The Reading Room - Fic: The Greatest Song I've Ever Heard by JJ_Minerva

[jj-minerva.livejournal.com]

It's Thursday here in Australia, so I hope I am not posting this too early for the rest of the world.

Read Story Here 

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to discuss the writing process and ideas behind one of my stories. I’ve included a couple of additional notes at the end because I do tend to waffle on and get side tracked. They are ‘optional extras’ if anyone is really keen to read more. 

In a note I wrote when I first posted the story on Lj, I said: “I'm excited about this one, because I think it's the best thing I've written since coming back to writing after 'The Long Break’”  

Although I’d been writing slash since about 1996/7 I hadn’t written anything for about 5 years and only returned late in 2008 after being lured back to writing by The Man From Uncle.  By early 2009 I had written four short Pros fic, none of which I considered anything special. I looked on them more as a way to familiarise myself with and get the feel of the characters.  Two contained fairly ‘stock’ plots and scenarios and two were humorous quasi-crossovers. When I came to write Greatest Song, I hoped it was fairly original ground. [Note 1] 

The idea for this story was conceived while I was writing A Taste For It, although Greatest Song was written and posted long before ATFI was finished. [Note 2]  I wondered, given Bodie’s undercover role and the time in which ATFI was set, what the possible long term consequences would be.  AIDS was a very real danger in the late 70s and early 80s and it would be years before any possible exposure was discovered.  The idea become so intriguing that I sat down and wrote Greatest Song in a very short space of time. Although the idea for Greatest Song came from ATFI, it wasn’t written as a sequel or postscript to ATFI. The stories are in no way connected and don’t share the same events. 

I was aware during writing that the subject matter, the lads not being together, Bodie having AIDS and Doyle being married with kids, would not appeal to all readers, BUT it was the chance to explore this scenario that compelled me to write.  I knew the lack of a ‘happily ever after’ would also disappoint some readers. Personally, I enjoy reading and writing angst because to me, it’s a very real part of life. I think it’s often easier to write a happy ending than to really move readers with angst, to make them genuinely feel for the characters and the situation they are in. I love to read stories that make me feel and this is one of the things I tried to achieve with Greatest Song. 

I saw the Ray Doyle of the future looking for a home and family. In ‘Takeaway’ it doesn’t take him long to set up house with the female agent and look the picture of domesticity, and that was just as part of an undercover assignment! Bodie, on the other hand looks positively uncomfortable in the one glimpse we have of him ‘domesticated’ with his school teacher girlfriend in ‘The Gun’.  So Ray would search out home and family and when he found it, I could see him and Bodie drifting apart. 

The character of Samantha was sort of an Ann Holly type with a splash of Sam Carter from SG1 thrown in. I wanted a strong character because I don’t think Doyle would go for a door mat. It would have been easy to make her a ‘villain’ but then there would have been no moral dilemma for Doyle and Bodie to face. Again, if there were no children involved, Doyle’s path forward for a happy ending with Bodie would have been far simpler. Doyle has a lot at stake and so his reaction to Bodie’s news is coloured by all he has to lose. He’s thinking of himself and his family, not Bodie, which, to me, was the most realistic reaction. 

Bodie, on the other hand, finally accepts that he may have been partially to blame for the ill feeling that exists between himself and Samantha. Although Bodie feels a bit sorry for himself, he is also trying to make peace with the world around him and seeing his own faults is the beginning of the process. We see this again towards the end of the story where he contemplates visiting Murphy to see how he is and show him there are no hard feelings. 

At this point, I should probably point out that I didn’t write Greatest Song with the idea the lads would get back together. It was meant to be a bitter-sweet parting, a final goodbye, leaving Bodie with his regrets but knowing he did the best thing by leaving Doyle to get on with the life he had chosen. The story was about goodbyes.  To me, a story doesn’t stop at the end of the page and for every story I’ve written I’ve always had ideas on what happened afterwards. I like to leave things open, not only for myself but also for the reader to ponder.  The idea for the sequel, When All Is Said And Done, came about because of readers’ responses. It was readers who saw the ending, where Bodie catches a glimpse of the old Ray driving past in his aging Escort and thinks ‘miracles really could happen’ as suggesting that there was hope of them getting back together. This surprised me somewhat because my intent was to show that Bodie had not given up hope for himself and that AIDS did not have to be a death sentence. [Note 3] 

Whilst writing the story I realised how little I actually knew about AIDS, HIV and it's progress. I always do research for my stories so I set about reading as much as I could and then translating it into a simple explanation as Bodie tells Ray what’s happened [there is more of this in the sequel story] 

I’ve never been good at choosing titles for my stories and have resorted to song titles in the past. A song can often give an extra dimension to a story if the reader knows the lyrics, in much the same way that theme music can add to a film. This song was a bit obscure, but it had been a favourite of mine since I first heard it back in the early 70s and it matched so well with the sentiments of the story. It was easy to bring in a couple of small details from the song to make it even more fitting.  You can find it on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLdQR6koC-8 It’s by the New Seekers. 

