ShivaDF
The Scooter-riding Artist
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- Seen Aug 25, 2017
A/N: I have no idea what prefix this would fall under. Anyway, back in early 2013, I realized that a guide for beginning fanfic writers would be very useful, so I wrote one! I hadn't updated this guide in a very long time, but when I decided that it might be worth cross-posting on here, I wrote another section. Past-me will introduce this guide right... now!
A/N: This was inspired by the book How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
So, you want to write a great fanfiction? Do you really know the tools of the trade? No matter how many style guides you've looked at, and how much non-fanfic writing you've done, it's still helpful to look at the pitfalls many fic writers fall into headfirst.
There are quite a few problems that seem to be strictly fanfiction-based—problems I have never seen in other works. Some of these issues will probably leave you scratching your head, while others you yourself may have fallen prey to (I've also made a couple of big mistakes in my first writing).
Let's start with a way to not begin your fanfiction. Here's a mistake I call:
Gilligan, the Skipper too…
Wherein the author forgets the point of fanfiction
Mr. Spock, who really should have been called Commander Spock, as he was commanding officer, and yet was called Mr. Spock by his crewmates, walked down the hall of the starship that was named the Enterprise, which he served on.
Mr. Spock belonged to a race of aliens known as Vulcans, who came from the planet Vulcan, and was highly logical, as their race was wont to be. This tendency for logic was often interpreted as emotional coldness, and Vulcans did almost always distance themselves from emotions. Mr. Spock, however, was only half-Vulcan, and had to work extra hard to contain his emotions. Many of Spock's crewmates tried to get him to show emotion. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. McCoy, often did this by…
(Five pages later, and nothing more has happened….)
Sometimes an author writing a fanfiction for a work forgets that his or her audience will probably be at least a casual fan of that work. The author goes on to reintroduce all the main characters and locations from that work to the audience, even though that audience just wants to see a plot with characters that they already know.
After all, someone who is seeking out Star Trek fanfiction will usually be familiar with Star Trek, right?
Once the action in a fanfiction has actually started, it creates many more opportunities for the author to mess things up. Often, authors will not know how to properly balance dialogue with action, and when they're trying (unnecessarily, of course) to find creative replacements for the word "said," they end up with this:
The Elmore Leonard Tag
When the readers are amazed that the character could really chuckle that whole sentence
Batman had finally gotten Two-Face cornered in the abandoned warehouse. His hired goons were unconscious, their bodies strewn across the floor. Batman had Two-Face on his stomach, his left arm in a lock.
"Tell me where you're keeping the hostages," Batman twisted the arm.
"I'll never tell," Two-Face spat out blood.
"Suit yourself, Dent," Batman wrenched the arm.
"I hate you!" Two-Face, trying to break free.
For some reason, many authors forget that when one puts a comma at the end of a snippet of dialogue, whatever action one says the speaker did afterward was what made the sentence "happen." Could Batman really have said words by twisting Two-Face's arm? This snippet reads like a rejected screenplay novelization.
A lot of people make this mistake. I was one of them, probably because I read too many works that didn't have any editors!
Superman Using a Gun
When characters act nothing like they're meant to
Legolas and Gimli walked through Fangorn Forest. Well, Gimli was walking; Legolas was prancing around gaily.
Legolas twirled a finger through his meticulously brushed, strawberry blonde hair. "Gim-gim, baby, isn't it, like, a marvelously beautiful day?"
Gimli sighed. "To you, any day with trees in it is beautiful, Legolas."
"So, like, true! But don't, like, call me Legolas. It's too formal! I'm Leggy, remember?"
It is fanfiction, and an author can do whatever he or she wants, but claiming that the story can fit into the canon of the work it's based on sort of locks the author into a certain characterization.
If a character acts too out-of-character, the work will start to seem like a parody. That's fine if the author is trying to write a parody, but parody usually only works if it's based on something concrete. If the author want to have your story match canon, he or she should try to avoid this sort of thing.
This next problem is not about characterization or plot, but instead is another style tip. A very important style tip, called:
Have You Ever Read Another Story? Really?
Wherein gremlins have done the writing and formatting for the author
michaelangelo joined his bothers at the table "—hey guys let#%#s try my new pizza"
ralpheal didn#%#t wanna "—its to weird tastin you surfer dud" he said sarcasticly "—i#%#ll add some spices too kick it up a noch" ansewred mike he went back to the chicken and brot some sipces "—add spices too taste dudes" he yelled
It's one thing if an author's eyes miss out on spellchecking after a hard day's work, but it's another thing if he or she fails to catch errors after posting something.
Other times, formatting will get messed up when a site for hosting stories can't properly read a file format. When that happens, one must, sigh, go back and fix all the problems manually.
