There are quite a few stories out there about rape and the seriousness of it.  It’s a horrible thing for anyone to go through, especially a teenage girl.  But there’s also another side to it.  There are cases of girls having regret about what they did.  They feel ashamed so despite having there been no force, they cry rape as some kind of means to absolve themselves of the action and put the blame on the guy.  He was the one that coerced her into doing those things.

So my story’s in two parts: the actual act and Monday morning, after the girl’s claim.  It’s the act that I find myself having trouble getting through and I think it’s because I’m writing a lot of it.  It’s by no means smut (although I’m sure that would be dependent on the eyes reading it) but it’s very telling and I can’t help but feel like I’m writing some kind of Cinemax-level kiddie porn.

But my goal with part A is to show what’s actually happening in the act.  The guy is the “big man on campus” type and he can talk the talk.  But the walk?  He’s just making that walk for the first time.  The couple is losing their virginities to each other.  I wanted to show his awkwardness on not really knowing what to do, her awkwardness in thinking she knows what she’s doing but not really.  And that involves getting a little deeper than listening behind the curtain.  I need to show how he nearly explodes when the girl wraps her hand around him because, to me, that’s a testament to how he really is.  No “player” would nearly end his night at the single touch of a hand.  When he thinks she’s uncomfortable, he stops until she urges him to keep going.

I have absolutely no worries about the repercussions of writing a story like this.  I don’t care.  Because rape isn’t cut and dry and it isn’t always stereotypical.  Yes, more women report rapes but men get raped too.  And cries of wolf can often be made.  And when that happens, and it’s the guy the wolves have been released on, there are horrible repercussions for him that he didn’t deserve.  Duke lacrosse players, anyone?

To me a different story needed to be told.

Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices) was/is also a fanfiction writer. At least, that’s where she got her writing start. I’ve only read City of Bones and I’m reading Clockwork Angel now and I can’t help but see a lot of writing issues in her books that one would find in fanfiction – excessive descriptions (in City of Bones, it was so bad I didn’t want to keep reading the series for fear of death by similes), no trust in the reader, heinous overwriting, awkward prose.  And when I read her work I can’t help but think, “Yeah, that’s typical of a fanfiction writer.”

Of course I think of my own work and I wonder if it reads like a piece of fanfiction.  No one that’s read it has said that, thankfully.  And the thing is, I’m not alone in my opinion of Clare’s work.  Many people felt it’s derivative, not only of other works but of itself, Clare having rehashed her own plot in subsequent books.

In Clockwork Angel, every single thing is described, from a person’s looks to what they’re wearing, what they’re holding, what’s in the room and so on.  There’s no trust.  And it’s typical of a fanfiction writer to spell everything out.  The similes have substantially died down but the descriptions she has in there now are awkward and clunky, like she was searching for a good descriptor, couldn’t think of anything and just settled on something.  It makes for a very strange read.

So am I unnecessarily prejudice?  Am I hypocritically prejudice?  Should I take a closer look at my own work and hunt down any signs of fanfiction?  Has anyone else read Clare’s work and felt the same way?  The thing is, I’m entertained by her stories (although CA is really dragging, I’m closing in on page 150 and only 6 chapters in).  It’s just the writing isn’t quite there for me, like she’s hanging on to some semblance of fanfiction and doesn’t want to let go.

Just for the record, no I’m not bitter that Clare was discovered by writing fanfiction.  Good for her, actually.  But again, I find myself going, “That’s typical of a fanfic writer” when I’m reading her work and I don’t know if it’s right.  Not all fanfiction fits so nicely into a mould.  Some is far more eloquent than a lot of published works.  But a lot has telltale markers of it being fanfic. It’s just Clare’s style screams fanfic to me.  I can’t help it.

I’m also working on my synopsis which, after asking on AW if I should even write one, has already been rewritten once.  Synopses aren’t too heavily critiqued in AW (they don’t have their own subsection so they get stuck in Queries and tend to get lost) so it’s hard to find something that does work.  Like AW has a thread for successful queries but not for synopses.  I could use Agent Kristin’s tutorial on how to write one but the standards for them vary from person to person.  Bottom line is you want to sell your work.  You need to strip your story down to its basic plot and give that from beginning to end only in a short story type of set-up, with more telling and little showing.  Wholly contradictory to everything I’ve learned as a writer but it’s standard for synopsis writing.  Fun.

Now I’m just waiting for some feedback on how to query one particular agent.  When I went to my reading in San Francisco a couple years ago, I was offered representation by a reputable agent and after some discussion with her, we decided another one of her agents would work better since she reps YA and the one that offered doesn’t.  I just don’t know how to send the query.  Do I email the YA agent and CC the one that came directly to me?  The other way around?  What?  After some fine tuning I might even be able to start getting some queries out on Monday.

Puke.

So it’s now turned into a slight portal story.  Just slight.

And Sabina totally doesn’t know that the DC world even exists because her parents escaped during the take-over and took her to ours, ending up in New York City in the Alphabet.

Yeah.

I had this beginning swimming around in my head for a few weeks now and I really like it.  Originally she was a suburbanite with parents that totally acclimated to the suburban lifestyle but meh.  This one . . .

The original usurping of the big guy (how bad is it that I have to consult my own notes to remember the world I created?) stays in, the Sickness is probably going to be eliminated altogether or at minimum grossly altered because the entire world would be destroyed if it stayed as it functions currently.  At the usurping Sabina (now called Sabi) was very young (a year or two at most) and since he’s a diamond crier, her parents took her and ran.  They end up in our world (haven’t figured out how yet), dead broke, homeless and destitute.  Mata, Sabina’s younger sister, is born in our world not too long afterwards.  Her parents end up with mediocre jobs and like in a crap apartment in Alphabet City.  At least they’re not in Raydin.

Until it comes to get them.  Surprise!

Sabina has personality!  Yay!  And not author-induced!  Woohoo!  I’m excited.