Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Tips of a Good Writer (AKA- I am bored, sick, and thought this up)

Hi. I was bored a couple months ago, because I was sick. I lately was digging through the junk in my room and on my computer because I'm sick again. I found this. It's not to be taken seriously, it's just my thoughts on all of this. Ciao!

Phoenix-Rising’s General Rules of a good story (Fan Fiction or otherwise)

1. An exciting plot. People don’t want to read about a normal day about a normal person eating a normal breakfast, they want to read about a normal, bad-guy-butt-kicking day of an ordinary crime fighter with a messed up social life and a love interest that goes no where and every where all at once. (This is why Superman, Spiderman, and Batman are sellers; they’ve got the plot down pat.)

2. (to avoid confusion, I’ll refer to the bad person as ‘he’, though the person can be female) A bad guy everyone loves to hate. He cannot be evil through and through, though he can be insane. Make him with good qualities (he’s polite, or handsome to a fault, or both) but give him a blind spot, be it the thing that makes him angry (Trask against Clarks’s existence) or what he doesn’t want to believe (Cell and him not being perfect(DBZ)). You want your bad guy to be believable and realistic.

3. NO MARY SUES! Mary Sues are perfect. They’ve got beautiful hair, eyes, skin, they’re always tall and slim, are super strong and super smart, have a horrific past specially created to get the sympathy of the readers. Mary Sues may have ‘interesting’ body parts (Ex: wings) and nothing bad ever really happens to them. They can get out of all the problems placed before them with ease, and smile the whole time. They also have perfect teeth, which is really annoying to the readers with braces. NO MARY SUES!

4. Give your character dimension. Not just past and present, but personality quirks. Fears and hopes, painful experiences that is embarrassing. Fears: a fear of spiders or a fear of heights or whatever, just have them scared of something, even toothpicks! Hopes: Hope to find a home; hope to have that unrequited love returned, whatever. The painful experiences are really good to show how ‘real’ the character is. The character can mess up; can make a bad day worse.

5. Realism. Real people cannot regrow lost limbs, unless the story is set in the future where such thing are common place. In real life, a thirty year old man getting married to an eighteen year old girl is looked down on and quite possibly illegal. Don’t have that sort of thing in your story, even if you think they are perfect for each other. (E.g.: Trunks and Pan Parings in DragonBallZ section-FF.N. Trunks, at the time, is thirty-something, while Pan is eighteen. Same with Piccolo and Bra, Piccolo being older then Bra by A LOT of years, let alone older then Trunks by a lot of years). Do not bend the rules of the universe to suite what you think should happen. If you like that idea of pairings, then don’t publish the story, or put it up someplace people will read it. You will probably get ‘flamed’, or yelled at on-line by people who dislike the idea. An eighteen year old may get a crush on some one who is thirty, but it will likely be just that, a crush.

Continuing with realism, don’t have impossible things, like mind reading right off the bat. The story may be centered on someone who gains mental powers, and has to deal with them. (For fan fiction, this can be ignored. Unless you’re writing about a Mary Sue, in which case go delete everything about the Mary Sue story as soon as possible.) People cannot survive without equipment, like food, or breathing apparatuses if the story is high up on a mountain or deep under water, things like that. Unless they're Superman.

6. HAVE FUN! This is your story, and you can live through the characters you create. You may find you recognize some of your friend’s characteristics in one character, or even some of your own in a character. Again, have fun and try not to make a Mary Sue.

Specific Rules

1. Don’t tell anyone about what you’re writing WHEN you’re writing the story. Before the story, it’s good to get specific details down or bounce ideas off the first person to read the story. After the story is also fine, after you’ve let the person (or people) read the story and mull over it a bit. During a story is bad, because you get so busy thinking about what might happen and what did happen and how that might affect the story, that you suddenly try to use PLOT, which is bad. Rules on Plot below.

2. Don’t get discouraged. You may need to take breaks from the story, which is fine. You may even need to start over if the story really sucked, but the idea was wonderful. (Examples? The first three versions of ‘A Clone’s Worth’, which had to do with a) a fanfic for ‘The Zeta Project’, b) a girl who could randomly turn into a dragon [which is a good idea but it should be saved for later], c) a girl who was experimented on by her parents when she was a baby, raised by her grandparents, and then exposed to major radiation and could randomly turn into a dragon) The final version of ‘A Clone’s Worth’ is a lot better, and it took two years and three bad starts for it to work. I finally tossed the idea of becoming a dragon into the gutter, and switched to certain things. There have been two versions of ‘A Clone’s Worth’ so far that have dealt with the characters without changing them very much, except making Emily more insane and less of a major character, and Nathan hasn’t been introduced more then as the ‘little brother.’

