[FONT="]I realize this thread is a bit different from others in this section. Trust me, this will not be the first time I have done things in my own delightful way. The whole point in my posting this is to try and help others in much the same way I have been helped. That said I want to cover the experiences that helped shape me as a writer and the lessons that I learned from them.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Writing fanfiction is how I learned to be an author. (Frightening as those words may be to some of you.) I think of myself as an advocate for fanfiction and fanfiction writers. I know it has a rather poor reputation, and honestly, perhaps ninety percent of the stories are deserving of it. But it’s the other ten percent that makes it worthwhile. There are a handful of real treasures to be found as well, that are every bit as entertaining as anything you will find from a trade publisher.[/FONT]
[FONT="]George R R Martin has stated his opinion multiple times that he loathes fanfiction and does not consider it real writing. As he usually puts it; ‘creating your own characters is a part of the writing process.’ I agree with him as far as that goes. The biggest single difference between fanfiction and original writing is the need to create your own characters and setting. Yet that doesn’t make the effort worthless. You can still learn about plot, pacing, dialogue, keeping characters consistent, foreshadowing, building tension, subplots, and everything else that is part of real writing. I think of it as riding a bike with training wheels. Yes, eventually those suckers have to come off, but it teaches you the basics and is a worthwhile part of learning.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I know that many writers here are always looking for feedback on their efforts. Well one of the easiest and surest ways to get that is to write something set in a world that is already well known and popular. If you make a serious effort you WILL get reviews and people WILL tell you what they think. Just understand that the readers can be very… expressive in their opinions. I have gotten everything from being told I was a genius to being told I should go die.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Some of the lessons were harsh but all of them were necessary, and ultimately beneficial.[/FONT]
[FONT="]It turns out I really can write. [/FONT][FONT="]For a very long time I thought I could write. I filled up notebooks with various stories. I poured all my creative energy and passion into those stories and can remember always thinking they were great.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Yet I didn’t dare show any of them to my friends of family for fear of having someone tell me they were all crap. That was more than my fragile ego could stand. So my notebooks stayed hidden and I cherished my secret hope that I could actually write, while dreading the possibility that I was just fooling myself.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Fanfiction gave me the opportunity to let people read my stories while still protecting my fragile ego.[/FONT]
[FONT="]While I have gotten more than my share of hate and flames, I have had people tell me they loved my stories and were waiting for an update. My words have made people laugh, cry, and get angry. Complete strangers have felt due to the words I’ve written. Even now that amazes me.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For someone who was always filled with self-doubt it is hard to explain what it meant when I posted a chapter to one of my stories and had fifty to a hundred reviews within a few hours. The first time one of my stories got a thousand reviews, two thousand reviews, a hundred thousand hits, five hundred thousand hits, a million I would feel just a little more confident and think, ‘yeah, maybe I really do have a little talent for this.’[/FONT]
[FONT="]More than anything else, that self-confidence was the most valuable part of writing fanfiction. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Writing is a skill like any other, you only improve through practice. [/FONT][FONT="]I wrote fanfiction for seven years and have over seventy seven stories posted, totaling over two point eight millionwords. Rereading my older stories I can see how I have improved over time. I have learned to battle my mortal enemy, the comma. I have developed characterization and learned how to pace myself and use foreshadowing. I have fought the tendency to use, ‘said’ with every single line of dialogue. I have tried to resist my urges to overpower my characters and my tendency to Gary Stu my main protagonist. Still working on that one.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Writing so many stories gave me the chance to see what worked and didn’t. It taught me some basic lessons about storytelling and let me slowly improve. I know there is still lots of room for improvement, but just writing as much as I did let me develop my own individual voice and style.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Constructive criticism and other points of view can actually be good things. [/FONT][FONT="]When I first began posting my stories online any review that even hinted there was something wrong seemed like a personal attack. Eventually I figured out that just because someone didn’t like my story didn’t mean that they were the devil incarnate. That is reserved for people who spam.[/FONT]
