Writing Tutorials Series

Welcome to the FanFiction Garret and congratulations. You have taken the first step toward considering your writing seriously.

"But I do this for fun!"

Yes, and people make pottery for fun too. But nobody wants to put flowers in a cracked vase and nobody wants to read a story that hasn't been constructed properly. How many times have you clicked to the next fanfic in the archive because you saw the writer didn't even bother with spell checking or proper spacing?

Don't be shy. I'm the first to raise my hand and say "guilty".

Odds are you have a pretty full life already. Friends and family who insist on making sure you’re breathing; work, school, or maybe both; and the other stuff I like to lump under “chores” that generally insure that your home and personal environment isn’t toxic. And now you want to add writing to the list.

Be prepared for those without the compulsive writing gene or drive or mindset to look at you like you’re crazy and maybe ask that question out loud. I haven’t found a good answer for “Why would you want to? Are you crazy?” yet, even when I ask myself.

In simplest terms, pre-writing is what you do before writing. Go ahead and groan; I know you want to. Specifically, it is the brainstorming and planning you do to create your story. And the best way to illustrate this is to take you through the creation of a story step by step. Write along with these tutorials; just choose your own ideas. It's called practice and you are under no obligation to show it to anyone or submit it anywhere. But the more seriously you treat your writing, the better it will get.

There’s no right or wrong way to write a story. Some authors only work on the weekends, some work any free second they get. The majority sets the same time or go by a daily word count goal to reach. Me, I’m a daily scribbler. I get out of sorts if I don’t write, so I don’t like to skip a day in my daily writing.

By now you should have brainstormed enough to realize who is in your cast of characters for this story. Characters are the most important aspect of a story. Everything else hinges upon the people inside. "Character is the destiny of the novel," is how Donna Levin puts it (Get That Novel Written! 5) and it applies to short stories too. Characters influence the plot, and the actions and conflicts show off the characters. And if you don't write about interesting characters, no one is going to read.

"Back up a minute. My main character is new. I don't know its eye color much less its goal in life." Don't panic. You probably have a better grasp on your new characters than you think you do. You just need the framework to organize the ideas. And just like there are many ways to organize your brainstorming, there are many ways to help you organize your brainstorming on your characters.

This is a technique I learned about writing Tin Man: Pirates of the Nonestic. I noticed other writers had created cast lists of who would portray their OCs if the fanfic was filmed and decided to try it out. My guess as to why I never had before is so much of what I have written is cartoon-based. Casting those are handled completely differently.

Okay, so you've done the exercises and know your characters as thoroughly as you can possible know them. Now how do you get the readers to know them that well? "Show don't tell." If you haven't heard that writing rule before now, you should know that it is the oldest writing dictum around. With characters, it means you put them in action every chance you get.

Example: The tan-furred humanoid pulled off his helmet, reveling clearly the mouse stamp on his facial features. He raised his empty hands and took another step closer.

First I would like to apologize for the lateness of this tutorial. The New Orleans Saints football team (American football) won their first Superbowl, and I got caught up in the revelry.

Now a short review: a plot is a series of causally related events that emerge from a series of ever-intensifying conflicts and proves a premise at the end. Unlike real life, fiction has a point and once you reach that point, you feel satisfied as a reader. That's the difference between a great ending and a groaner.

You've got your road map for your story? Now you're ready to start planning conflicts, and from conflicts build scenes. I think in scenes when plotting out my stories; brainstorming until the entire work plays like a movie in my head. It happens almost automatically now, so if I miss something or have made things more confusing trying to explain, please let me know.