Fic Writer's Guide

[Bob Schroeck]

The latest -- but still far from complete -- version of my ambitious "Fanfic Writer's Guide" has gotten a bit too big to post directly into a message, so I've put it on my website. It
can be found here, and will stay there for the foreseeable future. I'll update this thread or start a new one when I put up a new version. In the mean time, if people want to take a look and comment, go right ahead. Be aware that I haven't yet addressed everything that people pointed out or suggested the last time around, but trust me, the intent is there.
Thanks.
And yes, I'm working on DW5-3 as well. Don't worry.
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[Morganite]

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Do you ever think of anything you say as appearing in parentheses?

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Yes.
-Morgan. "I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me."
---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
-----(Not really)

[classicdrogn]

Parentheses? Hell yes. At least once a day, usually two or three times. It's all part of getting distracted too easily - I keep wanting to expand on details, then get back to the main topic.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Epsilon]

Some comments:

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xx. PARENTHESES

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I would disagree with this to some extent.
Note that in many works of popular fiction by popular authors (Stephen King, Eddings and others spring to mind) that many of them use italics or other typographical tricks to set aside certain sets of narration as different then others.
While the use of italics is growing more common throughout the internet it is still not universal. You can't save italics in a pure .txt file, for example and that is still the best format for distributing fanfic. The use of parantheses can serve as a stopgap for that, where the liteary tricks that can be used with such formating can be brought to bear in your story as well.
Also parathetical references can sometimes be useful. Often you can simply stick them in via use of the comma, as I do right here, instead of going for the full on paratheses. Use of paratheses for side comments can be valuable, however.
One particularly use is the humourous aside. If you've read manga you've all seen them. The tiny little words written outside the speechballons near characters to give a little humourous juxtaposition to what the character is actually saying apear often. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples of this is the "Inner Sakura" from the Naruto manga which takes the cliche and inflates it to new heights.
By using parathetical sentences you can have such humourous non-sequitors appear in your story as well.

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Don't end every sentence in an exclamation point -- not only will you dilute the impact of *all* the exclamation marks in your story, nobody's ever that excited, and your dialogue will end up looking like it came out of a Silver Age comic book.

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This is, of course, an ignorable rule if you want the characters to sound like they come from a Silver Age comic book. Particularly useful if you are basing the story off of said Sailver Age books, sentai/Japanese action hero stories or parodies of either.
One of my favorite characters in Hybrid Theory ends every sentence in an exclamation points because yes he is that excited about everything.

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xx. STORY KILLERS
Over-large casts.

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Ugh. Oh god yes. Guilty as charged. To be fair, I had little choice given the kind of story I started out writing but man, NEVER again.
Not only does the over large cast risk losing the reader, it also risks losing the author! It's hard to keep track of large casts when your writing. And if you fail to check in on them you end up with the "Is Matt still stuck under a wall?" question from the Wheel of Time books.

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If you really can't figure out how or why this is better, think
about the way a movie is structured. You don't (usually) plunge right into the action in the first shot. Instead, a movie will often spend fifteen minutes to a half hour building up the core character(s). You get to know them in their everyday lives, get a sense of how they deal with people, get a sense of who they are. It's only after you get a baseline picture of them in their normal lives that you can really care about them when they get thrust into something extraordinary (i.e., the story the movie is going to tell). Imagine if "Star Wars" had simply put up a card
that read "Luke Skywalker is a farmboy on Tattooine, a planet with two suns. One day his Uncle Owen bought two droids. The next morning, one was missing" and then jumped right in to chasing down a runaway R2. Wouldn't you feel cheated, like something was lacking? Would you even care about Luke and the droids?

