Fanfiction, fanfiction how you've gone wrong... *singsong voice*
Oh...where to even start on this tangent. Alright. I'm a fanfiction writer I have been since 7th grade...and now I'm... Ok the years don't matter right now. The thing that does is that people are filling sites like FF.net with their dribble and Mary-Sues. Where will it end!?
Just cause it's fresh on my mind I'll start talking about characters, and how people seem to have a block about inventing them. First off, there is nothing wrong in basing a character of yourself or someone you know; just keep them believable. Most people (When pairing the bishie male) will use themself, and then raise themselves to greatness. This includes making their bodies female or male Adonis's with more power then an A-Bomb several A-Bombs. Also, the characters from these kind of stories usually are onesided without a clear past or their past is muttled with horrors and tragedies. Yeah, some characters it works, not all of them with their 'wah I was raped and beaten and was going to be killed lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots and lots of times by my parents/jealous siblings/boyfriend/girlfriend but I somehow magically got away from it and am now normal' or whatnot. And a lot of that is around. Some people are sick of hearing the same damn sob story over and over again! Come up with something new and less 'angsty'. Which reminds me of another point, emo fics are fine if you keep in mind emo mean EMOTIONAL and not, 'I wanna kills myselfs cuz nobody luvz me cuz I'm so sad'. Get it right, or don't write.
Mary Sues and Gary Stus...they've been around, and will always be around. Sadly. They cannot die no matter what you throw at them, they are always loved by everyone around them romantically, everyone is always jealous of their perfection and they are the most powerful things that apparently ever existed while having a 'perfectly normal' life. Yeah real normal. Freaks. No wonder so many vampire fics have them- oh, what's that? I just insulted lots of little fantard girls and their Twilight/Vampire Night/Non-Stoker fantasies? Oh I'm so sorry, go dig up some hot looking corpse and f*** it to get out your desires of nercrophelia. Maybe while you're pounding the cold dead flesh you'll get a reality check that vampires don't exist. Oh what's that fantards? They do exist? Prove it.
Another thing that's really just horrible is how the fanfictions are written. Get an editor or spellcheck or something. There are three different spellings for there/their/they're, learn them, and learn them well. And CAPITALIZE your names, the first letter of a sentence, places, and of course the word 'I'. As for spellcheck, you have Microsoft Word? Good, F7 is the hotkey for it, and wanna pretend you're at least halfway intelligent while you're butchering something you love press Shift+F7; it's a thesaurus, use that too. Stop using plotholes as well, get an editor, editor will find plotholes if they're worth anything.
Being canon is also very, very important. For the many people that don't know what that means, canon is staying true to whatever it is you're writing about whether it be a movie or show or book or whatever. So please, keep all characters in character to the best of your abilities and stop making everyone gay for each other after dumping their significant other just because you want to see them make out. If the creator didn't put hot guy one and hot guy two thru eighty-seven together, chances are, they didn't intend for that. Also, there is nothing wrong with alternate universe; this of course means the story won't be canon to the original plot of what you're writing about but if you take the time to take charcters out of their original setting have the good graces to give them at least half the personality god intended. God being the characters creator for you aetheists out there. Also, nothing wrong with crossover, in fact some can be quite entertaining. Just for the love of anything (Especially if you're writing about something you love) don't go off pairing the seperate characters with each other, if that was the entire plan for your crossover... *rubs her brow* Just no...refer to the canonness portion, other than that, no comment.
General Tip: Endings and Beginnings Ok, these are both hard, endings usually give people the most trouble. Just try to wrap everythign up in a conclusive way, and please don't leave anything unsettled like plotholes. If you have these of course either go back and edit or TRY to address them in the ending. Epilogues are also not called ending prologues, the word 'epilogue' exists for a reason. Beginnings can also be hard (I have trouble with them...lots of trouble) itry to avoid starting your story with dialouge if you can help it. It just doesn't seem very professional even if you're writing for fun (Unless you're the only person you intend to show your work to). Just try to start off describing just a tad of the setting before inserting a character.
Alright, now that I'm done ranting I'm totally gonna go to bed. 3nodding
psychicfiredemoness · Sun Feb 08, 2009 @ 08:49am · 3 Comments |