Writing Fanfiction
 

(This might belong in General; I'm not sure.)

If you'll look down at my signature, you'll see the second link I have posted is to my fanfiction. Well, I tend to browse among my fellow writer's works, and I sometimes wonder how some of this crap passes. Anyway, I want to make this thread so that writers can discuss what should and should not be in fanfiction.

First thing is to make sure you have the ability to write correctly, but that applies to everything.

Anyway, I think "script" is definately not a way to write fanfiction. And as you'll see from the link I gave above, that dude really loves to write in script.

http://forums.megatokyo.com/index.php?showtopic=1678752

^^^ That's an example of mock fanfiction. I wrote it as a joke follow up to a really crappy Zelda poem where Link followed the first commandment and didn't kill Gannon. You can look through the MT CW Forums and read the bad poem. But, I think, even this, is a good example of how not to write fanfiction.
It's a critique forum, so there is actually somebody who critiqued it. But it was mostly a joke, and meant to incite a tiny bit of humor. Most people get offended when a game like Zelda is satirized though. Go figure...


This link:
http://www.planetnintendo.com/ff1/fanfic.shtml

The link there is full of Final Fantasy fanfiction. I have a private fanfic about Final Fantasy, but I think I'll keep it to myself. Mostly because I'm still having a tremendous amount of trouble sorting through different ideas on how to deal with garland in my stories... Whatever.

Anyway, on that site, The First Fantasy is awesome, The Breeze Fiasco is hilarious, and I really like Compulsary Duty.
Otherwise, there's a lot of crap fanfics, and maybe a few others that are okay... Mediocre... But the three I mentioned are examples of pretty good fanfiction.

Alside from poorly writen fanfics and script writen fics, I hate it, HATE IT, when the author puts themselves into the story. Just, no... Stay out. Original characters aren't as bad, I guess, but I usually just prefer those that were in the series. Because I liked those in the series and thats *why* I am reading the fanfic. Yeah >>;

I've never imagined a fanfic where the author would put himself in. That doesn't even make sense... Unless you mean writing it in first person, but I don't know why you'd hate writing in first person.

You can't make a new character for a fanfic, but it's pretty much a waste of time to make something identical to what's already been done. I always write fanfics on games like Final Fantasy 1 or The Legend of Zelda because the characters are lacking in personality and character. A fanfic should be at least somewhat an original work, even if it's based off a precreated world. So don't go writing a fanfic about Locke as he had adventures in FF6. Write about why he became a returner, dang it! Write about his fetish for robotics which led him to Edmund, and about visions of Celes which made him lose his mind a little. That girl who saved him and died, she was actually murdered!
That's how I think a fanfic should be written. More of a hypothetical situation concerning the characters... Or a history or future related thing...

On the other hand, fanfics are always examples of poor writing, and they are more deserving of being mocked than anything else. Even if you add your own twists and personalities to undefined characters and alternate problems and endings, it'll still be uncreative and unoriginal. Ultimately, fanfics are pure amusement for way-too-hardcore fans, and a decent writer shouldn't waste time with them.

That said, somebody just insulted my piece in MT, and I'm going to rewrite my piece with good form, structure, and punctuation. I hate being insulted so much that I'm actually going to write a good fanfic which isn't even a fanfic so much as a satire. Not to mention that I don't even believe in the message that the satire is about... It is a complete waste of my time. I'll be working on it tonight though. Damn my ego.


Bottom Line: Fanfics are fun, but they should be done with the utmost creativity possible! Don't bore me with what I already know!

Edit: Oh, and I onl do crappy video game fanfics. Other stories already have good enough plots and characters (Spiderman etc...) that I don't feel the need to add anything to it. Writing a fanfic about Batman and Joker, for example, is ridiculous.

No, I mean where the author puts themselves into the story... Well, I've seen it a few times.

The Author goes and makes up a character (which is really them) and slaps them into the fanfic with all the real characters from the series. I've seen it mostly in Anime though.



Something quite amusing: This is my version of Disney's Lilo&Stitch with gundam wing characters. 1x2 story -updated, a part of chapter one is up but chapter one won't be finished until I get some ideas, enjoy!

