#i drew these in school. i should be focusing on the crucible but NO. i’m drawing THIS MOTHERFU | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ljandersen · 4 years

Note

Hi! I was wondering if you’d be willing to share a little (or a lot! I’m not picky) about your process for writing Burning Barriers? Things you researched, things that gave you inspiration, any of it. I’m having a blast reading it and I’m so curious about what all went into writing it! (And it’s totally okay if you don’t want to! I just had to let you know how much I’m enjoying it!)

Wow! I’m incredibly flattered by this ask. I think it’s the first time I’ve gotten an ask about my writing that wasn’t part of a game. I was ecstatic to see it in my inbox. Thank you for taking the time and interest to send it. “Burning Barriers” is my favorite posted story. I love talking about it. I’m humbled when anyone actually wants to know something about it. Anyway, seriously, I appreciate getting this ask. It made my day!

On to the actual question though: The inspiration for writing the book had a lot to do with what lead into me writing fanfiction. “Burning Barriers” was the first piece of fanfiction I wrote and the first novel-length story I finished. In a lot of ways, it was a turning point in my writing. I’d written my whole life, but for the most part, I’d gradually given it up during grad school and internship rotations. It turns out, though, corporate healthcare can be quite dehumanizing and impersonal. My career wasn’t what I thought. I decided I needed to return to what I loved doing, which was writing.

Initially, I decided it was time to write that masterpiece of literary fiction I’d always planned on writing. I made detailed outlines and character sheets. I had each beat perfectly aligned for a four-act story structure. I had the character arcs. Subplots were variations on the theme and parallel to the main story, just like the writing books recommended. Everything was set to finally write The Masterpiece. And . . .

I stalled out.

I was too overwhelmed to write this overblown piece of art. I knew I couldn’t live up to my own expectations. I’d decided to return to writing, but nothing as happening.

I loved writing, but I also always loved video games. I’d played all the Dragon Age games as each came out. I had no idea Mass Effect existed. In 2018, my sister came across it. After playing the ME trilogy, she recommended it to me. I loved it. With the three games tying together and having the same protagonist, who spoke and had a name, I became enthralled. Then came the ending with Shepard dying on the Crucible.

The credits rolled. Moon boy had just asked about “The Shepard,” and this was it. Was Shepard alive or dead? What about her love interest, in this case, Kaidan? What about their story? What about Shepard’s story as a person? It just ended. Cut off.

While I appreciate the bittersweet nature of the ending, I didn’t have any closure. I kept thinking, “How would I have ended it?” There were a few elements in particular that I thought would be interesting to explore more: fraternization and biotics. It’s always interested me when a super hero loses her power. What if Shepard couldn’t use her biotics? As for fraternization, I understood it being dismissed in ME-3, but what about after? They want to be together but rules are falling back into place. It’s always interesting when two people are forbidden to be together by external forces. There were so many interesting way to play out these different ideas.

I kept thinking about this hypothetical ending for my game. Finally, I decided I should just write it. It was going to be a short story for myself. I just needed it out of my system. Maybe it would be a good warm up to finally writing The Masterpiece. I started writing my ending for ME.

I had a very vague plot in mind. As I started writing, the plot became more than just a vehicle for finding closure with Shepard and Kaidan’s love story. I had only planned on writing Shepard’s POV, but as I drew closer to a section in the story that I knew Shepard couldn’t tell, I realized I needed someone else to take over the story. Skipping forward in time as I initially planned wouldn’t be satisfying. I decided to make the story three parts, and Kaidan would tell part two. I would return back to Shepard’s POV for the last part.

I was nervous switching POV and thought a lot about how Shepard and Kaidan would tell their story differently. Shepard is fast, goal-oriented, no-nonsense, and avoids uncomfortable, emotional rumination. Kaidan, however, is more self-aware and honest with his feelings. He’s reflective, cautious, and has a deeper internal life. The idea of contrasting the POV while keeping a consistent narrative voice was a interesting challenge. In the end, switching POV didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I thought, and I really enjoyed writing a part of the story from Kaidan’s eyes.

As I approached part three, where Kaidan’s POV would end, I realized dropping his side would feel disappointing in a way. The story had become as much Kaidan’s story as it was Shepard’s. They needed to tell the ending together. The decision to alternate POV in part three even gave the story cohesion: 1. Shepard 2. Kaidan 3. Shepard and Kaidan. It felt right. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of that from the beginning.

The story was starting to become big. Somewhere into writing part 1, I realized this was a more serious endeavor than a throw-away short story. So I got serious. I knew my ending for the story, and I decided to dissect apart what would make the ending truly satisfying. What were the barriers to it feeling the best it could feel?

Once I identified those elements, it influenced the story quite a bit. I had to include new pieces to the story, like Kaidan’s family, and I had to emphasize character arcs in some of the secondary characters. I also realized the thing keeping Shepard and Kaidan apart had to be more than fraternization regs. I had to be something internal in addition to external to feel believable.

As I wrote, there was one big development I hadn’t planned but that felt organic. It worked for the character arc I was creating, and I let it play out. While there was one big surprise, a lot of the story’s details sprang up and were little surprises while I was writing. I knew the points I wanted to connect, but I discovered the details as I wrote it. It was like I had this skeleton, but the discovery process as I wrote gave it the flesh and beauty of being something worthwhile.

The story’s ending was everything I hoped, which was a huge feat for me. I took a long time reflecting on how all the elements could come together at once in a way that felt right. I needed to incorporate a lot of external elements into one moment: the Mass Effect shard, the Scorpion terrorist leader, an object they’re looking for in part 3, and all the secondary characters (Council, Alliance, Shepard’s companions). I needed it to bring Shepard and Kaidan’s internal conflict keeping them apart to a moment of clarity, which would be easy if it was just about realizing they loved each other. They already knew that. Shepard needed to confront her fears and realize her false reasoning wasn’t just wrong, but that actually the opposite was real truth. It was a lot to achieve in one ending, but as far as I’m concerned, I felt like I was successful in bringing everything together into one moment. I was able to resolve many questions, external and internal, with one answer.

