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The Rough Guide to Better Fanfic

So here’s the deal: I was reading fic recently and in my irritation at bad writing came up with the following list of four things that really annoy me. Watch in awe as I attempt to explain why, as well as offer potentially helpful exercises for you (and me) to train yourselves (and myself) out of these terrible habits. Hooray.

(Note that these are specifically targeted at fanfic authors, though some of them at least can apply in a more limited sense to writing in general. Maybe.)

#1. Show, Don’t Tell (Unless You Want To)

This is probably the biggest ‘rule’ in creative writing, and if you can master this one then you’ve pretty well got it made. In a nutshell, showing is about allowing your readers to experience a story from the headspace of your characters, rather than by being dictated to by an omnipotent god-figure (i.e. you). How to do this? Well, my advice is to simply not assume your readers are stupid (they might be, but let’s pretend they aren’t). Saying, Sigmund was scared. is assuming stupidity, it’s telling. When you’re showing, instead of describing the thing itself, you’re attempting to describe the surrounding phenomena which demonstrate the thing. Maybe Sigmund’s palms are sweaty, or he keeps trying to push his glasses up his nose, or is constantly trying to stand with his back to a wall. You don’t need to tell your audience directly that he’s scared because your readers can reasonably extrapolate out from his actions that he is.

Showing can be used for pretty much anything, but in (non gen) fanfic its primary function is to describe the emotive reactions of characters. Because by describing the character’s reaction you’re hoping to elicit empathy in your readers; hope that they will substitute themselves in place of your protagonist, mentally imagining themselves to be having the same reactions and therefore ‘feeling’ the emotions. You’re essentially taking advantage of the capacity for empathy here; humans have this weird brain-quirk where if we’re told about emotional stimuli happening to people we care for, our brains start behaving as if we ourselves were experiencing the same thing. Of course, making your readers care for your characters in the first place is another skill all together…

All that being said, there are situations were telling is better than showing. Tolkein was a great shower which has a habit of making his books tediously unreadable for some people, including yours truly. So there’s a bit of a balance here. If your characters walk into a room with yellow walls, it’s perfectly fine to say so if the yellow walls aren’t supposed to be interesting in and of themselves (but remember Chekhov’s Gun). If you’ve been doing a lot of showing, suddenly switching to a tell can also serve as a kind of literary slap to the face; this is the He was totally fucked. ’shock-sentence’.

So it’s a bit of a balance, the only way to learn is practice and experience.

Exercises

1. Re-read through a fic you connect with emotionally. Take notes about where the author is showing and where they are telling. How are they using each of these things for effect?
2. Think of a character and an emotion (e.g. Loki was angry.). Now write a drabble¹ describing that without actually ever explicitly stating what the emotion is supposed to be. Focus instead on your character’s reactions; thoughts, actions, dialogue. Get someone else to read it and guess the emotion; make sure they tell you why they came to this conclusion.
3. Pick a season. Now write another drabble, set in that season (with or without characters; up to you), without actually outright stating what season you’re writing for. Get your helpful friend to guess this one, too.

#2. Listen to Your Dialogue

Dialogue is the other big killer. The thing you have to remember here is that dialogue isn’t just narrative that you’ve assigned to a character. Dialogue is that character speaking, and a quintessential part of characterisation is getting a feel for your character’s ‘voice’; what they would and would not say. Showing rather than telling comes into play here, too. So, okay, you’ve been building the UST for the last n thousand words and finally, finally, you’re at a resolution. Character A and Character B are gazing wistfully into each others’ eyes and the sunset looks like a nice place for a ride and someone opens his mouth to speak and—

Stop.

Before you write anything, before anyone says anything, stop. Imagine that character in your head; if he or she is from a live action source, imagine the voice, too. Now, carefully imagine your character saying the lines you’ve written out loud. Does it ‘work’? Be honest here; can you honest-to-gods imagine your character saying your lines, in all seriousness, without cracking up?

The reason I’m using a romantic example here is because it’s the number one place for bad dialogue to creep in. Because, seriously, it’s nice that your characters are in love and so forth but unless it’s in character for them to be making flowery, vocal declarations of that fact for godssakes don’t have them doing it! The other major gotcha here is dialogue that’s thrown in to try and explain an action from the canon that the author doesn’t like by infodumping reasons the audience understands onto another character (”I never told you because…”). Be careful with that, too. Sure, resolve as many conflicts as you want, but in most cases having two characters just sit down and spew long sentences at each other is not the best way to do it.

