An Insight into the World of Fan Fiction: Part 5

Here it is folks, the last part of my interview with Otalia fan fiction author, DiNovia. Here she starts delving into her most popular story, Hide Beside Me.

Now, I know you have your secrets that you cannot reveal, but inquiring minds want to know. How many chapters do you have planned right now? Is it still 44? Will we get another chance to have the girls do the deed?

Ah, ha! Hide Beside Me questions. Currently, the chapter count is now at 45. It could change again. With an epilogue, afterwards. The epilogues will not be one of those gigantic, seventy-thousand word epilogues. It will be a true epilogue. I believe, probably, no more than five to seven thousand words, if that long. Of course, the chapter count could change, just depending on what I need to add or what I find I need to add as I get further along in the story. Currently, in addition to Chapter 26, which was Olivia and Natalia’s first time together, there will be an additional four or five other sex scenes, I believe. I can’t believe the exact number and I could look it up in my outline, but there will be other opportunities for, yes, the girls to “do the deed,” as you say.

So, when are Natalia and Olivia going to catch a break and get some outside help in dealing with Phillip?

Ah ha! Technically, they don’t catch a break really, ever. [Laughter] There’s a little arc of joy here that I’m working in, right now. 26, 27, and 28, I believe, are all part of that arc of joy and then we start going back down hill again. However, keep in mind that Olivia has made a telephone call to her brother Sam, and Sam will be a part of this story. Sam will help them. There’ll be some other outside help coming for them, but essentially, this is a story about Olivia, Natalia, and Emma and how they survive this threat against them. But yes, there’ll be some outside help. Some from Sam; some from other people. It’s coming. Don’t worry.

In fact, why did you choose to make Phillip so evil? He’s an angel on the show.

Yes, he is an angel on the show, and I adore the Phillip that’s currently on the show, and I adore Grant Aleksander. He has such an expressive smile and such a sweet face when he’s thinking about Emma or when he’s trying to help someone out, and I think he’s just so, just so sweet looking! Like a little boy! You just want to go “woo! Thank you!”

But, I wanted to know, when I first sat down to write the longer Hide Beside Me, where I was going to take this story. I wanted to know what would’ve happened if Olivia had been right about what she said on 2/16, which is, what? “We have to get out of here. He’s insane!” basically, and, “I have to flee!” And I wanted to know what would happen if she had been right. If he had gone through the madness and, instead of coming to the other side a sane person, had come to the other side clearly psychotic or sociopathic or both, and had become super evil. That’s why I went that direction. I wanted to see what would happen. I wanted more than anything to see Olivia, Natalia and Emma on the run, and the only way to get that to happen was to have Phillip chase them. That’s really the whole basis of this storyline.

Somebody once wrote, a long time ago, that there are seven or eight basic stories told over and over again, and one of those stories is the protagonist leaves town. Someone comes to town and then someone leaves town, and this is that story- the protagonist leaving town. That’s Olivia. Olivia, Natalia and Emma are leaving town, and why, and how that plays out, and that’s important. So that’s why I chose to make him evil. I know, he is so sweet on the show, isn’t he? I just want to, like, hug him, and I can’t believe they’re, yeah… anyway. [Sigh] We won’t go on to that, but yes.

And, lastly, are you ever completely satisfied with the stories you write? Does your emotional response beta help you with over criticizing your own work? In fact, can you tell us a little about the infamous Hide Beside Me betas that we all wait on (impatiently) after each chapter is complete?

Actually, I’m glad you brought up the betas, because I really, I can’t go, or leave this interview, without talking about them and how wonderful they’ve been to me. I have five betas, and all of them are extremely valuable to me. For this story, I have five betas. I don’t usually use betas all the time, but for this story, I deemed it necessary because there were so many things going on, and so much that I didn’t know about the history of the characters and that sort of thing.

So, Destini, from Big Purple Dreams, was one of my first betas, and she’s my canon beta, so she tells me what I need to know canon-wise, and provides me with links to clips so I can find out things from the past that I may not know. She helped me, extremely, with some clips of Phillip when he was crazy and had kidnapped the kids that I would not have had otherwise. That was extremely helpful.

