Writing Fanfiction

[leekyle]

This thread contains writing advice on how to improve your fanfiction. Up front disclosure: I teach classical literature. What this means is that I find the typical fanfic to be so poorly written that I cannot tolerate even 500 words of it.

But fanfiction does not have to be this way! Unlike my English Department colleagues, I do not turn up my nose at this fascinating and thrilling genre. Quite the contrary. I believe fanfiction is the most important literary trend of our generation. That's why I would like to see it get better.

What the literary snobs fail to remember is that almost all the great stories are fanfiction. Do they think Homer thought up the Trojan War? Or that Sophocles created the story of Oedipus? Or that Shakespeare invented Macbeth? Wikipedia says that Star Trek fans invented fanfiction. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fanfiction has been around for so long that it's actually hard to find a pre-18th century author who writes an original story.

The recent surge in fanfiction shows that our culture is entering a new creative phase. Writers are taking the characters and worlds created by others (Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, anime) and expanding on those stories. Ironically, if history is any indicator it is the fanfiction based upon these foundational works that will actually stand the test of time. After all, no one knows who first thought up the story of Achilles' rage. Everyone knows about Homer.

My desire is to see fanfiction improve. I teach high school, not college. I write science fiction, not "literature." So I freely admit there are others who could give better advice. All the same, I have a horse in this race. Let Me In fanfiction is really good. But it could be so much more! I'd like to see it reach its full potential.

Four Unpleasant Facts Few Writers Want to Admit

1) I am not interesting. Sad but true. If I were story-worthy, I'd be writing autobiographies, not fiction. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that no one is interested in reading about me. And if I am not interesting, that means I should not write about myself. Unfortunately, there are lots of ways authors stick themselves into their stories, some obvious, some subtle. This is no way to write a great novel. Your goal is not to write about yourself; rather, your goal is to create characters way more interesting than you are. Admit it. Own it. A book about you is incapable of greatness, for the painful reason that you are not great.

2) I must be trained how to write. Musicians, athletes, doctors, plumbers - they're all willing to admit they need constant training from outside experts. They actively pursue instruction and advice. Yet few writers are willing to do the same. Somehow they think if they just read enough and write enough, their skills will mature into something amazing. I hate to say it, but you need to get over yourself. Writing is no different than any other skill: it can be learned from others. I'm not talking about getting a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa (supposedly the best writing school in the country; go figure). There's plenty of free advice online. Do you seek it out? Do you try to apply it? Pick ten random fanfics and observe the average length of the paragraphs. Right away you realize most writers are not making even the slightest effort to improve their skills. It may be objected that some of the greatest writers received no training whatsoever. Fair enough. You're not one of them. Neither am I. We need to make ourselves teachable.

3) I must read books I don't want to read. As you probably know, reading is the best way to improve your writing. But you can't read just anything and expect your skills to improve. I asked one fanfic author what strategy she pursues for improving her writing. She said that she reads fanfiction. I hate to break it to you, but you can read fanfiction every day for the rest of your life and not improve your writing in the slightest. You have to read stuff you don't want to read, works that will push you and challenge you and make you grow. I remember forcing myself to read Moby Dick and A Passage to India while working on my first novel. I did not want to read those books, but my writing improved for having read them. Think of this unpleasant task as the equivalent of weightlifting for athletes. Most athletes do not want to spend time in the gym pumping iron. They do it anyway, knowing it will make them better at the activity they really are interested in. The difference between you and an athlete: no coach is hovering over your shoulder, forcing you to read books you don't feel like reading. Does this mean you have to make yourself sit down and study Shakespeare? Yes, that's exactly what it means.

