So...you have a set of characters, a plot, and you want to write a story. What now?
1: Make your story concise and interesting.
In today's age of quick-read, full-satisfaction material, a good story doesn't have to be thirty chapters and four hundred pages long to be decent. Oftentimes the reader may become bored with the material and abandon it if there's not something there to keep the reader interested.
It's also important to consider your audience. Are they going to want to read your four hundred page account of your latest Dungeons and Dragons campaign because you had a great time...or is there a hook in there to make a certain incident into a thirty page whirlwind of a great story?
2: Make the plot relatively easy to follow.
No matter how great your plot is, if it has more twists and turns than a roller coaster, most readers aren't going to want to keep up unless the work is very well done by a writer experienced in such endeavors. Most stories run on the A B C plotline. That means there are two smaller plots (B & C) that tie into the main 'A' plot.
3: Setting up the document and the importance of spelling and grammar.
If you're planning on setting up your document on-line (as many FanFic authors do), there are three important things to keep in mind: Page format, paragraph format, and the document itself. The best way to format a page is black text on a white background. This makes it easy for someone to read. It also makes it easily printable for you or a beta reader. As cool as white, red, green, or blue text might look on a black background, it's very hard to read and one of the most often made mistakes authors make when they finally upload their work.
Paragraphs should start after a double space, rather than keeping it single-spaced and indenting (like the paragraphs done for school writing assignments). It's easier to read and easier on the eyes than one large block of text. This document is an example of double-spacing paragraphs.
Take advantage of the spelling and grammar checker on your computer! Run it a few times as you work and when you're done, have someone else give it a proofread. Why? A sentence can read 'She is form France' when your intention is to say 'She is from France'. Slight difference, but a noticeable typo and not one a spellchecker would catch.
A major turnoff to any reader, despite how great the story is, is if the reader has to chop their way through pages of typos that a little bit of editing could easily fix.
4: Do your homework. Know your material well.
Xena doesn't wear jeans, Jean-Luc Picard isn't going to say 'ain't', Beast (Hank McCoy) isn't going to use simple words, and Yoda isn't going to speak in a word-coherent sentence. Do your homework and know your material with your Book/TV/Etc Canonical characters.
5: Creating interesting and well-rounded characters.
If all of your characters are inherently the same, readers may keep track of who is who and the story will quickly become boring to them. An acquaintance of mine uses a basic formula for almost all of his tabletop characters and it has become a problem for him because even though his characters are different, they were all mistaken for being the same by my gaming group because of the base formula. They all were educated the same way, had certain talents, and even stayed within the same set of ranks and positions amongst many other things. Keep each character a little different and just outside of the 'cookie cutter' and people are going to be much more apt to remember them.
Unless you're writing a science fiction story or your material requires the use of an unusual name, keep your names simple to pronounce and avoid more than one name that starts with the same letter.
Important: If you use other characters that are the original works of your friends/fellow players, ask permission to use their character first and then have them beta read (see the section about beta-reading) to make sure your adaptation of their characters is who their character is. Who knows? They might return the favor and be inspired to write a fic that includes your character!
6: Who is Mary Sue & Gary Stu and why they must die.
This is an excerpt from Self Insertion and Mary Sue-ism by Sabastian Weinberg. I'm using it because I can't think of any better way to cover the material. Linked to this document are other helpful links on Mary Sue-ism. The Doctor Merlin guides (linked to Mr. Weinberg's document) are highly effective.
"You already know Mary Sue. Mary Sue is the perky, bright, helpful sixteen-year-old ensign who beams about the ship. Everyone on the ship likes Mary Sue, because Mary Sue is good at everything. Mary Sue is an engineer, a doctor in training, a good leader, an excellent cook, and is usually a beautiful singer. Mary Sue often has mental powers that may manifest themselves as telepathy, precognition, or magic. If Mary Sue is very young, she is often the offspring of one or two already established characters. If she's a little older, she will probably end up sleeping with the author's favorite character. Her name is often the author's name, be it a net.name, a favored nickname, or the author's middle name (this is seen in the most famous Mary Sue of all time, Wesley Crusher, who was named after Trek creator Eugene Wesley Roddenbery). By the end of the story, Mary Sue will be in bed with the desired character, will have beamed away amid cheers from all the regulars, or will be dead, usually accompanied by heavy mourning from the cast. The reader, on the other hand, will be celebrating.
"The female Mary Sue is perky, everybody's darling, never suffers from PMS and is an inspiration to those around her. Her male twin is a brooding, solitary type who has a deep-running disregard for authority that always gets him into trouble, even though he virtually always succeeds in whatever rule-breaking stunts he pulls. In the end he has earned the grudging respect of the authority figures.
