Why it's easy for me to write fan-fiction · 9:59pm Mar 15th, 2015
I never intended to write only fan-fiction. Yet nearly 3 years after starting, I’ve written almost nothing else. Why?
Yesterday I had “Someone Else’s Story” from the musical Chess stuck in my head. It set me wondering, again, why the Russian threw the match at the end.
I thought it was ironic that the musical had the Bobby Fischer player playing psychological games, when Bobby Fischer was the only world champion who said he didn’t believe in psychology, but in good moves.
Which reminded me of a professor I TA’d complexity theory for, who once mentioned that people usually assumed he’d gotten into chess because of the Spassky / Fischer match, because he was just a little kid at the time, but in fact he was one of the commentators at the match because he was already an international grandmaster. He quit chess because he realized it wasn’t as interesting or as important as mathematics.
Which made me wonder whether there were any real geniuses in chess, or whether they all left the game when they realized it was too small a scope for their abilities.
Which made me wonder what would happen if someone on the level of John von Neumann played professional chess. Would they get so bored that they would make crazy moves just for fun? I imagined a player at a world championship match amusing himself by looking for the worst-looking moves he could make and still win the game. I wondered what the other player would think, seeing the world champion make an obviously bad move.
Then some ratchet in a corner of my mind snapped into place. Hah! Twilight would do that!
So I wrote a little story.
I was thinking on and off about chess for maybe half an hour, until I happened to run across something relevant to an MLP character. Probably lots of other things I thought about would make stories for some other characters, but they hadn’t taken up residence in my brain.
Sometimes I set out to write a specific thing--a Holmes/MLP crossover, a story about a silly black-and-red alicorn picture, something for a write-off prompt--but very often one of the ponies in my head snatches at something drifting past at random and says, Me! This is a story about me!
So how do you write when you don’t have characters already living in your head, on the lookout for story ideas about them?
...I hope one of you knows, ‘cuz I don’t.
I've always just imagined how a type of character might react to a particular thing, and formed the story around that. Sometimes it's easier when you've already got the character in your head, because then you can think about how they'd see it from the moment of inspiration. Other times, the story itself dictates the characters who have to be involved; in that case, the plot comes first and the characters are made to fit the roles needed for the story.
Whatever the case, I've never lacked for inspiration when it comes to writing. I guess I'm just lucky like that.
I tend to do things I like, to death. I like ponies. Therefore, at present, I write ponies.
I could write non-pony stuff. I would try to do it for a living if I felt so inclined. At one point I was considering the possibility, but I'd rather limit myself to nonfiction works for the time being (outside of fandom).
Poni has a huge audience and a rich and complex canon and fanon, and the characters are complicated and fun and lovable. It's hard to resist writing pony fanfiction. I have a lot of things I want to say, but I think people in this fandom would be most likely to appreciate most of them, so it's a good place to express them. If I ever get Open Pony to a point that I'm ready to move it here, I'll be able to see just how well some of my personal messages can line up with this fandom. I'm betting: well.
Pretty much worldbuilding.
All characters are derivative. All settings are derivative. Because most imagination runs on inspiration. Some imagination is truly spontaneous, but never to the degree to create something complete. The future is made of the past, after all. That is why differences stand out to us more than similarities. Because differences are small things that make one unique and the truth is that everything has far more in common than these differences.
If you want to write original fiction, embrace the derivative, write it OOC, and create a new recipe by blending in those original spices.
Do realize that some of the stories you and many other authors have written are only fanfiction in the tangental sense that they have arbitrarily had some element of the IP they are based on stitched onto them. That they are so far detached from canon, a minor edit could fully qualify them as original.
Most fanfiction in most fandoms just tend to be written for that fandom because that is what was filling the author's head at the time and coloring all their inspiration. Like that saying about too many cooks and not enough weed or something.
It's a matter of finding new characters to be inspired by, one way or another.
EDIT: ...and now I've got "Someone Else's Story" stuck in my head, too.
Oh, wait, this begs a new response. Hold on.
Original characters and settings move into your head the same way. I imagine many of Banks' story ideas started off with idle thoughts of how a Culture AI or Special Circumstances agent would react to or think about something or other.