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I find it interesting that you use as an example of the slow build up into a story one of the greatest In Media Res openings of all time.
Star Wars doesn't start with Luke on Tattooine, it starts with a dramatic boarding action in space between two behemoth star cruisers!
In Media Res is one of the best ways to start a story. Jumping into the middle of the action is a great way of immediatly hooking the reader and pulling them along for the ride. It serves as an excellent "hook" as well.
Another good example of In Media Res opening os Final Fantasy VII (the console game). We start with Cloud and friends attacking a reactor that is killing the planet, fighting through hordes of soldiers and killer robots and blowing the hell out of everything in sight. Only later do we slow down to explain what is going on, and even then we leave of starting up the actual plot until we're several hours into the game!
The trick to a good In Media Res opening is that the reader should not HAVE to know anything to get it. Starting out a Buffy fanfic where she is fighting for her life against a powerful demon is cool. You dive right itno the action and you don't need any exposition that can not be understood beyond "Buffy good" "demon bad" and you're off.
Then, after you've hooked the reader with interesting action, you slow down and tell them WHY. Sometimes you literally flash back. One excellent story I read (which I forget the name of now) actually starts with the FINAL scene of the story and then flashes back to the beginning, constantly teasing us with how we get from A to B.
The important thing is that The Story Starts When The Story Starts. Don't get bogged down introducing the characters and their everyday lives. Your story starts when things begin to change for some reason. Harry Potter's story starts when he begins to dscover that magic exist in the world and what this means for him (and his past). Luke Skywalker's story starts when two droids stumble into his life. Don't get bogged down telling us how you got to here.
Bubblegum Crisis doesn't start with telling us how the Knight Sabers were formed. It starts with action! Then it gets around to telling us why this action is important and interesting later.

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Properly executed, you can stretch out an explanation for a
*long* time, turning it into a hook that keeps your readers
interested. For instance, look at the first few chapters of my story "Drunkard's Walk II". Doug shows up in Megatokyo, and during his turns as the narrator starts discusing songs, being a Warrior and a host of other things as though the reader already knows what he's talking about. It's not until chapter six that the readers have the answers to every question he raises just in his first ten or fifteen paragraphs. This was deliberate. See "Don't Tell Everything Right Away", elsewhere in this document.)

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The term you are looking for here is Abeyance. The act of "setting aside" information for the readers later. It is a common feature of scifi and fantasy literature. You can safely introduce a term (say "meta-talent" or "The Force") and leave it to be explained later. If you put it in the right context, it will create its own small amount of suspense as the reader desire to learn more about this term.
Be careful however, as you run the risk of frustrating the reader if you put off explanations for too long. You also run the risk of the "end of season infodump".

The "end of season infodump" is something I noticed about a large number of recent anime series, including Evangelion, Rahxephon, Serial Experiments Lain etc etc. In amy of these series the creators create an Abeyance concept, one that the readers want to find out more about ("What is Rei?" "What are Mulians?" "Who is Lain?" etc.) but then the creators begin to think the anticipation for the "big reveal" is all that's keeping the viewers watching. This leads to all of the major secrets being revealed in the last two or three episodes, usually in a broken, clogged and unintereting way which falls apart, ruingin the end of an otherwise perfectly good series.
I really became aware fo this problem when watching Rahxephon which was a fantastic series right up until the last two or three episodes which just became a storm of heavy-handed exposition that was a) rushed and b) uninteresting because of a. Then I watched Rahxephon: The Movie which had the exact same story but didn't dick around with the watcher and actaully told us what we needed to know as we needed to know it. As such, it was a much better story with a much better flow to it and didn't become a trainwreck of exposition near the end.
The moral of this story is that exposition is a delicate balancing act. Too much, too soon and you risk driving the reader away. Too little, too late and you risk frsutrating the reader and ultimatly ruining your story entirely!
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Epsilon

[Custos Sophiae]