4) I must let an editor rip out my heart and stomp on it. You have to have an editor. You have to have an editor. It is just that simple. Your editor needs to possess a mastery of the English language. If you are writing fiction, he or she must also understand the art of story-telling. And your editor must be willing to enslave your ego and crucify it. You must let him do this. You must give him your dear, precious chapter or story or whatever it is, and you must smile politely while he cuts it to pieces. You must repeat this process over and over again, until your poor, precious pride lies naked and rotting in the sewer. The very best authors all have editors. You think you're so special, so different, because you write fanfiction? When I was writing my first novel (20 years ago!) I refused to let anyone edit it. It turned out crap (granted, it still would have been crap even if I had let someone edit it; most first novels are). A good editor is worth her weight in gold. A great editor is worth her weight in gold-pressed latinum. Every author needs an editor. Every author needs to bow down and do homage to his editor. Own it. Admit it. Repeat after me: I will never submit another chapter, story, or manuscript to any publisher (FanFiction.Net included), without having my editor first beat my ego to death with it.

More to follow. Happy writing!

[David Blue]

Bravo!

As it turns out, I've actually been hired by a friend to edit several of his books. Now another friend wants me to edit his novel. Some of the guidelines I'm so trying to instill...

Stop using the passive voice!
Cut down on the adjectives and adverbs!
Develop a rhythm with your sentences and paragraphs!

[leekyle]

The First Task in Storytelling

If you are telling a story, your first task is to make your reader care about your characters. It is easy to forget this. You have been thinking about your story for some time. By the time you start typing, in your mind the characters have become real people. You talk about them, you think about them, they matter to you. But to your reader, these characters are strangers. You have to get your reader to invest in these imaginary people. If you do not accomplish this primary task, nothing else you do will matter.

The great advantage of fanfiction is that this task has already been performed for you by somebody else. Your reader begins your story knowing the characters and caring about them (indeed, your reader is so invested in these fictional figures that he has sought out a fanfic about them). The author of fanfiction, then, commences his storytelling with what we can call the "Fanfiction Head Start." He can jump straight into his story, knowing that the characters already matter to his reader.

The author of an all-new novel, by contrast, begins with what we can call the "Original Story Fresh Start." This writer gets to build his world and his characters from scratch. He is not bound in any way by the creative decisions of those who have gone before him. But then he truly has to start from the beginning: before doing anything else, he must make his reader care about the people in his story.

What complicates this simplistic division between fanfiction and original fiction is that a lot of fanfiction is written "Out Of Character," or set in "Alternate Universes." For example, an author of a Harry Potter fanfic might decide to pair up Harry and Hermione. Or the writer might go for bigger changes, like having Harry join Voldemort, for example, or eliminating magic from the story entirely. What this creates in practice, then, is a spectrum of fanfiction, with stories at one end trying to be completely faithful to the original source material, and stories at the other end transforming characters and world so radically that nothing of the original but names remains.

To the extent that a fanfic is Out of Character (OOC), to that extent it moves away from the "Fanfiction Head Start" toward the "Original Story Fresh Start." In other words, an OOC fanfic cannot assume the reader knows the characters or cares about them. Instead, such a fanfic, just like an all-new story, must begin by convincing the reader to invest in the characters.

It seems to me that the majority of fanfiction is Out Of Character to one extent or another. Certainly many authors enjoy writing such stories, and many fans prefer them. But if you are going to write OOC, you have to understand that you are losing the "Fanfiction Head Start." You must perform the same task as any other author telling a story about new characters: you must make your reader care about them.

This is perhaps my biggest criticism of fanfiction from a storytelling perspective: authors jumping right into their story rather than convincing me to care about the people in their story. For example, imagine you are writing an OOC Let Me In fanfic novel. You cannot expect your reader to transfer his interest in the "real" Abby and Owen to the new Abby and Owen you have created. Instead you have to pretend that your reader has no prior exposure to these people or their backstory. Maybe your Abby and Owen are utterly fascinating characters, truly worthy of investing in. But you have to convince your reader of that. And you have to do it immediately.

Thus determining where your story lies on the Head Start - Fresh Start spectrum will greatly affect how you structure your book, especially its early chapters. Always imagine your reader asking, "Why should I care?" If you write In-Character, that question has already been answered by the original storyteller. If you write Out of Character, you have to answer that question yourself.

[David Blue]

I want to comment on a nuance or two here.

