...of the first section of my fic writer's guide. I haven't really implemented everyone's suggestions yet -- mainly because I haven't actually sat down and gone through them point by point -- but I think I hit most of the important ones.
Anyway, let me know what you all think.
Thanks!
I. GENERAL GUIDELINES1. Learn, and write in, reasonably proper English. This means spelling and grammar (more about both later), and on a larger scale, writing proper sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Understand -- I'm not talking about being able to write like a professional before you start. No. Some fan writers can and have done it, but it's not something one should expect of all fan writers, and certainly not in their first works. There's no shame in not being Hemingway, or even Tom Clancy, when you start. Not even Hemingway was Hemingway, at least in terms of his writing, when he first put pen to paper. *BUT* -- if you expect someone to read what you wrote, try to have at least a high school-level grasp of the language you're writing in. Some may accuse me of snobbery when I say this, but if you want your work to be widely enjoyed, and maybe even acclaimed someday, you *have* to have a minimum profciency in using your language of choice. I've seen authors claim that they don't need even that much because they're writing "for fun". Well, bunky, let me tell you that I'm *reading* for fun, and if trying to puzzle out what you're saying is too much work, it gets deleted. Quickly. Do you want that to be the fate of your story? Look at it this way: words are your tools. You *must* learn to use them properly if you are ever going to craft something worthwhile. Imagine two furnituremakers -- who will make the better chair? The one who chips away at the wood with a dull screwdriver and bangs nails in with a pair of pliers? Or the one with a router, lathe and woodcarver's blades, and the knowledge of how to use them properly? You don't need to be Chippendale, but you do need to know how to make something that's attractive and will bear the weight put on it. Just as an example, I know that many fanfiction authors are writing in a second language when they work in English. But you know something? Unless they say so, I often can't tell. That's because they frequently write English better than native speakers do. It's a rare case that one of them makes an error. I only wish the native speakers were as well- educated. Related to this rule is the next:2. Acquire writers' references, and consult them as needed. If you're planning on doing any reasonably large amount of writing -- be it for pleasure or profit -- it's a good idea to build up a set of reference books to help you with your craft. At the very least, you should have a good thesaurus and dictionary. Fortunately you can find inexpensive paperback editions just about everywhere, and even some hardcovers aren't too exorbitant. A style guide will help you avoid some of the more common but harder-to-detect errors a writer can make. (And you *will* make them, and continue to make them, no matter how good you get.) It will also guide you in crafting sentences that mean exactly what you want them to mean, instead of just coming close (or worse, looking like they do while missing the mark entirely). You don't need to adhere slavishly to its suggestions -- in fact, you probably shouldn't -- but when you're having trouble getting something to come out just the way you want it, a style guide can be an invaluable aid. I recommend Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style", which you can get at any bookstore (and, of course, on Amazon.com). There are others, like the Associated Press stylebook, but they tend to be primarily for journalists, while Strunk and White's is focused on more general use. If you're weak on English usage and grammar, supplement these with a good guide to structure and writing. I can't recommend Karen Elizabeth Gordon's books highly enough -- get "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" and "The New Well-Tempered Sentence" (again, available just about everywhere). Not only are they spot-on guides to grammar and punctuation, respectively, they're a whole hell of a lot of fun to read. And there's a book called "Eats Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss which is also very good. If you are hesitant to shell out $30 or more for reference books just to write fanfiction, you do have alternatives. Since reference works aren't big sellers and are frequently updated, you can often find them on the "severely discounted" tables in bookstores. Used book stores are also good places to look for copies at cut-rate prices, along with public library sell-offs. Don't worry about getting older editions; while the language is always evolving, the core elements are sufficiently constant that you'd have to buy a *really* old edition -- half a century or more -- to stumble onto something that's no longer relevant in modern usage. If you're so strapped that even buying at discount is out of the question, you can check these books out from (or just *at*) your local library. Or, if you're still a student, your English teacher/professor. You can also consult the Net; there are a number of good grammar/style sites, although you need to be careful about your choice of site -- if you can, get an independent opinion on how good it is before you start to rely on it. However, if you're really *serious* about writing, fan or otherwise, there's no excuse for not (eventually) getting your hands on your own set of references. It's like trying to be a mechanic without