any advice for someone who might be considering starting to write obx fanfiction?
take your time! there’s no deadlines, it’s not an important assignment worth half your grade — so just take it slow and find your style!
and (this applies to any thing, really) something that helps make it more immersive is rewatching the show and kind of looking at the characters from a studious stand point.
what makes fanfics better imo is if you can fully picture the character saying that, and get dialect correct.
of course it isn’t necessary, but something i’ve always gotten feedback on is how accurate my character are presented.
with rafe i do his speech quirk : “I-I think we should — uhm…I think we should kill them all.” “‘cause — ‘cause what you do, sarah, affects me. okay? you don’t…you don’t think of that, do you?”
this i use most with season one/two rafe because he’s more erratic, jumbled, and scattered with his sentences as he’s strung out on coke most of the time.
he repeats the last part he said, pauses a little, and uses ‘uh’ a lot. i highlight those pauses and erraticism with … and —.
with season four, i tend to write him a lot smoother with his words and sentences, since his mind is less foggy because he is now sober, so his sentences come out easier. he still pauses, but it’s not so much as finding the next words, but to me seems more ‘i’m making emphasis’.
“and never came back…I didn’t forget that. see ya’ in traffic, slick.” “well…you screwed me, and then you lost my money to those mercenaries…alright? so now you’re gonna be my bitch.”
with jj he doesn’t have many speaking ‘quirks’, but since he’s on the cut and a little more southern than rafe (though, rafe does use ‘em instead of them, often doesn’t emphasise the ‘g’ in words. ie: listenin’, talkin’.)
he tends to not use the ‘g’ as well, along with other letters: “kinda hard to not have hard feelin’s ‘bout that.” “hold up — you’re mackin’ sarah cameron?”
other than that, jj doesn’t have many dialogue quirks. don’t over use the ‘ too much but just enough that you can get the southern twang to his accent down.
he’s also very clumsy in his words in a sort of silly, witty dude way, which i tend to include. also very cocky at times. same with rafe.
of course, you don’t have to make it so technical and i’m sure this is sounding complicated, but i find that using those sort of mannerisms and dialect really helps my readers immerse themselves in my fics.
don’t publish anything until you’re sure you like it, even if it’s a ‘eehhhhh i guess this is okay’ like it. half my most popular works are my ‘ehhhhh this is okay’s.
there’s no rush, understand your style, the formatting, the characters. keep trying and eventually you’ll get somewhere you like, and it’s all up from there :)
romaincrisis
snowghoul
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
