Control: Writing FanFic: A Journeyman’s Guide…
I, Dalton Lewis, have written a dozen or so fan fiction stories. At first I wrote 2000 words stories with a dozen or more characters from several different IP’s, but that didn’t have enough to give the characters a chance to grow and develop. I changed things up — now I write 5000 word stories which give the characters some more time to develop themes and characters and conflicts. I also include fewer characters from fewer IP’s. I mostly write about characters from the Warhammer 40k brand or Marvel/DC in the Marvel/DC crossover story.
Include description. Describe characters and scenes. Be professional. Develop actual scenes. This sounds easy but is something that experienced writers know to do and amateurs can’t figure out. Point out the setting and the characters before every scene. This simple advice will make your writing sound much more real and believable and authentic to the audience. I describe a New York apartment as being very different than a small Pennsylvania home where a mentally ill primarch lives. These differences can make your story sound more interesting to the audience.
Know your characters. Your characters should sound like the characters from the intellectual property you are copying. These characters are beloved by millions — and those fans know the characters as well as they know their own family. They will know if you write the character improperly. They will know if you mail it in and don’t write the character the right way. Typhus and Mortarion are from the Death Guard and worship Nurgle, the god of plagues and diseases. They are outsider freaks that don’t get along with the traditional space marines or imperial guard — so I pitted them against the imperial guard and grey knights who think that they are evil based on their religion. I wanted a conflict which sounded like something that would happen to those characters.
Have dramatic conflict and an arc. This is a simple but essential cog in the writing wheel. The story should build from a beginning to a middle to the end. Everything should add up to something. In the story I just wrote Typhus is a fat kid wanting to be a space marine. He finds Mortarion, a demon worshiper who was kicked out of the marines. He and Mortarion learn that the government is framing demons because they are afraid of humans wanting to work for demons and worship them. This is developed through a number of scenes which lead to a climax in which they finally meet a demon — the legendary Kairos Fateweaver. Then they break the rules and rescue him instead of following the Emperor’s orders and holding a suspect who may be innocent. This is developed through the story instead of just having individual scenes one after the other.
Have sympathetic villains. This is a difficult one that many people don’t understand. The Emperor and Celestine think that they are wonderful people defending the Earth from scary demons. They aren’t cartoonish villains trying to destroy the Earth or bad people killing demon babies. They are fighting their side of a war, as nobly as can be expected. They are not the most evil people in existence — but that’s what makes them such interesting antagonists. They just want to protect America, Earth, and the space marines. They don’t want to kill innocents at all. This conflict has good people on all sides — it just happens that the good people on Earth find themselves making terrible mistakes and locking up innocent demons. That’s the key — getting your antagonist to be a good person believably doing something terrible. That makes for a good bad guy.
Take risks. Have characters fall in love with people they wouldn’t be expected to fall in love with. Have sex scenes. Include explicit violence. Show what’s wrong with life — in exact and brutal honesty. Don’t just show what you’re expected to write — write something different and interesting. Don’t just have the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other side and then have them fight — mix things up a bit. Blur the lines. Add some gray.
These are my tips for writing fan fiction. I have written over a dozen fan fiction stories and have gotten hundreds of reads. That’s what I’ve noticed worked from my own experience.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
