How to write 'Good' fanfiction

[Narf the Mouse]

1) It's always nice when enemies get together, so always pair up mortal enemies. Really, everyone will just love your new Harry/Draco story.

2) Legolas doesn't have a girlfriend. This must mean that he is desperately lonely and needs You!, yes, You! to go to middle earth and be the gorgeous she-elf he's always been looking for. Also, don't forget to give yourself a pretty name, like Amber. Or maybe more elf-life - Perhaps Amberlilly?

3.1) Alternately, completely ignore the concept of friendship. There must be another reason why he hangs around Gimli...And hey, just because there is no text evidence, doesn't mean it's not true!

4) Splelig is teh consurn ov smale-mindead peepul. U r ane rtist!

5) Wouldn't it be cool if you could get into your favorite fictional universe? Wouldn't it be cool if all your friends came with you? Don't forget to describe every day in exquisite detail. Talent optional.

6) Your favorite character (Xander) is underpowered, overabused and clearly in need of a makeover. (S)he (Xander) is in need of a name change (Alex), super-combat powers, a kitana, a submachinegun, a dozen knives, an axe or two and a new, snarly attitude. Oh, and don't forget a black trenchcoat to hide it all in, so the police don't stop you (Him).

7.1) Also, actual super-pwers (By way of halloween) and having all his friends hate him are both great ways of getting your favorite crossover going.

8) And hey, nothing says 'Suprise, Awesome Crossover' like killing all the other characters off. That way, your Favorite (Xander) will have to move on.

9) Logic? What logic? You're an Ar-teest!

10) Methos, despite all evidence to the contrary, MUST have been deeply and truely in love with your Immortal OOC for the past several thousand years. And hey, why not make her older and a Horseman(Woman)? That way, they can really bond!

11) Or why not Duncan? After all, nothing says 'Twu Wuv' like sneaking in and stealing beer. Of course it's true love. Havn't you figured out Methos and Beer yet?

12) Or heck, Cassandra! With their whole shared past, certainly there must be feelings there!

13) And don't forget, everyone is on the edge of their seat to hear about Your Dark Elf.

14) A slayer can beat up Superman! Really!

Ok, I'm out.

[CooperNRG]

That's hilarious!

[One post wonder]

Mindead. I am using that word from now on.

[Dustman]

*Strokes imaginary beard in thought*
Yes, I see... I am totally going to write a Buffy/LOTR crossover now. Sure, I might have to sell a chromosome or two to pay for all the DVDs so I can get some backstory to ignore, but I don't think that'll be a problem.

Seriously though, was this actually inspired by something?

[Narf the Mouse]

Inspired? Every single one of those has at least one example behind it. Generally, a lot more than one.

Dawn/Xander pairings, for example. Dawn/Xander Halloween episode pairings.

Here, have some brain cleaner. I don't think I've use all of it, yet. Maybe.

Fanfiction: More San loss than Cthuthlu.
Fanfiction: Making Sturgeon look like an optimist. (Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is 'garbage'")
Fanfiction: Yep, we've got that.
Fanfiction: Psychos on parade.
Fanfiction: The reason commercial fiction has quality controls.
Fanfiction: Mostly better than fatal.
Fanfiction: They say roses grow best in fertilizer. But does there have to be so much of it?!?!

[Tom the Fanboy]

One of our friends who happens to go and read fanfic often is actually against all crossovers. She has a great deal of caveats but mostly she just hate people bending the "rules" of universe just to make them fit.

However, when telling this to mechalith and I she brought up one that kind of made sense to us.

Buffy and Dr. Who

Now the quality of the fanfic in question is not the issue, the similarity of the universes was. Buffyverse rules state that all demons are from other dimensions. Change that to "Planets" and you're instantly compatible with Dr. Who.

Magical vortex under the town? Check
Weird new monster of the week? Check
Existence of temporal anomalies? Check
Chavy blondes? Check
Brainy british people? Check
Bisexual Beefcake? Check (Riley)

There's plenty of crossovers I can agree with her on being just WRONG but that certainly wasn't one of them. One of the examples of crossovers whose universes don't work together actually turned out to be a very popular fanfic that many thought was pretty good.

Harry Potter at the Xavier Institute

[Jbaum2]

there is decent fanfic out there, but it is few and far between; I actually have a friend who is an author trying to get published (as he says, he's working on his collection of rejection letters) and in the meantime is writing fanfiction both as a skill-sharpening exercise and as a means of evicting the storylines that walk into his head and insist on being written.

That being said, that list is awesome.

[Narf the Mouse]

If it's good, why don't you post it? There's a 'Good Fanfiction' thread on the second page, just waiting for posts...

Second, my opinion is almost the exact opposite. I tend not to see the point of non-crossovers. The point of fanfiction is to write something new, something not seen in the canon - And too many people write things we've already seen in the canon. Like another Stargate fic about an advanced civilization that does/n't want to share technology.

And nothing's newer than crossing it with a whole other universse. True, some of them are just absurd, but that doesn't always affect how well the writing flows. If you want to see some really good examples, look up a fanfiction.net author by the name of Vathara. I have absolutely no interest in yu-gi-oh, but I gleefully read her? yu-gi-oh/Sentinel (TV cop budy show with a supernatural twist, evidently) crossover more than once. And most would say that's absurd.

I don't care. I'm just hoping her next, whole and complete, fic will get posted soon.

[Tom the Fanboy]

And nothing's newer than crossing it with a whole other universse. True, some of them are just absurd, but that doesn't always affect how well the writing flows. If you want to see some really good examples, look up a fanfiction.net author by the name of Vathara. I have absolutely no interest in yu-gi-oh, but I gleefully read her? yu-gi-oh/Sentinel (TV cop budy show with a supernatural twist, evidently) crossover more than once. And most would say that's absurd.

