by Trixie

It's taken me ages to start this little essay. Mostly, because I have no earthly idea how to begin. And besides, who the hell am I to tell you fine people how to do anything, much less write?

But I said I'd do it (temporary insanity) and I try to never break my word unless death is on the line.

I suppose the question of the day would be, how =does= one go about creating an alternate universe?

The answer: Well, that depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Gee, Trix, could you vague that up for me a little?

I can try!

When I set out to write my own AU, "Quis Si," it didn't come about because I had the thought "You know, I don't think the universe Chris Carter created is =interesting= enough for me to write about, so I think I'll create a brand spankin' new one." Rather, a seed idea popped into my mind: What would Mulder's life be like if his sister hadn't been abducted?

The most obvious answer was "Samantha would be in his life." Beyond that, I didn't know. And it started to bug me. The notion infested my brain until I sat down and started working out the particulars. From there, it snowballed. Samantha's abduction was a turning point in Mulder's life. His interest in the paranormal (or so I theorized for creative purposes <g>) was built on the foundation of her unexplained disappearance.

My entire theory was based upon the principal that, had Mulder not been traumatized by his father's lies, his sister's abduction, and so on, and so forth, he would never have stumbled upon the X-Files, something he only did =after= his post-hypnotic regression therapy. Ah, but is that perhaps a catch? Can I say he never joined the FBI, and give him an entirely different background?

No, is the answer I came up with. Because while Samantha's abduction scarred him, it didn't necessarily shape the career paths he took. I'd say going to Oxford had nothing to do with her, and he was recruited into the Bureau during his time at Oxford. Ergo, Mulder would still join the Bureau -- but without his "quest" it is decidedly unlikely he'd choose to stay there for very long.

If you haven't gotten it by now, let me spell it out: The most important ingredients to creating a successful alternate universe (that is, if you consider my AU "successful" -- and really, if you don't, why are you reading this? Are you mocking me? Laughing with your friends at my horrible punctuation and grammar? Wondering why on EARTH I was asked to write this when I'm so clearly incompetent?) are the details. (And not getting distracted by all the other nonsense thrown at you along the way. It's extremely important to get your facts straight before you set out. If you don't know where you are, where you're characters are, you're screwed before you get out of the gate.)

Another detail that came to my attention, once I'd figured out Mulder wasn't too long for the Profiling life, and certainly would never stumble upon the X-Files, was what on earth to do with Scully.

It would stand to reason that if Mulder's life were different, naturally, Scully's life would have to be, as well. Not her formative years, or the time she spent in school, college, and so on. But the big years -- the years she'd spent working with the crazy guy down in the basement.

The Dana Scully we all met in the Pilot, I think most of us can agree, is a billion miles from the Dana Scully we see currently inhabiting our screens all these years later. Which made me consider, had she never found purpose with the X-Files, would she have knuckled under to familial pressure and gone back into medicine?

I've just taken note of how many question marks I've used so far, and it reminded me of one of the best ways to ferret out a whole new world (great, now that's gonna be in my head all night): Ask yourself questions. No question is too freakish, no answer to obscure. After all, you never know where a seemingly idiotic question might lead you.

Example:

Q: What happened to all those cases Mulder and Scully were never assigned to in my AU?

A: They were never looked into. Thrown into the basement, locked in a drawer and forgotten about. Deemed "unexplainable" by the Bureau higher-ups.

Q: Wow, all of them? Even the really =good= episodes??

A: Yep.

Q: So "Ice" never happened?

A: No.

Q: What about "Post-Modern Prometheus"? PMP =had= to have happened.

A: No. In fact, many fans don't even believe it happened in THIS universe.

Q: Surely "Bad Blood" still existed somehow . . . right?

A: <impatient sigh> Noooooooo.

Q: But what about--?

A: NO! None of the freaking episodes happened! There was no abduction arc, no comedy episodes, no shippy moments, no ditches, no Smoking CSM's, no One Armed RatBoy's, no Others, including Phoebe Green, Ed Jerse, Jack Willis--

Q: Hey, if "Lazarus" never happened, that means Jack Willis is still out there, right?

A: <ponderous silence> I suppose.

Q: <onto something> But what happened to Willis . . . it didn't have anything to do with Mulder or the X-Files. It was back when Carter was trying to show how Scully's world was slowly being consumed by Mulder and the paranormal--

A: Yes, yes, get on with it.

Q: Doesn't it stand to reason that if Jack switching souls with a serial killer was going to happen, regardless of the X-Files, it would still happen, even if everything else was different?

A: Why . . . . <astounded> Yes. You have a good point.

Q: So theoretically . . . If Scully didn't have Mulder and the X-Files to consider . . . could she and Jack, now Warren Dupree, have maybe gotten back together? And could it all have gone horribly awry?