Breaks tend to be necessary sometimes, especially with beginning writers that happen upon an AMAZING, WONDERFUL and EXCITING idea, but are a little bit afraid. But, one must remember, you have to write one word at a time (Stephen King’s words, not mine) and if you don’t have a beginning, you can’t have a middle or an end, let alone a story you can sell. (Or even like.) Just try not to take a break longer then a few weeks, or a month at most. And do try to think about your story at great length, trying to think things through.

3. Details, especially ones that are extremely important (like the year [1879 or 9781] or place [Las Vegas or a random countryside]) are best written down in a separate file (or on a separate pad of paper) so you can take a look at it without moving the screen (or paper) away from your spot.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, MISTAKE DETAILS FOR PLOT! Doing so is a very bad thing, understand? Good. Details are things you might or might not add in your story, like ‘Green eyes’ or ‘blue skin’. Details also include BACK STORY, which will also be mentioned later on. (Such as it being the aftermath of a war and the character lost his/her entire family to the battle). Plot lines out everything. Details are just things about the characters/story that affect the story, but not necessarily needed to be mentioned. After all, do you really need to say ‘Lisa had olive colored eyes that snapped angrily when she was angry, and shined when she was especially happy’. Details that we could better live without. ‘…angrily when she was angry…’? Yeah, I think that’s a given.

Like I said, it’s best to get these things down, and also put down the major characters. Try to keep it to three or four. Then you put them in a circle, and have a legend. Say, blue for hate, red for love, yellow for friendship, stuff like that. Then (remember, this works for me only sometimes, it may not work for you at all) you put directional arrows along the lines you will draw connecting the characters. So, while one character may love the leading female, that same character might hate the one who’s in love. And so on and so forth. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a pretty good way to start the story. Later, the character that doesn’t love the other may fall in love. But whatever, that’s just the major characters.

You might also want to list the sub-major characters, the ones that aren’t on quite as much as the other characters. Such as, say, the sheriff. He may be on a lot, but he might not be that important. He may also get killed.

Finally, you’ll want to list the minor characters, the ones that usually get killed right away or change sides a lot. You can use the line/circle if you want, but since it doesn’t really work that well as you get further into the story (and loose a few minor characters) it doesn’t work so well. And you don’t want to have to update the stinkin’ thing every chapter (or more).

Using the First Reader, the one who gets the first look at your story as someone to talk to about the general details (such as time period or placement) is good, but again, do it before the story. Or after, if you’re worried something didn’t fit because of the time period or placement of the story. But anyway, it’s a good idea to get those details down first, so you don’t have to worry about it later on. It also helps with research.

4. Research. It’s kind of important. If, say, your character is just getting out of jail, you might want to ask the local police department to give you a look around their jail, so you can see what the character went through. Same if your character’s going deep sea diving, you might want to take a book out or look up Deep Sea Diving on the internet, or even ask someone who does deep sea diving a lot. An instructor, maybe.

And this is where you might have to play reporter. Bring a notepad and pencil (or pen) and take LOTS of notes. Also write down your questions, such as what something is or does so you can write in fragments. Kind of like taking notes in class.

Finally, while research is important and will give realism to your story, try to keep it to a minimum or in the BACK STORY. If you’ve done the research, you should probably make sure you know what’s what, so you don’t write about a Buick (which I know nothing about) doing things that only an army jeep could do (which I know less about). And if you can’t get an interview, well, that’s what the internet search engines are for. Also, you can use the print function so you don’t hurt your hand copying, word for word, fifteen pages of necessary information.

Or you could use a keyboard, save the info to disk, and use the file on the disk a lot instead of printing. Its an Either Or situation.

