Getting Ready to Write -- Fiction

SUMMARY: Beforehand it's research but, like,  fun!

(Started in a comment on an artist's post about an image he created.)

1860s cowboys or cavalry?
More photos of dress from that era

In a private group, an artist posted a style sheet for a character in his [wild-west-magical-realism] graphic novel--the man's appearance, every angle, every expression in which he had drawn him. He adds another sketch to it every time he draws some other angle or expression or clothing view.

I liked seeing that. 

It startlingly echoed the for-fun fan fiction (FFFF?) project I'm working on that takes place in the 1860s-'80s "wild west" using characters, names, and tropes from the original author of a trilogy (which I talked about a little here), intermingled with true history and familiar tropes of wild-west time and place.  In other words, fan fiction/historical fiction that gives verisimilitude to both universes that readers of either might recognize and yet is different from both. 

I'm a writer, not an artist particularly but, like [the artist], I need to decide--before plunging into writing--who and what will be in the story, what they look like and their backstory, whether a  person or a town.

So I'm up to my eyeballs in [internet] research on what real cowboys really wore during that time and gold- and silver-rush mining Colorado (and other areas up and down the Rockies) mining towns when they start up and then after a few years, and from among the images, descriptions, and explanations, I need to pick what style goes with each character or location.  I can also invent anything about anyone or anyplace, but this is supposed to be a "short" for-fun fiction so I don't want to have to invent very much but I also don't want it to take place in the author's original time and place nor in the actual wild west (if there ever was such a thing).

What the previously nonexistent Virginia City looked like
in 1867, seven years after the discovery there of the Comstock Lode.

And then 10 years later at its peak of estimated 25,000 residents.
Fifteen years after that, the population had dropped to 6,000. 
40 years later, about 600. About there it has been ever since.

In other words, this is an Alternate Universe of the American west and ditto of the original books.

And of course I track what people and towns and buildings and landscapes look like; I don't want Billy to accidentally have green eyes somewhere where they've been blue all along (not that kind of story: no magic). 

I'm sharing this info with an artist who came up with a single idea and location and set of characters (same wild west/original fiction) and is creating a painting of it.  I'm building the story around that, but we are currently going back and forth on what the artist's vision is and how I want to work with it, so it's important to record and share details. He's even given me a floorplan layout of the building in which his particular scene in the story takes place--which is extremely cool, because then I don't have to invent a layout myself and try to remember it.

I've shared wayyyyyy more details than he probably wants, although he says it's fascinating and he never expected he'd learn so much from doing a one-off image for fun.

My point was: I have a lot of text notes about clothing choices--style and color and how they wear them--hair styles, attitudes towards others and each other,  where they're from originally so how they talk--likely mostly the same sort of thing that [an artist goes] through. 

I won't have actual sketches, but I do track how I expect they'll react in certain situations and how that would be expressed in body, face, and gestures. It's fun.  BUT it's also fun because I'm reusing the original author's fully realized characters, so I don't have to invent most of this.

And I think I'm within a day or two of starting to spew story onto the [digital] page. I already know more or less where I want it to go, but I can't keep saying, "he made his way through waist-high shrubbery"--I want to know what kind of vegetation is actually out there where he'll be riding. Oh, I know, sage brush and all that, but of course that's not true everywhere. So much easier to know these things before I start putting sentences and scenes in writing than to go back later and fill in a lot of [insert here some appropriate river name between uh... [sometown1] and [sometown2]].

Our deadline is October. I've barely ever done any collaborating historically, and this *is* for fun, so I'm trying to remain relaxed about it.

Hey, [in my online post to the original artist] I think I just wrote myself a rough draft of a blog post. 

Instead of actually writing on the story...?!?!

Writers. Pfft.

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Town images: See them on Wikipedia at Virginia City, Nevada and Deadwood, South Dakota. Click each image for source details.

Cowboy image: Is currently on a Pinterest board, so I hope it doesn't go away...  I have saved an actual copy just in case.

Deadwood, S.D.,  the year someone discovered gold there.
These towns were not like we see them in Westerns. Muddy, grubby, horse manure everywhere...

Random Notes on Music and Love at First Sight

SUMMARY: While reading fan fiction online

Started from a comment I left on this chapter   In Feb 2021 (and started this post March 3, 2021). (Finished July 14, '21.)

This fan fiction was for Captive Prince, a trilogy that I am newly (March 2020) a fan of, but that I suspect has only a certain demographic of fans. Auguste is one of the characters.

About that music

I had music in my life from my earliest memories. We always had instruments in the house, including an old crappy piano. My mom still sometimes got out her old cello and played a bit, very rusty. She played the piano, too. Advanced beginner level, I'd say. I liked to pick at playing it, too: major symphonies such as Chopsticks.

In the fourth grade, I learned to play flute and how to read music. 

And I was always in the choir in most of elementary school and high school. (And in the Sunday School choir, too, I suppose simply by being there. I remember singing songs in the church at Christmas: "I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown...".)

And in band in elementary school, junior high, high, and college.

I told the story's author, "I know so many of the composers’ names and the titles of music from your story so far. I love how you weave music all through it." Told me that all those years of playing and listening to (I have albums, as did my parents...) so-called classical music paid of in a deeper experience when reading this.

This is not the albums I was referring to. But I have this, too.

I also said that I laughed out loud when I read: “Choosing a song from Don Giovanni isn’t exactly the proper way to get a girlfriend, Auguste.”  But one has to know Don Giovanni to appreciate that line in the story more fully. Fully pleased with myself.

About that love at first sight thing

Because love-at-first-sight was something that happened in the story, that I believe one of the characters didn't believe in, I noted that I believe in love at first sight. Not because it has happened to me, because it hasn’t. But I saw it happen to two male friends and their now-wives exactly the way you describe Auguste. 

Friend#1, on the day we arrived at the University 300 miles from home, while I and friend#2 were up in the dorm room putting things away, went downstairs to drive his truck to the proper parking lot. He didn’t come back for an hour; should've been about 10 minutes.  He finally walked back into the room with starry eyes and said, as I recall, “I think I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.” After chatting with a freshman girl in the parking lot. And he did. And they’re still married. After – – 40+ years? we certainly teased him originally. 

My left arm is on friend#1; his new girlfriend's (now also a friend) left arm is on me.
Friend#2 is in the center.

But then, eight years later, it happened to friend#2, too! We were long-time friends who had also ended up working at the same company.  Over the weekend, he went to a party that included a few mutual friends. He arrived at work Monday morning, and said, "I think I’m in love." The first time they met. This is a guy who had hardly ever even dated anybody. They’ve been married now for about 38 years.

The latter couple (friend#2) with rabbit ears behind him) came to visit maybe 15 years later
with their three kids. (Me on left in colorful shirt.)

Love and music?

When I hear music, I often feel many emotions. Some evoke the feeling of love.

When I think of love at first sight, I think of music. I blame the movies. ("Love at First Sight {A Montage of Movie/TV Couples}")

And that pretty much sums up life, doesn't it?

Sister and me at Mountain Winery for a Moody Blues Concert

Back in the day