I'll stop this inanity right here, because I think everyone gets the point. (And if you don't … deah gott, how did you turn on your computer?!)

After I'd worked out the details, my next mission was the thing that is usually my =first= priority -- characterization. The place I think most AU's falter at is Mulder and Scully no longer seem like Mulder and Scully. What I wanted to accomplish was a Moose & Squirrel who were still Moose & Squirrel, just who they'd be living under different circumstances. (Whether I succeeded, of course, is entirely up to you <g>)

What I did was, I broke Scully down to her most fundamental. The tricky part of the whole thing is, I think that Mulder and Scully are both defined, on a very basic level, by their jobs. That's how Carter writes them, and most of their "character development" has actually been brought about, primarily, in fanfic. (At least, that's where I get =my= information.)

So this Scully isn't a forensic pathologist. The only mental image I got in my head after I thought that, was one of Scully, slipping slowly into madness, twitching slightly at the loss of her much-coveted career. Scully is defined by what she does. And in that little whirl-a-gag of logic, I found the core of AU Scully: she was set adrift, without a purpose, and vulnerable to a certain monster in this world. That's where the core actions and reactions of her character would lie at for me.

Mulder was a little more difficult. Rather than go the same route as Scully -- i.e., having him be a wanderer -- I decided to give him a different career that could define his character. Naturally, I had to throw a few curve balls at him -- how boring would it be to watch a well-adjusted guy with all the answers go through his life? -- but his basic character always came back to one certainty in my mind: Mulder deeply, intensely, and actively wants to make the world a better place. His empathy knows no bounds, and I thought to myself, what better career than that of a child psychologist?

Instead of throwing him into the career willy-nilly, I gave him a reason to have gone that way -- a case gone bad, which also explained his departure from the Bureau. Each event, be it a huge fireworks in the sky deal, or a little moment you barely notice, is connected. Random things occur in life sometimes, but in the realm of fiction, I don't believe there are =any= truly random moments. Every detail is done for a reason, serves a purpose to the greater good of the story you're trying to tell.

This is never truer than when applied to characterization. And never more valuable than when you're trying to write an AU, which is, in essence, a completely original idea you're hammering out.

(*Trix takes a deep breath and tries to stop sounding like a know-it-all. Fails miserably. Shrugs it off and continues, hoping to have this completed before February.*)

But you can't just stop there <g>. (At least, God knows =I= couldn't!) Sure, you've got this strange, new universe to show people, but after the newness has warn off, after they get what you're saying . . . then what?

One of the main stumbling blocks I encountered was trying to figure out how to make the AU interesting, in and of itself, beyond the nifty idea of "hey, look, it's Mulder and Scully, but not!"

Thus, I began to develop this new world further. I invented the character of Kelly, and gave Scully more back story than she would have had otherwise.

I wanted to have a good villain (because if you don't have someone to hate, where's the fun?), but I didn't want to go the predictable route and bring Jack Willis back. Besides, that would have made this Scully's story, and I really wanted to give both Mulder and Scully their own demons. Enter Ray Elders (which was also a great way to pay back Brandon Ray for naming a character I did not care for after me, but that's neither here nor there <g>).

Ray was a ghost from Mulder's past, that complicated Scully's present while she was busy fighting off demons from her own past. By using Kelly as a pawn, and Elders as the protagonist, I tied together Mulder and Scully's individual journeys into one final end game.

The point, you ask, of my blathering on about that?

Once Ray was caught, Kelly returned, and AU Mulder and Scully paired off -- the AU could end. It was a self-contained story within a story, and the only person who would ever remember it is Mulder, and maybe that gypsy lady, tho' I'm sure she's gone back to whatever dimension she came from by now. ;-)

To me, it was very important that the AU come to a satisfying conclusion in and of itself before I moved on to the inevitable encounter between the "real" Mulder and Scully.

Which brings me to my second to last point on AU's: I believe it's extremely important to ground whatever fanciful world you create in "reality" (as much "reality" as you can get considering no matter what you do, they ARE still fictional TV characters.).

By book-ending the story with "our" Mulder and Scully, I attempted to give the whole AU a sense of authenticity. By acknowledging that my world wasn't the "real" world, I think I made it easier for people to swallow it. Giving a happy ending to the "real" Mulder and Scully, as a result of what Mulder experienced in the AU, didn't hurt either, I'm sure.

Which now brings me to my final (I know, I know, finally) observation.

Don't write an AU just to write one. Do it because there's something you desperately want to know about, and there's just no way for it to happen in "reality." Be true to your characters, and I promise, they'll come through for you in the end.

You can read Trixie's work, including "Quis Si," at http://www.crosswinds.net/~trixie1013/xfficmain.html .