How do you write your Fan Fiction?

has anyone ever tried to write in the 2nd person?

i havent, yet, but i'm gonna include some in my book (well, trilogy actually, but it's not finished yet).

does anyone actually know what the '2nd person' is?

 

A weak example of "second person."

*****

You come into your apartment. There's a Jedi Knight sitting on your couch. You reach for your blaster, but he jumps up with his lightsaber ignited. After staring at each other for several moments in silence, you finally lower your blaster. He switches the lightsaber off and grins.

"Oh, sure, use the Force to pick my lock again," you murmur.

"Actually, I swung in through the window this time," he says.

You grimace. You don't know why you bother to open the window in the first place, it's not like Coruscant ever has "fresh air."

"Well, come on, get it over with," you sigh. "Say what you came to say."

The Jedi Knight kneels down in front of you, reaches for your hand and holds it in both of his.

"Please come back to the Temple, padawan."

 

that's quite good actually, well i liked it.

got any more where that came from?

 

Thanks, but just at the moment, no, there's not more where that came from.

 

lol, I can't write second person. The whole time I'm reading it my brain is thinking "No I'm not. No I'm not. No I'm not" (lol)

 

A book I'm reading now, Warchild by Karen Lowachee, begins in second person and then shifts to first person after about thirty pages.

 

i was talking to my english teacher a few years back, and he said it is a really hard thing to do, so only a few people use it.

that's why we're not told about it in school.

 

Not told about it in school, hm? Maybe that's why the authors of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series (gad, haven't seen THOSE in ages) always wrote in the second person. I mean, they were designed for elementary/middle schoolers.

 

Writing a good story in first person is pretty hard.

I prefer a 3rd person story with multiple points of view (depending on the scene), but I don't like when the POVs are mixed.

 

I usually write in third too, just from different charaters views. I am working on a 1st person fic though and it's not as easy as it seems. It's hard to get into the mode. 'I saw this, I did that, I said, I watched him, ect.' Of course, once I'm in it it's just as hard to get out of. <shurgs> What can ya do?

 

I do where the challenge is: first person isn't tough at all, just how you write the other characters in view of the first person. Usually it is what is needed in a story is how I write.

 

I've never heard of 2nd peson before, but it does sound hard to write.

 

Second person -- outside of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure and text based video games, which are its natural milieu, imho -- strike me as pretty much gimmicky, using an unusual prose to cover up for not having much of a story. Mileage varies, but I have generally disliked gimmicky prose, and favor straightforward storytelling. I like pretty prose, yes -- aesthetics count with me, big time -- but flat-out gimmicks make me suspicious.

On the choice between third and first, I usually use third, because I can always adopt a second or third point-of-view (I usually hold in tight point-of-view, though) if I need to see something the narrator doesn't see. On some stories, first person seems right. Sometimes I'll try both and see which feels more natural; it usually ends up being third. I don't remember ever having written first person fanfic, but I suppose I might have. I've written original first person.

One of the best things I did for myself as a writer -- though the story was awful -- was an apparently never-ending melodrama about a family that a friend and I wrote in alternating first person chapters. Pretty much everyone in the Cecil B. DeMille-sized cast got to talk now and then, and some scenes were written from two or three different first person points of view, just for the fun of it. "I" got to be a girl not too different from myself, a young Jewish intellectual boy, a boy of the same age who was slipping into a strange kind of insanity that eventually caused him not to talk for two years, an evil woman who seduced her stepson, the stepson, a city girl who moved to the country with her husband but couldn't stand it, the responsible older brother, three different children, a teacher... well, you get the idea. To this day, I've gotten letters from men addressed to "Mr. Fernwithy," so I guess I learned to do it relatively well.

I basically think that creative writing teachers should forbid first person characters who are too similar to the author, at least until there's been practice at seeing through different eyes. You're a young black Protestant girl? Try writing an old white Jewish man. You're an Italian boy in his teens? Try a five year old Chinese girl.

And of course, sci-fi and fantasy give us the opportunity to forget all those cosmetic differences and flat-out write as an alien (but make it an alien who's alien).

It's good exercise, anyway.