Honestly, I have compared Burning Barrier’s ending to my current big WIP and felt like I can’t live up to my own benchmark of satisfaction in an ending. Granted, all of that’s really talking up my own ending, and readers may or may not feel like the ending brought everything together in a satisfying way. But for me, I was pleased with the ending to a story I was telling myself. Since I had never finished a novel-sized story, it was huge moment.

I wrote "Burning Barriers” in notebooks over the course of four months. I had no idea of the word count when I finished. It all come together so naturally and simply, I actually thought my story would fall short of being novel-sized. All three parts together I expected to fall into the novella range. I was wrong. I started typing it up and watched the word count climb. This story that felt so simple and quick to me turned out not only to be novel-sized, but each part was novel-sized. I was thunderstruck. I realized: not only had I finished my first novel, I finished three of them! It was huge for me.

Writing fanfiction and not trying to live up to this inflated, self-imposed ideal of creating “Art” had finally set me free. I could finally write and finish a novel. I even did it with a method I never expected to work for me. Being an organized and kind of methodical person, I always assumed outlining was the best way for me. It was the responsible, better approach. It turns out, knowing my direction but finding my way as I go was what worked best. It gave me joy in discovering, and knowing I could edit it later, freed me from every word being perfection in the first draft.

“Burning Barriers” had three major drafts. After writing the story in notebooks, I knew what I needed to emphasize and cut away as I typed it into a second draft. I could foreshadow and set up the ending. I could fill in missing scenes. It was a major overhaul. I then read through the whole story a third time focusing more on the writing-level, sentences and wording choice. Then it was done.

Now I needed to do something with it. After a certain point of writing this story, maybe halfway, I realized I was putting enough effort into it, I actually wanted someone to read it. My sister, who had recommended Mass Effect to me, was also a writer. As I wrote and finished editing my story, I had her in mind as the one person who would read my story. Unfortunately, fanfiction is stigmatized and on a much lower level than if I wrote The Masterpiece. After I was finished with this story, by sister felt embarrassed for me writing fanfiction. The idea of reading fanfiction was demeaning for a serious writer and it wasn’t her thing. It’s fair to feel that way, I suppose, but I was disappointed.

My other sister who isn’t a gamer but was aware of fanfiction as a thing suggested I post online. The game had been out for so long, I doubted Mass Effect fans were still reading fanfic, but I decided to try. I had written 300 K words that no one would ever read but me if I let it lay forgotten on the hard drive.

I went ahead and posted it on FFN. I made each part it’s own book, and I posted all three books and all the chapters all at once. Then I sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. It was deflating. I had a few favorites or follows scattered here and there, but it felt pretty silent. I could see stats that some people probably had read the whole way through, but that was it for spending months writing this 300 K fic. I actually felt worse than before I’d posted it online, because this felt more like a rejection. My fear, my story actually being awful, could actually be true.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about fanfiction culture. I didn’t know people posted before they finished a story or that it was common practice to post chapter by chapter to gain readership. I had no idea my posting method could be playing a role in why the stories were lost to the void.

My sister who had suggested posting online recommended looking for Facebook groups to information on other places to post. I joined some FB groups and asked for recommendations where else to post. I heard about AO3. Now, I still didn’t know about this whole posting chapter-by-chapter thing, so I posted my story on AO3 the same way as before. Unlike FFN, I decided this time to keep all the parts together, since so much of the story relied on in-jokes and references from earlier parts. Plus, the story and plot arc were made to connect over the whole story. Other than that, I posted “Burning Barriers” as one giant chunk of 124 chapters, like I had on FFN, and sat back again. This time there was one difference: someone commented.

I got a comment from someone who read the first chapter, liked it, and said she would put it on her reading list. That one comment changed my whole experience. I replied to the comment, and I through a back and forth via email met my now very good friend @ripley95things . She introduced me to another wonderful friend @rpgwarrior4824 . Their comments on “Burning Barriers” made all the difference. I went from feeling kind of devastated and being embarrassed about my story to being glad I wrote it. It was a complete 180 just by having two people who cared. It made all the difference.

They welcomed me into the fandom. I learned so much about the fanfic culture and started reading other Shenko fanfics. I haven’t stopped since. With all the encouragement I got from talking with them, I decided to write more Shenko fanfiction myself even. I hadn’t planned to write anything more than “Burning Barriers,” but suddenly I had a new plot-heavy story I was writing (am still writing *sigh*). I wrote a one-shot and some lighter, shorter multichapter fics. I eventually joined Tumblr. But it all started with “Burning Barriers.”

That’s a lot of extra information on “Burning Barriers” than just my inspiration and approach to writing, but haha, I guess, I got on a roll. The story has a lot of meaning to me, and the history surround it feels integrated into its DNA. If you read this far, I really appreciate you reading not only a very long book with “Burning Barriers,” but also a very long monologue about the very long book. Haha. Thank you!

Anyway, I’ll end here. Thank you for your wonderful question. It was fun to reflect back on this story that has so much meaning to me. I appreciate your interest in “Burning Barriers.” It means more than I can say that you read my story, and even more, to know you’re interested enough to ask a question about it (thought you probably didn’t expect how much you’d get! Lol! :D) Thanks again!

#my writing #mass effect fanfiction #writing ask #Burning Barriers #Thank you so much for the ask!

22 notes · View notes