To re-arrange The Arrangement...opinions sought

[maldoror_chant]

At one point, I'll run out of things to archive and of excuses, and will have to deal with The Arrangement.



I've been polishing up my GW stuff and some of my earlier Naruto fics too, as I transfer them over to AO3. Moving house is a good time for a bit of spring cleaning. Man, was I ever addicted to the word Lithe when I started off. And Duo and Quatre appeared to be on springs in my earlier work...Fixing up The Source of All Things is a physical relief, trust me.

And I'm also super glad I did that re-write of Freeport back in the day. That's going to get archived As Is, that's about as good as I get when all's said and done. That taught me a lot about writing and editing myself, I might add.

Now I'm looking at The Arrangement and wondering what I do with this beast and what level of rewrite I do.

level 1 - fix the punctuation (oh my god, I spent my whole childhood and early adulthood stuck in a book, how did I manage to not know how quote marks work???)

level 2 - fix the punctuation and tighten the wording ('Lithe', you and I are mortal enemies now and I will hunt you down and exterminate you). Also fix a few dangling participles, typos, stuff like that.
This would be what I did with most of my GW fics so far. It's where I'm thinking of staying. It would probably pass unnoticed, other than making it a bit more easy to read.

level 3- The 'Freeport' treatment, where I do all of the above but kick it up a notch, and also take a few scenes that didn't work or that had redundancies in them, and tighten them way the hell up. This would be noticeable, but not in a major way.

level 4- Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. This would be all of the above, and also take some of the chapters I'm really not happy with and do some serious rewriting, restructuring them to get rid of construction problems and inconsistencies. This would mainly affect the last chapters after Breaking Storm, though the first arc might get a good thrashing too. This would effectually take a story that I wrote back when I was young and naive (snerk) and re-write it to match what I'd write these days, now that I'm old and mature. Old, anyway.

I don't think I'll go to level 4 (a tiny bit of me wants to rip Chinese Poles apart and rebuild it from the ground up to work the way it was intended to, but I probably won't, it almost feels like cheating to undo the mistakes I made when I started off, and that taught me how to write better). I'm hesitating between levels 2 and 3, mainly.

Thoughts, from those who remember this mammoth of a fic? For those who need to jog the memory, it's a HeeroxWufeixHeero and consists mainly of sex and gun p0rn, with a few Gundam missions and a few Preventer missions thrown in. Also Wufei and Heero being repressed, uncommunicative hard-asses. And then more guns.

Comments

[the_rck]

I enjoyed The Arrangement as it was back in the day, so there's that. I'll be pleased to see it posted in any form.

My experience with editing is that I start out at level one and gradually escalate to level three without having meant to. I avoid level four as much as I can.

You could always go with level zero-- Posting with a note that says that this is an old fic and unedited, just archived as is.

[maldoror_chant]

Level 0 is how I'm going to repost the Whisper series and a few of the really old works. Well, might correct the punctuation *shudder* so maybe a light level 1.

I bet if I do start out at level 1, I'll be at level 3 by the end of the fic. I hadn't thought of that ^^;

[cyphomandra]

I, um, actually have a copy of The Arrangement where I fixed speech tags and quote marks, if that's helpful? I would have to dig around for it as it's at least one computer ago. I love it in pretty much any form, though, so am torn between wanting to see what you would do with some of the later chapters now and just going with the original. I also haven't reread the sleep deprivation chapters since having my own (nonsleeping!) children but even before that I found them pretty traumatic :D

[maldoror_chant]

If you can find it without too much trouble, I wouldn't mind :) Then again that's easy enough to fix during the re-read the fic will require, so no biggie if it's lost in limbo (I have a few odds and sods I lost that way, bloody computers...now I try to remember to stick stuff on G-Drive)

I wrote The Arrangement, particularly the 'Storm' chapter, at a time i was working night shift. 'nuff said.

[cyphomandra]

I found it! (apparently it was one of the things I deemed important enough to copy over when I set up this computer). Let me know how best to send you the file.

[maldoror_chant]

Hah, awesome :) How big is it? If it's not too large, I can ping you my email and you can send it to there. Otherwise I can see if I can dust off my dropbox. Thanks :)

[cyphomandra]

It's a 1.5 MB word (or pages) file, so not too enormous!

[maldoror_chant]

Oh yeah, that should go through fine. I'll use Dreamwidth messages to send you my email address (I avoid dropping onto the interwarb :D ) Thanks! That'll save me some time.

[jainas]

A level 2 should be just fine... But it kind of sound like you secretly want to go full level 3 on it?
Level 4 would probably be too much, the fic obviously has flaws, but it didn't stop me and many other from loving it, so even if a full rework could make it better, I think it would be overkill. Use the time to write some new stuff of go to the movie or whatever! ;)

[maldoror_chant]

Actually I am completely undecided :D Part of me wants to do a level 1 and that's all. A lot of people liked this fic back in the day, and I'm afraid I might lose that crazy youthful energy I had back then if I change more than punctuation. I have a feeling I'm going to end up doing a level 2 on it, and leave it pretty much intact, warts and all. I rewrote Freeport only 2-3 years after I finished it, while I still had a good idea in mind what I wanted to do with it back in the day. A hella lot more time and life separates the current Mal from the Mal who wrote that mammoth fic (ahhh, all the spare time I had back then!)

[anushca1]

well, I liked it, of course i do. and I am and I will be content with it as it is.

but, if it's confession time, I am also very curious to see how a comple re-write will look, though.
What I mean is that the fic can, and in a way should stay as it is--with the punctuation and the like you feel the need to add to it. But you could, in your spare (ha!) time maybe, rework it all? post separately, if you do end up doing it, instead of replacing the old version? From what you're saying feels like it would be something else, another approach, maybe--and I, and others, I'm sure, would love to read this new take too.

(am I too greedy perhaps? hehehe)

[maldoror_chant]

Hmmm, an intriguing solution...Especially if I wait until I finish all my current projects, which are eating up all my spare time anyway. I had both versions of Freeport up on my LJ too, now that I think about it. After I'm done with the more intense part of the current two projects I'm on, this could be a side project. It wouldn't be a problem if it took awhile since the original+ would be up on AO3...And if I don't have the time or my inspiration can't handle it, no real loss. Yeah, that's an awesome idea, thanks!

[anushca1]

:)
(and thanks for getting me stuck on Likeness and Hannah Fury hehehe)

[maldoror_chant]

*evil laugh* My work here is done.

[anushca1]

hihihi
let's not talk about Thiéfaine then. (I'm still waiting for that post)

also, talking about evil laugh, *smirk*...someone's re-apparition got some people last night very excited on tumblr. there was much invocation of 'holy' and things that are not holy at all. ;)
Have fun! hihihi

[maldoror_chant]

Always! XD