Story notes for "Tilt" by Resonant First posted to Ex-Wood on October 9, 2001
When anne and I first discussed the tiny bunny that grew up to be "Tilt" (I believe it went something like, "Wouldn't Ray look hot playing pinball?" Something deep like that), we both immediately agreed: No way could Fraser play a decent pinball game.
And I really thought so, until I put him in front of the machine. At which point it occurred to me that pinball, like baseball and knife-throwing, can be reduced to physics, and that the laws of physics tend to rearrange themselves for Fraser's convenience, often with accompanying humorous camera effects.
I don't often write Fraser point of view. This is odd, since I have a lot more in common with Fraser than with Ray -- at least in the sense that we're both bookish introverts who make up in vocabulary what we lack in social skills. But somehow stories mostly come to me in Ray's voice.
Good thing, too, because the Fraserish idiom comes so naturally to me that after I write it, it keeps infecting stories where it doesn't belong, so that when I go to write a Rayish story (like the one I'm working on now), I'm constantly having to go cross out "If they had been in the boxing ring, it would never have crossed Ray's mind to hold back for fear of hurting him," and replace it with, "He trusted Fraser to look out for himself in the ring and on the street. Probably ought to trust him to look out for himself in bed."
Thanks to anne for bunny-batting-around, Livia for her usual fine and careful beta job, and Ces for both beta and helping me root out all the places where Innocent Fraser crossed the line and became Maiden Aunt Fraser.