First, whether something is OOC may rest upon personal opinion. To use Buffy fanfic as an example--there's a faction of readers who view Riley as a typical sexist jock who had a temper tantrum because Buffy wasn't paying enough attention to him and left in a huff. Now, I claim that directly contradicts the character and story as presented on screen. Riley reacted to Buffy's refusal to allow him to be there for her during her emotional crisis. In other words, she was being emotionally distant. Likewise she showed an amazing lack of respect for his abilities in an area where he was in fact an expert. Methinks this reversal of gender roles--i.e. Buffy acting like the stereotypical 'guy'--was entirely deliberate. Others of course disagree.

Likewise all those Xena fics that show the two ladies in a BSDM relationship make little sense to me--because they show Xena as a top to Gabrielle's bottom. We don't fantasize about being ourselves. 'Twould go the other way round!

Another point is that defining OOC gets tricky when we're presented with a situation the original characters did not face, as (for example) with an AU. My long fanfic Never The Twain? essentially rests on one specific event going a different way than in the series--Willow failing to return Angel's soul at the end of the second season. I did my level best to keep everyone in character given the new set of circumstances (with what degree of success or failure remains open to debate).

But I also want to note you're making perhaps the most crucial difference between original fiction and fan fiction. As a writer myself, the effort of creating as well as introducing the whole situation looms as the most daunting initial challenge.

[leekyle]

Setting Goals for your Fanfiction

It helps to have a clear audience and a clear purpose in mind before you start writing. Who do you hope will read your story? What do you want these readers to get out of it? How are you going to define success?

Some goals are more ambitious than others. A simple goal is that you enjoy the writing process. This is a very attainable objective, as it requires no rewriting or outside input. You can also take pleasure in the act of writing even if the final product isn't that great. Perhaps the most difficult goal to achieve is creating a story that later generations will freely choose to read (rather than merely being forced to read it at school).

Your goals determine what kind of story you write. For example, let's say your objective is to write a popular novel. (I pick this as a possible goal because it is easily understood and easily measured.) Once you decide that popularity is your objective, you then research what makes large numbers of people invest in a story.

Study the 30 most popular movies of all time, and you immediately notice some very interesting trends:

1) All are G/PG/PG-13. Not a single one is R-rated.

2) All are aimed at children or teens (even Titanic and Inception, which played well to older teens).

3) All have a male lead (except maybe Titanic?), with a prominent supporting female (except maybe Lord of the Rings?).

4) 5 of the top 30 are animated; the rest contain major CGI/SFX.

5) The 25 live-action films all contain significant amounts of violence, but no gore.

6) None contain any sexual content, except (interestingly) the top two: Avatar and Titanic. Even these, however, keep it PG-13.

7) 29 out of 30 are science fiction or fantasy.

8) Most have relatively simple characters and plots; few ask the viewer to do any serious thinking (Dark Knight and Inception being the notable exceptions).

9) Most contain all three primary story archetypes (Quest, War, Romance), and in that descending order of importance (in most of these films, the Quest element is primary, followed by the War component, and finally by the Romance sub-plot).

So if you want to make an insanely popular movie, what should you probably do? The above list tells you.

I'm not saying popularity should be your goal. I'm simply saying that your goal should govern your writing. I happen to prefer writing deep, thought-provoking science fiction. There is a niche market for such stories (2001, Blade Runner, Solaris), but I have to acknowledge up front that make-you-think novels are never going to be best sellers. That's OK. My goal is not to be a super-popular author. My goal is to get my reader thinking.

I encourage you to make sure that what you're actually writing matches well with your actual goals. If not, you are going to be one seriously frustrated author.

[leekyle]

More on Fanfiction Goal-Setting

As mentioned in a previous post, you begin your novel with a great advantage: your reader already cares about the characters in your story. But this is not fanfiction's only advantage. Another plus you start with is an unusually clear understanding of who your target market is. It is fans of the original source material who will be reading your work. If you have a good picture in your mind of who these people are and what they are like, you will have a much better chance of achieving your goals.

