In case you missed it, 00Carter is back and better than ever! We’re counting down to our fifteenth anniversary and the debut of our new episode, “Mr. Body Beautiful,” by reposting and blogging about one of our old episodes each week. This week, we’re looking back on Episode 2: “Idolize Me” in a blog written by Dee.
Dee:
There’s a lot of things about 00Carter in a revival that are the same and a lot of things that are really different. When we first started this collaboration adventure, we did “open recruiting” on Absolute Chaos, promptly got reminded that while the forum was created for fanfic talk, it wasn’t created to be monopolized by planning one story. We were so shameless back in the day; I think it’s an age thing. Anyway, we had already been using Yahoo Messenger to chat as we worked on our own stories, since it was quicker than the forum and flashed when someone typed, so we opted to move 00Carter chatter and planning there. But I think we had ten people when this first started and at least fifteen that had expressed interest? And that’s a lot of people to wrangle into a chat at one time while trying not to monopolize a fanfic forum. So we made a 00Carter Yahoo Group to organize planning sessions, but also keep track of all our documents. I remember that every time we had a planning chat, Rose would piece it together into ideas that made sense as parts, then Julie would upload to her site for the group so everyone could choose. We’re fully in Google Suite now, so it’s much easier, organized, and streamlined on all accounts.
I wish I remembered how we chose parts (was it like a fantasy football snake-style draft, lol?)*, but I do remember that, like Julie and Rose said Diamond was really popular among the Carter Girls. One of the things I’ve always prided myself on is crafting memorable characters, so I was tickled pink that everyone wanted to write for her. But on our reread, I definitely had many “woah, this feels off” moments with her character. Thankfully, we gave each other some grace in this edit to tighten up the characters as we saw fit, so I took some small liberties this episode. I think that’s one of the cons of huge collaborations, a singular vision can get lost if everyone isn’t on the same page and in the spirit of collaborating, you do lose some “quality control” over that vision. Luckily, Rose, Julie, and I are all on a similar wavelength (we’ve joked that we have a hivemind when it comes to 00Carter), so overall the characters stay consistent in these newer episodes.
I think one of my favorite things about having such a large collaboration project was getting to know a bunch of people better and it was nice seeing such a large project executed without having to take on all the work alone. And coming back after a really long hiatus, I enjoyed the creativity of my old co-authors in continuing our story. I hope that any old readers or new readers are enjoying the creativity that is 00Carter (and hopefully the slightly improved flirty jokes in this episode).
*A note from Julie (in case anyone else was curious or has a bad memory like Dee, lol): From what I remember, we divided everything up into parts and then claimed one at a time. Priority went to the people who were actually in the planning chat, but it seems like maybe we each picked one part and then let anyone who wasn’t in the chat choose via Yahoo Group before we chose second parts. (This sounds right to me, so I feel like we tried to keep parts smaller back then so everyone would have more opportunities to write, whereas now the parts tend to include multiple scenes.)
What worked with such a big collaboration? And what didn’t? How have those things changed now that it’s smaller?
Julie: Writing with ten other people (we actually had eleven for at least the first episode!) was actually easier than it sounds — and that’s coming from someone who absolutely hated group projects in school. I have always been more of a lone wolf, so it’s surprising to me that I even like collaborating. With the right people, it works because it comes with built-in solutions to a lot of the biggest problems you encounter in writing: coming up with ideas, overcoming writer’s block, staying motivated, fixing plot holes, revising and editing.
Dee: Eleven for the first episode! Crazy. I think in the beginning we were all really excited that so many people wanted to join in on this two am joke-turned-real fanfic. That’s always been my favorite thing about collaborations, in general. You have both built-in beta readers and a built-in audience.
Julie: My favorite thing about 00Carter has always been the high level of creativity we bring out of each other. I’ve never considered myself to be particularly creative, as writers go (I acknowledge that it does take a certain level of creativity to write fiction at all, but some writers are more creative than others), but my creative 00Carter co-writers have always brought out my own creativity. I have fond memories of the many late night group chats we had where we would come up with these crazy, funny ideas and somehow find a way to make them work. I could not have come up with half of this stuff on my own.