owning a set of good tools.3. Proofread and preread. Do it yourself, or recruit a friend. If you're lucky or determined, you might assemble a small circle of prereaders. For god's sake, don't trust spellchecker programs. They are notoriously *stupid*. Unlike a human reader, they have no sense of context, and will blithely miscorrect a bad spelling into the wrong word if you carelessly tell them "fix all" or the equivalent. They also *never* have every English word in them, and lacking them, can end up flagging and "fixing" a perfectly good and proper word that they don't recognize. A case in point: the built-in spellcheckers in a number of popular word processors do not know the word "genteel" (meaning "refined, well-bred, ladylike, gentlemanly") and will insist on turning it into either "gentle" ("delicate of touch") or "gentile" ("not Jewish"). Not exactly the kind of thing which helps the meaning of a well-crafted sentence, that. Make no mistake -- most spellcheckers are designed for *business* writing, and the words they know are biased in that direction. Don't let them get their hands on your work. Similarly, grammar checkers are not the be-all and end-all. They *are* somewhat better tools for the fiction writer than the spellchecker, but again, they tend to be business-oriented. Worse, they have no real way to allow for the less-stringent structure and flow that is necessary for fiction. Use a grammar checker if you want, but be prepared to wade through more false positives than you'd like. The only real solution for both is to manually eyeball your work. This is something that's problematic for most authors, as they have a tendency to read what they know they meant, and not what they actually wrote. Other eyes without preconceived notions about the content are the best way to go about this, although if you have the luxury to let a written piece lie fallow for a few days (or weeks) until you forget its contents, you can manage by yourself.4. Pick prereaders carefully. Once you have a chapter or a story out, it's easy to get (more) prereaders. If you're any good, almost everybody who liked your work will clamor to preread simply to get an advance look at your newest stuff. Be aware that these folks do not always make the best prereaders. While this is not a hard and fast rule, self- nominated prereaders run the risk of being (or turning into) "yes men" who always respond "it's great!" to any new material. This can make it hard for an author to grow in his skills, or to evaluate his growth. No pool of prereaders should be made up entirely of self- nominees. When assembling prereaders, *always* make sure you ask some folks who have given you more than just praise. Anyone who's ever told you something was broken will make a good prereader. Likewise anyone who's spent the time to tell you how your writing made them *feel* or react -- prereaders like this can be especially invaluable. And if you can actually recruit someone who is uninterested in your subject matter, story, or fandom entirely, even better -- they won't be biased by their own enthusiasm when trying to evaluate your writing. Finally, when selecting prereaders make sure they know that you want more feedback from them than just spelling and grammar errors. Encourage them to find weaknesses in your story, like plot holes and places where your characters are acting like idiots for no good reason except that the plot demands that they do. You'll profit from it in the long run. 5. Pay attention to what your prereaders say. Especially if they say things like, "why does this happen?" or "this doesn't make sense". Ideally, your prereaders are representative of your greater audience, and if they're more frustrated or confused by a story than entertained and intrigued, that's indicative of problems with your approach. Listen to them, and fix as needed. Sometimes that fix will have to be drastic:6. Don't be wedded to your text. Nothing you've written is graven in stone. Nothing is so perfect that it can't be revised or even thrown out. Do not get so attached to a passage that you cannot ruthlessly cut it out of the story if needed. And be prepared to rip your entire story down to the foundations and start it over if that's what the prereaders suggest. It'll be painful, and you won't want to do it, but nine times out of ten, it'll be the right thing to do, and you'll end up with a much better story, one that gives *you* more satisfaction during the writing.7. But don't throw away your deletions. Nothing says you can't save those scraps and recycle them, though. For each of my writing projects, I have a "discards" file. Anything more than a sentence long that gets cut goes in that file for potential reuse elsewhere -- and I *have* found ways to reuse things. This is the best way to preserve that turn of phrase or clever scene that you're so proud of, but which just didn't work in the place where you first wrote it. Plus, if you know the material won't be lost forever, it's easier to make drastic cuts when they're needed. 