If I were writing a HP fanfic, before I started I would note that the fandom seems to be divided into at least three distinct groups: readers who grew up with the series and are now adults, new child-age fans who have raced through all seven books in a single binge, and people who have seen the movies but never read the novels. Before beginning my fanfic I would probably decide which of these three groups I was interested in reaching, and write my story accordingly.

Let Me In has a much smaller fan base, and I've never read any articles about what LMI fans are like, so I'm really just guessing here. My impression is that most LMI fans are adults (it has always interested me that although Abby and Owen are twelve, the film does not seem to have a wide appeal to teens). Some LMI fans are really into horror movies; others adore LMI but do not normally watch similar movies. And based upon the quality of online comments, LMI fans may be a bit on the intellectual side. Put all this together and your reader is probably going to be an adult or older teen of above-average intelligence. The big division in the fandom may be between those who are regular consumers of horror stories and those who are not.

Once you've decided who you're writing for, you need to define success. The goals you choose can include both abstract ideals and concrete metrics.

Abstract Goals:
1) The characters become "real" to the reader
2) The resolution of the conflict leaves the reader feeling satisfied
3) The reader enjoys your story and is glad that he read it
4) Your story renews or "recreates" your reader, restoring his energy and spirit
5) Your story expands your reader's mind, helping him better understand himself and others
6) Your story touches your reader's heart, enabling him to love more sacrificially
7) The reader develops a greater appreciation for the original source material
8) The reader is inspired to write a story of his own
9) You enjoy the writing process
10) You improve your writing skills

Concrete Goals:
1) Lots of people read your story (FanFiction.Net tracks daily visitors, which is nice)
2) Positive online reviews (the more the merrier)
3) People talk about your characters and story-arc in casual conversation
4) People read your book a second time
5) Your book gets made into a movie
6) Fans make websites devoted to your book
7) Fans write fanfiction based upon your book
8) Your story receives formal awards
9) People read or watch the original source material because of your book
10) People dress up as your characters
11) Students write essays about your characters and story-arc
12) Other writers imitate you (and give you credit in the process)
13) People not yet born will grow up and read your story

What's nice is if you can use some of the concrete metrics to measure whether or not you are achieving your abstract goals. Let's say, for example, that a lot of your readers tend to go back and read your novel a second time. Does such behavior indicate that some of your abstract goals are being realized? If so, which ones?

It really helps to have goals! Would you rather have 50 people read your story once, or ten people read your story twice? Would you prefer 100 people read but not review, or a much smaller number read and write reviews as well? Do you want people talking about your story after they finish reading it? If so, what do you want them to be saying?

So many different kinds of stories, authors, and readers! What is it that you hope to accomplish?

[David Blue]

Lee, I honestly hardly think of some of these questions at all. My target audience is first and foremost me. While some efforts involve making sure my writing is palatable, even comprehensible to a wider readership, can't say I have ever really "aimed" my story for an audience save that of yours truly.

Yet I cannot deny much elbow grease does go into making sure others enjoy the experience of reading. Not sure if that is really what you're talking about.

[leekyle]

Basic Writing Tips

1) Show, Don't Tell. You could tell your reader, "Abby was a vampire." Yawn. Instead, show Abby eating the neighbors (crunch, gollum, crunch). Then let your reader reach his or her own conclusion concerning Abby's ontological status: "Hey, this chick's a vamp!"

grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/show-dont-tell.aspx
www.dailywritingtips.com/show-dont-tell/
www.sfwriter.com/ow04.htm
www.writing-world.com/basics/dawn02.shtml

This rule actually guides you toward much of the fun in creative writing. You're working on a new story. It includes a character named Joe. As you're developing Joe's personality, you decide that Joe is bitter. What are ten interesting ways you can show Joe is bitter? Suddenly you have ten cool events to work into your story. Why is Joe bitter? Suddenly you have an entire backstory. Great stuff! And you never even had to use the word "bitter."

2) Use Good Grammar. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling distract your reader, pulling him out of your story. This is the last thing in the world you want. Your goal is for your reader to make it through your entire story without ever once noticing the writing. In this sense excellent writing is like excellent special effects: you don't even realize it's there. Which is why the next tip says...

