Neil wrote:

One thing that leaps out at me from the scripts, now I've had a chance to look at them, is how short most of the lines of dialogue are. I haven't done any statistical research on this, but I wouldn't mind betting that if you calculated an average number of words per speech for a script and did the same for a story, the story would come out higher. Perhaps much higher (depending on the author, probably). Characters in fanfic say a lot more, use longer sentences, are generally more 'wordy', or at least that's the impression I get.

I think this might be partly the difference between action/adventure (as per series) and character drama (as per much fanfic). Also, the series version had expression, action and body posture to go with the words, while fanfic either writes in all this or settles for a more explanatory style of speech. Length of sentence might well depend on the context (pace).

What I find generally irritating is that the regular characters (especi

ally,

but oc's often too) are often nowhere near 'tough' enough. I'm wary of saying this because I don't want to sound like I'm advocating some kind of macho manifesto, but they are revolutionary fanatics and/or criminals, habitually doing dangerous things, seeing unpleasant sights, forced into making snap decisions that might very well lead to someone else's death at the expense of their own. And in a lot of fanfic this

doesn't

come across -their 'inner voices' sound too 'soft' (another word I'm very uneasy about using), too preoccupied with 'trivial' things (also a dangerous label), too concerned with the fragility of their relationships with one another. This, to me, is the hidden hand of Mary Sue, acting within the characters themselves.

A lot of this might come down to inner vs outer voice, ie the difference between tough exterior and less-tough inner. To put it simplistically, I can see Blake watching a massacre he can do nothing to prevent impassively, yet grieving internally. This is also one explanation for the otherwise inexplicable character shifts in Cally -- Cally the Earth Mother (internal) vs Cally the Warrior (external) -- only being female the scriptwriters allow her to express her inner voice externally.

A lot of this may be because many writers are concerned only with the

characters,

not with the milieu. They are not interested in action/adventure plots (a

lot of

fanfic might be deliberately repudiating the action/adventure ethos and

its tropes,

which is why the characters come across the way they do), and not

particularly

interested in science fiction either. It was a real culture shock to me,

when I

first entered fandom about 9 years ago, to find that an awful lot of fans

weren't into

SF as such. I'd be surprised if this didn't affect the way they write the

characters.

Action/adventure's pretty dull to read, more suitable for the visual. It's a shame there isn't more science fiction in fanwriting, yet there's so little credible science fiction in the series. Less even than Star Trek. Give me grey B7 over shiny happy ST any day, but they do take up the science fiction challenge a bit more seriously, if in the style of Jules Verne or HG Wells than contemporary SF. Not that I know anything about contemporary SF.

Tavia