The Big Bang Theory: The Fan Fiction Affliction
Chapter 3, the Storyboard Syllogism
Penny connected her laptop to the guys' large screen TV the way Leonard had shown her. She projected the image of a cork board on the screen.
Sheldon said, "Penny, I'm not sure this is a good idea."
"Sheldon," Penny said, "You'll actually be doing me a favor. Let's storyboard the chapters you've written so far. My professor said I can use that for one of my projects. I could have storyboarded chapters from a published novel, but I thought I would enjoy storyboarding your story more. Even if we don't need to change anything, just storyboarding your chapters will let us see where the story's going."
"I don't see that there's anything to change," Sheldon said. "I think the readers just don't have the intelligence and discerning eye to appreciate my chapters."
"Sheldon, can't you help me out with my course?" Penny asked. "You would be helping me a lot."
"I guess," Sheldon said. "Why don't you get Leonard to share the story he posted before and deleted and try to fix that?"
Penny said, "He told me he deleted it from his hard drive. We can't recover it. Besides, I need to demonstrate that I was able to storyboard at least five chapters, and he only submitted one. I told my professor that I had a friend who has eight chapters he's posted on the fan fiction site, and he said that would be an ideal source for the storyboard."
"Wouldn't you prefer to use my corkboard and note cards?" Sheldon asked.
"I would, except that I have to turn in the storyboard in a file I create with my storyboarding program," Penny said. "Boarding your story will help me become more familiar with the program. I paid enough for it, I need to learn how to use it."
"You mean Leonard paid enough for it," Sheldon said. "What's it called, 'I can't write so I storyboard'?"
"Just indulge me," Penny said. "This is the way my professor wants us to do it."
"A dabbler, no doubt," Sheldon said. "Has this professor of yours actually published anything?"
"Of course," Penny said. "Hamish has written tons of SciFi books and has writing credits on movies and TV. He said we need to learn how to organize what we write."
"You're not talking about Hamish Mankiller, are you?" Sheldon asked.
"Yes, he's my professor," Penny said.
"Hamish Mankiller is an icon in the science fiction world," Sheldon said. "How did you get to have him as an instructor at a community college of all things? That is so beneath him."
Penny said, "He teaches one section of the first creative writing course in the fall and one section of the advanced course in the spring at the college. You have to submit a chapter, and he selects the students he wants to teach. He said he started out in community college, and he wants to encourage students who for whatever reason don't attend the big universities."
"And he selected you?"
"Yes."
"I can't believe he chose a waitress. All right, then, for Hamish," Sheldon said.
Later, Penny and Sheldon had storyboarded all eight chapters in Sheldon's Firefly Chronicles as well for the chapter he was planning to write next.
Sheldon looked at the storyboard for Chapter 1. "Hmmm," he said as he looked at the progression of the virtual note cards. "I see what you mean here [pointing at the card on the screen]. There does seem to be a gap in the story."
"How about we move this," Penny said, pointing at one of the note cards, "down here and add scenes here and here." She clicked on the card and dragged it to the place she proposed and created placeholder cards for the two places she proposed adding scenes.
Sheldon looked at the storyboard. He said, "How about, instead of doing that, [Penny clicked on Undo, returning the storyboard to its original status] we move this card [pointing] here."
Penny dragged the card Sheldon had selected to where he was pointing.
They sat back and looked at the storyboard.
"I have an idea," Sheldon said. He moved several cards, added three, and wrote in their titles and descriptions.
#
Later that evening, as they were cooking spaghetti, Leonard asked Penny, "So Sheldon deleted his story and plans to re-post it under a different title after he rewrites the chapters?"
"Yes," Penny said. "When I left him, he was working on the first chapter from the changes we made to the storyboard. He said he would let me read it before he posts it. I think he's actually excited about it. It's as if he's found a purpose for his story. Seeing the chapters and scenes storyboarded must have helped him see the discontinuities in his story."
