Immersion exercises

A forum for discussing fan fiction related to Let The Right One In
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DMt.

Re: Immersion exercises

Post by DMt. » Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:14 am

I dunno...what do you think? :D

[Or you could even put it in FF ;) ; it's not graven in stone. you can re-edit if you're not happy with it]

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by gkmoberg1 » Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:12 pm

I suppose you could start two threads - one that is the Story and one that is the Deliberations for it? You could post your drafts - partial and complete - to the Deliberation thread and we could discuss it. Then, when you are content you could add a finished segment (chapter, verse, etc.) to the Story thread. Me no see no harm in that! Or you could use DMt.'s CotS approach. That's simpler and works well too! Just don't go with the Procrastination approach - 'cause the more FF the better, as far as I'm concerned. Looking forward to Chapter One!

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EEA
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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by EEA » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:35 am

Thanks for the suggestions! I think I will do one thread with both suggestions and the chapters since I can edit later like DMt said.

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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by Clubmeister » Thu Aug 11, 2011 8:58 pm

Regardless of what motivates the authors, I want to thank them all for their efforts and creativity and wish further inspiration and success. And I hope, that owe to all of your work (and if Wolfchild and ACL won't get bored of it :lol: ), this forum will be existing as long as Eli, i.e LONG.
He is looking at me, silently, expectantly, in the near-dark room, neither smiling nor frowning; gaunt as a Belsen child, proud as the Devil, distant and beautiful as a star. [DMt.]

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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by Nightrider » Thu Aug 11, 2011 9:28 pm

I've never written Fan Fiction before. Fiction... yes...Poetry...yes, but never anything that had characters created by somebody else's imagination....but then I never read anything like LTROI before. Whether you writing a short story or a full blown novel, immersion becomes very important. My one FF effort took me about a week to finish. This however was preceded by about a good month of research...After all the information is gathered you proceed with actually putting things on the page...and that's where full immersion comes in handy. You take on personalities of the characters, you play out scenarios in your head, you try to imagine what they would feel in certain situations...you try to imagine the motivations behind some of the moves your protagonists make. Immersion is everything. Well, that and disciplined writing....Oh, and a good story wouldn't hurt either.
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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by DMt. » Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:11 pm

**

If you read 'How to Write' books, they will usually, and sensibly enough I suppose, advise you to have your plot outline, cast of characters, locations etc all laid out before you start. The better ones should tell you that the story has a life of its own, as do the characters, and that they will frequently subvert the frameworks you have set up for them. Keeping things open-ended and dynamic, giving the story and characters the freedom to unfold according to their own necessities, seems a good way to keep the life in it all, to avoid the well-crafted but dull and formulaic result.

I was horrified to realise, early on in my infection, that just about all the possible outcomes for E&O were tragic. They would become vampires, they would burn together in disgust at vampyr squalor, they would descend into corruption and savagery, they would be caught and/or killed. I determined to rescue them, to stick the finger to all of the redemption=death and Sweet Kids story arcs, just because of their overwhelming logical probability, and to make a story where they turned the tables on their infection.

I wanted them to bootstrap themselves into the maximum positive interpretation of their position. This seemed to me to be a sort of angelhood, and I took heart from the various mentions of Eli as an angel in the book. So I knew what the desired story arc was, more or less, but that was all I had. Then I saw them on the run, waking in a fox's sett in a nature reserve; typed out a few paragraphs here, and quickly found myself riding the lightning.

Attempts to work on it away from the forum all rapidly foundered; the most I got was the occasional cameo or image of what might happen next; it would not unfold, would not start flowing, until I was here, writing it live in the thread.

I miss doing it like anything, but I really have to be getting on with the music and music tech now. :?

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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by gkmoberg1 » Tue Jan 05, 2016 2:53 am

I was thinking about storytelling while driving to work. And I found I had several songs playing that were really very good at storytelling. This reminded me of this old thread, story immersion, and how we write.

What I think is key about each of the songs that I'm going name in a second is that not a word from any of the lyrics is from the narrator's point of view. The entire lyric set for each song is from one particular person's point of view. You get to see their side of life, and you're left to grasp their mistakes and how they view life. You might not agree with them, but that's what you take away from the story. What fun!

For each of these, listen to the song. Please do not watch the video - Watching the video is 100% eye candy == pure distraction.

The first three are from the old Dire Straits album 'On Every Street'.

Heavy Fuel: ( you might recognize this one but listen just the same )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEUw1t8RcZ0
This character is a hoot!

Ticket To Heaven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwLem__ ... E_X9DgKrQZ
This just makes me sad.

My Parties
https://youtu.be/3SfJ-GVUId8?list=PLUrr ... E_X9DgKrQZ
Ugh! I can see this.

And the last is 'Ordinary World' by Duran Duran. This one in particular has long intrigued me; I see this as an older Oskar lamenting and remembering life with Eli before she moved on, leaving him behind (imagine that she's just left him and he's left in their formerly shared attic apartment thinking it over), and he's wondering how anything can come next in his life... Woah, heavy. This I have listend to so many times. Yet, it is fantastic in that view: All storytelling and no narrative voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1PnQT4emS0

Uh, yes I find great inspiration in music. (Yeh, I'd be a musician if it paid.)

