Meme: Fanfic Year in Review

[john_amend_all]

Memed, this year, from aralias, with a handy template.

Stats:

List of Completed Fics:

• Keep Mum (Jackie, Frobisher)
• Foregone Conclusion (Seven, Ace)
• Accept No Substitutes (Tegan, Omega)
• Undercover as Lovers (Flick / Helga)
• Childcare Arrangements (Sapphire, Steel, Silver, OC)
• The Crawford Ritual (Liz Shaw, Mary Crawford)
• An Idle Moment (Two, Jamie, Zoë)
• The Consolidated Cookery Conundrum (The Middleman, Wendy, Lacey)
• Lost, Stolen or Strayed (Ten, Tegan, Nyssa, Rose, Pharius, Horschstadt)
• The Housekeeper's Hobby (Inspector Neele & Mary Dove)
• Persistence (Anne Elliot / Frederick Wentworth)
• Dimension Breach (Sapphire, Steel, Ace Rimmer)
• Legman (Miss Marple, Ace Rimmer)
• A Case of Impregnability (Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Charles Augustus Magnussen, the Daleks)
• A Gest of UNIT (Three, Liz, the Brigadier, Benton, Yates)
• The Price of Victory (Four, Sarah, Harry / Bettan; Character death)
• The Wrong Door (Ace / Shou Yuing)
• The Lost City (Jo, Dalek Sec)
• Hearts' Desire (Ten/Rose, the Master)
• One Day in Rome (Vicki / Clara, the Great Intelligence)
• Retirement Bonus (Victoria, Dodo, Lucie, Zoë)
• Complications of Glamour (Zoë / Isobel, OCs)
• Wedding Cake Woes (Jamie / Sam)
• Captive Headache (Zoë / Isobel)
• Never Live It Down (Clara, Lucie)
• Encounter On A London Street (Marian Halcombe)
• Ectoparasitism (Clara, Courtney)
• A Sticki Situation (Steven / Vicki)
• Overcorrection (Tegan, Nyssa, the Monk, the Duke of Wellington)
• Winds of Time (the Bonfire Night remix) (One, Vicki, Ian, Barbara)
• Secretarial Savage (Four, Leela)
• The Value of a Venue (Mel / Glitz)
• Anaml lles o rodio'r nos (Seven, Ray)
• Plan of Attack (Clyde, Rani)
• Professional Development (Lucie, Karen)
• Rebound (Jamie / Rose)
• Polly to the Rescue (Two, Ben, Polly)
• The Blockage (Jackie, Lucie)

Total number:

39

Total word count:

82499

Ship/character breakdown:

I included the ships and characters in the list; I'm not sure there's going to be much of a breakdown, when as far as I can see the only 'ship I've written more than one of is Zoë/Isobel and all the rest were one-offs. A quick squint at characters suggests that my go-to characters this year were Zoë (as ever) and Lucie.

Specifics:

Best/worst title?

Looking back at the titles this year, they mostly seem to be bland and forgettable. Best is probably The Consolidated Cookery Conundrum; worst is The Lost City.

Best/worst summary?

Best is probably the one I wrote for One Day in Rome, because I wrote the summary and later came up with the fic to match it, so it had to stand on its own.

In Nero's palace, there are spies and plots on every side. In order to protect the Doctor, Vicki finds herself allying with a slave-girl who seems to know more than she should.

Worst: Most of the others. I seem to be overly fond of two-sentence summaries where the second sentence begins with a 'but'.

Best/worst first line?

I'm rather fond of the first line of 'A Gest of UNIT':

Glancing around to make sure none of the Sheriff's men was tracking her, Liz Shaw slung her bow over her shoulders and clambered into the boughs of the Great Oak.

Though there's also the first line of 'Undercover as Lovers':

"This advanced Gestapo wire recorder simulates realistically all sounds of rumpy-pumpy," Herr Flick explained.

As for worst, the opening of Winds of Time (The Bonfire Night remix) is a complete cliché, to whit:

It had all happened so quickly.

Best/worst last line?

I like the last line of The Price of Victory. And I think the last line of Keep Mum is clunky, because I was bumping up against the drabble word limit when I wrote it.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

As last year: More than I thought, less than I'd have liked.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

Fandom: The Middleman. As for pairing, that rarest of all possible combinations, Ten / Rose.

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Probably Complications of Glamour. 12 chapters of Zoë, Isobel and utter chaos.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

Persistence by a country mile; in less than a year it's managed to be my highest-ranked story by kudos, overtaking Vox et Praeterea Mysteria despite that story having a year more to build up its scores. It would seem that writing a canonical Austen pairing on AO3 is playing with the big boys. Or girls.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

The Price of Victory went out to deafening silence. I'm guessing people don't want to read fic where Sarah Jane dies.

Story that could have been better?

What do you mean? All my fic is perfect All of them, probably. I think I'm least satisfied with The Lost City and A Case of Impregnability.

Sexiest story?

If you're into femslash, probably One Day in Rome — Vicki and Clara actually get to kiss on-screen! While wearing skimpy tunics! If not, probably Anne and Frederick's escapades in Persistence.

Saddest story?

I'm inclined to choose Retirement Bonus (yes, even over The Price of Victory). As Big Finish might well say, what's not to like about a dementia-afflicted Zoë?

Most fun?

I'm taking this to mean 'most fun to read', since 'most fun to write' is further down. In which case, Dimension Breach.

Story with single sweetest moment?

I think the scene in Hearts' Desire where the Doctor gives Timelord☛Rose the Whitepoint Star as an engagement ring was deliberately aiming to be this. Though I prefer Anne throwing herself into Fred's arms at the end of Persistence, or Shou Yuing nerving herself to come out to Ace in The Wrong Door.

Hardest story to write?

I don't recall any being particularly intractable; probably Complications of Glamour for sheer length.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Several more or less wrote themselves: Persistence leapt more or less fully-formed from my brain, as did Work Experience and Professional Development.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Not this year, because most of the characters I wrote were familiar ones I'd written before. One of my WIPs has left me wondering exactly how many people Susan Q was forced to kill before she met Ace, though.

Most overdue story?

Overcorrection is a 500-prompts fic, and it's absolute ages since I was given that particular prompt. Mind you, there'll probably be even later fics from other prompts in the list.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I signed up for more writing challenges: trope_bingo, and dw_remix. I found them somewhat stressful; with dw_remix, there's the issue of finding a fic that wants remixing (since, usually, I'm content to leave fic as I find it), and with trope_bingo the difficulty is going from trope, to plot, to full-fledged fic without stumbling on the way. My first attempt at the 'locked in' trope, for example, petered out without an ending only after I'd written 2559 words of it.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

I'd like to finish some of my WIPs, particularly the longfics that have been floating round for years.

Bonus question: How did I do with last year's goals?

I wrote two 500-prompts fics, but there are still more prompts outstanding. And of the eight WIPs I quoted bits of last year, I completed, um, two (Complications of Glamour and Childcare Arrangements). Definite room for improvement there.