Snowflake Challenge 2024 - challenge 8

[meridian_rose]

I'm going to jump forward a bit to Challenge #8: – Talk about a current fannish project

I'm working on my small fandom big bang piece for smallfandombang with a mininum 10k wordcount. Rough draft is due end of the month. I'm almost done with the first draft and it's going to be about 20k.
The fandom is Jungle Cruise (movie) which I'm surprised has so little fic on AO3 and aside from a couple of gifs and art on Tumblr has almost no fandom.

screencap of a tumblr post with art and caption comparing Jungle Cruise and The Mummy

I found it very similar in style to The Mummy movies which are still popular though I admit never so popular as to exclude them from Small Fandom fests and exchanges. I really fell in love with this and fell into a bit of Jack Whitehall fangirl spiral and I blame Clifford the Big Red Dog for priming me in advance of this movie
I should get matched with an artist for some art or other non-fic medium piece. I doubt I can find a beta but I'm pretty pleased with how well using Balabolka text-to-speech helps me find errors and check pacing. The first draft will require quite a lot of editing.

I mean, I had to rein in the outline to tighten things up when I realised how far I was behind on writing but that's not a bad thing. I did have to rejig a couple things because despite having the rough outline and initial scenes broken down in Scrivener (and I highly recommend the "paste your notes into each scene to avoid blank page terror" advice) things needed some work as I actually started to write, beginning at the prologue and start, but then jumping around to write particular scenes I had planned more thoroughly than others which then led to necessary changes to the overall structure.
Then I did some research and dithered and did some more research and then made stuff up but also did more research because of a need to touch on or specify some 1918 geography/travel and mythical creatures/spirits plus etymology online got used a lot to see which phrases were in use or not.
(I can't share any quotes/bits I'm proud of while it is a WiP as that's against the rules of the community)

I'm pretty pleased overall I think though I've gone back and forth with "what was I thinking" a couple of times! It's strong on friendship and family dynamics, but has some dark themes; angst, depression, spiritual possession, period typical homophobia, and some suicidal ideation. It does of course have a happy ending because hurt/comfort/angst with happy ending is a large part of what I write!

Comments

[sparrow2000]

I don't know this fandom but I do love reading about other people's projects and one of the things I love about fandom is how broad it is - yes there are the big fandoms like HP, but so many small fandoms as well that people pour their love into and that's wonderful.

It sounds like you've got things well in hand for your current story if you're almost done with the first draft. Then you get all the 'fun' of the editing. It's funny how some people love that part and other people hate it with a firey passion. I think I'm somewhere between the two.

I loved the advice about "paste your notes into each scene to avoid blank page terror" - that's great advice and I agree, it definitely helps get over the white space frighteners. And yes to hurt/comfort/angst with a happy ending. The happy ending is what makes all the h/c and the angst trauma worthwhile. When I first came into fandom many moons ago I was all about the dark fic, but in recent years I want a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for sharing, that was super interesting.

[meridian_rose]

Thank you :D Editing really is a double edged sword where you can improve on the story but it can take so much work and feel like a chore at times!
I'd heard it before but ysabetwordsmith reminded me of it recently and I spent one day of writing just making documents for each scene I'd got in the outline and pasting the notes - sometimes a line, sometimes a whole paragraph of dialogue - into each so I had something to work from and it did help get past the terror of "so much to write!"
Dark fic has its place but yes, light at the end of the tunnel for me :D

[under_the_silk_tree]

I did quite enjoy the Jungle Book movie. That's awesome that you are writing a fic about it! It sounds good. I have noticed there is little to no fandom for it on tumblr because after I watched it I went looking for some gif's to reblog and there wasn't a lot.

You are a good writer so I'm sure your fic will be amazing. Happy Writing!

[meridian_rose]

I will never cease to be amazed at what is popular or not; sometimes even big movies or shows don't get much fandom.
Aww, thank you! ♥