Our feature author this update is the multi-award winning syntax6.
You can find her stories at her site: home of the slug slayer

When did you start writing XF fanfic? How did you start?

I found XF fanfic in January 2000, and started writing it in
April of the same year. I stumbled across the XF fandom
while writing fanfic for another show. While I'd been
writing fanfic since I was 13, this was the first time I'd
considered posting it for mass consumption, and I needed
examples of how to format, what sort of copyright disclaimer
to use, etc. The webmistress in this other tiny fandom had
helpfully included links to the large XF sites to guide us,
so I started poking around.

At this point, I'd only seen a small handful of XF episodes,
and the movie, so my canon-based knowledge was pitiful. But
the stories were fabulous! I was impressed with the overall
high quality of the writing, and the breadth of the XF
community. I read voraciously for months, devouring about
300K of XF fic a night. After four months, I was ready to
try my hand. I had by this time added perhaps another two
dozen XF episodes to my mental library -- still a paltry
quantity -- so my initial characterization was very much an
amalgam of other people's interpretations from their fanfic
stories. It took me until "Blood Oranges" really, before I
was writing my own versions.

What else do you write?

In my current incarnation as a journalist, I write science
and medical news stories. I'm also working on an original
novel.

Do you have a writing process? Do you outline and plan out
the entire story before you begins to write, or does she
make it up along the way?

I do have a writing process but it has little to do with
outlines. Most of the hard work is spent away from the
computer, thinking about the story. I definitely do not sit
down and map out where the story will go before I write it,
because if I do this, I will never write the story. There
has to be an element of surprise and suspense for me as a
writer or I won't stick with it. Generally, I'm working with
mental "sign posts" that mark a story along the way, so that
I am always writing toward the next goal. The territory in
between the signs allows for a lot of improvisation.

Individual chapters get a much more tight mental outline of
signposts, with particular lines of dialogue, POV, etc.
mapped out in advance.

When I'm stuck with a story, I find driving or showering
often helps solve the problem. If all else fails, I break
out the chocolate.

How has the end of the series and the potential for a movie franchise
affected your writing?

I don't think the end of the series or lack of a second
movie (thus far) has affected my writing at all. My XF world
ends with "Je Souhaite," so my fanfic writing career only
overlapped with the series for about eighteen months. To be
clear: I harbor zero ill-will toward Chris Carter or 1013 or
even FOX for the way the series turned out. I liked Reyes
and Doggett, and I enjoyed some of the episodes from seasons
eight and nine. But I signed on for a Mulder-Scully crime-
solving team, and that's what continues to interest me most.

 

If you were in charge of writing the next X-Files movie,
which elements/characters would your script outline contain?

Oh, I would be a terrible person to write the next movie. As
I mentioned, I'd just want to roll time back to 1999-ish,
with no baby, no Mulder-returned-from-the-dead, and no 574
kinds of aliens. I wouldn't even know where to begin writing
a movie that picks up after "The Truth" and I've always
found the mythology rather murky. In my hands, the movie
would probably end up being a monster-of-the-week type thing
that was heavy on the human element, light on the
paranormal.

 

What keeps you writing when so many others have called it a
day? What's the secret to your longevity as an x-files
fanfic writer?

I'm combining these into one since they seem to be asking
the same thing. :) The short answer is that I've kept
writing because I haven't run out of things to say in the X-
files universe yet. While I'd love for a secret batch of
fresh episodes to mysteriously appear from the FOX vaults --
wouldn't that be an X-file! -- I'm not done mining the first
seven seasons for ideas. Plus, I mostly write canon-
compliant stories that take place in a plausible universe
that parallels the one on screen. I don't do much in the
way of post-ep work, so I don't need new episodes to keep
going. I expect I'll stick around as long as I'm still
having fun!

 

Where do you get your inspiration for your original characters?

I watch and read a lot of true crime stories. To quote
Mulder, "A lot, a lot, a lot." Many of the bad guys are
partially inspired by real people or situations. Carl
Quentin, the shoe-fetishist from "All the Way Home" and
"Head Over Heels," came from a man who was attacking women
in the area in which I lived at the time. This man didn't
harm the women; he tackled them, removed their shoes, and
sucked on their toes. A friend said I should write a story
about a serial killer who murdered women and collected their
little toes to make into a necklace. I started writing Carl
about six months later.

When I'm people watching, I like to think up ways I might
describe them in a story. I try to find something that
really stands out, so I don't end up saying, "He was six
feet tall with brown hair." Instead, I might say, "He was
tall but still boyish looking with a lean ribcage and skinny
forearms, Buddy Holly glasses and a mop of dirty-blond
curls."

I don't often put people I know well into a story because it
feels invasive to me. I might borrow a funny line of
dialogue, or their first or last name, but my friends and
family generally won't find themselves in any of my fiction.
Mention YOUR friends and family, though, and they're liable
to become instant characters. Recently, an acquaintance
told me about her father, a farmer who is one of 11 children
and who speaks in parables. Ask him if he wants a cup of
coffee, and he answers you with something like, "When the
crow flies at midnight, a wise scarecrow keeps his own
counsel." How fun would it be to write someone like that?
Hee.

You've gone by different handles in the XF Fandom. Was there
a reason why? Did changing your name affect your readership
base?

The major switch was from Hannah Mason (also not my real
name, btw) to syntax6. I did that because a woman in my
academic department found out about my Hannah name from a
friend of a friend and was trying to make trouble for me.
Since then, I've done a few one-offs under other names,
usually because I don't want the syntax6 expectations
weighing on the story. People can get awfully snippy with
me if they are expecting one type of fic and I've written
another. Even with the most recent birthday series I wrote,
some of the letters I got were people gently rapping my
knuckles: enough with these short pieces -- where was
another casefile? Sometimes I just don't want to have to
deal with people's expectations of syntax6. I'd prefer that
the stories stand on their own.

I don't think I had enough of a readership as Hannah Mason
that the switch affected anything in that regard. My non-
syn stories do not get the number of hits or the amount of
feedback that my syntax6 stories do.

Do you have any upcoming stories or projects to look out for?

I've been kicking around an idea for an X-files noir story,
but it remains to be seen if I'll actually write it. I'm
not writing anything XF at the moment.

Anything else you'd like to tell readers out there?

Thank you for your support over the last six years! To
those readers who are also writers, it was your creativity
that inspired me to leap into the fray. To those readers
who post intelligent commentary on the boards, it was your
thoughtful exchanges that have made and continue to make the
X-files community one of the best places on the Internet.
To those readers and writers who have become real life
friends, let's get together soon, huh?

And to those readers who go by Nancy aka beach -- a
heartfelt thank you for your early feedback to me when I was
completely unknown and for your ongoing feedback to
practically everyone in the fandom. You are a true gem in
the XF world, and I wonder just how many first-timers you've
kept around for years by virtue of your unflagging kindness.