Try to always check to see how a story looks posted before moving on to write something else.
EDIT: I just realized these sections may be too short, so I merged some of them.
A/N: This was inspired by the book How Not to Write a Novel, by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
So, you want to write a great fanfiction? Do you really know the tools of the trade? No matter how many style guides you've looked at, and how much non-fanfic writing you've done, it's still helpful to look at the pitfalls many fic writers fall into headfirst.
There are quite a few problems that seem to be strictly fanfiction-based—problems I have never seen in other works. Some of these issues will probably leave you scratching your head, while others you yourself may have fallen prey to (I've also made a couple of big mistakes in my first writing).
Let's start with a way to not begin your fanfiction. Here's a mistake I call:
Gilligan, the Skipper too…
Wherein the author forgets the point of fanfiction
Mr. Spock, who really should have been called Commander Spock, as he was commanding officer, and yet was called Mr. Spock by his crewmates, walked down the hall of the starship that was named the Enterprise, which he served on.
Mr. Spock belonged to a race of aliens known as Vulcans, who came from the planet Vulcan, and was highly logical, as their race was wont to be. This tendency for logic was often interpreted as emotional coldness, and Vulcans did almost always distance themselves from emotions. Mr. Spock, however, was only half-Vulcan, and had to work extra hard to contain his emotions. Many of Spock's crewmates tried to get him to show emotion. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. McCoy, often did this by…
(Five pages later, and nothing more has happened….)
Sometimes an author writing a fanfiction for a work forgets that his or her audience will probably be at least a casual fan of that work. The author goes on to reintroduce all the main characters and locations from that work to the audience, even though that audience just wants to see a plot with characters that they already know.
After all, someone who is seeking out Star Trek fanfiction will usually be familiar with Star Trek, right?
Once the action in a fanfiction has actually started, it creates many more opportunities for the author to mess things up. Often, authors will not know how to properly balance dialogue with action, and when they're trying (unnecessarily, of course) to find creative replacements for the word "said," they end up with this:
The Elmore Leonard Tag
When the readers are amazed that the character could really chuckle that whole sentence
Batman had finally gotten Two-Face cornered in the abandoned warehouse. His hired goons were unconscious, their bodies strewn across the floor. Batman had Two-Face on his stomach, his left arm in a lock.
"Tell me where you're keeping the hostages," Batman twisted the arm.
"I'll never tell," Two-Face spat out blood.
"Suit yourself, Dent," Batman wrenched the arm.
"I hate you!" Two-Face, trying to break free.
For some reason, many authors forget that when one puts a comma at the end of a snippet of dialogue, whatever action one says the speaker did afterward was what made the sentence "happen." Could Batman really have said words by twisting Two-Face's arm? This snippet reads like a rejected screenplay novelization.
A lot of people make this mistake. I was one of them, probably because I read too many works that didn't have any editors!
Superman Using a Gun
When characters act nothing like they're meant to
Legolas and Gimli walked through Fangorn Forest. Well, Gimli was walking; Legolas was prancing around gaily.
Legolas twirled a finger through his meticulously brushed, strawberry blonde hair. "Gim-gim, baby, isn't it, like, a marvelously beautiful day?"
Gimli sighed. "To you, any day with trees in it is beautiful, Legolas."
"So, like, true! But don't, like, call me Legolas. It's too formal! I'm Leggy, remember?"
It is fanfiction, and an author can do whatever he or she wants, but claiming that the story can fit into the canon of the work it's based on sort of locks the author into a certain characterization.
If a character acts too out-of-character, the work will start to seem like a parody. That's fine if the author is trying to write a parody, but parody usually only works if it's based on something concrete. If the author want to have your story match canon, he or she should try to avoid this sort of thing.
This next problem is not about characterization or plot, but instead is another style tip. A very important style tip, called:
Have You Ever Read Another Story? Really?
Wherein gremlins have done the writing and formatting for the author
michaelangelo joined his bothers at the table "—hey guys let#%#s try my new pizza"
ralpheal didn#%#t wanna "—its to weird tastin you surfer dud" he said sarcasticly "—i#%#ll add some spices too kick it up a noch" ansewred mike he went back to the chicken and brot some sipces "—add spices too taste dudes" he yelled
It's one thing if an author's eyes miss out on spellchecking after a hard day's work, but it's another thing if he or she fails to catch errors after posting something.
Other times, formatting will get messed up when a site for hosting stories can't properly read a file format. When that happens, one must, sigh, go back and fix all the problems manually.
Try to always check to see how a story looks posted before moving on to write something else.
EDIT: I just realized these sections may be too short, so I merged some of them.
Last edited:
