How to Write Fanfiction And Succeed in Life: Part I
The Rules on How to Write the Best Damned Fic Fandom Has Ever Seen and Thereby Win at Life
Gather, friends, for I have words for you regarding how to write fanfiction. This is something that’s been on my heart for a while because I believe in the power of fanfiction (and it’s bloody powerful make no mistake). More than once it’s saved my mental health and brought me invaluable friends and taught me invaluable lessons that I’m using right now to forge my path in life.
And I believe fanfiction can do that for you too if you use it right.
So here’s how.
Write
Simple. Clean. Easy. Write. I don’t care if you’ve never written before, if you think you’re bad at it (plot twist: we’re all bad down here) whatever. Kill your excuses. Write. However you write, write. Write whatever makes you happy, or what you think will make you happy. Write your obscure crossover rarepair or toss your hat into the ring of literally hundreds of thousands of Harry Potter fanfiction. You aren’t in this game for clicks or big name fan status. You’re here to write. So do it. And keep doing it. You will get better. That’s not wishful thinking, it’s literal statistical fact. It’s inevitable. Write.
DON’T LOOK AT THE NUMBERS
I’ve been ficcing since I was 16. The first story I ever wrote was an Inuyasha / Queer Eye for the Straight Guy crossover (which should provide a good enough clue as to how old I am.) I remember running home from school the day I posted it to check if I had a comment.
Nada.
Sixteen year old me was crushed. I deleted the fic (thank God) and never wrote another Inuyasha fic again. (THANK GOD!)
Back then, fanfiction.net and LiveJournal kept track of your comments and that was it. Now with Archive of Our Own (AO3.org) and wattpad (what do y’all be doing over on wattpad? I hear odd things.) You get stats like hits, kudos, subscriptions, comments. A plethora of data.
IGNORE IT!
Looking at the numbers is an exercise in self-defeat because it’ll never be enough. Focus instead on your content, on engaging the readers you do have. Do that, and they’ll come back and beg for more — sometimes violently. Back then, writers used to have role play sessions blocked off before and after the fic between the writer and their characters. Like a pre and post game show where the characters shook their fists at the angry gods who wrote them into such horrible situations. They were supposed to draw you in and entice you to comment and it worked. Do that.
NEVER COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER WRITERS!
Going hand in hand with never looking at the numbers, never look at another writer and go ‘I’ll never be as good.’
A good portion of the time you don’t even want to be, especially if you’re comparing yourself to the BNF (big name fan) in your corner of fandom. Most of the time, they’re not that great either, they just won the popularity lottery. In fandom you have successful fics that aren’t the best and obscure little known fics that are works of art. Do you, improve you, and you’ll be just fine.
Read and connect with fellow writers.
Build your people. Some of my best friends I’ve made through fanfiction and the fandoms attached, worth more to me than any comment or kudo I could ever receive. They’re your betas, your soundboards, your storyboards, your best supporter, and your best critic — because you yourself are already your worst one. It’s difficult and not everyone in fandom is your friend (for reasons we’ll discuss later) but when you find a good ‘un, it’s lit.
Give credit when credit is due.
This is tricky. Fandom and fanfiction is like the Wild West, there’s no oversight, no supreme governing body of Fan Works that monitors what writers do and keeps them in line. All’s fair, then, in love and war and plagiarism. Besides, we’re all making derivative work based on intellectual properties that are not ours. So when someone makes a derivative work of a derivative work is anyone really in the wrong?
Yes and no. Which is why this and all the other ‘rules’ I have here, like the pirate’s code, are more guidelines than rules. To be used or ignored at your discretion. This one is designed to keep your name and business drama free and out of the fandom wank communities. (Not porn, but please click with care.)
If you see something, read something, if something from someone else lights the spark of inspiration in you, wonderful. Use it. But try to at least mention from where or whom you got it. And I’m not talking general ideas or tropes, but specific idiosyncratic elements. Writers talk to each other, they find out, and writers are petty. Fandom drama is the worst and can be avoided with something as simple as ‘I read x fic and liked it so much I wrote y’. That’s easy and costs you nothing. Nobody’s making any money off this anyway. ‘Cept Stephanie Meyer, but that’s another story.