"You did all of us a favor," Leonard said. "If it stops him from whining, even for a little while, we'll all owe you."
"It actually does help me too," Penny said. "I'm getting much more comfortable with the software. Sheldon even bought himself a licensed copy so he can use the same program. Apparently, Sheldon got the same tremendous discount through the licensed program download section of the Caltech online bookstore that you did through the Pasadena Community College online bookstore when you bought it for me. He showed me how to synchronize the files to Dropbox, so I can download his file every time he saves it and see what his progress is. We're doing the same thing in my course. Hamish is able to download our files and see how we're coming on our assignments."
"You're enjoying the course?" Leonard asked.
"I am having a ball," Penny said. "It's the first time I've taken a college course when it doesn't seem like work, even though I'm working the hardest I've ever worked for a course. We don't even meet in a regular classroom. We meet in a room at the college's coffee shop, where we have a large screen TV where we can show what we're doing. Hamish showed us the storyboard for one of his novels and talked us through the process. I have a copy of it. The software we're using lets us create what he calls the SFD, edit it, and convert it to a Microsoft Word file so we can submit it."
Leonard said, "SFD?"
Penny said, "Let's pretend the s stands for sloppy. SFD would be for Sloppy First Draft. He said the program's what he uses when he writes. We can do everything with it to produce a manuscript that we can edit in its final form in Microsoft Word. You could use it when you write your science articles, since it has templates for nonfiction academic papers. He wanted to use a program that would help us organize our manuscripts. I've gone back and storyboarded the slush novel I was working on in high school that I had on floppies. Sheldon downloaded them with his old portable floppy reader for me and copied them to my flash drive. The program imported them, so now I can work on the book again if I want. I already submitted the storyboard on it and got an A on it. I was just 16 when I was writing it, so it's super rough."
Leonard said, "It sounds to me as if you're turning into quite the writer."
Penny said, "I love it. I'm beginning to wonder if I've been chasing the wrong thing. Maybe what I really want is to be the writer. He told us about working as a writer for all these shows and movies, and I'll have to admit that I think I would enjoy that as much as being in front of the camera. You know something, Leonard? I'm seriously considering taking his advanced course next semester. He said I'm in if I want. He's encouraging me to continue on for my four-year degree in one of the writing fields after I complete my two-year degree in communication next semester."
"I hate to bring this up," Leonard said, "since you freak out whenever I use the M-word, but you do know that, once you're my wife, you can take any course through the University of California system tuition-free? You will only pay a nominal fee-$50, I think-and buy your books. If we were married, you could finish your four-year degree tuition-free."
Penny said, "Let's keep that as a possibility. Hamish said he would love to recommend me for the fiction writing program at the University of Southern California or the screenwriting program at UCLA. He knows the people at both programs and thinks I would be able to get into either program."
"How does Hamish feel about your writing fan fiction, Anathema?" Leonard asked.
Penny snapped her head around. "You know?"
"Of course I know," Leonard said. He kissed Penny on the cheek. "I'm proud of you. You have a real talent, and that's not just your boyfriend talking."
#
Hamish pointed to the storyboard from Sheldon's first chapter on the large screen TV. "Does everyone see what Penny did? She suggested that this card go here, but the author looked at it and thought this card should go here instead. After they talked about it, he added these cards. That's collaboration, folks. If you can get someone like Penny to read over your work and make suggestions, that can help punch up your writing. Sometimes sounding out ideas helps you realize the direction you need to go. At minimum, it can help you catch typos and sentence fragments before you publish. Using a beta reader for your assignments would be perfectly fine, for our purposes; it wouldn't be cheating at all. The point here is to get you thinking like a writer, and using a beta reader is what real writers do."
"Hamish, who reads your writing?" Jenny asked.
"Different people," Hamish said. "My wife does it a lot of the time, but there are others. Penny, who's your beta reader?"
Penny said, "I don't have one yet."
