I interviewed Jane Espenson for my book, and we talked a lot about the audience and their relationship with the storyteller.

She mentioned something about fanfic i wanted to share with the fic writers here:

...Fanfic, the wonderful stories created by fans that allow them to play in the same world we play in. I adore fanfic and I think there are times when these stories can surpass the official product. Writing for the joy of creating exists in its purest form in fanfic.

And I thought that was such a lovely thing.

One of my favorite fix-it fics in X-Files is like this.

Snacky, I'm guessing that's Livia Balaban's thing, with the name I can never remember. Cuneda's Revenge, or something?

Writing for the joy of creating exists in its purest form in fanfic.

Awwwww. Thanks, Jane! Even if I never wrote any Buffyfic.

Jane rocks. Plus, has the good taste to know our Scrappy, so she wins at life.

I just had the horrible realization that I am significantly older than most of the people who write in some of my favorite fandoms.

Signed,

Just found out that the person who is beta-reading one of my fics is (technically) young enough to be my daughter.

Snacky, I'm guessing that's Livia Balaban's thing, with the name I can never remember. Cuneda's Revenge, or something?

Yep, Cunegund's Restoration. So smart and funny.

How do you decide how smutty to let your fic get? Because right now, I'm pairing some characters that, well, they're both dogs.Forward, aggressive, damn close to being indiscriminate. Which is the attraction in bringing them together, but I'm not sure that shy me can depict this.

How do you decide how smutty to let your fic get?

In number of encounters or detail levels of encounters? If it's number, I figure if a particular romp doesn't advance the plot or illustrate something major for a character, I leave it to the imagination.

If it's level of detail, I get bored very quickly with thrust-by-thrust choreography. I've noticed my characters snark a lot during sex, so I go for dialogue rather than "A's hand went to B's hip" etc.

Some of both. Those are good things to think about, Connie.

Hmm.

When I write the pr0n, the whole thing is pretty much all about frustration and desire and emotional stuff. The interesting thing is finding the tension and the lust and cranking up as much as it will go, rather than fitting extremity A into slot B.

Emotional entanglement as opposed to physical entanglement. Yup.