YKINMKATOBFTLOGTA
Your Kink is Not My Kink and That’s Okay But For The Love of God Tag Appropriately
The more fandom is the same with its ship wars and popular tropes that never die (High School AU I’m looking at YOU), the more it changes to better reflect the times. In my early days of fic, you tagged questionable stuff at your discretion or didn’t and suffered no social consequences for either choice. Now, it is common courtesy (unless, again, you wanna end up on a wank comm) that you tag everything and provide appropriate content warnings. It’s de rigueur now. Do it. Don’t be an ass.
Along with that though, don’t get upset in someone’s comments because you don’t like their ship/kink. If that kind of stuff isn’t your thing, keep it moving, and let folks fic in peace. That being said, if you’re really really out there with Questionable Content, kink memes (this is porn, click with care.) exist for a reason. Literotica exists for a reason (again, porn, care, clicking.) Put that there.
And I say all this to make my next point:
Keep Fanfiction Safe For Everyone.
Fandom is where we go to revel in the things we love. Fanfiction is what we write to express our love, work through hardships, have a bit of fun in a world that consistently proves it is unfun. It’s a way we discover ourselves, and love ourselves when we feel no one else does.
But not every way we choose to write will jibe with someone else. That’s fine. But having creative differences is one thing, promoting active harm is another. And sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish the two so
LISTEN!
Listen to your fellow writers, step outside yourself, and extend your empathy to your peers.
If a writer of color says it is harmful to describe characters of color with food descriptors, LISTEN!
If a writer of color says it’s harmful to write a fic where a prominent black character is raped for no other reason than to be ‘taken down a peg’ (and it’s not a kink fic): LISTEN!!
If a gay writer says it’s harmful to straight ship a gay character: LISTEN!!!
The mere act of criticism is NOT censorship, it’s not telling you what you can or cannot write, but it is informing you that what you have written is harmful, for a number of reasons to a number of people. You can avoid heartache and headache if you
- Tag properly
- Resist ship/kinkshaming
And above all, if you wind up in error:
LIS 👏TEN 👏
And you might learn something about your world and yourself.
By the way, don’t mistake this as an attempt to sanitize fanfiction. Hell no. Fanfiction is written by humans, and thus contains the same beauty and filth humanity does. The beauty should be praised, and the worst of the filth left ignored in the bottom of garbage where it belongs. All those examples above are real things that I personally experienced in fandom, and I choose to leave them in the trash with the people who chose not to listen.
Lastly:
WRITE WHAT YOU WANT!
Write whatcha wanna fam. I don’t care if it’s the mary sue-est, tropiest, self-insert-iest, second person, modern high school au-iest fic ever conceived.
WRITE IT.
You don’t have to deconstruct the coffee shop AU genre to get the clicks you think it’ll get you. Writing a simple self-insert, second person, prequel worked just fine for me. And I considered self-inserts anathema to fic but my heart just wouldn’t be denied. So I listened to it and that story is my most popular fic ever in 15 years of writing. Sixteen year old Inuyasha/reality TV crossover me would be thrilled. Is thrilled, because that girl is still me. I never grew out of it, and I’m glad I didn’t.
So write what your heart wants you to write, feed the plot bunny that’s been nibbling at your brain-stem the longest.
Do so aware of all of the above guidelines and your fanfiction will prosper. Do so aware of all of the above guidelines and your writing will prosper outside of fanfiction. Do so aware of all of the above guidelines and you will prosper because all these points really boil down to three universal tenants:
Do the work. Respect yourself. Respect each other.
It sounds absurdly cliche, but it works. There are no tricks or special skills. This is it.
So do the work, respect yourself, respect each other, and write the best damn fanficiton you know you can.
And when you’re done, send links. I’m in need of a good AU.