When I posted Greatest Song to my Lj, I included a separate post with a warning that the story dealt with AIDS. The initial warning was that the story was NOT a death fic although some people might view it that way. I know there has been a lot of discussion recently about what should or should not be included in warnings. Being fairly new to Lj at the time I was a bit confused as to what exactly the warning rules were so thought I’d better cover all bases. Personally, I loath warnings. [Note 4] 

In closing, I’ll say thanks for reading, both the story and my ramblings. There is a sequel, When All Is Said And Done, although I prefer the first story as it was originally intended as a stand alone.   

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? I’m open to all and have tough skin :-)

 

NOTES:

Note 1: My greatest fear in writing in Pros was that I would simply be repeating what many others had done before because Pros fandom has been around for so long. It’s one of the first great fandoms, right up there with the original Star Trek! I was really worried that there wouldn’t be much left to explore or any fresh ground to be found. I come from fairly small fandoms, Sharpe, Hornblower [when it began] and Raffles where there was still plenty of room for character exploration and story development. I was very worried that I would simply be re-covering ideas that had been ‘done to death’. 

Note 2: A Taste For It was the very first Pros story I started in December 2008 but it took a long time to complete. It was inspired by a MFU story, The Variations on a Theme Affair, I had written in Sept 2008 year where Illya volunteers to go undercover in place of Napoleon and so begins their friendship. At the time I wondered what other great partnerships might also fit the scenario and Bodie and Doyle sprang to mind. 

Note 3: I have a roughly written addition to Greatest Song’s sequel When All Is Said And Done, languishing on my lap top. THIS one will never see the light of day on Lj as it was written for my own reasons because the ending of WAISAD just didn’t sit right with the original concept I had for the ending of Greatest Song – it’s a ‘fix-it’ if you like, for my own story.  Now how weird if that? 

Note 4: How often do you buy a novel and find warnings on the cover? Never. Rape, murder, graphic violence - I’ve been surprised more than once when a novel I bought turned out to contain some pretty hairy stuff that I wasn’t expecting! And I payed money for it! On the other hand, I have read and enjoyed many novels that I might not have otherwise bought or even considered had there been a warning on the cover. I think the same should be allowed for fan fic. Writers offer their stories FREE to readers. We shouldn’t have to put warnings on our work. If you don’t like it, then stop reading.  

 

Comments

[jj-minerva.livejournal.com]

So I think to write characters effectively and authentically, whether they're negative or positive in the eyes of the writer, the writer has to be involved with them as much as possible if they're going to do them (and the story) justice.

You've hit the nail on the head! I was thinking about the whole 'writing characters' things overnight. I realised that when I wrote original characters [I wrote a long series of stories about OCs set in the Hornblower universe] that I actually became MORE involved with them than when I wrote fandom characters. The reason, of course, is that you create them from scratch. As you said, they become like your children. I had an emotional investment in them as they grew and developed and the stories evolved. That's not to say they had happy lives. They were midshipmen in the Royal Navy during the war, so there were deaths and heartaches, but for the stories to have realism there needed to be real danger. I 'loved' the characters, even those who I killed off. Although I'm no longer writing those stories, I still daydream about the characters and make up stories about their future lives in my head to pass the time.

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

You've hit the nail on the head! The reason, of course, is that you create them from scratch

Oh, I'm so glad you could understand my ramblings! Thank you. And yes, someone you've 'created from scratch' is all-important.

The McCann novel sounds interesting. I'm not widely read at all but I suppose literature has quite a few well known characters who, if you deployed certain criteria, wouldn't be that lovable but because they're so well drawn, so real, human and larger than life, we can like them or grow to like them despite ourselves, because we can see elements of ourselves in them, warts/flaws, or maybe even because we're not like them and so can get all smug about it and can congratulate ourselves on that. I'm thinking of certain Dickensian characters e.g. Fagin and Uriah Heep who are quite fascinating and much more interesting than some of the 'good' characters. I'm just wondering if Pros fiction has thrown up any interesting 'baddies' or someone who is well written but difficult to like......hmmm, Geraldine Mather, possibly? Bodie's wife in Kate Maclean's Redemption?