Dee: One of my favorite things to do in these new episodes is to include targeted jokes just because I know they’ll make Julie and Rose laugh. The chats were definitely the best part of the whole writing process (and still are, though we’ve upgraded to video and just take notes as we talk now — like I said, it’s a lot more streamlined, lol). We have a couple that Rose lovingly saved for whatever reason, and it’s fun to look back and see how the jokes originated. Though, I feel like everyone else may have found the three of us hard to keep up with!
Julie: We definitely were hard to keep up with! The three of us were in college and would stay up late chatting into the wee hours of the morning while some of our other co-writers had little kids to take care of or lived overseas and were asleep or at work while we were online. But we were also very passionate! LOL I started student teaching right after we started 00Carter, so I would have a lot of time to dedicate during breaks from school, but then get busy and distracted by real life. So another thing I appreciated about collaborating with all these people was being able to divide and conquer. With so many writers, we could come up with these elaborate plots that we each only had to write a part of. I was always grateful to have co-writers to take on the parts I didn’t want to write or didn’t think I was capable of writing well. This story is so far from my wheelhouse that I still find myself thinking, “I don’t know how I’m going to write this,” even for the parts I do sign up for, yet somehow I always manage to pull them off. That’s the power of collaborating. These other girls give me the confidence to try writing the type of stuff I’ve never written before!
Dee: You’ve always pulled it off, you would never know! I agree with this though; in Mr. Body Beautiful, I took on a part that was definitely out of my wheelhouse and it was nice to have consultants and cheerleaders along the way. Even though it took me some time to write, it never felt daunting because of that, but it’s definitely not something I would have tackled on my own.
Julie: Thanks! You also did a great job with that part in Mr. Body Beautiful, which I can’t wait for other people to read! I love that we all have different areas of interest and expertise that we can bring to the table.
Dee: I think we’ve gotten better at this over time too. We know the jokes we want to make on a whole episode scale, but we also have a feel for where each of our strengths lie and where we’d want to challenge ourselves individually. The episode we’re working on now is the first one we’ve fully planned and written since reviving 00Carter and I think the part-picking took us maybe two minutes, instead of the week or so it would take before.
Julie: Yeah, some things are definitely easier with only three of us. It’s hard to get eleven people on the same page. One downside to writing with such a large team is that sometimes other people’s parts don’t turn out the way you envisioned them in your head. Sometimes the parts are fine individually, but don’t flow together to form a cohesive plot. It can take some editing to fill the plot holes and get everything to fit together, so everyone has to be open to that. It’s hard to get eleven different writing styles to blend together seamlessly, which I think was most evident in these early episodes when the writing team was the biggest. Hopefully our editing has made them more consistent so it’s not as obvious where one writer ended and another writer began.
Dee: I think the three of us have more of a “00Carter-style” that we write in too, which helps keep it consistent. Although, a reader could probably still pinpoint who wrote each part with some tell-tale word choice. For instance, I think you’ve edited out some of my “character scans the room and notices details before acting,” Julie, and I’d call scanning very much Dee-word choice, lol. I can’t think of any other examples at the moment. However, I think that as long as we share a common goal of “for the story” and not “for my writing,” we’re able to really focus on the cohesiveness that makes a collaboration smooth reading.
Julie: Absolutely! We each have our own style, but we’re willing to bend and blend to make the story more cohesive. Compromise is key when you’re collaborating. We’ve been lucky to have a group of writers who are willing to compromise or at least go with the majority when making decisions. For the most part, everyone has been flexible, supportive, and encouraging of each other. At the same time, looking back on these early episodes, I do wish we had been a little more critical of each other’s writing for the sake of making the story cohesive. I think the wide variety of writing styles and experience shows more toward the beginning of the story when we had a larger writing team. But without knowing exactly how open everyone was to constructive criticism at that time, I’m not sure if that would have helped the story or hurt our working relationship.
