The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Stefanie

Interviews by Fans
Title:	The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Stefanie
Interviewer:	LMFFI/Abby Goutal
Interviewee:	Stefanie
Date(s):	posted 02 July 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Les Misérables
External Links:	An Interview With Stefanie interview index
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In July 2002, Les Mis fan writer Stefanie was interviewed for The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index.

Interview Series

• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Amy
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Arlene C. Harris
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Laura Waterstripe/Quiara
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Lonely Gamine
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Ponine Enjolras/Jenelin
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Stefanie
• The Les Miserables Fan Fiction Index Interview with Ursula

Introduction

Stefanie Brawner is sixteen and lives in Southern California. Her first novel is, if unpublished, at least complete; the second one is still in-progress. She is understudying Madame Thénardier in the first amateur production of Les Misérables in Ventura County, and is the author of over 25 fanfics, including L'Avenir Viendra and Racing Atalanta.

Some Experts

Q: Do you tend to base your stories on the novel, or the musical?
A: Definitely the novel; the characters are more fascinating because there's more to them. Besides, they're also very incomplete, and it's fun to put myself to the challenge of writing characters that Hugo invented and trying to stay within the bounds of what he said, to stay believable to someone who's read the book, and still let them be my own work, not someone else's cliché, and to try and avoid writing the same thing as everyone else.

Q: Do you like to write about original characters, or do you prefer to stick to the ones from the story?
A: On occasion, I'll introduce original characters, and they're usually needed in a full story to make things interesting. Hugo can't give us everything we need. Mostly, though, I stick to the ones from the story when writing Original Miz stuff--I tend to use original characters more often for Moderne pieces--probably because I'm afraid of falling into that horrifying abyss known as Marie-Suzette-Land. It's not hard to write a Marie-Suzette--we're always writing about ourselves--and it's even less difficult for half the fandom to notice it's a Marie-Suzette.

Q: What one character would you like to read more about?
A: Personally, though she's mentioned often, I think Cosette herself needs more attention. The focus is on the students (I don't blame anyone for that, though; that's where my focus is, too, and a good focus it is). I think people tend to figure that, since she's a main character, she doesn't need fan fic, and when she is in fan fic, she tends to be portrayed as weak and wimpy. But if you look at the book, she's intelligent, she's well-educated, she's compassionate; she loves her father deeply, and yet she has the strength of will and love to go against what she's sure he'll say. She's insecure at fifteen, like most other girls, which is amusing in one of the heroines of an epic novel. And as for those scenes at the end after her wedding when she acts like a twit, well, to quote Jamie Howard, "No one acts normal after their wedding." She's probably as persistent as her mother, if a little less naive. And she was naive, not merely innocent. She was wild and spirited, if you read her description; a lark, not a dove. I'd like to see a story where Cosette is treated as an intelligent and interesting person in her own right, someone with the capability to make decisions and see things through.

Q: What's your favorite story of yours, and why?
A: "Sparrows", because I love Jehan and I love Enjolras and I'd never bothered to write them into the same scene, and, when I did, I liked how it turned out. Jehan's long been a favorite of mine, yet, up until "Sparrows," he wasn't in any of my stories. My Enjolras was vaguely human; if you look at him in my other pieces, I've noticed he's a lot more--human, I suppose, than a lot of the other Enjolrati, probably because it's difficult to write him human for a lot of people. I have difficulty writing for stone. Anyway, I couldn't remember having written anything for him off the barricades after he became revolutionary, besides "Cat's Eyes" and he wasn't the focus there, and I wanted to see how the strains of leadership affected him. I wanted to see Jehan being a little bolder than he normally was, out of concern. I wanted to let the poet speak. I usually look at my stories and say that I could have done better, but I really liked how "Sparrows" turned out. I extended it for a writing contest--just descriptions, really--and entered it, and it came out first place, so that was exciting. Though, the results were amusing--the judges thought that it should be extended into a novel, with "Sparrows" as the first chapter. I didn't bother telling them that it already was a novel, just without my piece in it.