8. When in doubt, look it up. In the era of the Internet, there is no reason to make a dumb mistake of fact. Between Google and Wikipedia alone, there is absolutely no excuse for errors born out of ignorance. Series canon for virtually everything is thoroughly documented online these days, unlike (for instance) the Dark Ages of anime in the middle 1990s and earlier. Web-based language dictionaries are reasonably good and mostly easy to use. It will take maybe five minutes to confirm or correct most details about which you are unsure. Take that time. Newbie readers will thank you, and old hands will respect you. And every once in a while you'll find something utterly cool that no one has ever used before. Expanding on this: 9. Know your source material This one may seem painfully obvious, but a distressingly large number of writers ignore it: If you're into a particular book, movie or TV show enough to want to write your own stories about it, then for god's sake care enough to make sure you get the established details right. And I'm not talking just about knowing that Character A's house is exactly 2.5 blocks from Character B's, and I don't mean the kind of things that change when you create an alternate universe -- I'm talking about stuff as basic as *names*. I cannot tell you how many fics I've seen over the years where a writer simply didn't care enough to make sure he had the names of a show or book's *main characters* spelled right. I can almost excuse this for anime fanfiction -- trying to work with names in one of the languages most foreign to English speakers can be daunting at first. But there is no excuse for misspelling names in *English*. I swear I will hunt down and kill the next person I find misspelling "Delores Umbridge" as "Dolorous". (Even though, to be fair, that particular misspelling does show a creative combination of scholarship and laziness...) In any case, this is a *major* red flag for me as a reader -- if I see that misspelling names is endemic, the story goes into the circular file. To a limited degree, over-Americanizing Japanese settings comes under this heading. This is sometimes unavoidable, especially with anime that has been heavily "adapted" for Western audiences. But if you have a clearly Asian setting, it behooves you as a writer to be at least passingly familiar with those Asian customs, mores and behaviors relevant to the story you want to tell. By extension, don't write fanfic about a show or setting if you've never actually seen/read it. I can't express just how bad the results will be in the eyes of people who know the source material. You may get readers and even fans among others who have no exposure to the original, but you will earn no points with those familiar with it. Just don't do it. If you like the idea of a series, movie or book enough that you want to write fic for it, you owe it to yourself to actually experience the original. Related to this is:10. Don't Arbitrarily Violate Canon For Your Convenience. Unless you have a damned good story reason for not doing so, you should adhere as close to a setting's canon as possible. "Canon" here means any and all details -- including time, place and characterization -- firmly established by the creator of a setting, either within the primary source, or by way of a secondary one (interview, commentary, etc.). Except in the case of the "Unicorn In The Garden" rule (see below), do not blatantly violate canon -- especially not just to satisfy a whim, or to save yourself effort or time in research. I can't count how many Harry Potter fics I've read with an author's note that had words to the effect of "I don't care if Rowling says the stories start in 1991 -- I'm putting it in 2006 because I want to." Or "Ranma" fics where Nabiki has internet access on her laptop. (See "The Eternal Now", below.) This is lazy, sloppy writing. It dilutes the core setting, whose unique attributes and flavor are presumably why you're chosing to write fanfic there in the first place. If the setting has that much appeal for you, why in hell would you want to make random changes to it that don't have anything to do with the needs of your story? Surely it wouldn't be a terrible chore to reread or rewatch as needed to get a key bit of information right. Related to this point and its predecessor is the next:11. Avoid fanon. Fanon, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is the accumulated body of fan-created detail that fills holes left by the creator(s) in a series or setting. It contrasts with (but tries to complement) canon. For example, the name of the late Mrs. Tendo in "Ranma 1/2" is never given in any official source, but somewhere around 1998, many writers on the FFML gradually standardized on "Kimiko". The problem with fanon is that for a newcomer to a fandom, it can be almost impossible to distinguish from canon at first. It can take years to shake off all the accumulated "details" that fanon can saddle a newcomer with. It also saddles you as a writer with a horde of details that were created by other fan writers for *their* creations, and which may not be right for *your* story. Resist the urge to fall back on fanon, even (or especially!) when it fills a known hole in your fictional setting of choice. Fanon is never unavoidable -- and making up your own detail from scratch will sometimes lead you into profitable new areas of exploration.12. Don't disguise original fiction as fanfiction. Some observers/readers might phrase this as "don't make the characters so unlike themselves that they're different people with the same names". Either way you look at it, it's a complete puzzle to me. If you're writing fanfiction, you're celebrating the source material. Why choose to change it so radically that it's unrecognizable? Conversely, if you have a good and compelling story idea that is so radically different from the original setting, why feel constrained to turn it into fanfiction? A good example of this would be the acclaimed "Ranma 1/2" fic "Ten", by "Richard E" (ten.waxwolf.com/). This is an amazing story demonstrating outstanding literary skill ... but it has absolutely no reason to be a Ranma fic. None of the