Also, Megan, or she goes by the name Mightbefound on livejournal, is my ‘Grammar Nazi’ beta. She helps me, particularly with commas, because I suck at commas, word choice, and a lot of other grammatical issues. But she also helps with the story. She has made several chapters so much better by having a little comment here or there, like saying, “Have you thought about this?” or, “This is good, but have you thought about that?” and, “I like how this is done, but maybe change the punctuation so that it makes it sound like this.” She has been extremely helpful in that regard as well. She’s made many of my chapters much better.

So, let’s see. That’s Destini and Megan, and Fewthistle is also a beta of mine. She came to the story a little bit late, but she has a lot of grammar experience as well, and also, she helps me with word choice and kind of the overall feel of it to make sure that I’m on point, character-wise.

Tiffany, a friend of mine, is the plot genius who, in one afternoon of driving, we were on our way out of town, helped me figure out all the plot problems and the outline for this story, after Chapter 10. I’d gotten to Chapter 10, and I was worried that I didn’t have any idea where this story was going, and she had no experience with Guiding Light at all, but she listened to me tell her this story that I was trying to tell, and asked me questions. We figured out the plot for the rest of the chapters, pretty much that afternoon and evening. It was quite exciting to get that all out of my head and onto paper, within the next couple of days. And so, she’s truly a plot genius. I don’t know if this story would be half as good without her input, as it is.

And then Shiva. Darling, Shiva, who is my emotional response beta, and she keeps me in line by letting me know, really, what the reader is going to be thinking. If the reader is going to be thinking, ‘Oh my god, this is brilliant!’ or ‘Oh my god, that’s so sad,’ or ‘Oh my god, how could you do this to them?’ or ‘Oh my god, thud!’ [Laughter] Whatever the emotional response of the reader is likely to be, that’s what Shiva helps me to discover.

And, Shiva, well actually, all of them help me to not be too critical of my own work. I am not ever completely happy with a story. I will read a story that I’ve written or a chapter over and over again and I will find all the tiny little mistakes. All the tiny little… Like, in Coming Undone, I left off a ‘T’ in the word “three”. It’s driving me crazy. But, you know, with Hide Beside Me, I have the opportunity to go back, from the beginning and fix all my mistakes. Like, I have several chapters in the beginning where I referenced Olivia’s eyes as blues, and they’re not blue; they’re green, hello? So I have to go back and fix a couple of things before I can, you know, publish it all in one fell swoop. I will with Hide Beside Me, especially since it’s so long, I will go back through and fix all of that up, and I will publish it in one, long archived piece, probably, on Burning City’s archive so that, if somebody wanted to read it all the way through from the beginning, without stopping, they could. And it will be my final version of it so I’ll be able to fix it.

Some of the other ones, I don’t go back to fix just because it’s too much of a difficulty. [Cough] Excuse me. But no, I’m never completely satisfied. I always think that I could’ve done better, or I could’ve done something differently, or I could’ve… I go back, and I read it, and I think, ‘Ugh, god, that’s so ham-handed.’ There’s a story that I wrote for the Law and Order: SVU fandom called Twenty Twenty. It was posted probably three or four years ago. I still can’t read it because I’m so embarrassed that I wrote it. [Laughter] And yet, it’s not bad, at least, that’s what people tell me, that it’s not bad. It’s just that, woah, it’s a multi-chapter sex scene, and I was a little embarrassed that I had written, afterwards, and so, no. I’m not ever completely satisfied. Part of me wants to go and take that down, but I know that people from the Casey/Olivia fandom would be just livid with me if I did.

So there it is. The end of this edition of Insight. I'm hoping to line up a couple more shorter interviews with some other fan fiction authors and other Big Purple Dreams artistic members, like nut meggers. Stay tuned!

As always, thank you to Katie for transcribing the interview. Without your tireless efforts there would be no interview to post. Thank you to Xan and Badger for editing advice. A very special thank you to DiNovia and DJ Shiva for agreeing to the interviews, I love you both and am so glad to have you in my life. You are both so talented, I only hope that more people will see how incredible you two are through these interviews.

Lastly, thank you to you all for reading and checking my blog for a new update to the interview. It means a lot to me. I hope you're enjoying it!