A unicorn in the garden is only allowed in chapter one. If something like that appears, without warning, in chapter 17 the readers are likely to rebel, even if it was foreshadowed. Those who want unicorns will have been put off by the 16 unicornless chapters, while those who dislike them will be annoyed by their sudden appearance, and they will probably not be familiar enough with unicorn conventions to have recognsied the foreshadowing.
More generally, any sudden shift in genre or tone can throw the readers. E.g one author wrote a decent story about family relationships stressed by an SF plot device, then decided to expand it into a trilogy. A few chapters in the sequel, it turned into a space opera, with moons being vaporised. Reader reaction was so bad, the writer abandoned the trilogy.
Rapid power escalation has the same problem. If the protagonist is a demigod from page one, or if they find an artifact of ultimate power on page three, the reader can accept that. If they go from Mr Average to godlike over 30 chapters, that's a major change in the scale of the action, and there are problems keeping the story balanced throughout.
In the first chapter of a new story, you've got free license to be as radical as you like, so long as you don't loose touch with the base story, but that's a one time chance. Use it or loose it. After that first chapter, twists have to be heralded, and taken slowly, or the readers will be lost.

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Chris Claremont's Sovereign 7 is the classic example of too much abeyance.
Claremont basically refused to tell his readers anything about what was actually going on, for years, and the series was cancelled before he could ever get around to it, because his readers had stopped caring and moved on to more comprehensible material...
--Sam
"I think I got a bone bruise."

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks, folks. When I get a chance, I'll try to incorporate your comments -- at least the stuff I agree with.
I will also make a point of clearly saying when advice is my opinion as opposed to hard-won knowledge from the experience of centuries of writers.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[robkelk]

Hope it isn't too late to offer some advice...
Overall
Is it "Hogwart's" or "Hogwarts"? (I've never read the books.)

Part I
1. Learn, and write in, reasonably proper English.

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Not even Hemingway was Hemingway, at least in terms of his writing, when he first put pen to paper.

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Before anyone replies "But Heinlein *sold* his first story!", read "Life-Line" critically and compare it to his later short stories; you'll see how far he progressed with a few short years of practice.

2. Acquire writers' references, and consult them as needed.

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And there's a book called "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" by Lynne Truss which is also very good and just as fun.

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Now supported by a website: >

5. Pay attention to what your prereaders say.

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Sometimes "why does this happen?" has an answer that would spoil a future chapter (see "Checkov's Gun" in section II).

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Since you've seperated "Asspulls" into its own section, this should point there instead or as well.
comment: I believe this is the only place in the document that you use "in section II" - almost all other references to other entries use "above" or "below".

9. Know your source material

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I can almost excuse this for anime fanfiction -- *almost*. Trying to work with names in one of the languages most foreign to English speakers can be daunting at first.

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Most licenced anime DVDs have subtitle tracks, where the names are written out in a consistent manner. This is an example of "When in doubt, look it up" (above).
Taking this problem to an extreme, Ryan Mathews's fanfic "Bubble Gum Cards", >, spells the lead character's given name differently every time it appears. But that's a parody; do you really want people laughing *at* your fanfic?

10. Don't arbitrarily violate canon for your convenience.

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One of the worst cases I've encountered was someone who couldn't be bothered -- and actually said so in an embedded author's note (q.v.)

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comment: I believe this is the only place in the document that you use "q.v." - almost all other references to other entries use "above" or "below".
12. Don't disguise original fiction as fanfiction.

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... their backgrounds are all so radically different that it's hard to justify it even as an "elseworld", ...

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comment: You haven't defined "elseworld" in this document yet. (Is the term a trademark of DC Comics? I don't recall one way or the other.)
16. Don't blackmail your readers.

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Don't *demand* reviews, or C&C, or whatever your outlet of choice calls reader response, and by the gods do not threaten to stop writing if you don't get any.

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If you do, then some people will take you up on your offer to stop writing. If you do it repeatedly, then *many* people will take you up on your offer to stop writing, and some will complain when you don't keep your promise. Nobody likes an extorter.
17. Grow a thick skin.