I think that's common to most authors who stick with a setting or set of characters for a while. Some ideas happen because the characters keep piping up about stuff the author saw, or the author habitually compares real world stuff with how it would be received in the setting.[1] It seems like authors who keep producing new settings and characters tend to come at it from a different direction--there is something they want to say or some situation they want to see happen, and then they build the setting and characters to specifically suit that goal.[2]
You can come back to the same setting or characters again and again using method two, you just have to have a deft touch to keep from breaking them, and the longer they live in your head, the more often you'll find yourself in a method one situation.
[1] HiEs, then, are completely natural--they're just the clumsiest fumbling at that kind of comparison. When this approach fails, it's because the author has not managed to say anything or draw any kind of comparison or juxtaposition or whatever that's interesting.
[2] Which is what's happening when someone bends characters all out of shape to make a plot run. This approach fails by either a) deciding to write about a situation or event without first figuring out why anyone should care about it, or b) ham-fistedly beating the characters and setting into shape to fit the preconceived plot.
2880820 What is Open Pony?
2880953
It's the pony story I conceived as a graphic novel which I am considering bringing to fimfiction instead of rebooting it on tumblr. I'm not sure I can justify it though, seeing as the imagery is such a key part of the story. In any event, it's a story I want to tell, and it should be fun when I get around to it.
For me:
I've got three big globular structures rolling around in my brain, one with semi-fleshed-out characters, one with possible settings, and one with partial plot outlines. Every once in a while, the globs will smack into each other, and I'll say to myself, "Hey, here's a person in a place with a problem I can maybe write about."
Mike
Continuing from my last comment:
Long before I actually wrote anything, my primary creative outlet was running games of Dungeons and Dragons for my peer group. Pre-printed adventures exist, of course, but most Non-Player Characters exist only as stat blocks until you give life to them. So I was listening to Chess, specifically "Nobody's Side," when I was seized with a sense of gravity and depth. It's not like constructing a scenario and saying "Ah! Twilight would do that!" It's more like getting a sense that "There is a character's story here, if only I can suss it out." So I went hunting through a few other CDs in my collection, trying to get a handle on the character that was using the music in order to take shape in my head, and I ended up creating one of my better and (I think) more endearing NPCs based on a series of inexplicable impulses in my gut.
The point is, I guess, is that when something seems important, when it stands out from the background noise, pay attention to it. It may be a unique character trait (like the odd style of chess-playing you mention above), it may be a skeleton of a plot (a feeling that this sequence of events should happen to someone you don't yet know) or it may be something as vague as experiencing that the the lyrics of a song having extra levels of gravity today that they usually don't. Sometimes you will follow this impulse to a pre-written character (either yours or someone else's) that you already know, but sometimes you follow this impulse to someone completely new. No joke: seventeen years ago I started writing prose because I saw a picture of a Dalmatian wearing a vampire costume on a novelty Halloween calendar. I could absolutely not explain why that picture was so much more important than all the others in that rack of novelty calendars, but I knew it was, somehow; and that was the seed of my very first prose protagonist.
Back when I was a game programmer, I had to build a Sudoku game that would generate a completely random puzzle whenever the player wanted. How do you get a computer to generate a Sudoku Puzzle? First, you write a program that solves an incomplete Sudoku puzzle through brute force calculation.
Then tell the computer to solve a blank page.
Beautiful, isn't it? For me, making "original" characters is kind of like that: I think of the solution first, and the problem second. Decide what kind of story you want to tell. What kind of emotions or relationships or challenges you want to depict. Then build the character(s) in whatever way best serve the needs of the story. You'll almost inevitably start with an archetype, trope, or cliche. Chip away at the parts you don't like, and slap some additional globs as needed.
My characters tend to grow wildly out of control for the first ten thousand words or so, and then solidify into shape. But I never lose sight of the key character traits that are essential to the progression of the story.
2880989 I think the larger lesson is that we should all listen to Chess. Also, now I have "Nobody's Side" stuck in my head, thanks.
2881059 Would you say that, with original fiction, you have to start writing without much inspiration before you can get inspiration?
I think that chess is, at this point, too dependent on memorization to really be that fun for a more creative-type genius, but someone who is very good at memorization will likely find it more interesting.
Incidentally, fun story:
Everyone knows that Gary Kasparov lost to Deep Blue.
Many people don't realize that this is pretty much why he lost to Deep Blue.
