the vein of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, wanting to watch Han and Leia navigate leadership and the new order of the universe. Lots of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. CSI: NY had a brief, intense stint in my imagination, and of course Buffy, always Buffy, Spike x Buffy 4ever. 

If I loved a piece of media, I wanted more of it: more detail, more down time, more silly, fuffy, character-building moments; wanted to step outside the relentless forward momentum of the big plot for a minute and give everyone a chance to breathe.

It wasn't until high school that a friend introduced me to the now-inferior fanfiction.net (all the good stuff's on ao3 these days, y'all) and I couldn't believe that people wrote for existing properties, too, just like me! And they posted them online for everyone to read! And some kinda sucked...but some were amazing! I was hooked. 

I don't write fanfic anymore, and haven't since 2010 or so, but I still read it. You have to weed through the self-indulgent, teen-written stuff, inevitably, but there's some absolutely gorgeous character- and story- and prose-work out there. I roll my eyes when I see blanket fanfiction hate, because let me tell you, there is a wealth of valuable lessons to be learned about writing in the reading and execution of fanfic. It's written with love: love for a work, for a character, for the shape and texture of words, and the ability to weave magic with them. And it's through fanfic, with a canon that's already established and built, backstories already created, that a writer has the chance to really play. To do the deep digging that canon perhaps fails to, or refuses to. 

Seeing what's possible with fanfic has affected my writing style, for sure. In my original work, I'm creating the characters and their world, layering in the back story - but I always want to do the deep digging, too. I'm Southern, so yarn-spinning is already baked into the equation; I just take it to the next level, and lean hard on the small details and softer moments that would most likely get cut from the manuscript if I was traditionally published. I know I could get the books "tighter." I don't want to. I choose not to, because I'm writing books for the readers who were kids like me, who always wanted more. The current publishing climate turns the pressure up on working faster and faster, and cutting more ruthlessly...but I make a conscious effort to include the slow beats, the backstories; the flashbacks, and ruminations on the past. I will forever love including a character's memories, and childhoods, and old traumas. Those kitchen table conversations in which heavy things are laid down between two people. 

I don't write fic anymore...but I approach each novel as if I do.