Those're called self-insertions, and I was going to start ranting about that, next. Wolfgang, you scare me.

Anyway, don't tell me you've never seen a self-insertion. The worst of all are the Mary Sues and Marty Sams. Take our fellow write up above, "Young Roy." Look at how many times he has "Me:" or "Roy:" in his scripts. He takes up the role of a character, and sometimes even uses his BnG-like "author powers". Others appear INO(In Name Only), a character sharing the same name as the author, but looks nothing like the author. Then, Mary Sues and Marty Sams are what the author wishes s/he could be, somehow has perfection over everything without knowledge, gets it on with all the canons that the author find to be hot(t), and just over-all pisses the regular authors off.

So, if people want to do self-insertions, I say let them. But, let their self-insertion have flaws. Notice my self-insertion; the character doesn't think very quickly, gets his ass served to him on a regular basis, and likes various canon females but many of them don't like him; the only female canons who like him are ones whom it's in their nature to like various guys, not the ones that already have their hearts set elsewhere.

Wolfgang, do you hate self-insertions only because people screw over the canon characters, ala Mary Sue and Marty Sam style?

Below is the best piece of fan fiction that ever will be, Written by Tim Rogers.

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SCABBERS: THE MOVIE

(this takes place between Harry Potter books two and three, and yes, fits perfectly into the continuity.)

Scabbers was a rat with a rat-shaped penis. He walked down the castle hall while his master Ron Weasley, the poor kid with the red hair, was asleep. Scabbers was a fucking stupid rat that everyone hated. He couldn't do anything. He was even dumber than idiot Neville Longbottom's stupid toad. That's really fucking stupid. Harry Potter, "The Boy Who Lived" -- meaning he survived an attack by the world's strongest and most bodaciously evil wizard -- had a snowy white owl named Hedwig. She was pretty.

Scabbers was a rat with a rat-shaped penis. He stuck it in a female rat and felt pleasure. He took it out, and then put it back in, thinking of Hedwig. He bit the female rat's ear. The female rat squeaked like a rat. Scabbers abandoned her and walked down through the main castle hall in the dead of night while ghosts howled by and the ceiling looked pretty, all bewitched to appear like the night sky. He went back to sleep by Ron's side, wishing he was something that could do something.

---

I hate self-insertions because authors make themselves seem like hot gods that everyone wants to sleep with. Not to mention, most self-intertions are writen by crappy authors and the stories are next to torture to read.

Plus, way back when GW was popular, I knew some people that made themselves Mary Sues. When in real life they were greasy, pimplely little girls trying to write down their fantasies of Heero or Duo (or lord forbid, both) and it just creeps the hell out of me.

I think the only GOOD way to use self-insertion is if you are trying to write a light-hearted humor fic.

I think anoher thing fanfic writers have is having the characters they write about sticking to continuity. Again, with the Marys and Martys. If you can't portray a character correctly, then you shouldn't be writing about that character. People claim to be giving their support for someone and they're suc big fans, but I think if that was the case, they'd honor the characters that person created and write them as should be.

Thats why I disagree with Martyr that fanfiction is for uncreative people. I think you can judge a person's creativity by what they put in a fanfiction; if they write the characters as they should be, that shows a mind that can grasp and understand what "personality" is, but if you have the characters acting all goofy and stupid, that shows the person who's writing it has no comprehension of personality. I write fanfiction to better help me with my original works, and vice-versa.

Not sure if I should be responding here...
 

... but I recently posted the start of my fanfic (possibly published novel on the extremely remote chance that iD will like it) called DOOM: Survivors, and haven't heard much of any poor remarks on it, and I'm wondering if writers such as yourselves have ever seen a decent fanfic that is truly printable.

Also, I noticed you haven't said much of anything about the fanfics on this forum (possibly not to insult anyone) or from much of any other sources, so I'm a bit confused how you became an aficionado source of critisizim on fanfics in general.

As I'm in the proccess of trying to read fanfics on the site you pointed out, I do see some rather pathetic examples, but you don't touch on any that might be of possible reading quality, so they are essentially lost in a mass of bad writing.

Well?