Ranma characters really act like him or herself here, their backgrounds are so radically different that it's hard to justify even as an "elseworld", and there's really nothing here that anchors the story to the "canon" Ranma world. (Just as one example: Ryoga as a lame, intellectual scientist. Huh???) If you're writing something so radically altered, you might as well take that last step, use new names, and call it original fiction.13. Write for yourself as well as your readers. Or, to put it differently, you are one of your readers -- don't forget you're writing for your own enjoyment.14. Write for your readers as well as yourself. However, don't get so wrapped up in writing for yourself that you forget you have other people in your audience. This is what causes the worst Self Insertion fics -- when the author gets so caught up in his self-indulgent ego trip that he forgets that other people are going to read this, and want to see more than chapter 135 of "L33TWr1T3R Conquerz Teh Wurld"!15. Don't blackmail your readers. 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. If you're not getting reviews, or not getting *positive* reviews, there's a *reason*, and a puerile threat to stop writing won't do much good. It might even *reward* some of the people who give you bad reviews. Just write. Yes, you want people to enjoy your work, but nothing is enjoyed by *everybody*. Besides, the work itself should be as much reward as the response. If it's not, you're doing something wrong.16. Grow a thick skin. Related to the above point is how you respond to criticism. Every writer gets bad reviews. I've had them, Stephen King gets them, Hemingway got them, hell, even Shakespeare got heckled in print and in person. 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. Remember that you are writing as much to please yourself as your readers, so don't let someone's abuse make you stop doing something you enjoy. The anime fanfiction community has already lost a couple fair-to-good writers (who both had the potential to be truly great) because they let negative comments get too deeply under their skins; we don't need to lose more.17. Know when to break the rules. Remember that the guidelines here and below are simply that -- *guidelines*. Sufficiently skilled writers can ignore them and make it work. But even the best violate only one or two at a time: like an unexpected dash of spice in a familiar dish, breaking a rule can add a powerful twist or impact to a story. But breaking too many is like dumping the contents of the spice cabinet into a meal in the hopes that it will improve. It won't. A skilled writer will choose his broken rules carefully and for special reasons, if he chooses to break any at all. And until you understand almost instinctively what you can achieve by ignoring these guidelines, it's better if you adhere to them closely.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
Anyway, let me know what you all think.
Thanks!
I. GENERAL GUIDELINES1. Learn, and write in, reasonably proper English. This means spelling and grammar (more about both later), and on a larger scale, writing proper sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Understand -- I'm not talking about being able to write like a professional before you start. No. Some fan writers can and have done it, but it's not something one should expect of all fan writers, and certainly not in their first works. There's no shame in not being Hemingway, or even Tom Clancy, when you start. Not even Hemingway was Hemingway, at least in terms of his writing, when he first put pen to paper. *BUT* -- if you expect someone to read what you wrote, try to have at least a high school-level grasp of the language you're writing in. Some may accuse me of snobbery when I say this, but if you want your work to be widely enjoyed, and maybe even acclaimed someday, you *have* to have a minimum profciency in using your language of choice. I've seen authors claim that they don't need even that much because they're writing "for fun". Well, bunky, let me tell you that I'm *reading* for fun, and if trying to puzzle out what you're saying is too much work, it gets deleted. Quickly. Do you want that to be the fate of your story? Look at it this way: words are your tools. You *must* learn to use them properly if you are ever going to craft something worthwhile. Imagine two furnituremakers -- who will make the better chair? The one who chips away at the wood with a dull screwdriver and bangs nails in with a pair of pliers? Or the one with a router, lathe and woodcarver's blades, and the knowledge of how to use them properly? You don't need to be Chippendale, but you do need to know how to make something that's attractive and will bear the weight put on it. Just as an example, I know that many fanfiction authors are writing in a second language when they work in English. But you know something? Unless they say so, I often can't tell. That's because they frequently write English better than native speakers do. It's a rare case that one of them makes an error. I only wish the native speakers were as well- educated. Related to this rule is the next:2. Acquire writers' references, and consult them as needed. If you're planning on doing any reasonably large amount of writing -- be it for pleasure or profit -- it's a good idea to build up a set of reference books to help you with your craft. At the very least, you should have a good thesaurus and dictionary. Fortunately you can find inexpensive paperback editions just about everywhere, and even some hardcovers aren't too exorbitant. A style guide