5. REALISM! I’ve touched on this before, in the general rules, but there’s a lot more then simply putting fears and equipment, laws about marriage (certain things being illegal, a 30-something year old marrying an 18 year old for one, I think), or hopes and dreams. You also have to think about the little things, like if you have guns in your story. You don’t want to put down that there’s a certain gun being carried around that can’t possibly exist, or you don’t want to put down that your character is a midget that is five foot eleven inches. I think (I don’t know) that midgets don’t go over the five foot six inches, but I could be wrong. (Note to Self: Of course, I’m writing about a midget so I should find out, shouldn’t I?)

Another thing, you don’t want something like a dog with human intelligence, unless there’s a good reason (And explanation) for it. Or a worm that can talk human, which is just impossible, thank you very much. Or small things, like color of animals (a Dalmatian can’t be black with white spots, but it can have enough black spots to LOOK like it’s got a black background with funny looking white spots), color of animals, color of things like fire, too. Aluminum makes the flames blue, and some other metals and some plastics (maybe glass too) make the flames burn a different color. I think something makes the fire pink when it burns, but I’m not sure.

This all ties in with research, which basically involves talking to people who should know (a firefighter about fire stuff, a diving instructor [the diving with the ocean not the pool] for diving, so on and so forth). If they don’t know, you should be worried about their competence, not about whether you can get the information. Again, that’s what the ‘net is for.

And please, for the love of all that is good and junk, DON’T MAKE YOUR CHARACTER PERFECT! MARY-SUES will be touched on later, with a lot of shouting going on. I hate the buggers.

(On a similar note, try to make your characters really breath. Stephen King writes in his book ‘On Writing’ that the character should surprise even you, the writer, with his/her choices. No cardboard cut outs, please. No clichés either, but that sometimes can’t be avoided.)

6. Last, but not least, Time Line. It goes under details and realism and under research sometimes. Flying halfway around the world doesn’t take a day. I don’t know how long it takes, but that doesn’t matter. You might phone a flight service and ask. Also, people can’t heal from broken bones in a matter of days, though they might in a matter of weeks if it wasn’t a bad break, more like a fracture.

Once you get the general idea of how long something might take (say, a week for the character to return home from a bad vacation) or three hours driving from Fergus to Toronto, you can make the story ring true and make it even more believable.

Even if you have fire breathing dragons and aliens making a regular appearance, your time line can still be believable.

PLOT (The demon of story writing)

If you’ll notice, I wrote Plot as ‘The demon of story writing’. I’ll explain. Then I’ll get onto the rules.

Plot, to quote Stephen King, ‘is a jackhammer. It will get the fossil out, but a lot of it will be broken’. And King is right, plot is a jackhammer. Your characters will have to follow the course laid out for them, and, if you’re a good writer, it will only be minimum damage; your characters will be cardboard cutouts, your readers may be bored out of their skulls, and you might not like the story much. (Maximum damage? You’ll get rejection slip after rejection slip, that doesn’t give you any advice about how to fix the problem and just mentioning how the narration slips from Past to Present back to Past and junk).

Of course, some writers work very well with Plot. My mother seems to be one of them, because she can write down what happens in the story, in order, and her stories seem to flow. When Mom and I write stories together, we might get into arguments because I want to ‘Flow’ and she wants to use the Jackhammer. We usually work it out in the end, using generals instead of specifics. Like ‘Fight, chapter nine’ if she gets her way the most. If I get more of my way, I’ll put ‘Fight, somewhere near the beginning, but more towards the middle’, which, although perhaps a little confusing, works well for me because, hey, the story might only be three chapters long and I could put the fight in the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two.

Specifics can be really bad, because they are the Jackhammer, Sledgehammer, and Ball and Chain all in one. Generals, however, can be used just fine, even if your philosophy is to ‘let it flow’. Example 1: Plot:

Chapter one- Meet (Character) and (Character), see how they hate each other
Chapter two- Character one sabotages character two…

Or Example 2: Generals:

Character One and Character Two introduced quickly, they hate each other. Character one ruins something of Character Two’s early on…

Or:

Middle of the story, have ____ steal a cop car and crash it.

Either one of the Generals is fine, though I like the second one better, but that might be just me.

If you noticed in plot, (AKA Specifics), you find that 1, you’ll probably end up with stiff chapters that doesn’t really let you do much besides ‘Character A meets Character B and they get into an arguing match’. (There are other ways to do plot, but those tend to be even worse).

