A challenging challenge

Alright, I know I haven't been a member for more than a few days, but I've been going looking at other's fanfic's and I'm noticing something. Most of them are romances! It's not that it is a bad thing, but I think it's ridiculous that every fanfic site I visit, the majority of the stories (usually over 90%) revolve around a romantic relationship. So, here's my challenge, write a fanfic, that does not center around a romantic relationship, that doesn't mean you can't have there be one, it just means it can't be the focus of the story. Alrgiht, begin!

Update: Alright, I'll clarify what this will be. To make it more of a challenge for those that don't think a story is good unless it has some romance in it, there will be absoultely no romance, not even a hint of it. And so no one cheats and goes with a one gender cast so there can't be any romance, there has to be an equal(or nearly equal) number of males and females

I hope that sets more specific parameters for you all. Peace out

 

Hah, welcome to fanfic. It is not surprising that you are coming upon so many romances. The vast majority of fan fic writers in any fandom are female. It is such a common but unexpected phenomenon (since fandom is mostly male otherwise) that there have even been popular culture academics that have written theses on it.

There are action based fics floating about; you just have to look. Perhaps search for your preferred genre on sites like tf.n or ff.n.

 

LOL, I can relate. I don't really like romances much either. But I've read a few that I enjoyed. The writing's good, but I can't take a ton of the genre .

I'm new as well, but I've found a good amount of action based fics.

 

As an author who doesn't often venture into the lands of romance, I can understand the feeling. But while it's a noble sentiment, but I'm not sure there's enough material for a challenge. A large percentage of the fics on this site could fit the description of not focusing on romance.

I'd recommend hunting around for a fic that suits your taste. Romance fics are popular, but there are a lot that focus on action or humor or other genres. If hunting looks like too daunting a task, you can use the indexes and challenges on the Resource board to narrow the field significantly.

 

It might also where you hang out. Beyond has a lot of romances and, to some extent, so does Saga. Before tends to focus more on the Jedi which tend to be action or drama based rather than romance.

Good luck with your search.

 

I tend to be a genfic supporter, but... I'm really not seeing these boards dominated by romance to the extent you seem to be describing. Certainly, just looking at the thread titles, there are plenty of stories that either don't list a romance at all or appear to include one of the basic canon ones as part of an extensive plot. Although this is easier for me to tell in Before or Saga -- I'm not all that familiar with Beyond.

But anyway, yeah, I think challenges tend to work better if you have something specific to write about, as opposed to sticking only to something to avoid. You can have "Do not use X," especially if X is common-approaching-cliché in association with element Y that you are including, but there needs to be a Y. *grin* There's only one of my current SW ideas that could really be said to focus on a romance, but for a challenge to help me choose among the rest or give me new ideas -- or just hurry me up! -- I think there'd need to be a few other elements.

 

Thanks for the comments, and I guess you guys are right, so I'll clarify a bit and see what happens.

 

What I think would be fun would be to take something that's a usual pairing, and de-pair it without pairing anybody off with anybody else. For example, write a story about Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala that has them NOT a couple, and not paired with anyone else. It could be before they got together, or an AU, for instance. This would work easily in Beyond the Saga, too - Luke and Mara, Jaina and Zekk, Han and Leia, etc. I'm not sure about Before, since I don't go there much, but I imagine it would have some pairings that could be written as non-pairing interactions.

 

Eleventh_Guard, I think what you're describing is the Crackship Roulette challenge....which does exactly that. Pairs odd couples that you don't normally see in fanfics together. It can be found here: Crackship Roulette

 

Well, technically 11th is suggesting an anti-pairing story - wherein you put together two normally paired characters, but don't actually pair them up.

d, I tend to write extremely non-romantic stories. As does Correllian Ale, the Face, RK_striker, etc. Like Pallas said above, the majority of fanficdom is dominated by women. So good idea, then, would be to look for the male writers. Not that this is a guarantee of anything, but when looking at the odds, it's a safer bet. I hate generalizing, but the only male writers I've found who did lots of romance were exceptions to the rule, so It's only logical to start there.

Once you get used to who writes what and where, you'll begin to find lots of female writers who don't go anywhere near romance. Until then, this is a pretty good rule of thumb. Actually, two writers I follow closely, whose stories are about as non-romantic as it's possible to get, are unknown_shore and Oqidaun, both of whom are definitely female. And they're not the only ones. (Who write non-romance, not 'who are female'. Obviously they're not the only women. That's silly. Weren't you listening earlier? Jeez.) So in the end, it's really just a matter of keeping your eyes open.



And to be perfectly honest, I've found some brilliant diamonds-in-the-rough hiding out there, that I would never have even glanced at let alone read, had it not been for a moment of boredom or a misplaced mouse click. So don't be too quick to write of a story, just because it has the dreaded word 'romance' in the title. Cuz you might be surprised with what you find.

 

d, I tend to write extremely non-romantic stories. As does Correllian Ale, the Face, RK_striker, etc. Like Pallas said above, the majority of fanficdom is dominated by women. So good idea, then, would be to look for the male writers. Not that this is a guarantee of anything, but when looking at the odds, it's a safer bet. I hate generalizing, but the only male writers I've found who did lots of romance were exceptions to the rule, so It's only logical to start there.


There are a lot of us female authors out there who don't write romance fics. Speaking for myself, as a general rule, I abhor writing romance. I'm terrible at it. I think it depends primarily where you hang out as Diane mentioned. Before the Saga is most definitely not as full of romance as The Saga and Beyond.

 

Yeah, the Crackship is fun, but that's almost opposite of what I was thinking. Instead of taking rarepairs and putting them together, you take a common pairing and sort of split it - writing the people as friends or something instead of partners.