Fanfic 101: Planning Your Story

Welcome to my new hopefully ongoing blog series, Fanfic 101. I’ve been thinking for a while how I wanted to start this series off and have been going over numerous ideas. I finally decided to just go with the basics and treat this like I’m writing to someone who has never written a story of any kind before. As such, this first installment will focus on what I would advise a new writer to do when starting off. Keep in mind that not everything I write about in this series (aside from grammar rules) is something absolutely has to be done in order to write a story. A lot in this series may just be my opinion. However, I will try to put what I think is the best advice I can give and I really hope I can help. With that said, let’s get started. Class is in session.
Okay, so you want to write a story? Awesome! Welcome to the world of storytelling, I genuinely mean that. The world could always use more creative minds. However, before you grab that pencil, start typing on that keyboard, or whatever it is you use for writing stop and think for a moment. You can’t just charge into writing a story all willy nilly. That rarely works. Let’s stop and think for a moment. A good story takes time to write. Even a one-shot needs to have some thought put into it. So let’s consider a few questions before we begin.
First off what is your story about? Is it an adventure story to defeat an evil foe? Is it a tale of star crossed lovers finding romance? Is it just about characters being goofy and funny? You need to have an idea of what kind of story you want to tell. Don’t just start writing and hope it comes together. That might work out okay sometimes but I would argue it’s better to be methodical. Knowing what kind of story you want to tell will help you pick out setting, genre, characters, and the story’s pace. Just winging it and hoping for the best does what I believe in my opinion and experience to be the one crucial flaw of writing: keeping the writer out of the loop. If you as the story teller don’t know what’s going on, what chance does your reader have? You need to at least have some idea of what you want your story to be.
Second, what genre is my story? Genres are things like action, adventure, horror, etc. Picking a genre helps the writer keep the story in focus as well as letting the audience know what kind of story they’re in for. Make sure your story is actually in the genre you want to tell. Don’t tell your readers it’s an adventure and then give them no adventure. That’s misleading and annoying. Also, you don’t have limit yourself to picking just one genre. Pick however many you think are appropriate. Just remember that if you tell your reader a story will have a certain genre in it, you better make sure you deliver.
Thirdly, what is the setting? This refers to when and where the story takes place. A story can’t take place in nothingness. You need to know where your story is going to be. This is particularly important in a fanfic since you are basing your story off of someone else’s idea and the reader’s need to know at what point in the show, book, movie etc. your story will be in so they and you can apply the appropriate context. When is also just as important as where. Is it in the past, present, future? You need to use the setting to give as much of a visual picture to your reader as you can.
Fourth, what is the point of your story? No, really, what’s the point? Why should I read this? I find few things to be more frustrating than a story that wastes my time. I realize what a reader finds worth reading is up to their own discretion, but that’s only to a limited extent. Even if the reader might like the setting, genre, or premise of your story, if they feel like you are wasting their time, they will stop reading. Every story, even fun light-hearted tales, needs to have a point and a reason to exist. The reader should be left with something like a lesson or a certain feeling. If you can’t answer the question of “Why should they bother?” then you probably need to rethink your whole story.
Fifth and final question for now, does this story feel like the canon? You’re writing a fanfic. Much of the story you are telling is being based largely off someone else’s work. Your readers expect to have a story that feels like whatever it is based off of. This is probably the most crucial factor of writing a fanfic in my opinion. If it doesn’t feel like the source material, then it’s likely your reader won’t even give our story a passing glance. I get that some writers deliberately write a story that’s out of tone with the source material, but that kind of thing needs to handled carefully I think. If I can be blunt for a moment, I’d like to ask, if you’re not going to keep in tune with the source material, why not just write your own original story? And don’t take that as an insult. If anything, writing something completely new might actually give you more creative freedom. But getting back to the point. Be true to the source material.
Well, that’s my first installment. I want to point out that I don’t claim to have mastered these techniques I write about. I still struggle with these sometimes and need to learn to apply them. Don’t think that I’m somehow better than you. I’m not. I learned a lot of this through reading and writing fanfics for some time and I just want to pass on what I think might help. I hope this did help by the way. If you have any questions, critiques, or suggestions, I would love to hear them. Any tips we could all exchange with each other would go a long way into helping a lot of writers improve their craft.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Class dismissed.