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There's always somebody who's going to hate your work, no matter how good it is. DON'T LET HIM CHASE YOU AWAY FROM WRITING, BECAUSE THAT WAY HE WINS.

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comment: I'm now using this line, with proper attribution, as my .signature over on rec.games.frp.gurps .

Part II
1. Vocabulary, Vocabulary, Vocabulary
Should you want a quotation for this section, here's an applicable one that I keep in mind when writing:
"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter - it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
- Mark Twain, in a letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888

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The combined image is not of a mystical medieval fortress, but rather of a pile of cheap modern building materials out of which protrude the rear ends of humongous spiders.

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With its windows on fire.
(The previously-quoted text claimed "the windows were each burning with torch light", rather than "the windows were each glowing with torch light". To me, "burning" means "on fire", and my copy of Roget's doesn't list "burn" in entry 420, "Light"...)
xx. Assuming Familiarity With Your Sources

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This is a hard one to call, but if I have to come down on one side or another, I will encourage fanfic authors to write their stories so that someone unfamiliar with the source(s) on which they are based will not be utterly lost.

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This also helps casual fans of the particular setting remember who's who and what's what in the universe. Only the most die-hard fans of a work will remember every detail about that work; providing the essential background in your story will refresh the other fans' memories.

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The beauty of Wolfe's work here is that if the reader is (like I was) unfamiliar with either or both shows, he will learns everything he needs to know about them before he's more than a third of the way into the story.

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typo alert: "will learns" instead of "will learn".
xx. Mondegreens and Eggcorns

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* "Phase" -- as in, "The strange behavior did not phase him."
The correct word for this usage is "faze". "Phase" is a part of a cycle or sequence, usually one that repeats on a regular basis.

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It's also come to mean "interpenetration of matter" in space-opera and supers fiction. (In "Read or Die", Nancy's first demonstration of her metahuman ability did not phase Yomiko, but it did faze her momentarily.)

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* "Prodigy" for "protege".

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Or vice-versa. Chiyo-chan from "Azumanga Daioh" is a prodigy, not a protege.

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* "Mindsight" for "mindset". This is another pure eggcorn.

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Unless the character is a Newtype, Lensman, or other esper, in which case it's a neologism which still doesn't mean "mindset".
xx. Eye Dialect

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The transcription of spoken language is what is called "eye dialect", and I certainly do it myself in Doug's dialogue, among others.

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comment: You haven't yet mentioned in this document who Doug is.
xx. Asspulls (part of Chekhov's Gun)

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(more examples here)

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Priss Asagiri wishes she could survive the fight she's in, and suddenly a combat robot that hasn't been seen or mentioned before (or since) shows up to fight alongside her. (BGC OAV #6 - another "pro" example)
xx. Narrative Voice vs. Character Voice

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It's the 'Rabbit Season', "Duck Season" cartoons... without the clear voices or visual charicters to tell who said what.

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typo alert: "charicters" instead of "characters".

spellchecker barfs:
Also:
"rouge" for "rogue" -- the context being the infamous "Rouge Boomer" of "Bubblegum Crisis" fanfiction fame. It's supposed to rampage, not apply makeup.
"cannon" for "canon" -- mostly found in reviews. (The Verne Canon is the body of Jules Verne's fiction; the Verne Cannon is a fictional very-large-bore weapon from "Castle Falkenstein".)
xx. NARRATIVE TIME VS. NARRATOR TIME

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If you think to use "ago"/"tomorrow"/"yestrday"/etc.

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typo alert: "yestrday" instead of "yesterday".
xx. EXCLAMATION POINTS

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I am of the opinion that tthere's a Law of Conservation of Excitement

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typo alert: "tthere's" instead of "there's".
xx. STORY KILLERS

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Over-large casts. Harems that diserve their own zip code.

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Which is either a special case of "over-large casts", or a specimen of "Negima!" fanfiction.
typo alert: "diserve" instead of "deserve".
comment: My spellchecker wants to change "diserve" to "disserve", which makes this another example of miscorrecting a badly-spelled word into a completely wrong correctly-spelled word.