"Really? As good as what you've turned in is? You might want to think about getting one, not that there's anything wrong with what you're writing: It's wonderful." Hamish said. "It will help you by giving a fresh perspective to what you're writing, especially when you get stuck."
After class, Penny came over to help Hamish load up his materials.
Hamish asked, "Penny, have you given any thought to your semester project?"
"Yes," Penny said. "I found a slush novel I wrote during high school, sometimes when I was supposed to be doing other things. All my friends and I wrote our own slush novels that year after we read Love's Fury. I was thinking about re-writing it now that I am 12 years older and am taking this course. It's not very good, but maybe I can make it better. You know, I was enjoying writing fan fiction, but I think I'm going to have to put that on hold while I do this."
"Fan fiction can be a good way to go," Hamish said. "What were you writing?"
"My boyfriend and his friends love the Firefly series," Penny said. "I've been writing a story that has my boyfriend and his three friends in that universe. To be honest, I put myself in the story as someone my boyfriend's counterpart bought on a planet where they practice slavery."
"You're Anathema Divine!" Hamish said. "I love your story!"
Penny began turning red. She said, "You read fanfic?"
"I write fanfic," Hamish said. "I write under different names. You have a wonderful story. How many chapters have you written?"
"I've only written the two chapters I've posted, plus I was halfway through the third chapter when this course began. I haven't written much on it since then because I've been devoting my time to the course."
"Think about something for me," Hamish said. "The point of this first course is to get your creative juices going, to get you thinking and writing like a writer. Think about what you enjoy more, rewriting your slush novel from high school or finishing this fan fiction story. Either would be just fine for this course. If you would prefer writing the fanfic story, do that. Have you storyboarded it?"
"I didn't know about storyboarding for the first two chapters," Penny said. "I've gone back and storyboarded the first two chapters, though, and I have a tentative storyboard for the rest of the story."
"I would love to see the storyboard," Hamish said.
"I'll send it to you. Let me think about which one I would rather write," Penny said. "If the fanfic is all right, I may write that for the course and then punch up the slush novel later. I'm going to have to totally rewrite the slush novel anyway."
"You might also want to start storyboarding something original that I could help you submit to an agent," Hamish said. "Think about it. The fanfic would probably be easier for our course requirements, since you're already on the way with it, but I do want you to think about publishing for money. You have the talent."
#
Leonard looked up from Penny's third chapter in her Firefly story. "This is amazing," he said. "The story makes sense, you have strong characters-I recognize all of us, by the way-and you leave me wanting more."
"What suggestions do you have?" Penny asked.
Leonard said, "I wouldn't change a thing. I don't have any suggestions other than where I hope the story is going. I hope Larry and Persephone fall in love and wind up married. I suspect that Persephone is an assassin the Alliance sent to kill the guys. You're Persephone, right? And Persephone and Jax were in cahoots and staged his capturing her and selling her as a slave?"
"Yes, and Larry is you, Eldon is Sheldon, Simon is Howard, and Sanjay is Raj. You don't have any suggestions for what I've written?" Penny asked.
"No," Leonard said. "It's perfect just the way it is."
Penny looked at him for a moment and said, "You don't want to point out any problems because you want to be totally supportive, right?"
"Well, uh," Leonard said.
Penny said, "I told you that Hamish has his wife serve as his beta reader. I guess when you've been married 36 years, maybe you can afford to be honest. Perhaps I shouldn't expect my boyfriend, who is trying to get me to marry him, to be totally honest."
"Sweetheart," Leonard said, "I want you to be the best writer you can be. I don't want to tear you down or make you feel discouraged. Besides, I know enough to know what I like, but I just don't have the talent to write fiction."
"So you did find some things you would change?" Penny asked.
"No!" Leonard said. "I love it all. I corrected a couple of typos and syntactical errors, but that was all."
"You're going to love anything I show you that I write, aren't you?" Penny asked.
"Of course," Leonard said.
