beatrice_otter | (no subject)

I am writing an Agent Carter fic. The show usually had some badass fight scenes between Peggy and the villain du jour, and I was planning on doing that. But she’s an espionage agent, and so for her fighting often means she’s failed because she’s been spotted. The most important thing, in most counter-espionage (which is what she’s doing) is to spot the enemy without being spotted in return, so you can tail them and find out their contacts and keep the enemy you know from being replaced by agents you don’t know (and hopefully feeding them false information while you do it).

It has just occurred to me that maybe instead of a fight scene, I should end this fic by the target being positively identified and put under surveillance. But it seems so anticlimactic. (On the other hand, it means I don’t have to figure out what the villain’s plot is, because that’s part of what the surveillance is meant to find out.) (On the third hand, it also means I don’t have to write a fight scene, which is good because I suck at action.) (On the fourth hand, given the time constraints, I think I’m going to write the surveillance ending so I can post it today before the deadline, then send it out to beta and see what they say–I’ve got a week until it goes live.)

Thoughts, opinions?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't think the surveillance ending is anticlimactic at all, but then again, I am not particularly interested in fight scenes in a non-visual medium and think you and all good writers can make reading the newspaper seem sufficiently thrilling.

Here's a thought --

If your whole story follows the Agent Carter television pattern, then a complete lack of action may rub people the wrong way; you'd leave out that element. But if your story is a little different anyway, focuses on some parts of it only or has its own structure, then I really wouldn't worry about taking the villain away at the end without a big fight.

(Right now, I am writing a fic in a show that also involves crime-fighting, and I am struggling with it: Do I just write the character-based stuff I'm interested in, or do I weave it into the convention of the genre, and that show in particular? I am not good at that, but it would make the story infinitely better, I feel.)

Edited (don't re-write sentences, self, and leave words in there...) 2015-06-15 15:34 (UTC)

Thanks for the reassurance.

The story is currently a hot mess, but that's not inherently the problem of the espionage-instead-of-fighting choice, it's because the plot's changed so many times during writing it's not even funny, and I haven't had time to go back and smooth it all out yet. (Thank God there's a week between posting and the archive opening.)

Is there a B-plot you can tie into the ending? Surveillance where Peggy gets a particularily satisfying sandwich? She gets to skip the fight scene and go home early and eat pie with Angie? Something like that would be a satisfying alternative to punching people.

Currently, it's kind of a mess. There probably is something there to turn into a B-plot (it's about 10k words), but I know it needs editing. THere's stuff that needs to be added and undoubtedly stuff that needs to be cut. But at least I have a week to do so!

I think one of the best things about fanfic is that you can do stuff that *doesn't* follow the television/action formula (that maybe follows reality a bit closer, or subverts the formula) and still have it work.

Of course it still has to be a good story, you just don't have the formula to lean on. :P

In my very limited experience of this, I would say that want you need for a traditonal plot structure climax is tension-building-to-release (...you can tell I'm mostly done this with messing up romance formulae rather than action huh.) Anyway in the romance formula the primary tension is romantic tension and then the release is sex or confessions of love or whatever, in a PWP it's foreplay->orgasm, in the action plot the tension is a physical threat and the release is a fight scene. But you can mess with it by having your primary tension be focused somewhere else, and then your climax is the release of that other tension.

So maybe the tension is, IDK, "will I make it home in time to have date night with Angie" and the release is "hot damn, intel CONFIRMED, I am out of here." Or whatever.

/BS

OR you can just ignore traditional plot structure entirely, that's another fun thing about fanfic.

Good point about the formula, just not sure there's a good (enough) story do make it without the formula to lean on :(

Can the fight be between Peggy and someone who could blow her cover, not the surveillance subject? One thing about that kind of spycraft is that the person who is the target doesn't ever see what happens behind the scenes.