3) Don't Use Great Grammar. Perfect grammar can also distract your reader. "Who are you writing to?" can sometimes be better than "To whom are you writing?" This is one reason it really helps to know who your readers are. The greater their level of education, the fewer grammar mistakes you should commit. Whatever mistakes you do make should be intentional: "In this particular sentence, avoiding a split infinite would do more harm than good. So I'm going to make a mistake on purpose." All of this refers to narration, of course. With dialogue you go for realistic speech (although even then you don't make it too realistic, as excessive realism will also distract your reader). Keep the overall goal in mind: the reader should never notice the writer.

4) Say What You're Trying to Say. So often I observe a student struggling over a convoluted sentence. I ask her, "What are you trying to say?" She looks up from her paper and says it. I reply, "Then that's what you say." And she says, "Really? Oh." Don't make it harder than it has to be. You want to engage in clear, straightforward communication. To say exactly what you mean to say, what you want to say - the joy of words! Dump the flowery, complex, overly descriptive language. You're not writing poetry. You're telling a story. When all else fails, imagine you're narrating to a room full of 12-year-olds. Keep it simple. Say what you mean to say.

5) Only Books Can Do It! Movies are the defining story-telling medium of our age. Nevertheless, novels retain a critical advantage: they can enter into the heart and mind of the characters. Make the most of this special power! Let your reader hear what people are thinking. Let your reader feel what people are feeling. Take your audience deep into the characters. Movies show us amazing battles and settings and facial expressions. But as a novelist you can enter a place no movie has ever gone. Go there!

6) Random Stuff. Make your paragraphs shorter. This isn't an SAT essay you're writing. Shorten your paragraphs. Just a few sentences per paragraph often works best. You say this breaks all the rules? So what. This is creative writing. Modern readers hate long paragraphs. Keep a consistent POV throughout a section or chapter; no hopping between brains. Natural dialogue, please. It should sound like real people talking. Say it out loud if you have to. And it's awesome if every character has his or her own voice. Even a lot of famous books fail at this one, with all the characters sounding identical (i.e., like the author). Every word and phrase should matter. If a word does not change the direction, the meaning, the substance of what you are trying to say, delete it. Less is more.

Happy Writing!

[leekyle]

Identifying Great Stories

Now that the obligatory composition class mantras are out of the way, it's time to introduce a more interesting topic: how to make a great story. This subject is broader than writing, as a great story can be told through any medium (novel, short story, movie, television, theater, dance, song, and plain old-fashioned oral recitation).

Before discussing what attributes elevate a story to greatness, it would be useful to identify a body of "great stories" that we can analyze. The fastest way to do this is simply to pick the best-selling books and movies. This approach is useful, but limited, as some great stories do not become big hits (Let Me In), and some major money makers do not necessarily possess much in the way of story (Transformers).

So what I'd like to consider instead are the effects a great story has upon its hearers. If we can understand what a great story "does" to us, then perhaps we can reason backwards and make a list of the five or ten greatest stories we have ever been told.

How a Great Story Affects You

1) You internalize the characters and plot, such that these fictional people and events become real. You talk about the characters, wonder how they're doing - they've become a part of your life.

2) You reread the book, watch the movie again, attend additional performances of the play. Each time through you get more out of the story. The fact that all the "reveals" are known does not reduce your enjoyment. No matter how many times you read the book, you never get sick of it.

3) A great story is a major life event; you can remember where you were when you first read that book or saw that movie. If someone were making a timeline of your life, these stories would be included on that timeline as key events in your life.

4) A great story becomes a part of your identity. It matters to you so much, and is so integral to the essence of who you are, that a person cannot really know you unless he knows that story.

5) A great story changes you. It's like opening a door that can never be shut. After reading that book you cannot even remember what life was like before you read it. The story has expanded you, made you larger. Nothing will ever reduce you back to what you were.

