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#Post#: 16593--------------------------------------------------
Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Jack Date: December 25, 2019, 10:23 am
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Please do not read this until you’ve read all of It Happened One
Christmas!
Warning: Thar Be Spoilers Ahead!!!
Let’s start with the ending. I had a LOT of feedback on this,
and there were a lot of guesses about what happened.
Adric was the only one who correctly guessed what had happened -
that the money had come out of Bailey’s backpack when he gave
her the Christmas card and didn’t get put back in, though DB105
had a very similar guess (that he had given her the money by
accident, instead of the card).
I should also mention David M. Katz here, but I need to get into
some other stuff for his explanation to make full sense, so I’ll
come back to it.
I already have ideas for next years Christmas serial, and I had
the idea for this one about a year ago as well. I worked on it
when I felt inspired all year (thought obviously not a lot).
I was thinking about the last two series - The Christmas Pageant
and A Club Red Christmas and realized both of them were very
similar. While there were some dark spots in CP, both of them
were basically wish-fulfillment stories that focused on spanko
kids at Christmas. I wanted something a bit different this
year.
My original idea was to do an adaptation of A Chritmas Carol.
While that does inform a lot of what happens in this story, I
ended up telling something more in line with It’s a Wonderful
Life. At the beginning of that movie, the angel, Clarence, is
given a review of the main character’s life, which ended up
becoming the basis of most of this story (until it slips into
‘Ghost of Spankings Yet to Come’).
The main character in It’s a Wonderful Life was George Bailey,
who was played by Jimmy Stewart.
The villain was Mr. Potter.
Here’s where I refer back to David Katz. He’s the one who
caught those names, and he theorized that Mr. Potter had somehow
taken the money (which is what happened in the movie).
Adric also discovered and commented on this later.
In 1977, there was a gender switched remake of It’s a Wonderful
Life, which was the first version I saw. It was called It
Happened One Christmas.
I never really decided or tried to explain who or what Charlie
is in this story. In the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George
Bailey was helped by an angel named Clarence. In this story, I
went with Charlie because of my original inspiration - A
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
And yes, Bailey’s possible future son is named for Charlie.
I should also say that Zyngaru had some excellent thoughts on
Charlie that he shared in a PM, beyond him being an angel. I
actually thougth about using some of them, but…
Which brings me to another apology. I’ve already explained how
much I have going on this year, with the short period between
Thanksgiving and Christmas, the usual pressures that go with a
holiday and a large family, and then having to deal with my
mom’s insurance and contractors (which should have been done two
months ago).
The first deadline I met with this story was actually not
because of all that. Chapters 14 through 18 were supposed to be
about Bailey in junior high, getting into trouble with a group
of kids, and a period when his dad tried not spanking. This was
also going to explain why he’d started at King’s Academy.
The honest truth is that this section just didn't work for me.
Part of it was that it took Bailey away from being the basically
nice character i was picturing him as. Actually, I think that
was a lot of it.
I ended up working in one more chapter with Bailey and his
cousin than I’d originally planned, and finally came up with the
idea of Kevin, which seemed to click a bit more for me. Even
then, and with a quick chapter dealing with Bailey’s shoplifting
from another angle, it still took me a bit longer to finally get
a handle on where the story was going.
Another problem that delayed things was that I had originally
intended to have Bailey catch David shoplifting and spank him
himself. While it might have been ‘hot’ for the story, it just
didn’t feel like Bailey, but it did seem to throw off where I
was going for the story, so I had to sit back and try to either
find a new direction or redefine this one. I think it worked
pretty well.
Also, those two parts are reversed in the story as it appeared
and how I originally envisioned it.
I think the Kevin part was the hardest part for me to write.
When I’d decided to write this, I’d not only planned on it to be
less ‘fun spanko fantasy’, so I also had to resist the urge to
have Bailey and Kevin hook up, while still showing Bailey had
something of a ‘straight crush’ on the slightly older boy.