Exercises

1. Take a character-defining block of dialogue from your book/movie/TV show/comic/whatever of choice. Strip out all narrative, visual and auditory clues and stage notes until you’re only reading the dialogue. How can you identify which character is saying what? Is there a certain way they speak? Certain things they avoid saying? Note your findings.
2. Take a fic you’ve written in the past and a couple of good friends. Assign your friends a character each and get them to read a segment of your story aloud to each other (you can read the narrative bits). Does it work or sound silly? Do they start cracking up unintentionally?
3. Pick two characters. Write a conversation between them using only dialogue; you can think the narrative to yourself, but don’t write it down. Get some friends to guess the characters you’ve used, and tell you why.

#3. Beware Unadulterated Wish Fulfillment

I know this seems an odd thing to say, since fanfic can pretty much be summed up as wish fulfillment, but there are wishes and there are wishes, if you get my drift.

Sure, it’s great that you want to write a different ending for the sixth episode of series three or think that character x and y should get together. There are probably other people out there who agree with you. But your story still needs to work as a story; you still need to pay attention to the canon, no matter how outrageous your idea. Remember also that while your readers might share the same overall idea as you, they’re going to vary in their opinions on how it should be executed; what you’re trying to do with your story is provide them with something that will make them believe that their desires are actually possible. I’ve always thought that the greatest praise a fanfic author can get is, This could be a real episode/issue/sequel! Because what that means is that you’ve not only managed to convey your ‘wish’ to the readers but have also managed to recreate the feel of the source material. So it’s a double whammy; they’re seeing their wishes fulfilled in a way that Could Be Real if it weren’t for network censors/practical concerns/the government/whatever. That’s what you’re aiming for.

Exercises

1. Re-read a fic whose idea you’ve liked, from an author who’s competent but whose execution has let you down. I’m sure you can think of one. Why didn’t you ‘connect’ like you wanted to?
2. Re-read a crackfic you’ve thought was done well. Why do you think it works?
3. Think of the crackiest plot you’ve wanted to see in your fandom; time travel, mpreg, gender-swap, weird non-human sexual habits, crack pairings, weirder things I can’t think of right now. Now write it. Seriously. Even if the end result is supposed to be humorous, pay attention to your characters and try to make the story work. Get feedback. Alternately, for even more of a challenge, try writing the most cliched plot in your chosen fandom. Again, take it seriously; try and produce the definitive story.

#4. You Don’t Need Character Assassination

Hate shrines. Death fics. Fics where the formerly sweet and loyal character cheats on the heroine with her two best friends and proceeds to murder her teammates, just so she can be with the Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, or the Stalker With A Crush, or her brother, or whomever else the fan prefers. They’re all over the place. People who know nothing about the show or even the genre have heard just how much of the fandom hates the rival love interest.

The writer often claims some other justification for treating the character this way. But it’s for a very clear reason. He or she dared to get in the way of their OTP.

Quoted From: Die For Our Ship @ TV Tropes

I don’t care how much you hate a character; either write them in character or don’t write them at all. No-one is impressed when you deliberately exaggerate a character’s bad points purely to turn her (and it’s almost always a her) into an object of ridicule for your fic.

The truth of the matter is that you simply don’t have to do this. Firstly because the character was obviously annoying enough to start with, since she’s managed to put you off-side. Note that I’m not really talking about villains here, but rather protagonist characters to whom you have taken a dislike, generally because they are interfering with your OTP in some way. Character assassination is the cheap and easy way of getting out of a canon love interest, but honestly it’s not a good way. Simply not mentioning the character at all is a better option, and one most of your readers are likely to forgive you for. If you absolutely feel you have to dissolve the canon relationship in-fic, then find a way to work that one believably and ave the melodrama for the canon. Relationships in the Really Real World dissolve in mundane and amicable ways all the time.

Again it boils down to a characterisation thing. Bad characterisation is bad characterisation, whether you like the character or not, and your readers will pick up on it.

Exercises

1. Pick a character you loathe from your fandom of choice. Write down all the reasons you hate him or her. Now, the hard part; sit down and write out a list of that character’s positive qualities. Anyone writing ‘none’ automatically fails at writing. If you really can’t think of any, look down your list of negative traits and see if any of these qualify as positive (is she clingy, or loyal?).
2. Someone out there likes your hated character. Find them and ask them why; don’t judge or argue with their response, just listen.
3. The fun part; write a short vignette from the point of view of your hated character, portraying them in a sympathetic (but in-character) light. Do detractors of the character like it in spite of themselves?

1. Strictly speaking, a drabble is a fic of exactly 100 words. But because the function here is more important than the form, don’t worry about going over or under for the purpose of this exercise. ^

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