In his first game in the 1997 match, Deep Blue made a very strange move towards the end of the first game (which it lost). Kasparov was confused by the move - it didn't really make much sense, and Deep Blue resigned one move later. That night, Kasparov and one of his grandmaster friends puzzled over the move, and realized that the obvious move that Deep Blue had passed up on would have still lost Deep Blue the game pretty much no matter what in 20 moves or so. The problem is, the movie it made made literally no sense unless the computer somehow thought that making it would draw out the game even longer in hopes of Kasparov making a blunder.
As it turns out, the actual reason for the move was that the computer had found no good moves at all and, due to a very deep bit of underlying code which almost never activated, simply moved a piece at random. Kasparov had thought that the computer was smarter than it was, and it ended up psyching him out for the next game.
As far as writing goes...
I know my mind runs down these channels, but it also runs down a lot of other channels as well. I don't know, but I suspect that it is mostly just a matter of having a large number of possible channels for a story to flow down. Characters and settings are some examples, but I have other ideas as well which seem to come more-or-less out of nowhere - I don't know if I'm capturing them from the ether, or it is because I just constantly tell myself random stories in my head, or what.
Write about more interesting, handsome, and evil versions of yourself?
Have plot-first sorcery. I build characters and then scramble to find a plot to suit them.
2880989
Ah, Dungeons & Dragons (and other roleplaying games). They seem like such an excellent way to improve your character-building skills, but I've known people who have played those games for ages and yet still can't build characters well at all, while I've known others who made their first character and made a great one.
I've never been able to figure out why some folks grok the idea of playing a character so much better than others.
2881120
Impossible, on all counts. This is one of those thought experiments, right? A one hand clapping deal?
2881081
That's a question I've never actually thought about before. I'd have to say it's the opposite.
I do have a pair of original novels collecting dust on my hard drive. In both cases, the inspiration for the story itself came first. The main characters came to me soon afterwards. If you want to write a story about a knight who slays a dragon, you've already got two characters.
In my case, the primary characters started out as stereotypical cliches. I selected one major trait from each and inverted them completely. I spent a few days daydreaming out a window until the characters "felt right" to me. Only then did I start working on the nitty-gritty of world building and plotline.
By the time I actually sat down and started writing the dang thing, the characters already felt like real people waiting for me to discover their finer details: how they talk, their likes and dislikes, etc. But it was their interactions with each other that actually drove the story forward. I place a lot of emphasis on the importance of character relationships, rather than treating characters as isolated individuals.
I'm never completely certain whether I'm creating or discovering my characters. I'm pretty sure it's the former, but it feels more like the latter (if that makes any sense) because I've already put in the time to daydream about them. A writer's spouse needs to understand that when he's staring out a window, he is working.
One of these days, I will write a compelling story with no characters in it. Just descriptions of scenery, weather, props, and so on.
I will find a way.
2881242
The problem with building Player Characters for D&D and similar role-playing games is that many people aren't aiming to build great characters, they're aiming to build characters that are fun for them to play. It is rare that the two are one and the same.
We all have our own talents. The good thing about D&D / tabletop RPG means that, if your DM is doing it right, no one is excluded from the fun if they're not as good at "playing the character" as someone else.
*shrugs* You could probably express almost any story you want to tell through pony. It's the quickest way, certainly. And the public outlet is already there--just post it and it's immediately out for consumption.
But just because Twilight snatches it up doesn't mean you have to write it mlp. Try seeing what happens if you just sit on an idea for a while, even possibly a long while.
And hey, Fifty Shades of Grey started out as a Twilight fanfiction (the other Twilight, not ours).
2880960 Couldn't you write it as a regular story, but then have images that are integral to the plot to break things up?
2881510
That's the current plan, more or less. I need to start drawing again with my new tablet first, though.
2881386
You mean CiG's Lost Cities? Although I'd argue that, in that case, the scenery itself becomes a character.
Ponies get in your head. I live in constant terror of my tongue, so nearly have I come on occasion to saying "everypony" and other such variants out loud. I argue at length with Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia, and Princess Cadance about economics (Princess Luna is usually getting drunk and singing popular tunes off-key at me). Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack as I imagine them are strong moral guides. WWM6D is not a bad starting point at all.
Characters come. Why does the economics version of Twilight Sparkle have eight Sisters? Because that is the story that occurred to me to tell. The characters, then, are born in that moment, complete with their own different internal logics, as if they were gestating inside my brain for years, which is impossible.