You just made me imagine crossovers between "real world" cop shows and anime.
Like Gunsmith Cats meets Starsky and Hutch.

Which then led me to
Knight Rider meets Bean Bandit.

Which brings us to the inevitable
A-Team vs Cowboy Bebop (no spaceships)


I think I have The Best (and shortest) Stargate Fanfic Ever on my computer still, I'll see if I can find it.

[Lunaroki]

As a fanfic author myself I find this thread quite entertaining. ^_^

I'll admit there's a lot of crappy fanfiction out there. I will never understand why people who are so obsessed with a show/movie/comic/anime/whatever that they have to write their own stories about it can't be bothered to take the time to make sure their stories make sense and are readable. When I write I will not publish my work online until it meets both criteria... with one notable exception where I was intentionally trying NOT to make sense. Don't ask. That story's a piece of crap and needs to be deleted before anyone else sees it.

Um, getting back to my point, while there is a lot of crappy fanfiction out there I find once someone starts posting a lot of good quality fanfiction in a fandom the people posting crap get intimidated by the comparison and stop posting. This may or may not be universal, but it has been the case in my experience. Those who can't be bothered to write well don't like having the crappiness of their work highlighted by proximity to higher quality writing and tend to look for somewhere else to publish their crap.

In case you were wondering, I publish fanfiction based on the Saturday morning cartoon show the Winx Club. Yeah yeah, I know, it's a kiddie show and the art is a little simplistic, but there are some seriously hot babes in that show, if you ignore the fact that they all look anorexic. On top of that the social dynamics of that show have a lot of untapped potential that I love to explore. If anybody is interested you can find my work at adultfanfiction.netin the Winx Club area of the Cartoons section. You will have to enter your date of birth before you can read the stories. AFF has had to protect itself against potential lawsuits from parents of underage kids who don't take "Go away until you're 18" seriously.

Forgot to add, if you want a fandom that was just made for crossovers try Sliders. Every week they landed in another weird alternate version of Earth with its own strange rules. Thanks to Quinn Mallery's interdimensional wormhole they could wind up in ANY fandom! I once toyed with the notion of having them slide into the SGC only to have Quinn's wormhole get tangled up around the Stargate, rendering both wormholes unusable. It would take the combined genius of Quinn Mallery and Samantha Carter to get the two separated while in the meantime some sort of crisis loomed that could only be averted if the Stargate was useable.

[Narf the Mouse]

In one fanfic, the sliders landed in SGA and the stargate crashed the slider remote, so they ended up staying.

[Thunderhowl]

Mercedes Lackey and Gayleen Froese both got their start in fanfic. It's not ALL bad....just MOSTLY bad. Heh.

[Narf the Mouse]

One is a B-list writer, in my opinion (Mostly because of large incosistencies in her worlds and a tendency to write social tracts) and I don't recognize the other.

[Thunderhowl]

One is a B-list writer, in my opinion (Mostly because of large incosistencies in her worlds and a tendency to write social tracts) and I don't recognize the other.

Social Tracts? I don't know what you mean. Anyway, whatever.

As for Gayleen Froese....she's an awesome author. Her book is called Touch. You should Google her, and buy her book. It's excellent.

http://www.gayleenfroese.com/ <-----Linky

[Narf the Mouse]

Thanks for the link, I'll look at it later.

[Nolori]

Let is be known: I Love This List.

I will be a good fanfiction writer and I shall follow it! GimilixLegolas Adult Fan-Fictions, AWAY!
...

Dear God, did I really just write that? Ow. My fingers. They burn. That wasn't even a funny joke. Ow. Ow. Ow. Typing feels like pain!

Anyway, I was about to click Lunaroki's link there. Until I read that it was adultfanfiction. It's hard for me to believe people actually post there. Intelligent people anyway. The things I've seen on that site should not be seen by mortal eyes.
Although I guess the same can be said for some of the things on regular ol' fanfiction.net. Ehn. Whatever. I post there anyway.

I write fanfiction, too. I enjoy it immensly. It's great when I need a break from working on my actual story. The Marauders of Harry Potter really are fun to write about. Boys pratically write for themselves!
[Shamless Advertisement]Fan-Fiction? Where?[/shamless advertisement]

Also, on the topic of cross-overs, if they are well written I like them. But then again, I'll read almost anything that isn't "typd lyke tis" and isn't smut. I can't really take cross-overs seriously, but I don't usually take any fan-fictions seriously. (Except a few Marauders ones, but that's because the guy (girl?) who wrote them was genius!)

[Narf the Mouse]

My own rather slow to update fics can be found Here..

[DEBO]

I think the most acceptable form of fanfic, are the ones that deal with series that were never officially wrapped up. Again mostly crap, but I'm more willing to wade through the crap to find well written stuff when I'm ALSO getting a resolution to some of my favourite stories.

Crossovers are an all or nothing proposal, either they need to make perfect sense or absoluely no sense at all, though I would not be opposed to a crossover between Life on Mars and say, Doctor Who.

Also, The Sentinel wasn't supernatural, and rule 6 is almost justifiable, considering the official writers did it for just about every other charcter in the show.

[Tom the Fanboy]

Crossovers are an all or nothing proposal, either they need to make perfect sense or absoluely no sense at all, though I would not be opposed to a crossover between Life on Mars and say, Doctor Who.

You mean the last three episodes from this Series of Who?

[DEBO]

Wait, what? Is this season 4 of the 'new' series? Because I recall no mention of anyone from Life on Mars, at the end of season 3. I'd heard that Sam Tyler had been named after Rose Tyler, that's the main reason it occured to me (also I like both shows), but didn't realise they were actually meant to be related.