"He also tends to have horrible guilt trips about things that were neither his fault nor in any way under his control. Everybody around him knows that he doesn't bear any blame, but he insists on torturing himself with second-guessing, angsting the night away. This is a cheap trick to gain a reason for angst, soul-searching and general brooding, without having to commit and let the character be responsible for doing something actually wrong. It's also often used to allow the character to become anti-social and do otherwise despicable deeds, because he is so racked with guilt or hurt. Mary Sues can't do anything remotely bad without heaps and heaps of explanations and excuses.
"Some self-insertion authors think they can avoid the accusation of Mary-Sue-ism by letting their characters suffer. Tedious martyrdom, accompanied by slews of self-pity and sympathy from the other characters is often the result. Readers get turned off by this just as by the tedious wish-fulfillment because both are one and the same. The whole "suffering" thing is nothing but the good old "one day when I'm dead you'll all be sorry you were so mean to me" fantasy.
"Other common defenses against accusations of Mary-Sue-ism are, "This character isn't me - she just looks like me, talks like me, has my name and does all the things I'd like to do," (Yes, this really happened) or "My character isn't an idealized avatar - he's got tons of character flaws," or "She isn't perfect - there's lots of things she can't do." Unfortunately the "character flaws" are usually something like "he cares too deeply about his friends" or "he always tries to give his best in everything he does, to the point of overexposure". And the "lots of things she can't do" usually include the fact that she can't play banjo to save her life and other skills that are completely irrelevant to the story."
7: How to write a story and not a "play log" (especially important if your characters are culled from role-play (tabletop, on-line, LARP, etc).)
As gamers, we all have our favorite characters to play. Whether it be a tabletop character, a LARP (live action role-play) character, or an on-line text-based RP character, sometimes we have a character and a plot that sounds great as a write up...whether it is a singular incident or a string of incidents.
I learned the hard way about rule #1- keeping it concise. I kept logs of RP for months, intending to cull them into a fanfic based on one of my characters. However, once the storyline was finished, I discovered I had nearly a year's worth of logs from 4+ hours of play x 7 nights a week. When I finally added all of the logged pages together, I easily had over 1,000 pages worth of material. It encompassed the input of over a dozen players and two dozen characters (both Canon and original). With a groan, I plowed into it. My exuberance didn't last long and by the second of about forty logs, I discovered by culling a few small incidents into stories that were less that twenty pages each, I could tell a much more effective story with fewer characters.
Logs can be good things: They're great for remembering sequential information, who was involved, and putting together summaries of events. However, don't rely on them entirely or you may never finish. I looked through all the logs I kept and discovered that they're perfect as a resource not the source.
8: What are 'Talking Heads' and how to shut them up.
Talking heads are pages upon countless pages of dialogue between characters. This can work in the movies for a drama, but you never see a character sitting still yapping their mouth off for more than a few seconds in an action movie. Keep the dialogue between characters to a half-page or less and if it's longer, insert 'blurbs' of descriptions of things as they work into the story. This helps break up the monotony of too much dialogue while at the same time avoiding the trap of pages upon pages of needless description.
9: What is a Beta reader and why do I need one?
A beta reader is your best friend. Not literally, but they're your best bet for good feedback. A beta reader can be someone you know IRL like a friend or sibling, someone you game with on-line, or a complete stranger to the world you play in.
I usually have two beta readers. The first beta is a person who 'plays in my world'. They're familiar with the characters and the plots and they can tell me when someone is falling out of character, when events get out of sequence, or when something just Plain Doesn't Fit. They're also my first line of defense on finding typos I wouldn't ordinarily find. I also ask the people who have the characters I borrowed for the story to look it over to assure I stayed true to their characters.
My second beta reader knows nothing of where I play and he attacks my work with a red pen, making suggestions to tighten the work, smooth out choppy places, and ask questions about what's going on. Questions I might not see because I take for granted that I'm a part of the universe. I swallow my ego when he reviews my work and despite how 'rough' the criticism might be, I find myself with a much better piece of work.
Your beta reader needs to have a working knowledge of how to critique a story. Basically? Someone who's not going to be a chicken about telling you if something is wrong. A writer is going to learn more from the one person who says, "There are some problems and here's what they are" than from the 100 people that say, "This is good!"
Be prepared for the fact that you might not have spotted typos and that you may have left words or phrases out completely. You may even have to cull entire paragraphs (or even entire pages) of material to make your story better.
10: "Help! I have too many characters to keep track of!"