6) A great story generates strong emotional and intellectual responses. It makes you feel deeply, often including unfamiliar or suppressed emotions. It also makes you smarter, enabling you to internalize concepts, challenge traditional paradigms, and organize old facts in new ways.

7) A great story bears fruit in your life. You have a better life as a result of hearing the story. You bear more fruit yourself.

8) A great story spurs follow-up activity. You illustrate the story, read sequels, engage in online discussion, learn about the author, pester others to read it, and write fanfiction.

9) You want to pass a great story on to later generations. You make sure your children and grandchildren read it, see it, etc. The story "lasting," becoming permanent, abiding as an essential element of our culture - this matters to you.

10) A great story "feeds" your soul, meeting a transcendent human need for truth, goodness, and beauty. It leaves you with a sense of satisfaction, completeness, and consummation. It's like you were empty; the story makes you full. It energizes, recreates, enlarges, enlivens. You invest time and money in the story, but it's a positive investment: you end up with more than you put into it.

Using the above criteria, I would identify the following as the greatest stories I have heard:
Childhood - Bridge to Terabithia, Wrinkle in Time, Star Wars, ET
Teen years - Dune, Lord of the Rings, Terminator 2, Die Hard, Aliens
Adult years - Watership Down, Till We Have Faces, Shakespeare, Leon:The Professional, Let Me In

How do great stories affect you? Based upon these effects, what are the ten greatest stories you have ever heard?

[David Blue]

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Anthem by Ayn Rand
The Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
Richard III and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
The Crystal Gryphon by Andre Norton
Equus by Peter Shaffer
The film (not book) of Five Little Pigs (an Hercule Poirot mystery)
The motion picture Let Me In
Two other motion pictures: Love Actually and Blade Runner
The play Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill
The musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood

[leekyle]

Qualities Often Found in Great Stories

Disclaimer: The following qualities need not all be present for your story to be great. Your story does not automatically become great just because it possesses all of the following qualities.

1) A great story has interesting characters with whom the reader identifies. This is the most important quality, of course. Some might even say this is the only quality that really matters. Your characters have to be story-worthy. As your reader gets to know them, he must be thrilled he is getting to know them. The characters must become real to the reader, as real as the people the reader lives and works with. The characters should be so outstanding, in fact, that you as the author "lose" possession: your reader internalizes the characters and makes them his own.

2) An engaging plot filled with conflict, the resolution of which leaves the reader feeling thoroughly satisfied. Of the traditional conflicts (man vs. God, man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. himself), man vs. himself seems to be the conflict that most often performs the heavy lifting. For example, in many great stories it is not really the hero's conflict with an external enemy that provides the heart of the story, but rather the hero's search for himself. The climax, regardless of whether it is happy or sad, must provide the reader with an existential sense of consummation. If you don't know this mystical feeling of rest, of propriety, of everything clicking just so, my guess is you have never heard a great story.

3) The story creates a whole new world, one that the reader loves exploring. This seems to be especially important to modern consumers, which might partly explain why the most popular stories of our time are fantasy and science fiction. If the world you create is engaging enough, it can make up for weaknesses in character or plot. Harry Potter, for example, marches its heroes through a rather pedestrian plot. But fans find the HP universe fascinating, which more than compensates for the generic Death Eaters.

4) The protagonist must change as the story progresses, and this change must be one that the reader himself would like to experience. I hate the word "journey," but I'm going to use it here because I can't think of a better term. The protagonist (and hopefully a few other characters as well) must experience a dramatic internal journey that takes him to a new place. He must grow, develop, stretch, mature, something. The reader must root for this change. He must long to see it happen, and rejoice when it does. The reader must feel the victory and achievement of the protagonist, internalizing it as his own.

5) A great story follows the archetypes, usually all three: Quest, War, Romance. The greatest stories tend to prioritize the Quest element, followed by the War component, with the Romance subplot coming in last in terms of emphasis. There are exceptions, of course. But the great stories seem to lean on the archetypes rather than trying to fight against them. Star Wars' opening confrontation: Princess Leia in white, evil Darth Vadar in black. This movie seizes the archetypes and puts them to work. Think of it as not trying to reinvent the wheel. A lot of storytellers have gone ahead of you. Their patterns are hardwired into your reader's brain. Why not simply make the most of it?