I should also say that ‘yes, Kevin’s strapping was pretty harsh,
but I just felt like having his father be of Russian decent, and
I went with an old member of ours - 1strappedboy - for the
method - not abusive, but harsh.
I think once I had that figured out, the rest came quickly. I
am sorry that I was delayed for so long. The story with Bailey
and Charles should have been posted over at least a couple of
days. I don't think I cut anything from it, but it was pretty
long for a chapter in a serial.
I think that’s it. When I have time (probably tomorrow
afternoon), I will re-read all the comments on this year’s
serial and add any more comments i think are called for, but I
didn’t want to say at the time.
Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.
#Post#: 16595--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: db105 Date: December 25, 2019, 12:12 pm
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Merry Christmas to you too!
#Post#: 16598--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: kalico Date: December 25, 2019, 3:44 pm
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Merry Christmas 🎄
Hugs kal
#Post#: 16613--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Jack Date: December 26, 2019, 8:28 am
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In my 'Post Christmas' thread, I'd mentioned next year's
Christmas Serial. Zyngaru made a reply, and I started to answer
there, but decided it might be more appropriate here.
[quote author=Zyngaru link=topic=1658.msg16608#msg16608
date=1577366030]
WOW! Already starting the mental side of next years story.
Great. Have you put it down in type yet, or still in your head?
Never hurts to get a jump on things. Who knows what 2020 is
going to be like.
[/quote]
Of course, I don't want to give too much away. What I will say
is that I have things broken into 19 pretty well defined
chapters (maybe 20, depending on how one comes out). I'm pretty
sure of three of those chapters that can be expanded to more
than one post, and I know where I'd like to put one or two more,
if I can come up with ideas that fit there - mostly just a
matter of bouncing ideas around for a bit.
I can't find the original posts, but this is very similar to
what happened last year. I actually have one idea from two or
three years ago now, that was supposed to be a group project,
but never worked out (to had co-ordinating the different writers
and we weren't able to get enough volunteers). It's one I could
do by myself, but I'm not sure it would work as well with one
author. I don't want to discuss any of the ideas in too much
detail, since I think they're all good ideas, and might work
back to them one day, though one of them, which I called Angels
With Red Cheeks was a very loose idea - similar to a boy's
adventure story with a lot of cliffhangers, but the cliffhangers
being spanking related. I just couldn't come up with a way to
make that one Christmas related and ending each chapter with a
cliffhanger would have involved a lot more writing than I was
willing to commit to.
But I digress.
The point is, I work these things out while I'm still
percolating from this year, and then they will sit for a while.
With It Happened One Christmas, I had actually written the first
chapter last January. There were a lot of discussions about it
(mostly between Kat, Brit, and I), and it sat until June, when I
did chapter two. Over the next several weeks, I wrote chapters
3 through 5, which is where the first major problem hit.
A few people commented that I changed from 3rd to 1st person.
That was one of the big discussions with Chapter One. Kat had
suggested it would be better in first person, and I knew I
intended to switch to first person at some point. The problem
is, I felt like there was just too much going on that
information would be lost by telling the story from Bailey's POV
from the start. Also, writing in 3rd person allowed me to cover
some things up and avoid dealing with his direct feelings until
after that first paddling was through.
The problem was that I got a bit lost in chapter five and six,
there was a gap of a couple of months between me writing them,
and - even then - I ended up almost completely scrapping chapter
six and re-writing it, because the two of them originally got
too much into Bailey's mind and were basically just panicked
ramblings - very accurate to what a boy in that situation might
be thinking and feeling, but not terribly good storytelling.
Wow!
The point is, I'm trying something a bit different for next
year, something I hope will make it easier for me to write, and
I will probably work on this occasionally when I feel moved. My
ultimate goal would be to have it finished before Thanksgiving,
so I can relax and spend more time worrying about the formatting
and decoration.
#Post#: 16619--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Zyngaru Date: December 26, 2019, 2:06 pm
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WOW! Jack that was packed with loads of stuff.