This oftentimes happens with play logs but can also happen on fiction centered on purely canonical characters. If you're uncomfortable with keeping track of a large amount of characters, keep track of them in a notebook or on index cards. Personally, I use a small 2-ring binder with index cards for my character information. They're inexpensive and if you're working on different stories at once, it's very easy to keep track of information. You don't have to keep a full dossier on them- the following information is fine:
· Name, Age, Hair (color, style, length), Eyes, Gender
· Education, Profession, Rank, Position, Decorations
· Traits, Talents, Hobbies, Religious preference, Sexual preference
· Family (Alive? Relationship with?), Significant other(s)
It's a handy tool to have so you don't say in chapter one that a character has curly brown hair and in chapter two, say the character has straight hair. You also don't have to fill out every part of it. If you don't know what religious preference your character has or what talents? Leave that part blank. It will either write itself into existence or it'll be a part of the character that winds up not being integral to the story.
11: Writing for your audience.
People are not going to want to read your fantasies about your Mary Sue character bedding down their favorite character in a plotless and smut-filled story unless you advertise that the story is PWP: also known as 'Plot? What plot?'
12: Bringing attention to your work.
Sites such as Fanfiction.net is an easy-to-use resource to get your fic noticed. You can also publish it on your own website. In either case, disclaimers are mandatory to cover yourself and your work.
13: What is a disclaimer and why do I need it?
A disclaimer is a statement saying you don't own something. If you don't use it, there's a very good chance you could be sued for copyright infringement or worse. Firstly, there is no such thing as 'standard disclaimers apply'. You need to spell everything out. An example of a disclaimer follows:
"The elements of the Harry Potter universe belong to J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers. No profit is being made from this fan fiction and no copyright infringement is intended. Ilia Jones belongs to me and Artie Gordon belongs to Sly. The Dark Revel is a concept from Riley. Rated PG for mild violence and language."
1) Identify the Author.
2) Identify the Owner.
3) Identify Non-Profit/Copyright. This keeps readers from thinking you're getting paid for publishing your story and it explains that you're not claiming copyright as your own.
4) Identify Original Material. This includes your characters and places and those created by others involved in the story.
5) Identify the Original Work of others. In this case, the Dark Revel is a concept created in a fan fiction by another author.
6) Identify the Rating. Just like a movie, and give a Reason.
7) If the work is Slash (Male/male or female/female) pairing, WARN THE READER. Sometimes a person just does NOT want to see one man kissing another man. Identify the characters in the pairing and rate it. Example:
Rated NC-17 for softcore material between Professor X/Magneto. ((Or graphic material or implied smut, whatever the case may be.))
If your characters are underage: Check your area for laws regarding the publishing of said work. It might be illegal for you to post a story with underaged NC-17 material because it could be construed as child pornography.
The disclaimer should be displayed at the top of the work, before the title.
14: How can I protect my work?
Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do aside from putting your name on something if it's published on-line. Make a backup copy of your story on a disk, as most Word files will keep a statistic of when a story was created and edited. This can help if someone steals your work or even publishes it for profit. Also, keep track of who knows when you wrote and uploaded the story so that they can be witness that you were the first creator.
If you see something of yours on another site that is archived (or sections have been posted), politely inform the owner of the site (usually there is an e-mail address listed) that the work is yours. If you don't mind them archiving/using it, inform the party to post information as to the owner (you) and if you want them to take it down, you have every right to politely ask them to do so.
If they refuse to take down the work or credit you for it, you can contact the domain that the pages are registered on.
15: Write! Write! Write!
Write what you know, what you don't know, and even bits of things that won't become anything. It's practice that finely hones writing skill over time.
16: How do I respond to feedback...especially if it's something I might not want to hear?
The best thing to say is, "Really? What makes you say that?" Take a deep breath, listen, and don't automatically assume it's an attack on your story or upon a character. Consider what they have to say (really consider it- don't block it out because you feel like it's sacrilege upon your work) and you'll wind up with a better product in the end.
Sometimes you're going to get people that don't like what you do no matter what you try and change about the story. Most of the time, what you write simply isn't in their artistic taste and isn't a reflection upon you as a person in their eyes.
If you get a person that thinks how you write your stories and your characters within those stories is the be all and end all of your ability as a player, then you should probably consider distancing yourself from that person. Their opinions aren't going to be conducive to your work, and if you're a gamer, it's going to make the gaming ground (tabletop, LARP, on-line) awkward.
In short, you can't please everybody. However, you can still please the rest with a nicely written and finely polished piece of work that you can be proud of.
17: How do I give effective feedback to someone else without sounding rude... especially if their work just sucks?
First off, don't abruptly say "That sucks!" (Would you want someone to say that to YOU?) Be constructive and be polite. Offer advice such as, "There are several typos and some of the sentences seem fragmented and choppy. One of the characters has eye color that has changed three times within two chapters and another character just doesn't seem to belong in the story at all."
Be nice, be concise, and help with the writing- don't attack the author or the work.
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