[FONT="]As an author you have complete understanding of the story and the characters. When they say or do something you know the exact meaning of it as well as the motivation behind it. By contrast the readers only know what you write, and what seems obvious to you may not be so to them. Reading negative reviews that actually explain what the person didn’t like can actually be a great tool in fixing problems you didn’t even realize were there.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Also, the reader may have a completely different perspective on something that you, as the author, haven’t even considered. You are not required to follow anyone’s suggestions or agree with them, but if you keep an open mind you might actually find a new and better path to take.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Not everyone loves you, deal with it. [/FONT][FONT="]This may have been the hardest lesson and the one that took the longest to learn. Nothing is universally loved. The things one group will love are loathed by another. EVERYTHING that is worth reading is guaranteed to offend someone. You need to realize that just because someone or some group hates something you have written does not mean it’s bad. You can’t try to ‘fix’ every scene so that no one is upset by it. When you do that all you are doing is stripping your story of everything unique in it. What you will have left is a bland, shapeless mess that neither offends nor excites.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Understand from the beginning that you cannot please everyone and shouldn’t even try. Even if some people think you are wrong it doesn’t mean that you are.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Write for yourself and not for others. [/FONT][FONT="]When I sit down at my keyboard and start tapping something out I never ask myself, ‘will people like this’? I ask myself, ‘what will make the story better’? I write stories that I enjoy. I never wonder about what the reaction will be and I certainly would never let that change the plot.[/FONT]
[FONT="]On fanfiction.net I am infamous for my cliffhangers, plot twists, and character deaths. I take a perverse pride in knowing that my readers never know how it will end or if their favorite character will make it through. People have given me tons of grief for deliberately ending a chapter on a cliff hanger. They will often be surprised when I send the plot careening in a completely unexpected direction. And many of them can’t believe the body count among the main characters.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Yet for me that was always the fun of writing fanfiction. Taking familiar characters and settings and then having brand new adventures with them! I loved the fact that when people read my stories they honestly didn’t know what was coming next. I love originality and just letting my imagination run wild. I gave the characters freedom of choice and let them do as they pleased. I also made them pay the consequences for it.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The way I write is by trying to bring the characters to life within my mind and letting them behave as if they were real people in a real world. I then try to make their actions as realistic as possible. I believe strongly that actions have consequences, and that ultimately you will reap what you sow. People can make mistakes and bad choices, when they do they should not be shielded from the results. The kind of story I hate most is a ‘Deus Ex Machina’. Where no matter how badly the characters have screwed up they will get a happy ending even if it takes divine intervention. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Some readers hate my style of writing. That’s fine. I’m not writing for them. I write for myself and for those who also enjoy my stories. You can’t worry about what others will like. All you can do is write something that you yourself find interesting and hope some folk will want to come along for the ride.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Steal as much as you can. [/FONT][FONT="]Now by this I obviously do not mean go out and plagiarize. What I mean is if you read a great line of dialogue or a wonderful scene or a memorable character feel free to use it. In my stories I have written lines taken from history, the Bible, movies, TV, and other books. I have scenes and plot twists from elsewhere and have written my own version of favorite characters. Raistlin, Lestat, Druscilla, Gandalf, and many others have been the inspiration for characters in my stories.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Anything you see or read that you enjoyed and will make your story better is fair game. Never think the need to be original trumps the need to be entertaining.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. [/FONT][FONT="]I once wrote a scene in one of my fanfiction stories that involved a judo match. It was a short scene in a long story and not particularly important. I researched judo online for all of ten minutes, wrote the scene, and moved on. Next day I got a review from someone who actually competed in judo. He went into tedious detail about how I got pretty much everything wrong and explained EXACTLY how I needed to rewrite the scene to get it accurate.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I didn’t bother.[/FONT]
[FONT="]If I were writing a text book or technical manual then getting the facts right would be paramount. When you are writing a fictional story what counts is whether or not it is entertaining. The judo match did what I wanted it to within the framework of my story, regardless of how inaccurate it might have been, so I let it be.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I know some writers want to get things as accurate as possible and will do tons of research. If that is their style then more power to them. [/FONT]
[FONT="]When the readers care you win. [/FONT][FONT="]To me the difference between a successful story and an unsuccessful one is simply this; do the readers care about the characters? It doesn’t matter whether they hate them or love them so long as they care and want to see what becomes of them.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I once received a two thousand word review about how much a reader loathed one of my villains. Someone actually took the time to write over two thousand words JUST to tell me how much they hated that character and how they wanted him to suffer.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Reading that made me very happy. Obviously I had succeeded in bringing that character to life for that reader. Ultimately I think that is what writing really is; bringing characters to life for the reader. You must make your characters real to yourself so they can become real to the reader.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Okay, I think that about covers what I learned from fanfiction. Next post I will actually get into my experiences self-publishing. [/FONT]
It brought back some good memories.