6) A great story is character-driven rather than author-driven. The characters should be so real that the author himself loses control of the story. As he writes he ceases to make decisions: the characters are making the decisions; the author is simply showing what the characters decide. Readers can tell, even if only at an unconscious level, who is calling the shots. Their interest in the characters is what motivates them to keep reading, not their interest in the author. Die as you write, that your characters might be that much more alive.

7) A great story only asks its reader to suspend disbelief one time. At the beginning of your story you present a fictional world to your reader. Your reader must pretend that this world actually exists, that the characters in it actually exist. Once your reader makes this decision, you must never make him revisit it. In other words, every event that happens in the story should fit logically in the world you have created. So if aliens land at the last moment, bearing a miracle cure to save your heroine from immenant death, that's fine - as long as such an event makes sense within the world you have been developing from the get-go. A great story never makes its reader go "bullsh-."

8) A great story affirms the existence of truth, goodness, and beauty. A great story affirms the infinite worth of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is something worth living for. There is something worth dying for. This imbues the protagonist's actions with eternal significance: his journey matters. I realize postmodern philosophy would disagree utterly with this point. But postmodernists write lousy stories. A story always asks its reader to affirm something. What you ask your reader to affirm should be worth that affirmation!

9) When a great story is heard for the first time, the hearers never notice the storytelling process. Rather they are swept away, lost in the alternate reality you have created. Analysis during later readings may uncover intricate planning and structure on your part - but these things are only discovered after the fact. The general idea is that nothing takes the reader out of the story. He never notices the author, or the book, or the words on the page. He has been transported to another time and place. It is magic. Don't let anything break the spell.

10) A great story has interesting good guys. I know I've already mentioned that the characters have to be engaging, but it bears repeating in a different way. There's an old saying that anyone can create an interesting bad guy, and there's a lot of truth to that statement. Can you make an interesting good guy? Can you make the good guys even more interesting than the bad guys (without making the bad guys one-dimensional)? This is incredibly hard to do, but it seems like all the great stories manage to pull it off. When asked who the most interesting character in the story is, the reader should answer without hesitation: the protagonist.

11) A great story does not advocate, at least not explicitly. The reader can tell if the storyteller has an axe to grind. Although an audience might in rare cases be willing to forgive this (Avatar), in most cases you'll ruin what might otherwise have been an enjoyable read. A great story can advocate implicitly. But it's difficult to do. The reader should definitely not notice that any such thing is happening. I think Homer might be putting in a subtle plug for a more advanced definition of heroism (I still haven't made up my mind). But if this plug is there, it's certainly not "in your face." It comes at you indirectly, gradually, as you meditate on the story. Do you have some pet peeve or darling issue? That's great. Save it for your blog.

12) A great story is not iconoclastic for the sake of being iconoclastic. You want to violate all of the above principles? That's fine. But you better have a compelling narrative reason for doing so. In other words, if you're just doing it to "show everyone" that a story doesn't have to follow the usual patterns, your readers are going to detect that chip on your shoulder a mile away. Iconoclasm for its own sake makes the story about you and your annoyance at the world being the way it is. This warning doesn't mean you can't go outside the box. Just realize, if you create a Neo-Nazi protagonist who hunts down Jews, and then demand that your reader identify with this character and root for his success, don't get all bent out of shape when people hate your story.

13) A great story avoids self-limiting characters and plots. When I played D&D in the 80's, a restriction was placed on non-human characters: they could only level up so far. If you picked such a race, you accepted that the character could only progress to a pre-defined limit. Certain media are also self-limiting. An artist can only do so much with crayon. A musician can only do so much with the recorder. The same is true in storytelling: you can only do so much with certain types of characters and plots. For example, I think monsters may be self-limiting characters (I haven't decided for sure). A monster by definition experiences no internal conflict, no remorse, no doubts, no second thoughts. There is only so much you can do with such a superficial creature. The general point is this: if you want to create a great story, start with raw material that can be fashioned into something great!

