writing meme

[xparrot]

Taken from pretty much everybody:

Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.

...

"Don't go wasting your emo~tions~..."
*Why did Mamma Mia! have to be so ridiculously awesome? going around constantly singing ABBA under one's breath gets embarrassing!*

Comments

[rheanna27.livejournal.com]

The Seat of Talents.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hee, I was hoping someone would ask about that one! ^^; I could go on about it for a while - there's all the original drafts of the opening (Teyla was supposed to get a cooking talent), and the search for a title, and Rodney's piano playing...

The most that didn't get into the story proper was about the Challidan people (their name, like most of the words in the story, is a bastardization of the Latin "calliditas": "skill, craftiness, cunning," according to my dictionaries). The story has some mention of their caste system ("dux" is Latin for leader, "vas" is "vessel") but a lot of details didn't make it in, such as that the ducis pay the greatest price for their power - after they serve for a couple decades, they sit in the Sedes and give up everything, burning out their minds so all they've learned can be passed on to their successor. The Challidas are antagonists in the story, but I don't think of them as bad guys; really I think they've hit on a clever way to preserve their society in the face of Wraith predation. (A lot of John's thoughts in the fic could have the disclaimer, "The views expressed by the POV character do not necessarily reflect the author's.")

I spent quite a bit of time while writing the story wondering what I'd do in the Chair, what I'd give up and what I'd go for. I very well might do it, were I offered the chance; getting fluency in Japanese would be worth a lot to me...