will help you avoid some of the more common but harder-to-detect errors a writer can make. (And you *will* make them, and continue to make them, no matter how good you get.) It will also guide you in crafting sentences that mean exactly what you want them to mean, instead of just coming close (or worse, looking like they do while missing the mark entirely). You don't need to adhere slavishly to its suggestions -- in fact, you probably shouldn't -- but when you're having trouble getting something to come out just the way you want it, a style guide can be an invaluable aid. I recommend Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style", which you can get at any bookstore (and, of course, on Amazon.com). There are others, like the Associated Press stylebook, but they tend to be primarily for journalists, while Strunk and White's is focused on more general use. If you're weak on English usage and grammar, supplement these with a good guide to structure and writing. I can't recommend Karen Elizabeth Gordon's books highly enough -- get "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" and "The New Well-Tempered Sentence" (again, available just about everywhere). Not only are they spot-on guides to grammar and punctuation, respectively, they're a whole hell of a lot of fun to read. And there's a book called "Eats Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss which is also very good. If you are hesitant to shell out $30 or more for reference books just to write fanfiction, you do have alternatives. Since reference works aren't big sellers and are frequently updated, you can often find them on the "severely discounted" tables in bookstores. Used book stores are also good places to look for copies at cut-rate prices, along with public library sell-offs. Don't worry about getting older editions; while the language is always evolving, the core elements are sufficiently constant that you'd have to buy a *really* old edition -- half a century or more -- to stumble onto something that's no longer relevant in modern usage. If you're so strapped that even buying at discount is out of the question, you can check these books out from (or just *at*) your local library. Or, if you're still a student, your English teacher/professor. You can also consult the Net; there are a number of good grammar/style sites, although you need to be careful about your choice of site -- if you can, get an independent opinion on how good it is before you start to rely on it. However, if you're really *serious* about writing, fan or otherwise, there's no excuse for not (eventually) getting your hands on your own set of references. It's like trying to be a mechanic without owning a set of good tools.3. Proofread and preread. Do it yourself, or recruit a friend. If you're lucky or determined, you might assemble a small circle of prereaders. For god's sake, don't trust spellchecker programs. They are notoriously *stupid*. Unlike a human reader, they have no sense of context, and will blithely miscorrect a bad spelling into the wrong word if you carelessly tell them "fix all" or the equivalent. They also *never* have every English word in them, and lacking them, can end up flagging and "fixing" a perfectly good and proper word that they don't recognize. A case in point: the built-in spellcheckers in a number of popular word processors do not know the word "genteel" (meaning "refined, well-bred, ladylike, gentlemanly") and will insist on turning it into either "gentle" ("delicate of touch") or "gentile" ("not Jewish"). Not exactly the kind of thing which helps the meaning of a well-crafted sentence, that. Make no mistake -- most spellcheckers are designed for *business* writing, and the words they know are biased in that direction. Don't let them get their hands on your work. Similarly, grammar checkers are not the be-all and end-all. They *are* somewhat better tools for the fiction writer than the spellchecker, but again, they tend to be business-oriented. Worse, they have no real way to allow for the less-stringent structure and flow that is necessary for fiction. Use a grammar checker if you want, but be prepared to wade through more false positives than you'd like. The only real solution for both is to manually eyeball your work. This is something that's problematic for most authors, as they have a tendency to read what they know they meant, and not what they actually wrote. Other eyes without preconceived notions about the content are the best way to go about this, although if you have the luxury to let a written piece lie fallow for a few days (or weeks) until you forget its contents, you can manage by yourself.4. Pick prereaders carefully. Once you have a chapter or a story out, it's easy to get (more) prereaders. If you're any good, almost everybody who liked your work will clamor to preread simply to get an advance look at your newest stuff. Be aware that these folks do not always make the best prereaders. While this is not a hard and fast rule, self- nominated prereaders run the risk of being (or turning into) "yes men" who always respond "it's great!" to any new material. This can make it hard for an author to grow in his skills, or to evaluate his growth. No pool of prereaders should be made up entirely of self- nominees. When assembling prereaders, *always* make sure you ask some folks who have given you more than just praise. Anyone who's ever told you something was broken will make a good prereader. Likewise anyone who's spent the time to tell you how your writing made them *feel* or react -- prereaders like this can be especially invaluable. And