14 Steps to Make your Fics Better
I love fanfiction. I love that it gives a person the ability to put their favorite celebrity into any situation and make them fall in love. I love that it has taught millions of people acceptance of straight/gay/lesbian..and so on, relationships. I love that it inspires 12-year-olds to write 80,000+ word fics that I could never have dreamed of writing at that age. I love that it inspires people to not only write but to paint, draw, create and explore other art forms. I have read a lot of fanfiction in my life, other then the 500+ fics on this site, I have read thousands not posted. With that there are fics daily that I can’t even read a paragraph into before I have to close it because they are so poorly written. So here is my list of things people need to learn not to do while writing fanfiction.
1. Grammar. This is the very first thing that will turn me away from a story. I admit it I am not a good writer at all. However, I spell check and I reread what I write before submitting. There are also betas that are more then willing to help you check over everything to make sure it is okay to post.
2. Paragraph positioning and sentence structure. This goes along with grammar but it needs its own category. When you have a character speaking using punctuation! Don’t just put the sentence on its own line, expecting the reader to know who the hell you are talking about. Write: Johnny said, “Turn of the light”. NOT THAT HARD. Please stop from doing this.
Turn of the light.
No you!
I asked you first.
~~~~~
I understand there are published authors who use funky paragraph styling, so go ahead and do it, if you are consistent and it makes sense to what you are writing. Please refrain from leaving large unnecessary spaces in between paragraphs.
3. Time lapse. Most people realize the passing of time. You do not have to write “time lapse” when you want to skip ahead to later in the characters day. So please stop writing: ~*~*~*~* TIME LAPSE~*~*~*~* cuz i feeel like it :)!
4. Over Descriptive, unnecessary descriptions. We have all heard of fanfiction green eyes, we all know it is a joke, now stop using it. Yes, descriptions are very important to setting the scene, describing the setting and character. However, you are writing FANfiction, about someone who already exists. The person reading it already knows who that person is. You do not have to describe what they are wearing in every single scene. Along these lines, if you want to call someone’s hair “majestic black as the night” go right ahead. But please refrain from writing three more descriptive sentences of the character’s hair following that line, then continue every time the character enters a scene. We all know you want to sound like well-written author but looking up different adjectives in the thesaurus is not the way to go about it.
5. Realism and story arc. I went to film school and there I learned about how to develop a story arc. My issue with most fics is they don’t have any. Some key factors to a good story arc are: open with setting the scene, introduce the characters. Set-up the main problem that will need to resolved by the end of the story. Now here is the fun part, give the characters hell. Make them cry, bleed, hurt, break their hearts, whatever needs to be done. In the middle of the story, give them some hope, make it all better, turn it around. Then make it all fall apart, to the low moment of the story. Where your character has no hope and is at their lowest possible point in the story. Then build that climax up, make your character fight back. After the pivotal moment, began the resolution, wrap everything up. This the classic three act structure used in almost every movie and story made. A good way to develop this is to write your story out into key points put them on flash cards and tape them up. When you write, fill in the gap to hit each of these points. Here is a link to the three act structure: http://www.elementsofcinema.com/screenwriting/3-act-structure.html
6. Bored stories, Crack fic! Not fic!. I know a lot of stories aren’t meant to be these long 100,000 word epics, just something you put up when your bored in school. If you are just writing and not following any kind of preconceived plan then that is fine. It helps the reader a lot of you write that in the description. It is always nice when I see a “just putting this up because I am bored, not to be taking serious”. When I am reading that I won’t take it serious and I will forgive mostly all of its mistakes. If you aren’t sure on what you are writing and it has a lot of “Then they go to the mall, then they come home”, you might be writing in the style of a not fic! or even a crack fic!, labeling it that will help the readers know where you are coming from.
7. Labeling. This one goes with the one from above, but please start labeling your stories. I hate searching for stories and can’t find them because they improperly labeled. Also, a lot of stories have triggering plots that aren’t safe for everyone, if you have a plot that is triggering please label it with Triggering, and what the subject is that is triggering.
8. Asking for comments. I hate this. I hate this so much with a passion, saying, “I won’t update this until I get 100 more comments” is fucking obnoxious. Asking for feedback is totally fine, so is asking for help on a plot or what not. But not posting a story because you want something superficial as a comment to satisfy your need for popularity. You should be posting because you want to, because you love your story and you want to share it, because you are proud of your work. Not because you want some false acknowledgement from readers that they like your story. Readers will come if you have a well-written story and it is labeled properly. There are ton of fanfiction posting tumblrs and sites, like mine, that will post it and get readers, don’t beg for them, it isn’t classy.
9. Sex ratio. Alright, if you haven’t been in a long term relationship, like you have put most of your characters in, you wouldn’t know much about this. But people do not have sex constantly everyday, all day. For one shot, this one can be excused. But for some 10,000+ word fics I want some story in there. Now don’t go to the extreme, going 30 chapters without the characters having any action is a little less then satisfying. There is a balance between sex and story that needs to be there for a good fic.
10. Anal Sex. I know that most of you have never had it, so writing about it is a bit hard. But please do your research. It HURTS if there is no preparation. Please stop having Character A plunging is “thick 10 inch hunk of meat” into Character B’s virgin unprepared asshole. Character B would bleed, maybe cry and probably stop having sex with Character A. Once again, I understand if it is written as porn to get people off, or if it fits the story arc, go a head, but please make it have a point.
11. Celebrity Kids. This is more of a pet peeve of mine. Please do not include your characters real life kids in the story. It is disrespectful. If you are writing a kidfic! just use different names.
12. Deleting fics. This is also a pet peeve of mine. There have been countless times when I search for a story and can’t find it because the author deleted it. We all have done some embarrassing things, but don’t delete it. There is a great chance someone has that fic bookmarked, and it is there favorite fic. If you need to delete because you are worried about people and jobs finding it, open a new account and post it under a different name.
13. Waking up. This is not always the case, but please be more creative then starting your story with your character waking up in the morning.
14. Lastly and most importantly. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, SEND, TWEET, REFERENCE ANY FANFICTIONS TO THE PERSON THEY ARE ABOUT. IT IS FUCKING CREEPY. The word is fanFICTION, it is not true. You writing your own fiction and using them as characters, no matter how close it is to cannon. Even with all the evidence you have that your characters are sleeping together in real life, it is never appropriate to send it to them. If it is true they do not need people harassing them about it, if not then they probably are embarrassed by it.
Thank you for reading my rant if you have made it this far. Continue writing, hopefully this was helpful.