Rose: Yeah one of the only things I would’ve done differently was limit how many people could join in and give better constructive criticism. That definitely weakened the story and it’s something we’ve tightened at points now that it’s just the three of us.
Dee: Constructive criticism is hard, because it’s definitely something that takes time to come to terms with as a writer. And I think even if we’d set that standard right away (because I think at least the three of us very much appreciated constructive criticism even at that time), there would still have been some hurt feelings on the team as a whole.
Rose: I do remember back in the day always trying to make sure I kept a hold of Pearl as she was my creation and I definitely had a specific idea in mind for how she’d be. And she wasn’t as popular as Di but a few had an eye on her. It’s probably why Pearl didn’t run into the issue that Diamond had, to be honest. When skimming through I only tweaked a couple things in future episodes. I was younger, less mature, but rightfully picky? LOL.
Dee: I do admire the consistency in Pearl. I think Red is really consistent too because everyone may have been hesitant to take a stab at the medical scenes except for Julie, lol. (It’s hard.) In some ways, I wish I had been more picky, but then I also edited a couple scenes I knew I wrote in this episode, so who’s to say my way would have been any better back then? lol
Julie: Yeah, I think I wrote most of the Red parts. It’s easier to keep a character consistent when it’s mainly one person writing his/her scenes, but that wasn’t always possible when we had more writers than main characters. There were certain characters that a lot of us wanted to write, but we all had our own interpretation of them.
Rose: Consistency was definitely a problem and I feel like in retrospect the most consistent characters were Drums, Dr. Rough, and Nick himself back when this story had a “team”.
Dee: I don’t think I’ve ever met a Backstreet fanfic writer who doesn’t feel like they have a handle on Nick? I wonder if that’s the reason? lol But you’re right, some of the other characters are a bit all over the place. I think Dr. Rough stayed consistent because he was so far from the norm of Howie (is this a spoiler?), that it was easy to see him as “a character that acts like this” and not “Howie.”
Julie: I think that part is easier now that it’s just Rose, Dee, and me because we know each other well enough not to take constructive criticism personally. We’ve had our share of drama in the past, but if anything, that’s just made it easier to be honest with each other now. We respect one another as writers and people enough to value each other’s feedback and perspectives. It’s also easier to keep three people on the same page than eleven people.
Dee: Understatement of the century, lol. Three is always easier than eleven. I agree with what you said earlier, Julie, drama is inevitable at some point. But we’ve matured past where we were then and do have healthier ways of dealing when we disagree. Thank goodness, because reviving 00Carter would not be as fun if we weren’t all on the same page for the most part, or couldn’t constructively get there. We joke about the hivemind, but I don’t think we had that in 2007.
Rose: It’s funny about the hivemind thing because while we’re all similar, we balance. I’m definitely the one always throwing out the most random shit and hoping it sticks. Julie has this crazy attention to detail and logic. And Dee is like this weird blend of the two extremes. I think that’s why we work as a trio LOL.
Dee: I think that has a lot to do with what we’d consider our personal wheelhouses. Like you’re really eclectic in your writing Rose — I think you’ve tackled everything at least once, even before the AC Writing Challenges. But, correct me if I’m wrong here, your favorites trend toward sci-fi and horror, which are both very along the lines of “speculative fiction” (sci-fi more than horror, of course) where weird works. Whereas Julie’s wheelhouse is medical drama, very much a detail and logic genre, though I feel like 00Carter was an impetus for you branching out more as well (because now it also feels like you’ve tackled everything at this point). And then I do fantasy, and while hand-waving is one of my favorite things, I also love world building, which is more detail and logic based. We all just balance each other out, really, just like you said, Rose.
We often joke that 00Carter is “perpetually stuck in 2007,” do our pop culture references (such as this episode’s spoof on American Idol) hold up?
Rose: I think Global Idol does because look at all the reality shows we have now!
Julie: That’s true! Now there’s The Voice, America’s Got Talent, The Masked Singer, etc…
Dee: I love The Masked Singer!