The Generals are better, because in the first version, you could have two, maybe even three chapters of a) the two characters meeting, getting into an argument and storming off, only to have character one plotting the destruction of character two’s junk, or b) something that resembles Plot a little two much for my liking.

The second example of Generals, like I said, is my favorite. Maybe because it’s so general, it’s more like a Detail instead of a point that HAS to happen in my story somewhere. It’s also, in my opinion, like saying, ‘I want kids when I get married. Some will be adopted, some will by my flesh and blood. But I want kids.’ Then, if, say, you can’t have kids from your own flesh, there’s still the option of adopting. And if you can’t adopt (heaven knows why) you can have the kid grown in your stomach, go through morning sickness and a sore back, and suffer through trying to push something the size of a watermelon through a hole the size of a grapefruit. And you might have a husband who tells you ‘its alright, it’s just a little pain’. If your husband (or the father of your child) says that, slap him. But we’re getting off subject.

By making the Generals into something more like Details, you can play around with the placement. You could even decide you don’t like the idea and throw it away, or that it wont fit in the middle and might be better off near the end. Or you could stick it any old place and get yelled at by your First Reader. Or your editor.

Anyway, that’s why Plot is the ‘Demon of story writing’. And Rule number ONE is:

1. DON’T USE PLOT UNLESS YOUR DESPERATE!

Thank you.

BACK STORY

This might be just me, but I don’t really have any rules on Back Story, besides keeping it to a minimum in your writing. I’m sure plenty of people have rules about Back Story, and I’ve read several of those rules. Here’s what I say to that.

DON’T LISTEN TO THE BASTARDS! JUST DON’T!

My reason? Because you CAN work Back Story in with the flash backs, you can work it in with just stupid little passages (like for the fiftieth time…) and you don’t need to worry about that. It’s what second drafts are for.

The best way, in my opinion, to work FLASH BACKS in, is through dreams. If your character is dreaming about something, it will be opinionated, sure, but we’ll get the general idea of what happened. Like, say, a dream about the childhood might have the stove, which just burned the child, laughing. Can’t really happen, but it is a dream, after all. Or you could have dancing girls in the background doing the Can-Can (whatever the real name to that stupid dance is I don’t know and I don’t really give a bleep, either). But dreams are one of the best ways to work back story in. Even if it does get a little disturbing.

Those passages I mentioned? Yeah, they work too. It’s like saying to a friend, ‘Remember the time when… (Joey’s pants fell down; I got locked in the basement for three days…)’. Only it doesn’t have the Remember when. The character might be locking at ‘Joey’ (or whoever) and might break out laughing, remembering the time Joey’s pants fell down. Or whatever happened.

The passages are a little bit easier to work into the story without taking away from the story. They might even ad a hint of humor (remembering something stupid the bad guy did) during a very frightening situation. The character could burst out laughing at a bad time, like during a meeting with executives of the company during a serious discussion and be fired. Or it could be with a school yard bully, but whatever you want to write about.

Or the character could compare everything to the past. (Bars on the beauty shop windows reminding a recent Jail person of the iron bars of his cell).

Or you could just hint at the Back Story, which is also OKAY. Like I said, I don’t have any rules, and sometimes I just write down the story with no back story and go back in the second draft to fiddle with it. You might do something else entirely, but remember to ignore the bastards who write rules about Back Story. Even Stephen King, who’s rules about everything else should be followed by the letter.

MARY-SUES (The Most EVIL THINGS on the PLANET!)

If you can’t understand why Mary-Sues are the most evil things on the planet, you probably also think the sky is pink and that clouds are made of cotton candy.

Mary-Sues have been mentioned before, but it requires a greater look at, because there are several Mary-Sue types.

The best way to identify a Mary-Sue is to first look at how everyone else is. If the characters the Mary-Sue likes are obviously good people, and the characters that the Mary-Sue doesn’t like are bad people who kick their dog and pour harmful chemicals down the drain, then it’s a good chance that the Main Character is a Mary-Sue. Of course, the writer could simply be opinionated.

The other ways of identifying a Mary-Sue is Thus:

A Tragic Past- You can have a character that isn’t a Mary-Sue with a tragic past, but you normally can’t have a Mary-Sue that hasn’t had a tragic past. The Mary-Sue probably lost his/her parents to something or other, is being chased by the people who killed the family, and gets help from everyone.

