Excessively Long Extra Author's Notes For "A Short Week of Long Days"

[redfiona99]

This is the fic that used to be "Not Guildenstern and Rosencrantz Are Dead". Like I said, there's a reason I shouldn't be allowed to name fics.

I had the germ of the idea for part of what became this back in 2004 - http://redfiona99.livejournal.com/170821.html It's from the scene at the end of 'Guildenstern And Rosencrantz Are Dead' where one of them goes "was there any point where we could have said 'no'. And of course there's not, because it's not their story. The powerlessness of the situation interested me, because that's got to be terrible. Bad things are bad, not being able to do anything about them is worse.

But I could never find anything to do with the idea because either the characters I was interested in writing were driving their stories, or I couldn't come up with a way of keeping a plot going without it being the characters changing their own circumstance.

Then came the America's Most Wanted break-up. And suddenly you had a situation where one of the protagonists (Chris Harris) wasn't present at all but what was happening to him and between him and Storm was what was driving the plot forward. You had Petey Williams standing in for him in the ring, and Gail standing in for him outside, and neither of them could stop the momentum of the feud and suddenly, bingo, there was a situation that fitted the shape of the story I wanted to tell, and had characters I was interested in writing. So I started writing. In 2006.

It came in fits and starts because I kept losing the notebook I wrote the beginning of it in, and then forgetting to type it up when I had my laptop with me. I also had to come up with ways of keeping Harris and Storm off-screen, because I wanted to keep the feel of "G+RAD" where Hamlet happens around them and they only see bits of it.

I'm not sure if I managed to convey the sense of powerlessness I wanted to but it is what it is.