Bradel Bookwork – So You Want to Write a Crossover · 4:45pm Nov 14th, 2015
About two days ago, the always-thoughtful Wanderer D posted a blog about world-merging in crossovers. I found the thing pretty interesting, and with my extensive experience writing high quality crossovers [1], I thought maybe I'd draw up some of my own thoughts on the same topic.
To get some structure up in here, let's view this discussion through the lens of an author looking to write a crossover. The first question you need to address is: what kind of crossover do you want to write? It seems to me that there are three general types of crossovers, so let's start with a bit of taxonomy. I'll give some examples of each type I distinguish, including one of my own stories (which are uniformly the weakest in their sets, but since y'all are probably following me, they may also be the ones you're most likely to have read).
α-Crossover
The type of crossover that takes the least work, α-crossovers intentionally make no effort to reconcile their crossed worlds. These tend to be absurdist comedies, and in fact I'm not sure you can really do anything but absurdist comedy with this type of crossover. (Note that I'm distinguishing here between crossovers that don't attempt to reconcile their worlds and crossovers that don't want to reconcile their worlds. The latter are α-crossovers. The former just tend to be bad crossovers.)
My Harshwhinnial by horizon
トワイライト・スパークル・シュッド・ハブ・ゴン・トゥー・ホグワーツ・インステッド by Sharp Spark
The Legend of Dash Ketchum by Bradel
β-Crossover
The most common type of crossover (at least on Fimfiction), β-crossovers take a character from one world and shove that character into another world. These tend to be light on world-reconciliation since single-character crossing can usually be accomplished by some simple applied phlebotinum. There's no reason they can't push the reconciliation harder, but doing so tends to move them toward the next category. Again, many of these stories will be comedies, but at their core they're just fish-out-of-water stories and have all the accompanying range of that class as long as the reader can suspend disbelief past the crossover point.
Order from Chaos by TwilightSnarkle
Riverdream at Sunset: a Manuscript by GroaningGreyAgony
The Mouse by Bradel
γ-Crossover
The most artistically interesting type of crossover, γ-crossovers try to legitimately reconcile the crossed worlds they're using. These are obviously much trickier to pull off, but they can be fascinating when done well. (On the other hand, they can be some of fanfiction's greatest train wrecks when not done well.) This is the type of crossover Wanderer D spent most of his blog talking about, and I'll do the same in a bit.
Fallout: Equestria by Kkat
The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments by Wanderer D
The Curious Incident of the (Robot) Dog in the Night-time by Bradel
Having laid out that division, then the next question is how you approach stories in these three categories. Obviously, you've got your basic story-creation rules, and they apply as much to crossovers as they do to any other story. The key to writing a solid crossover, I think, is to recognize what special challenges are created by the type of crossover you've chosen to write. Once you've identified those challenges, you can address them the same way you'd address any other critical story need like character development or world-building. And as with any other story, excelling in the face of those challenges will turn your story into something lasting and powerful for the reader.
Writing a good α-crossover just requires a talent for zany madcap humor and sufficiently discordant crossed worlds to make the exercise amusing. On the other hand, it's something of an acquired taste, even when done well—discerning readers will probably frown on you for even trying it. Recognize that you're trying to write "Mistakes Into Miracles" and just run with it. So, okay, this is probably never going to be lasting or powerful no matter what you do.
Writing a good β-crossover takes a keen sense of characterization on the part of your insert character and a keen sense of worldbuilding on the part of your base world. A lot of Wanderer D's points about writing good crossover characters applies here. Depending on how you want to treat your crossover character, this can play a couple different ways. Keep in mind, though, that for a crossover like any other type of fiction, your primary goals include entertaining your reader and allowing your reader to suspend disbelief.
1) Your insert character is a new arrival to your base world:
In this case, you're interested in how your insert character will react to salient points in your base world. Sorting this out requires you to pin down your character's beliefs and motivations, and then to figure out what parts of your world the character will be most affected by. Suspending disbelief with this kind of story rests less on the joining phlebotinum and more on the interplay between character and world. If you can make the points of conflict between character and world believable, that'll carry a lot of the story.
2) Your insert character grew up in your base world:
This is the situation Wanderer D spends most of his time discussing in his blog, and I think it's worth pointing you guys over there again. If your character grows up in another world, their beliefs and motivations are going to change a lot based on what the world has already subjected them to. You're not going to have access to the same character/world conflict points you can use above; a story built like this will tend to be more of a conventional story. You don't want to lose too much of your insert character's original personality, though, or you lose the whole point of doing a crossover. You want to focus on how the unusual traits of your insert character, the remaining things that make them distinct and set them apart from your base world, change the way they approach the sorts of problems your base world throws at them.