"Maybe I need to get someone who will be candid with me," Penny said. "Maybe I need to ask someone else, like one of our friends. By the way: You know they all think you're Anathema Divine, don't you?"
"No way," Leonard said.
"Way," Penny said. "I wanted to tell you so we could decide what to do."
#
Penny looked over the passage Raj was reading to her. She read and re-read it. "You're saying that I should stretch out the illusion that Larry saved Persephone from the slavers?" she asked.
"Yes," Raj said. "Let the reader come to the realization on their own, but not right away. Let them begin to suspect, but don't give it away so soon. I like it that you have Larry acting like a lovesick puppy following Persephone around. That's so you and Leonard. If you really want to make it realistic, have her use him to keep her going financially and then treat him like garbage."
"Hey! I don't treat Leonard like garbage," Penny said.
"Penny, dear, this is writing, not Denial Theater," Raj said. "Have him obviously be hopelessly in love with her and have her take advantage of that and dole out little bits and pieces of affection. Make him work for it-you know, just like you do with Leonard."
"I do that with Leonard?" Penny asked.
"Oh, please," Raj said. "The man would dress up like Dolly Parton and carry around a dead rat in his teeth for any little bit of affection or encouragement from you."
Penny gazed off into space for a few moments. She then said, "What if I have Persephone be really nice to Larry and encourage his attentions? What if she really falls head-over-heels in love with him and treats him so he knows that?"
"B-o-r-i-n-g," Raj said. "It's not funny if she doesn't treat him like her bitch."
"You think Leonard's and my relationship is funny?" Penny asked.
"Oh, it is hilarious," Raj said. "I thought it was going to get boring again after you and he got back together, when you were so smoochy-smoochy, but, now that you're being bitchy toward him again and leading him on about when or even whether you'll agree to marry the poor schmoid, sometimes I laugh so hard when I think about it that I pee a little."
Penny made eye contact with Raj and said, "You should go now."
"I thought we were still working on your story," Raj said. "I thought I was your beta reader."
"Go now, go fast," Penny said.
Leonard started up the stairs. As he turned the first corner, Raj nearly knocked him back down the stairs. As Raj charged past, he said, "Run, dude. She's throwing things."
Penny sat gazing into space as Leonard knocked on the door.
"Penny," he said. "Are you all right?"
Penny jumped up, ran to Leonard, and wrapped him in a hug. "Hold me," she said.
#
Penny downloaded and opened Sheldon's file for the revised story. She clicked on Chapter 1.
Sheldon said, "See what you think. I added the three scenes that explain how this story began."
Penny read the first few paragraphs. "Sheldon," she said, "I like your explanation of what happened on-board the Enterprise, how Spock was trapped in the transporter when there was a malfunction. I'll have to get you to explain the effects from the black hole."
"It's simple," Sheldon said. "The black hole distorts everything: time, space, matter. The transporter wouldn't act the same way it would in normal space. The Enterprise crew could not stop what happened."
Penny said, "You might want to add a simple line or two in the story about that. Remember, a lot of people who are not theoretical physicists will read the story."
Sheldon typed away on his version of the story and showed Penny, who came over and read over his shoulder.
Penny said, "That is much better. Now I understand how the story started. Let's look at the rest of the chapter."
#
Later that night, Sheldon went to the fan fiction site and created his new story, the Firefly Chronicles Redux. He explained that the story was a re-writing of his previous version of the story, with revisions that he hoped would help non-scientists understand. He began with Chapter 1, "And So it Begins," which was Penny's suggestion.
#
Leonard and Penny sat on the sofa watching the DVD as the Fifth Element ended. Penny snuggled closer to Leonard and pulled his arm over her shoulder. She kissed him for about the twentieth time.
"You're being extra clingy tonight," Leonard said. "Not that I'm complaining, but is everything all right?"
"Not really," Penny said.
"What's wrong?" Leonard asked.