And, for the record, I love Chaim Potok's books in the first person, all of which are about bright Jewish kids in conflict with the Orthodoxy surrounding them, and I suspect that Potok was... a bright Jewish kid in conflict with the Orthodoxy surrounding him. It can work. But I suspect he mastered other forms before he started doing it.

 

i've nearlly finished a star wars piece done in the third person.

i like the third person cos you get to see what all the main charcters look like.

when i read first person, it leaves me thinkin 'yes, but what do i look like?'

oh, and when i'm done with the piece, i'll post it somewhere.

 

I almost exclusively write in 3rd person-limited. I tried 1st person once, and it came out mediocre. I usually do 1st-person-limited and either stick with the main character (9-LOM) or hop between him and some other character (like Acceptable Losses, where I hop between 9-LOM and Corran Horn). On occasion, I've been known to write 3rd-person-omniscient.

 

Most of my fics have always been in 3rd person. I like writing them that way because I (the narrator) can be anywhere I want to be, see anything I want to see, and convey it to my reader. You can get multiple POV and lots of dramatic irony. Which is always fun.

But recently I started an Original Character fic for a girl I had created in one of my previous fics. It was to be her story and how she got to where she is. I kept trying to write it in 3rd person and I just couldn't get a feel for it. So I tried 1st and I found for this particular story it just works so much better. While it lacks the ability for dramatic irony and multiple POV the reader becomes much more involved with the character. They can see/hear/feel her/his thoughts or feelings and concentrate on that instead of everything else that's going around. And if you create the setting that the person is writing in a diary/journal or somthing of that nature then you can add insiteful or amuseing comments aside from the actual story part, which helps to develop the story teller's character.

But to be honest, I think it really depends on what the main focus of the story is when choosing to write in 1st or 3rd. It's all a matter of opinon.

and there is my two cents.

Laters!

 

I've tried writing in 1st person before but the characterizations are usually off because I start writing about myself.

I've never even tried 2nd person and I don't plan to. The whole time I was reading the example 2nd person I was confused and unable to get into it.

3rd person with multiple POV is the best. I enjoy writing as if I'm omnipotent, that way you can put yourself into the characters but only certain things in certain characters. You become the whole story instead of just one character.

 

I'm pretty good at 1st person, but I can also do 3rd person.

 

I'm a thirdie, but I occasionally spring for first person.

For the most part, though, I find you can add more detail and make it more enjoyable in third.

 

I too enjoy third person more - you can just jump from one person to the next without having to either end the chapter or put big block letters saying:

"SO FORTH'S POV!!"

 

I must be odd or something. I prefer writing in first person, although I also write in third. I have a much easier time with characterization when I write in first, I think because I'm able to get into the head of whoever's pov I'm writing in. It feels much less detached to me than third.

It probably also has something to do with the fact that I've been writing in a diary since I was 12, but only tried my hand at fic writing in the last couple of years. For me, first person just flows better and I feel more comfortable and more in control writing in it. But I am trying to get more used to writing in third because it really does give you a lot more versatility.

 

I prefer to do 3rd person, I haven't even tried 2nd person, and 1st person takes to much thinking.

 

I've written first and third. Two totally different stories, but I've really learned a lot.

First: It started out really tacky (in my opinion) but eventually evolved into a heartfelt struggle. It's hard to keep the story with one person, but it gave me such a wonderful oppurtunity to explore the thoughts of Tahiri. This one, was a "personal struggle" story, so it was really appropriate to be placed in first person.

Third: There's no way I could have done BTWL in first person, there are about 3 different plotlines bouncing about, so for the saga sort of thing, third person was definately more appropriate for this story.

I think it depends on the plot of your story and the slant you want to take on it. Tahiri, who was a teenage girl, was pretty easy for me to write in first person. But in BTWL, I have to deal with writing a fairly large adult male cast, something that doesn't come too easy with me. Like JG said, it's hard to keep slipping in your own viewpoints, so theoretically third person is safer. When you're writing smart-mouthed aliens or street fighters instead of a teenage girl, things are a lot different.

 

one thing i've noticed with the fan fic that i'm writting at the moment is that no matter how much i plan things, it inevittably changes and the story goes it's own way.

i know it's general direction, important events and stuff, but that's really the limit of my control.

all i've got to do is find valid uses for the word 'opulant'.