Rose: Same. Especially a certain croc.
Julie: Of course! That cute pink croc was the best!
Dee: Absolutely! I still drink coffee from my crocodile cup every Wednesday to support our favorite Croc-star.
Julie: But even with all these other singing shows, American Idol is still around! So while Global Idol was obviously modeled after the original American Idol with Simon, Paula, and Randy — which does date it — I think it still holds up to the culture of today.
Dee: We worked hard on “Paulette,” “Randolph,” and “unnamed British critic”! There’s only so much copyright infringement you can do in a fanfic, lol.
Julie: Looking back, I’m not sure why we didn’t just use the real judges, since we already have so many real people in our fic. But I guess the parody aspect of changing the names while obviously referencing something real is funny.
Dee: I think my favorite 2007 pop culture reference that ended up in 00Carter is Grasshopper. Who knew a meme trend would become such a lovable character that we don’t use nearly enough!
Julie: Oh Grasshopper! He was definitely inspired by the Chuck Norris jokes/memes at the time. And as evidenced by our grainy character bio graphics, technology has come a long way since 2007.
Rose: The tech definitely doesn’t hold up and honestly in the newer episodes I think we’re in what, 2011? I might just use Pearl as an excuse at this point to upgrade their tech if necessary. (No matter what though, I’ll never let Nick’s watch be able to tell time.)
Julie: While rereading these old episodes, we cracked up at the one (I think it’s Episode 5) where Diamond asks if Pearl could get her a phone with a QWERTY keypad. Poor girl was still using a flip phone! But then, so were most of us in 2007.
Dee: Heck, I was still telling people not to call me during peak cell hours in 2007! Of course Diamond had the fanciest T9. I always envisioned it was a pink Motorola Razr or something and that she had thumbs of steel.
Julie: By the newer episodes, they have definitely upgraded to smartphones so Diamond doesn’t have to hit a button three times to get the right letter for her texts. The tech we made up for the story holds up better than the real life tech we included, like iPods, Blackberries, and Lancy’s Palm Pixie. All of that does sound dated now. But at this point, we’re basically writing historical fiction because the story is ten years behind real life, so it’s okay.
Dee: Honestly, we probably would have been better off making up cell phone tech too. Nick’s watch is basically a smart watch, so in some ways, we were ahead of our time. Although, is it really a watch if it doesn’t tell time? lol As Rose mentioned, we made a pact that it never would, even though Pearl probably could have easily figured it out by now. At least it’s right once a day!
Julie: I tend to think Pearl is totally capable of making Nick’s watch tell time, but has chosen not to just to annoy him!
Dee: You’re totally right. Pearl is just so loveable in that way, lol.
Rose: Oh you know she figured out how to have it tell time but has chosen not to let Nick know. She finds it funny lol. Just like making his iPod play “Mambo No. 5” on repeat. If there was ever a song that fits 00Carter the man in this story, it’s that song. Maybe I’m perpetually stuck in 1999 instead of 2007.
Julie: Aren’t we all? LOL.
Dee: I third this. What a great place to be perpetually stuck!
Julie: Seriously, though, a large percentage of the BSB Army are in our age range and grew up in the ‘90s, so even if our jokes and references are dated, most of our readers are still going to get them. At this point, it just seems like a fun throwback. We use music from a lot of different decades in the story, as this episode and the next one reflect.
Rose: I love writing Nick and Pearl for this reason. More so Nick than Pearl but she sometimes gives me moments to throw in random songs too. I’m literally a jukebox in real life, always singing what song pops into my head. (My poor coworkers) And that’s an aspect of me I throw heavily into Nick lol, and it works.
Dee: Music is a big part of this story for sure. How can it not be when it’s a Backstreet Boys fanfic? An AU obviously, but still a lovingly crafted fanfic. While a 2007 meme trend becomes a fun throwback, music is timeless. You know, someone wise once told me that “as long there’ll be music, we’ll be comin’ back again.” Seems like this applies to 00Carter too even with its semi-dated references.