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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:54 am

Something that gets me working on a story is when my mind starts to dwell on some aspect of a story. It builds from there.

For examples, let's take a peek inside GK's mind for a second and see what's bubbling:

#1: Eli tells Oskar (page 472) "Yes. No. I was born about two hundred and twenty years ago, but for half that time I've slept." For me, this concept of being able to live for so very long is outside what I can process. I try to work out, as an immersion exercise, what that might be like. The first realization for me has been horrible fact that Eli has probably spent nearly most all his "waking" hours for the last 200 years by himself. He is up & active during the hours we're normally not. There's some overlap, evenings, but he's likely long been on his own from about midnight on. Nightly. I simply cannot imagine how I would endure that. Another worry is that Eli, as a largely ungoverned child, would likely lose any concept of time as we see it. In that quote from the novel, we see Eli has a grasp on how "old" he is. But I wonder whether, after such an immense period of time, and having long ago learned that this state will continue forever forward, would he bother to actually know? There's almost no need for him to know what year it is, what month it is, etc. What's important to little Eli is his location, threat level, distance to the next dawn, and where hideouts and safe locations might be. I suspect I, in his place, would have long since disposed of keeping track of date, month or even year.

#2: Would Karin and Stefan, in LTODD, actually use meeting up with Eli & Oskar to become infected? Or would they simply want the encounter? And what would infection mean for them? There are lot of avenues this plays along. In role-playing this as either, I make conjectures on what might occur and what the outcomes might be. @metoo has a well written fanfic that explores this, btw.

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metoo
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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by metoo » Fri Jan 04, 2019 6:26 pm

gkmoberg1 wrote:
Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:54 am
#1: Eli tells Oskar (page 472) "Yes. No. I was born about two hundred and twenty years ago, but for half that time I've slept." [...] But I wonder whether, after such an immense period of time, and having long ago learned that this state will continue forever forward, would he bother to actually know? There's almost no need for him to know what year it is, what month it is, etc. [...]
I agree. Eli wouldn’t bother about time, other than the immediate need to find a shelter before next dawn. Then, he might have a rough knowledge about what month it is, and what year. At least he is able to tell Oskar his age at a precision of decades, which implies that he has some idea about years. Perhaps if you’d have asked him in 1981, he’d guessed at a year towards the end of the 1970s, remembering having seen that decade on newspapers etc once in a while for some time.

Regarding Oskar, I think he would rather soon lose the grasp of time like Eli. However, I have this pet idea of Oskar scrutinising local newspapers, to learn what the authorities might know about him and Eli. Since the newspapers have dates printed he might get a sense of time that way, but I see little reason for him to bother.
gkmoberg1 wrote:
Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:54 am
#2: Would Karin and Stefan, in LTODD, actually use meeting up with Eli & Oskar to become infected? Or would they simply want the encounter? And what would infection mean for them? There are lot of avenues this plays along. In role-playing this as either, I make conjectures on what might occur and what the outcomes might be. @metoo has a well written fanfic that explores this, btw.
The purpose of Karin’s and Stefan’s trio to Barcelona is a question I have pondered. JAL’s view is that they did become infected, as is implied in his short story What Kept You So Long?, published in Seize the Night. There also was a thread on his no defunct forum where he hinted at a similar opinion.

However, if becoming infected was their goal already at Arlanda is a different issue. I’m still uncertain, but it does make a difference. Regarding that fan fiction of mine (thanks for the kind words, btw), I have wanted to make a second attempt at it for years, and I still do. Fort that purpose, part of me wants S&K not to seek eternal life through becoming vampires, since that would make it easier to use their perspectives for writing about Oskar and Eli. However, at the same time their last postcard to the narrator indicates otherwise: “Let the old dreams die. We’ll dream new ones.” How do you write from the viewpoint of someone who actively seeks to become a serial murderer?
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Re: Immersion exercises

Post by dongregg » Sat Jan 05, 2019 5:41 am

metoo wrote:
Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:02 pm
Dear fellow ff writers!

I started writing ff when reading no longer would set me in the world of LTROI, I needed new stuff. So I started writing as a means to yet again become immersed in that world, and it worked very well. Reading is quick, but writing is slow, so I can actually stay immersed for longer when writing than when reading (or watching a film).

I believe it might be interesting to learn what experiences and motivations other ff writers have for writing. So, the topic is opened, the thread is yours!
The first FF I wrote was short--a remix of the film from Eli's perspectives. "When I Am with You." I wrote it because in 2013 there was still a lot of argy-bargy about Eli's motivation to have a relationship with Oskar. That FF presents the film as a seamless whole, the way I perceived it on the first and subsequent viewings.

But I liked going all-in (immersion) so I began casting about for another story idea. Future? Backstory? Jumping time dimensions? But something was blocking me--the horrible thought that the relationship would not last. I mean, they're kids, No experience with relationships, except perhaps unsavory ones. No friends, teachers, or relatives to encourage them. Finally, just to get past the block, I wrote a quick vignette about Oskar abandoning Eli. I was so mad at him that I didn't want to be around him anymore.

But then, metoo, like you, I missed them. For the next four years I lived with them during the course of writing "Set Me As a Seal upon Your Heart." Joyful immersion!
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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