if you can actually recruit someone who is uninterested in your subject matter, story, or fandom entirely, even better -- they won't be biased by their own enthusiasm when trying to evaluate your writing. Finally, when selecting prereaders make sure they know that you want more feedback from them than just spelling and grammar errors. Encourage them to find weaknesses in your story, like plot holes and places where your characters are acting like idiots for no good reason except that the plot demands that they do. You'll profit from it in the long run. 5. Pay attention to what your prereaders say. Especially if they say things like, "why does this happen?" or "this doesn't make sense". Ideally, your prereaders are representative of your greater audience, and if they're more frustrated or confused by a story than entertained and intrigued, that's indicative of problems with your approach. Listen to them, and fix as needed. Sometimes that fix will have to be drastic:6. Don't be wedded to your text. Nothing you've written is graven in stone. Nothing is so perfect that it can't be revised or even thrown out. Do not get so attached to a passage that you cannot ruthlessly cut it out of the story if needed. And be prepared to rip your entire story down to the foundations and start it over if that's what the prereaders suggest. It'll be painful, and you won't want to do it, but nine times out of ten, it'll be the right thing to do, and you'll end up with a much better story, one that gives *you* more satisfaction during the writing.7. But don't throw away your deletions. Nothing says you can't save those scraps and recycle them, though. For each of my writing projects, I have a "discards" file. Anything more than a sentence long that gets cut goes in that file for potential reuse elsewhere -- and I *have* found ways to reuse things. This is the best way to preserve that turn of phrase or clever scene that you're so proud of, but which just didn't work in the place where you first wrote it. Plus, if you know the material won't be lost forever, it's easier to make drastic cuts when they're needed. 8. When in doubt, look it up. In the era of the Internet, there is no reason to make a dumb mistake of fact. Between Google and Wikipedia alone, there is absolutely no excuse for errors born out of ignorance. Series canon for virtually everything is thoroughly documented online these days, unlike (for instance) the Dark Ages of anime in the middle 1990s and earlier. Web-based language dictionaries are reasonably good and mostly easy to use. It will take maybe five minutes to confirm or correct most details about which you are unsure. Take that time. Newbie readers will thank you, and old hands will respect you. And every once in a while you'll find something utterly cool that no one has ever used before. Expanding on this: 9. Know your source material This one may seem painfully obvious, but a distressingly large number of writers ignore it: If you're into a particular book, movie or TV show enough to want to write your own stories about it, then for god's sake care enough to make sure you get the established details right. And I'm not talking just about knowing that Character A's house is exactly 2.5 blocks from Character B's, and I don't mean the kind of things that change when you create an alternate universe -- I'm talking about stuff as basic as *names*. I cannot tell you how many fics I've seen over the years where a writer simply didn't care enough to make sure he had the names of a show or book's *main characters* spelled right. I can almost excuse this for anime fanfiction -- trying to work with names in one of the languages most foreign to English speakers can be daunting at first. But there is no excuse for misspelling names in *English*. I swear I will hunt down and kill the next person I find misspelling "Delores Umbridge" as "Dolorous". (Even though, to be fair, that particular misspelling does show a creative combination of scholarship and laziness...) In any case, this is a *major* red flag for me as a reader -- if I see that misspelling names is endemic, the story goes into the circular file. To a limited degree, over-Americanizing Japanese settings comes under this heading. This is sometimes unavoidable, especially with anime that has been heavily "adapted" for Western audiences. But if you have a clearly Asian setting, it behooves you as a writer to be at least passingly familiar with those Asian customs, mores and behaviors relevant to the story you want to tell. By extension, don't write fanfic about a show or setting if you've never actually seen/read it. I can't express just how bad the results will be in the eyes of people who know the source material. You may get readers and even fans among others who have no exposure to the original, but you will earn no points with those familiar with it. Just don't do it. If you like the idea of a series, movie or book enough that you want to write fic for it, you owe it to yourself to actually experience the original. Related to this is:10. Don't Arbitrarily Violate Canon For Your Convenience. Unless you have a damned good story reason for not doing so, you should adhere as close to a setting's canon as possible. "Canon" here means any and all details -- including time, place and characterization -- firmly established by the creator of a setting, either within the primary source, or by way of a secondary one (interview, commentary, etc.). Except in the case of the "Unicorn In The Garden" rule (see below), do not blatantly violate canon -- especially not just to satisfy a whim, or to