I have never been able to explain how the words come. Some people do not seem to be able to come up with plots, characters, or even just the next sentence. Other people, like me, are constantly assaulted by new ideas. Ponies are ideas-magnets, allowing us to breathe while they bear the burden of our madness. Then the madness begins to infect them...Twilight is heir to the throne and wants more; Rarity has a parasprite and resolves to take over the world.
I guess the simplest answer is to start imagining characters then put them out on watch. If they're living in your head they had best pull some of the weight.
2881290
A less interesting, handsome, and evil version of oneself then. Can't have our characters be too shiny.
I wish I could get back to my webcomic, and my poetry, and the other original stories I always wanted to tell...
But we go on pretending
Stories like ours
Have happy endings.
I wrote a novel that started with a central idea, which led to a whole lot of world building, and finally some characters that grew out of the circumstances they're surrounded by and the story about them that I wished to tell.
I'm slowly starting another novel with a somewhat similar process, although I confess the spark of an idea in this case was the unique relationship between the two main characters
Ah, but that's exactly what someone who truly believed in manipulating psychology would say.
2881386 It's been done.
2881386
So, a view-from-the-window piece? You don't see anybody, you just see -- stuff happening. Trucks driving along, stopping here and there. Newspapers blow by. An ancient tree falls, and takes out a young one, and then nothing comes by for a while -- but there is a buzzing. A storm rolls in, and everything stops, for a while.
Ray Bradbury has something vaguely like what I'm picturing. An automated house post-atom war. It's in The Martian Chronicles, possibly elsewhere.
2907283
I remember reading that, way back in the day. I don't know if it counts, though.. the building itself was controlled by an AI, and he did good job of making it seem like a character. A very alien kind of character, which only added to the eerie mood.
Take heed! "Lost Cities" has been pointed out to me several times so far. If the first chapter is any indication, it is extraordinarily awesome.
Spoiler warning: It's awesome.
In Magic: the Gathering, at times, I will purposefully make bad plays, ranging from a goal that's rather secondary to diverting stupid amounts of resources to killing off a Planeswalker, to playing just really dumb, to making stupid (yet funny) comments irrelevant to the game. Why? Hilariously, it throws off opponents who try to "read" moves, predicting them and counter them. The other is to get the opponent to underestimate me. Y'know, psych 'em out, maybe make em do bad plays. Yeah, it's certainly an evil playstyle, but you already know that I'm evil, Bad. Bluffing and lying about the unknowns ain't cheating.
It all adds up to me being actually being more skilled and calculating at the game than I'm actually letting on. Totally catches guys by surprise.
Like, psychology totally is a part of tabletop gaming. It takes a really serious person to keep their cool, which is actually quite an effective counter and a good psychological play.
Plus someone's gotta talk about Lilliana Vess' well endowed bossom. Like, who else will?
Then again, people think I'm stupid and silly after the game. Oh well. Can't win over everybody.
Still a damn fun way to play.
3198811
Uh-huh.
I don't believe that's why you do it.
3198823
It's a time where I can let loose that inner psycho in me that I usually keep hidden and shackled away, harnessing it for more than, y'know, the sake of it. Letting out that inner Pinkie Pie, eh? It's just as fun, possibly more fun, than the actual game of Magic. It's a good form of release. A casual time to let loose. Unless it's a big tourn or something.
...Ok fine, I like throwing in a
Not so much nowadays. I'm getting too old 
bitlot of subtle flirting in there if they're hot guys3198881 Now there's an honest answer!
Don't pass up opportunities because you think you're too old now. You'll kick yourself for your stupidity when you're 40.
Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests adopting the Fifty Shades of Grey approach to writing original fiction. From "Cheat codes for writing":
And from "Intelligence via empathy and respect":
Do you think this would work? When you come across a story idea that fits one of the mane six (or whatever other character you have living in your head), you write it, then change the names and add some of the character backstory and world-building that is assumed by fanfiction, and submit it as an original piece (with a backup plan of publishing it as fanfiction if it is rejected by all professional publications)?
3310031 How many blogs does Eliezer have, anyway?
I've never done that. We've already seen instances where it worked, tho it will be obvious if your wizard is really Gandalf or your captain is really Kirk. I find pony stories unusually hard to make into non-pony stories, because the world is so different.
But I also just... wouldn't want to. When I wrote a Holmes x Trixie story, I wanted to share it with people who knew those characters. It wouldn't have been half as much fun to hide who they were.