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Anime fanfic that uses excessive Japanese dialogue. Adding suffixes to names is fine. The occasional exclamation like "Gomen" or "Itai!" is less fine but still understandable.

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Sometimes it's unavoidable, because the equivalent term just doesn't exist in English (e.g. "genki"). Even in these cases it should be used sparingly.

Part III
Don't Restore The Status Quo
Additional commentary:
One of the things many Star Trek fans hated about "Star Trek: Voyager" was how they kept "hitting the reset button"; the situation at the end of almost every episode was identical to that at the beginning. The Saior Moon anime "Sailor Moon SuperS" also suffered from excessive restoration of the status quo. Both of these series are widely considered by fans to be the weakest parts of their respective canon.

The Eternal Now

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Other series are more definitive. We can pretty much place the Read or Die OAV series at a specific moment in time (around 2000 or so) and the follow up TV series follows up on it a specific number of years later.

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Episode 14 of "R.O.D The TV" gives viewers a detailed back-story and timeline for the setting (and breaks the "ExpoSpeak" and "Show, Don't Tell" rules in the process).

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

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Now supported by a website:

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Except at the moment there's not very much of use there. I went and looked as soon as I heard about it, with an eye toward a link in this document.

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comment: I'm now using this line, with proper attribution, as my .signature over on rec.games.frp.gurps .

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I'm honored. I guess I should also worry that this will be the rallying cry for a legion of bad writers who resolutely stay bad, such as the eternally awful Cute Neko Hibiki (or whatever the hell it calls itself) who keeps posting to the FFML five-paragraph-long scenelets (they're not complete enough to call vignettes) that just don't do anything or go anywhere, and calls them complete fics.

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comment: You haven't yet mentioned in this document who Doug is.

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I've been moving sections around, trying to find an optimal organization. When I settle on something, then I'll provide the necessary background text in an appropriate location.
I should also note that there are chunks of stuff in here which are other people's comments from previous incarnations. Most of it is offset with ((double parens)), but some isn't. It's not worth the time to proof that, as it's mainly there to remind me to write something that reflects its POV.
Thanks, Rob!
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[jpub]

Epsilon's point about terminology is a good one, but I'd like to make note of a specific author that has a somewhat odd method of explaining his terminology. He doesn't have a glossary at the end, there's no exposition, nothing. He just uses the words as he sees fit, and expects you to figure it out.

It works, mostly, since it's a bit of forced immersion right at the start of a book.
That author is LE Modesit Jr.
You might want to mention that as a powerful, but *very* risky technique.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[Rieverre]

attendum:
Cohesion and Coherence:
When you write a story, decide beforehand what sort of story it is. What you shouldn't do is hop between genres without any rhyme or reason, and without anything resembling an actual point. The perfect example that actually got published (how, I have no idea) is John Ringo's 'Ghost' - which can't decide if its an military adventure novel, a political rant, or just plain smut (and not even very _good_ smut), and hasn't got much of a plot, not to mention plot _points_. Ugh.
And while we're on the subject of rants.
Don't. Not even through your characters.
And if you have your characters rant, at least make it short and believable in the situation they're in. Again, this means _you_, Ringo.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to let the commentary build up as it might for a bit -- I don't have the time to go through it all right now. But thank you, everyone, for what you're putting up here.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[robkelk]

A little more commentary... (You weren't doing anything over Christmas, right? )
One more illustrative typo, seen on the Usenet group uk.media.animation.anime: "Amoured Trooper Votms". (Here's the thread.) The best comment on the typo has to be this one:

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It did seem a bit extreme. I mean, of course I've heard of "a love of giant robots", but "amoured" trooper Votms suggests something a bit beyond the limits of what is healthy...

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-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Thanks, Rob. I've pasted that in for future use.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...