Discussion The Scribble Pad (Fanfic Writing Discussions)

Yes, I read, Raissa's story, so I get it now. Hilarious idea, I'm gonna have to try it

 

I'm not sure that I have done anything quite like this, eg. characters knowing they are in a fic.

However, some of mine are aware of me, as the "I-5 entity", and that they can investigate adventures or scenarios on my behalf.

The roleplaying forum used to do this thing where you could write about the Boards as a physical city, populated by members that you knew. Those were fun.

 

That's kinda sorta what I did when I had myself read about Kylo and Hux and finding out that Hux was about to destroy the Sol System.

And nobody nominated me for the best established character afterwards. NOBODY.

 

Hey all! Was just lurking about and found this thread and it's current subject.

I wrote a fic on here a while back where I depicted a certain red-gold haired heroine in a world where she hears a narrator literally narrating what she and others are doing. This was back when said heroine was killed off in canon and riots ensued among her fans. I had her meet the author (or, rather, me in fan fic disguise) who was also trying to kill her off. And she was rather displeased. It was one of the most fun writing experiences and the feedback was fun too. Throwing the rules out really allows you to write literally anything.

 

In an effort to keep this thread from dropping to page 2 (For Shame!), I will ask or advice on how to approach writing fics for a show that has only aired its pilot episode. What are your approaches to writing fics with limited source material? Have you done it and how did you feel about it?

 

My Backstrom stuff is based on a smattering of episodes, maybe four or five.

Maybe it was the skills of the cast and director(s), that enabled me to capture the feel and voices of each, with such a paucity of material.

If you feel that you have that, after only a pilot episode, go for it.

Visualise what you want, and write what you see.

I spliced the police team into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, drawing heavily on the mannerisms and attitude of the main character; and really loved the result.
It was like adding another episode.

 

This seems comparable to writing for a Big Screen Movie franchise, in that many Luke/Leia fics appeared circa 1977 and well, what can we say about the continuing saga? If the idea burns inside a writer, it must fly free.

EAD Ooooh, colors!!!!! @brodiew Wasn't that fun!!

 

Heck, I wrote a vignette that was based on a trailer. My advice is call it speculation and go with what your heart thinks. It will probably be wildly off (like mine) but so what. If you’re nowhere close to what actually happens, you can always tag it AU.

 

I remember that one, @divapilot! Rey's mother, right? I think you are on the right track. It will be the a my first with so little to go on. That, and COLORS, are make my head swim.

 

Is it ever okay to post a story without a synopsis? I have an AU I'm working on, and I don't want to give away the premise before people even read the story. If I write a synopsis that doesn't divulge anything about the premise, it'll probably be so vague as to be useless--something like "Ezra learns a secret", because saying anything else about it would give away the story. Would you: go with the vague synopsis, write a real synopsis, but spoiler it, or just skip the whole thing?

 

Edge of seatness already... What secret? I'd go with something like: "Ezra makes a discovery which has the potential to turn his life upside down." That stirs curiosity without giving anything away.

 

Yes to this minimalism.

A good debate is whether to give pairings at all, like "Ezra/Sabine" followed by "UST", well, right away readers know stuff. I won't even go into AO3's colossal, and highly entertaining, tagging system!

 

Yeah, I think it's fine. Plenty of stories don't have synopsises (synopsi?) here (I rarely do). Most readers do like to know main characters/timeframe/categorization (Legends, D-Canon, AU), just to give their brains some context when reading, but I've even seen people purposefully leave those out as well.

 

See: EP forgetting to add headers to two stories.

 

Do y'all remember the discussion about what our muses "look" like? Because mine has begun to develop an "appearance". She is a humanoid female with light blue skin. She has Galaxy hair, purple eyes, and bright pink lipstick. https://pin.it/tvxhpqo6zqmdl5 (her hair. I forgot how to do links the cool way.) She wears a rainbow tie-dye t-shirt, denim shorts with a frayed hem, tennis shoes, and bracelets with brightly colored wooden beads.

 

I love her! And anime hair is fantastic, makes folks look like parakeets, or lorikeets or something exotic like that.

 

A space hippie!

 

We seems to have different cultural references. Hippie never entered my mind while reading that description.

 

No, we don't - please, do not automatically assume that we've not reached Cenozoic down here.

 

Yeah, I guess she kind of is.

 

"rainbow tie-dye t-shirt, denim shorts with a frayed hem, tennis shoes, and bracelets with brightly colored wooden beads."

Says 'hippie' to me too. Although I suspect that the 'tie-dyed' idea did not happen until at least twenty years after the Hippie movement.

Very nice look for your muse.

 

I am still at the stage of writing things and posting them. They may occupy the same thread, or multiple.

While a character may exist across multiple places, I am not, thus far, thinking of series, and therefore not thought about readers of one story, following me to a different thread.

 

Great topic Findswoman!

...do you feel that series have the same pitfalls as epics in terms of readership, keeping up, etc.? Different pitfalls? Are they easier or harder to keep up with than epics, in your opinion? Are the pitfalls different for different kinds of series

I think they probably have similar pitfalls, but maybe not the same? At least to me, most epics seem so daunting where as a lot of series, less so, especially if it's a series of short stories. I feel like most people try to make it possible to jump in at any point into a series, though not always and that's okay too. Sometimes big things happened and you don't always want to go back and explain something everytime you write.
I find series of short stories much easier to keep up with than a series of multi-chapter stories. (Short stories that have 2 to 3 chapters are in the short-story category in my mind). While I can see multiple author series might make it a bit more difficult to keep up with, I really like them because you get different points of view and different writing styles which can be a lot of fun.


What can writers of series do to help make their series more accessible? Indices? Lists of characters, etc.? Suggested reading order? Do you find such explanatory material helpful or intimidating when beginning to read a series?

I do think having some kind of character list, suggested reading order, and pre-story explanatory material is helpful. I enjoy reading it when I'm jumping into a series and it helps me get an idea of the story before going in. It makes me feel not so lost and therefore less overwhelmed.

As a writer of a pretty big multi-author series, I also find it helpful myself to have a list. Bri and I have not only a character list and a list of stories, but on our list is a chart that tells you which stories are very important to understanding the series, stories that will probably give you some more details and maybe have some continuing themes but you don't have to read, and then stories that aren't really important to the overall series at all. I don't know that it helps people, but I know it helps me to remember things in a big series, and I'd appreciate something like that for a large series.


I'm going to leave my response at those questions for now and maybe come back to the others, I don't want to write a novel!