"Leonard, do you think I use you? Have I made you my bitch?" Penny asked.
"Whoa! Where did that come from?" Leonard asked, taking his arm from around Penny and facing her.
Penny said, "Raj was reading my story and immediately recognized that you're Larry and I'm Persephone. He said that, if I draw out their story and make Larry a lovesick buffoon and Persephone a shrew who uses Larry the way I use you and make him struggle for every little shred of affection, it will be funny, just like our relationship is."
"He said our relationship is funny?" Leonard asked.
"He said it is so funny that, when he thinks about it, he pees a little," Penny said. "Do I use you? Am I a heartless manipulator who uses your love for me to keep me going financially and makes you struggle for every little shred of affection?"
Leonard said, "Ummmm."
"Ummmm?" Penny demanded. "So you think I use your love for me to push you into keeping my head above water financially and then just dole out little bits of affection to keep the money coming in?"
"Penny," Leonard said, "I don't think I would put it that way."
"How would you put it, then?" Penny asked.
Leonard said, "Let me put it to you in the form of a couple of questions. Do you think I'm a lovesick buffoon?"
Penny thought for a moment and said, "Sometimes you can be a bit-what is the word Sheldon used-cloying?"
"I'm sorry I keep telling you how much I love you and want to marry you," Leonard said, his voice getting an edge to it. "Fair enough, second question: Where are you in our relationship? I promised not to propose to you again a year ago, and the only movement I've seen on your part toward our getting married was a drunken, 'Would you be my consolation prize?' proposal. Are we moving toward anything, or are we spinning our wheels?"
Penny said, "Leonard, you know I have commitment issues."
"Yeah, that's getting old," Leonard said as he stood. "Where are we heading? Are we getting married? Are you going to show up at my door one day with a guy and say, 'Hey Leonard, this is Jeff. He asked me to marry him and I said yes'? You freak out whenever I want to talk about the relationship, and I'm sitting here with my feelings in my hand." Leonard walked toward the door.
"Leonard, I think you're being unfair," Penny said. "Where are you going?"
"Out," Leonard said. He slammed the door behind him.
Penny ran to the door and called after him, "Leonard?" as she heard his steps retreating down the stairs.
#
Penny sat with her head in her hands. Bernadette sat next to her with her hand on Penny's shoulder. Amy brought over a cup of chamomile tea and set it on the coffee table in front of Penny's laptop.
Bernadette asked, "Do you think Leonard is going to break up with you?"
"I don't know," Penny said. "I'm supposed to write another chapter for my class, but I can't keep my mind on it. I don't know where Leonard is. He turned off his cell phone. My calls go directly to voicemail."
"It sounds as if he was pretty angry," Bernadette said. "Maybe he's at a movie. He always turns off his phone at the movies."
"Penny, what do you want in your relationship with Leonard?" Amy asked. "It's obvious to everyone who knows you and Leonard that he is madly in love with you and wants to marry you. To be honest, other than your telling Bernadette and me that you love Leonard before you almost broke up with him, I have no clue how you feel about him. Do you want to marry him?"
Penny looked at the blinking cursor on her laptop screen.
"I'm not sure," Penny said. "All this started when Raj was reading my story and recognized two of the characters as Leonard and me and said it's funny how I use him to keep myself financially afloat and make him work for every little scrap of affection. Do you think I do that?"
Bernadette looked at Amy and said, "Penny, you do have to admit that your relationship is lopsided. You told us while Leonard was dating Priya what a great guy he is and how you wished you had never broken up with him, but what I see is that he works so hard at the relationship, and you take him for granted."
Penny buried her face in her hands.
Bernadette said, "Penny, I'm sure Leonard will come back as soon as he cools off."
"I don't know," Penny said. "He was pretty angry." She looked at the computer screen again and said, "I'm going to have to do my best. The chapter is due tomorrow. I'm really not up to it, but I can't disappoint Hamish."
Bernadette and Amy made eye contact.