[leekyle]

Finding Inspiration

Perhaps you know what it feels like to be "with book, as a woman is with child." The story is right there, dominating your heart and mind. It has to be told. It will be told. What engenders this driving urge to tell a story?

I have found three things that tend to spark my creativity:
1) Rereading favorite books
2) Watching Shakespeare performances
3) Watching musicals, especially live on stage

The last of these is a bit of a puzzle to me, as I'm not really into musicals. Maybe it's just the combination of visuals and music. Maybe this combo sparks the brain in an unusual way.

Discover what inspires your creativity, and seek it out!

[leekyle]

Writing a story that impacts readers requires deep insight into the human condition. Your reader must come away from your story with a better understanding of humans in general and himself in particular.

This is the traditional reason for studying the humanities: such learning grants fundamental insight into the human condition, an insight that will transform your reader because it transforms you.

The humanities are grounded in three fields of knowledge: Greek classics, Bible, and Shakespeare. Read an author who is so close to being great, yet lacks some essential bit of insight that would raise him to this last level, and it is likely that the writer you are considering is deficient in his knowledge of Homer, Moses, or Lear.

If you want to write something great, you have to slog through thousands of hours of brutal input: Greek classics, Old and New Testament, and Shakespeare. These ancient writings must become a part of you. You must die before them. Your reader must recognize that you have put it this work.

Greatness comes at a price. Pay it.

[David Blue]

Everything worthwhile comes at a price.

[Tim B]

I see what you are saying about sources. Certainly originality did not become the be-all and end-all of fiction until around Dr. Johnson's time. ("How small a quantity of REAL FICTION there is in the world; and that the same images, with very little variation, have served all the authours who have ever written.")

But what used to be done with sources seems to be the opposite of what you mean by fanfiction. They took old stories and made them new; they took used-up plots and remade them; they took two-dimensional characters and gave them life. Fanfiction takes the same characters and the same universe and extends the plot in a different direction.

Today's fanfiction does not invent the story of Achilles' rage, but neither does it re-tell it—instead it invents one of his childhood romances. You talk about the test of time; a back-story will not last if it depends on foundational works to set the stage and introduce the characters. You give examples of fanfictions which became classics, but I note that each example is really an instance of an author taking an old plot and giving it a new medium.

Johnson said "no combination could be found and few sentiments that might not be traced up to Homer, Shakespeare, and Richardson". It's notable that his examples of true originality are the same as your examples of unoriginality. I think his definition of originality cuts closer to the quick.

For example, I've been reading Genesis and Paradise Lost at the same time, and separately Pandosto (Shakespeare's source for The Winter's Tale), and while the general plot structure may be the same in both pairs, the characters are certainly not true to the original, and neither is the setting. Can you give a single example of classical 'fanfiction' that is not OOC?





I also want to disagree with your first point. I think normal human lives are inherently interesting, if only we could momentarily step outside ourselves to report on them. Not the superficial events of our lives, but our thoughts and our reactions. There is nothing new under the sun, but everything is new to everyone—once.

Many great authors have let their lives into their books. To Kill a Mockingbird, Theophilus North, A Pilgrim's Regress, and Leaf by Niggle are examples from a few of my favorites. And in each of these, it is not the bare circumstances which are notable, but the manner in which they are worked into the story. Sienkiewicz said "A man who leaves memoirs, provided they be sincere, renders a service to the future, giving them not only a faithful picture of the times, but likewise human documents that can be relied upon."

However, I understand your warning against relying on your own experiences to supply your writing. Sienkiewicz continued "to one who thinks much and feels deeply, it often seems that he has only to put down his thoughts and feelings in order to produce something altogether out of the common; yet as soon as he sets to work he falls into a certain mannerism of style and common phraseology; his thoughts do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common, empty artificiality."

It does not take a great man to have experiences and feelings which are worth reading about. It does take a great writer to be able to objectively inspect his feelings and experiences and cull out the unworthy material.