Since I'm a newbie to Royal Road, I have no idea if authors do this but, with Becoming April put to bed and Finding April launching next year, this feels like the perfect place to discuss just what the fuck I tried to accomplish with this fiction. It's probably a good idea to start with what I think are the story's major inspirations--the things that inspired me to write it, anyway.
Inspiration #1: The crappy storytelling of most MTF Genderswap Fiction.
TBF, my exposure to most of it has been through Amazon Kindle, but the purpose of most Genderswap Fiction appears to be smut; the MC is magically transformed (often the sole sci-fi/fantasy element in the story) into a Hot Chick who either feels the irresistible urge to fuck her brains out or is impelled to by the setup. The MCs tend to come in two flavors; either a guy whose mostly a woobie pre-transformation (in which case the change is intentional and intended to Improve Their Life), or an absolute jerk-a-thon of a dude (in which case the change is intentional and intended to be karmic). In any case, storytelling tends to be minimal and character engagement low. So Becoming April is, to a certain extent, a reaction-fic; I started writing it just to actually see an MC who reacted realistically to their transformation.
Inspiration #2: It's somewhere to put my poetry.
Yup, I am a poet and you didn't know it (to quote Sir Percival Blakeney, baronet). The erotic poems in Aunt Sophie's A Pillow Book are my fault, written several years ago and doomed to remain homeless. Once I decided to write April's story, I decided to make it their home and inflict them on others.
Inspiration #3: Alien Intervention Stories.
War of the Worlds. Childhood's End. Independence Day. Contact. Arrival. Alien Intervention has always been one of the big sci-fi sub-genres, and Zenna Henderson's stories of The People are a sort of subversion of the genre (aliens arrive but the last thing they want is to make open contact or to enslave/save humanity). I flat out named my aliens The People partly in homage to Henderson's but also because when you think about it any alien race's first name for themselves is going to be a variation of "us". I wanted to ask questions. How would humanity respond to the revelation of the existence of an unthinkably advanced alien civilization? What would be this unthinkably advanced civilization's goals for humanity be? (Hint: upon inspection their attitude greatly resembles the civilizational chauvinism with which European civilization looked upon much of the rest of the world. The question is, does humanity merit their attitude? And is their "help" a net positive?)
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Inspiration #4: The evolution of the cozy, slice-of-life, low-stakes novel genre.
It's been a fun trend to watch. There've always been cozy, low-stakes stories out there; the new genre is only new in that it puts the cozy stories in settings traditionally reserved for epic storytelling, and Becoming April is my attempt at a pallet cleanser from all the epic action and high stakes of other excellent fictions with a cozy, low-stakes story in an alien intervention setting.
So that's how Becoming April came to issue forth from my fucking impure brain, and now since you've finished reading the assignment I have questions for the class. Not the usual feedback; instead, I want to know what you thought of each character. April. May. Carl. Aunt Sophie. Pinky. Anyone else interesting enough for you to think about. Assume you had to describe each one to somebody, quick psychological character-sketch of each. Why, you may ask? It's simple; sometimes the character the reader experiences isn't the character that was in the writer's head. It's the difference between intention and delivery. I began with a very clear understanding of April's character, likewise with May and Carl, but I may not have written them that way and this is the last chance I'll have to make any scene/dialogue changes to fix any egregious errors on my part.
So, tell me what you think of each of them, and I'll tell you what I intended them to be in a follow-up post, or in a reply to your collective comments, whatever you guys think best (answer poll below).
And Merry Christmas!
-TP
How should I continue this?