save yourself effort or time in research. I can't count how many Harry Potter fics I've read with an author's note that had words to the effect of "I don't care if Rowling says the stories start in 1991 -- I'm putting it in 2006 because I want to." Or "Ranma" fics where Nabiki has internet access on her laptop. (See "The Eternal Now", below.) This is lazy, sloppy writing. It dilutes the core setting, whose unique attributes and flavor are presumably why you're chosing to write fanfic there in the first place. If the setting has that much appeal for you, why in hell would you want to make random changes to it that don't have anything to do with the needs of your story? Surely it wouldn't be a terrible chore to reread or rewatch as needed to get a key bit of information right. Related to this point and its predecessor is the next:11. Avoid fanon. Fanon, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is the accumulated body of fan-created detail that fills holes left by the creator(s) in a series or setting. It contrasts with (but tries to complement) canon. For example, the name of the late Mrs. Tendo in "Ranma 1/2" is never given in any official source, but somewhere around 1998, many writers on the FFML gradually standardized on "Kimiko". The problem with fanon is that for a newcomer to a fandom, it can be almost impossible to distinguish from canon at first. It can take years to shake off all the accumulated "details" that fanon can saddle a newcomer with. It also saddles you as a writer with a horde of details that were created by other fan writers for *their* creations, and which may not be right for *your* story. Resist the urge to fall back on fanon, even (or especially!) when it fills a known hole in your fictional setting of choice. Fanon is never unavoidable -- and making up your own detail from scratch will sometimes lead you into profitable new areas of exploration.12. Don't disguise original fiction as fanfiction. Some observers/readers might phrase this as "don't make the characters so unlike themselves that they're different people with the same names". Either way you look at it, it's a complete puzzle to me. If you're writing fanfiction, you're celebrating the source material. Why choose to change it so radically that it's unrecognizable? Conversely, if you have a good and compelling story idea that is so radically different from the original setting, why feel constrained to turn it into fanfiction? A good example of this would be the acclaimed "Ranma 1/2" fic "Ten", by "Richard E" (ten.waxwolf.com/). This is an amazing story demonstrating outstanding literary skill ... but it has absolutely no reason to be a Ranma fic. None of the Ranma characters really act like him or herself here, their backgrounds are so radically different that it's hard to justify even as an "elseworld", and there's really nothing here that anchors the story to the "canon" Ranma world. (Just as one example: Ryoga as a lame, intellectual scientist. Huh???) If you're writing something so radically altered, you might as well take that last step, use new names, and call it original fiction.13. Write for yourself as well as your readers. Or, to put it differently, you are one of your readers -- don't forget you're writing for your own enjoyment.14. Write for your readers as well as yourself. However, don't get so wrapped up in writing for yourself that you forget you have other people in your audience. This is what causes the worst Self Insertion fics -- when the author gets so caught up in his self-indulgent ego trip that he forgets that other people are going to read this, and want to see more than chapter 135 of "L33TWr1T3R Conquerz Teh Wurld"!15. Don't blackmail your readers. 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. If you're not getting reviews, or not getting *positive* reviews, there's a *reason*, and a puerile threat to stop writing won't do much good. It might even *reward* some of the people who give you bad reviews. Just write. Yes, you want people to enjoy your work, but nothing is enjoyed by *everybody*. Besides, the work itself should be as much reward as the response. If it's not, you're doing something wrong.16. Grow a thick skin. Related to the above point is how you respond to criticism. Every writer gets bad reviews. I've had them, Stephen King gets them, Hemingway got them, hell, even Shakespeare got heckled in print and in person. 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. Remember that you are writing as much to please yourself as your readers, so don't let someone's abuse make you stop doing something you enjoy. The anime fanfiction community has already lost a couple fair-to-good writers (who both had the potential to be truly great) because they let negative comments get too deeply under their skins; we don't need to lose more.17. Know when to break the rules. Remember that the guidelines here and below are simply that -- *guidelines*. Sufficiently skilled writers can ignore them and make it work. But even the best violate only one or two at a time: like an unexpected dash of spice in a familiar dish, breaking a rule can add a powerful twist or impact to a story. But breaking too many is like dumping the contents of the spice cabinet into a meal in the hopes that it will improve. It won't. A skilled writer will choose his broken rules carefully and for special reasons, if he chooses to break any at all. And until you understand almost instinctively what you can achieve by ignoring these guidelines, it's better if you adhere to them closely.
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...