Let's start with 1st Person and 3rd Person. I am good with
either or both at the same time. I find it difficult to say
what I want to say, if I restrict myself to one tense. I guess
some people have a real problem with tenses and want a writer to
use just one, but I don't. My mind will make the jump from one
to the other without skipping a beat. So unless you have a
quirk about a story staying in 1st or 3rd person, I would say,
write it your way.
Panicked Ramblings. Oh MY! I would have so enjoyed those.
That's when the emotions flow the most. I enjoy knowing what is
going on inside the characters head. I really like it when I
get to see inside multiple characters heads at the same time.
What the principal is thinking about when he paddles a boy.
What the boys is thinking about as he is being paddled. Is the
principal thinking he really don't want to paddle this boy, but
he has a school reputation to uphold. What will the other boys
think if I don't paddle this boy. The boy thinking. How did he
find out that I did it. No one was there but me. I'm sure I
told a good enough lie. But he is paddling me anyway. Oh Yes!
I love getting inside the heads of the characters. Because so
often the characters are NOT on the same page. It is different
from their POV. So, Yes. I would have loved reading the Panick
Ramblings chapters. I believe it would have rounded out
Bailey's character for me.
Oh, just think how interesting it would have been to be in
Bailey's dad's head on the drive taking Bailey home. He just
heard all sorts of things about his son. You know his mind had
to be going 100 miles an hour and skipping gears in the process.
But I also understand you can't put all of that in a story,
otherwise it becomes a novel. But it doesn't mean I wouldn't
enjoy reading it.
#Post#: 16622--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Jack Date: December 26, 2019, 2:56 pm
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I'm sure Kat will have an opinion on this, but I was taught a
story should pick a POV and stay with it (though switching first
person between different characters is acceptable, though it can
also be difficult).
You really weren't missing much with the original chapter six,
because all the information was there - most of it was just
being repeated as his brain ran around like a hamster - going a
million miles an hour, but not actually making any progress.
Wil pointed out that, while it's accurate, it wasn't progressing
the story, and I think she said it was also a bit confusing.
Re-writing it actually did help me get back on track and moving
again.
I normally write in either the first person or limited third
person. I needed to be in first person for most of this,
because it allowed me to keep Charlie mysterious, which I feel
was important to the tone. It got really hard for me during the
future scene, because I really wanted to talk about what Adult
Bailey and Charles were feeling, but there's a reason they say
'show, don't tell.'
#Post#: 16631--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Zyngaru Date: December 27, 2019, 6:37 am
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[quote author=Jack link=topic=1656.msg16622#msg16622
date=1577393790]
I'm sure Kat will have an opinion on this, but I was taught a
story should pick a POV and stay with it (though switching first
person between different characters is acceptable, though it can
also be difficult).
You really weren't missing much with the original chapter six,
because all the information was there - most of it was just
being repeated as his brain ran around like a hamster - going a
million miles an hour, but not actually making any progress.
Wil pointed out that, while it's accurate, it wasn't progressing
the story, and I think she said it was also a bit confusing.
Re-writing it actually did help me get back on track and moving
again.
I normally write in either the first person or limited third
person. I needed to be in first person for most of this,
because it allowed me to keep Charlie mysterious, which I feel
was important to the tone. It got really hard for me during the
future scene, because I really wanted to talk about what Adult
Bailey and Charles were feeling, but there's a reason they say
'show, don't tell.'
[/quote]
That is why all you other people are real authors. You think
about all that stuff. What person a story is written in. What
the POV is. Is what you are saying moving the story along, or
just filling in space? All of that is beyond me. I couldn't
manage that if I tried with all my being.
#Post#: 16633--------------------------------------------------
Re: Author's Afterward - It Happened One Christmas Endnotes
By: Jack Date: December 27, 2019, 7:31 am
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[quote author=Zyngaru link=topic=1656.msg16631#msg16631
date=1577450243]
All of that is beyond me. I couldn't manage that if I tried
with all my being.
[/quote]
Different people have different talents and skills - that's what
makes the world go around.
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