Other Characters either Love or Hate the Sue- Again, your character CAN be loved or hated by the other characters, but some of those characters should probably be good people who hate/love the character, and some should be bad people who hate/love the character. With Sues, the good guys all love the Sue, and the bad guys are either trying to kill the Sue or acquire her for their own. (The bad guys might be in love with the Sue).

Characteristics- Remember how I told you to make your Character afraid of something? Sue’s aren’t scared of anything. They want only the best in life and they get it. They have amazing strokes of luck that any other character would never get. Like sudden super powers that are mentioned once and never again.

A Sue will also be perfect in her looks. Sue’s are never fat, and always look like modals. The ones that normally don’t need to be airbrushed.

The types of a Sue tend to fall into the three categories, Butterfly, Bad Girl, and Experiment.

Butterfly- This Sue is very beautiful, with blond hair and blue eyes, or whatever. She is also very naive about the world around her, and everyone loves her. Or loves to hate her, whatever. The Sue may also have super powers or maybe even wings, or transforming abilities. Whatever, the Sue is never in any real trouble because she can always deal with it, smiling the entire time.

Bad Girl- Some people think making their character a real bad person makes them not be a Sue. Wrong. These Sues tend to swear a lot, but the words are never written down. (*@^*&^ Instead of ‘Damn’ or ‘Shit’). The Sue is also really cruel to people, and kicks butt. The Sue is also very pretty, in a ‘Bad way’. The Sue can also deal with anything that comes her way with her SUPER FIGHTING ABILITIES! Please don’t be alarmed if I double over choking, I was probably drinking and needed to laugh.

Experiment- This Sue has had a horrible experiment done to her. She could be a robot now, or have super powers due to being an experiment. Extremely beautiful, the Sue can, as usual, get through anything without being in any real trouble.

The Mary-Sue is also, ALWAYS AS A RULE, smart. This can be really annoying for those of us who’ve failed Chemistry and is now in Applied just so she can pass… Ahem. Sorry, bitter feelings.

One last thing to remember, Mary-Sue also has a brother, Gary-Stu, who’s just a male version of Mary. Yeah. Avoid Sue/Stu. Okay? Okay.

END NOTES FOR NOW

If I ever become a published author, and am asked to write a book on writing, you’ll probably find that the Characterization notes are as above, right down to the nitty gritty mistakes. Because, for some reason, I think that the rules on characterization, Back Story, Plot, and dealing with Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus have never been clearer then right now as I write this, a mere Fifteen Year old who is in Applied Science because she failed it the first time.

I give many thanks to Stephen King, for writing his book ‘On Writing’, because unlike so many other stories he doesn’t agree with the Plot idea. Thanks to him, I’m writing better then ever. So, thanks to Stephen King.

P.S. Thanks to my Mom who just finished reading it. Thanks Parental Unit Female!

((Nothing has been changed!))

Will you please stop calling me "Parental Unit Female"?

Wow! When you read this out to me, I didn't realise how long it actually was. I still love your rules, 'Adolescent Unit Female.'

love,
Mom

Nice food for thought, Phoenix! Thanks!

I can promise I'll follow these tips... but, then, again, I hardly qualify as a 'good' writer All joking aside, though, I think you've got good points. And, may I say, I find it astonishing how you've organized your thoughts so well! I doubt I could do it.

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Good food for thought, indeed. Mary Sues...always make me ponder. We've all probably Mary Sue'ed something at one point or another...it just amuses me how they all unintentionally wind up having the same charaterization. Um...that really made a lot more sense in JD-Land before I tried opening my mouth. :p

Word,
JD

Irene and Phoenix, love the parental/adolescent vibe. Makes me feel waffy.

I have 2 youthful unit females in the house, and hope that my relationship is like yours seems to be when they become adolescents.

Yeah Mom. I'll stop. (NOT!) JK! And nobody HAS to take the advice, I was bored! I wrote it! I posted it! There are a lot of exclimation marks, aren't there? NEways... Me n' mom are pretty special, but good luck, er... L? Is that right? Meh, coming from a teen, don't yell when they're talking on the phone and they'll love yha. I think... Thanks for the comments! Got to go take over the world now, bwahahahahahaha*coughhackchokingness*
Ciao