Last up, writing a good γ-crossover is a serious exercise in worldbuilding. Primary goals remain the same here as above, and as for most serious writing: keep your readers engaged, and make sure they're willing to suspend their disbelief. It's possible to see the issues here through the same lens as the β-crossover—namely "newly joined worlds" and "always joined worlds"—but I think we can get a bit more mileage by twisting that division a bit. Instead let's think about:
1) One of your worlds exists within the other:
This is much the easier route in writing a full-scale crossover. The idea here is analogous to creating a frame story to contain a smaller story. In fact, that's often how these sorts of stories play out. Wanderer D's "Sweetie Chronicles" involves Sweetie bouncing between self-contained fanfiction story-worlds. Her story exists as an overarching and self-governing narrative, but the stories she visits are woven into that narrative through mechanisms that Wanderer D takes the time to establish for the reader. My own "Curious Incident" places Equestria inside the larger framework of Iain M. Banks's Culture stories and repurposes two background characters as links between the two. In "Sweetie Chronicles", the individual story worlds are blissfully unaware of Sweetie until confronted with her presence. In "Curious Incident", Ditzy and Lyra do everything in their power to make sure nopony is aware that there's an outside context to some of the problems they encounter. The framing structure allows you to bridge two worlds without having to do a whole lot of work on direct interplay.
2) Your worlds need to be blended:
In pony fiction, "Fallout: Equestria" is the ur-example of this type of story. Kkat creates a story that justifies how the world can be both Equestria and the Fallout setting simultaneously, taking an evolutionary approach to the reconciliation. This requires a lot of work linking elements from each—thinking through key features of both worlds and seeing how to combine them or transition between them. On the surface, there's not much similarity between Equestria and the Wasteland—but if you put in the work, bridging the two is completely doable. While Littlepip has her own story here, the separate story of how these two worlds link up is a critical driver of the success and popularity of "Fallout: Equestria". The lesson? A blended world story should seek to do more than just link up two worlds; it should strive to make the blending of those worlds so compelling that readers are constantly on the edge of their seats, waiting for the author's next chunk of worldbuilidng to drop.
So if you're thinking of writing a crossover, my advice is this: figure out what type of story you want to write, identify the main challenges that story is going to face in crossing worlds, target those points as you write to shore up the foundation of your work, and finally build on that reinforced foundation until you've got something new and special.
[1] Well, to be fair, there was actually a good one. Even if everyone assumed it was going to be a crossover with the Autism book. Even though I was referencing Arthur Conan Doyle instead. In a story that had absolutely nothing to do with either of them.
I like your categories... honestly, writing crossovers is a bit of art, a bit of science and a bit of established tropes, if you want to do it correctly, but the main problem a lot of people have is just doing the first thing you mentioned: Sitting down and figuring out what type of story they want to write.
In a way, I have to do that every single chapter of TSC... sit down, figure out the meta-influence, what I want Sweetie (and the readers) to get from it, and then sitting down with the other author, and figuring out not only how we can do that, but also what they want to get out of it, be it exploration of a character, showing off more of their world, etc.
Thank you for sharing this! I'm going to probably rework my Writing Guides blog list, so I'll link this in there for sure!
Definitely good stuff here, Bradel. I like your classification of crossovers, too.
I've begun sending people to this essay when they ask about writing crossovers.
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Two things:
1) That's a pretty considerable mark of approval, and I appreciate it! (Believe me, I've had to resist a small temptation to put a "Now Kkat-Approved!" sticker on this blogpost.)
2) It turns out I've got a question that I have a sneaking suspicion you might be able to help me with. I've never actually played any of the Fallout games, but I started looking into them recently and they look pretty darn cool—I've always had a penchant for post-apocalyptic fiction. I never know where to start with any of these long-running AAA game series, though. If I wanted to play Fallout (and it happens to be on sale through HumbleBundle right now, so it's very tempting), would I want to start at the beginning, or would any of the games be equally good to pick up, or is this not a question you think you'd be much help in answering?
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That would depend on what you are looking for out of the game. The first two games, Fallout and Fallout 2, were amazing for their time. Their storylines are still brilliant, with Fallout 2 being the star of the series for both storyline and roleplaying options. The later games were weaker in both regards, but made up for it by giving us better worlds to play in and greater immersion. These early games also allowed you to gather a party together (with the characters occasionally talking to each other similar to the Dragon Age games). If you are most interested in the stories that these games tell, I recommend at least trying one or both of these.
Starting with Fallout 3, the games changed from isometric games with confined map locations to first person shooters in sprawling sandbox environments. (The open sandbox in Fallout 3 was just awesome.) Fallout: New Vegas arguably offered the best compromise, giving the strongest storyline and best roleplaying dialogue choices of the latter three games, but sadly giving us the most confining and least interesting of the sandboxes, and giving us the laziest blank-slate of a character. (See this video for what I mean. Also, see that video because it is amazing. Every writer should see that video.) If you are interested in exploration and environment, I would start with one of these.
Personally, I have a hard time with the outdated graphics and user interface of the first two games, with the original Fallout being unplayable for me because of how limited and clunky the mechanics are. Fallout 4 is the newest game and is mechanically the best of the lot. The sandbox is superbly solid. I cannot speak for the quality of the story as I am still playing through it, but it has been enjoyable so far. The roleplay options available through dialogue, however, are very meh. And compared to what previous games offered, that's a tragedy.
Some of that meh can be alleviated with the right mod, which brings us to a final major consideration: the latter three games have massive modding communities that you can take advantage of, allowing you to tweak and tailor your games, and adding a ton of replay potential. Notably, several of the biggest improvements introduced in Fallout 4 were originally seen as mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout: NV, including the ability to build and defend settlements in the wasteland. IMHO, that kind of actively working to rebuild civilization is a beautiful addition to the post-apocalyptic setting. (On the other hoof, Fallout 2 does have a mod to let you play as Littlepip.)