Meta: On Fanfic Writing

[amatara]

After reading a number of posts, at metafandom and various other places, about what makes for 'good' and 'bad' writing, and seeing the often strong reactions to those posts, I feel like I should pitch in some thoughts of my own.

 

First of all, I've found I really, and I mean really, dislike the term ‘badfic’, that's used so often in meta on writing. Not that I don’t think there’s a whole lot of fic around that could, in my opinion, be called ‘bad’. Or could even be called ‘bad’ by some general standards that nearly everyone agrees about, say, grammar or characterization. But having an actual label for it, that people can attach to fics they dislike, gives me the feeling that it’s an either-or situation. As if a fic is either badfic or it isn’t, whereas in my opinion what’s badfic for one person may not be that for someone else. And even if some fic is really, objectively speaking, horrendously bad in quality, I still have trouble with the idea of attaching a label to it to denote it as such. Somehow, that makes it sound as if said fic is irredeemable, which, I’m sorry, is an idea I resent. Yes, there are definitely errors in writing that detract from the quality of a fic, and can even turn me off of it completely (because, unlike what all of this may make me sound like, I am very picky about what I read and enjoy), but that doesn’t mean the fic as a whole needs to get that label. Plus, reading barely nuanced statements like “no one reads long paragraphs without dialogue, so get rid of them” and “never use the word ‘suddenly’ in a fic” in meta posts discussing 'what is badfic' – that has a way of irking me. Because things are rarely that simple. But anyway, that’s my personal opinion. Just wanted to vent about that for a moment. Finished now. *g*

 

So for myself, I’m not going to talk about what makes for bad writing, but about the opposite: what can, in my personal view, help to give a fic that little something more. I’m not pretending to be either an expert on writing, or a great writer myself, but as I said, I am picky – I know what I enjoy in reading a fic and what I don’t, and try to follow those guidelines in the stuff I write myself. Whether or not I’m successful at that – that’s up for you guys to determine. :) But anyway, here goes.

 

Your POV character’s eyes are your own. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t always put enough thought into my choice of a POV character. But the truth is, a different POV character means you’ll be telling a different tale. Even if, as a writer, you know how your plot fits together, your characters rarely have all the details. Your POV character will always be missing certain bits of information, and react differently because of that – for example, if characters X and Y are talking innocently and suddenly X kisses Y square on the lips, X will most likely know why s/he did that, but Y won’t. Having your story reflect that, will help to emotionally engage your reader. Rather than a dry ‘And suddenly, X kissed Y,’ which doesn’t specify the POV at all, you could say ‘Y was stumped when X grabbed him by the ears and kissed him’ or ‘X didn’t even know why, but suddenly, all she wanted to do was kiss Y’ depending on whose perspective you’re writing from.

 

A good choice of POV can save you. Choosing your POV can also work in your favor. You don’t always need to lay out all the details – only those that your POV character knows. So if there’s an aspect of a fic you’re writing that you’re not quite confident about, or a part of the plot that doesn’t quite work out, maybe switching the POV can solve your problem? Restricting your POV to a character who isn’t supposed to know the details about that aspect, may just be the thing you need to circumvent it, and focus on the story you really want to tell. One could say that’s cheating, but personally, I think it’s just efficient writing. If, of course, you don’t take it too far. *g* In Of Wine and Virtue, there was a perfectly good reason for my not picking Londo but G’Kar as the POV character – taking Londo, I’d have had no choice but to explain how the Drakh would have agreed to let Londo leave Centauri Prime, and I didn’t know how to do that – besides, it wasn’t the point of the story. By telling the story from G’Kar’s perspective, all I had to do was give a very vague hint as to the explanation, then let it drop. That choice saved my skin there.

 

The character makes the mood. In the same vein, try to use your POV character’s uniqueness and sensibilities in crafting the shape of the fic. Your POV character is, quite literally, the lens through which everyone will see your fic. A tragic story, for instance, can sound very different when told by a gentle, innocent type of person (say, Vir from B5 or Harry Truman from TP) than when it’s told by someone hardened and sarcastic (say, Londo from B5 or Albert from TP). Personally, I am very fond of POV characters from the latter category, especially – and that may sound like a contradiction – when writing angsty tales. Recounting tragic events from a hard-assed character’s POV allows me to downplay the drama using the character’s inherent cynicism, and thus avoid the slide into melodrama (which I’m terrified of doing when writing angst). I’m not a cynical person, at all, but by writing from the viewpoint of a character who is, I’ve managed to manage to write about tragic events that I never would’ve been able to recount when telling the same story from an innocent character’s eyes, because then I’d have slid over into melodrama for sure. That’s why to me, characters like Londo, G’Kar, Timov, Albert, Dr. McCoy, etc etc. are so great as POV characters. Which isn’t to say I can’t use anyone else – I have done Vir, and Lyta, and Spock, and Dale Cooper, who aren’t all innocents but do not have that sarcastic/self-deprecating reflex, or at least not often – but it’s a lot harder for me. (Which, I guess, is part of the explanation for why I write from male POV more often than female – it’s not that there are no female characters who have that streak of self-deprecation, but they’re certainly harder to find.) So again, depending on the mood you want for your story (and often it’s the choice between downplaying the emotion/humor/whatever or explicitizing it) you’ll want to pick another character to tell the tale.

 

Your POV character is not you, and doesn’t have to be. There’s another aspect: characters’ opinions, including what they think about other characters, aren’t necessarily your own.  They may even clash with your own, totally. That doesn’t always make it easy for you as a writer – you’ll have to play Devil’s Advocate to your own opinions, at times, and of course you’ll want to make it clear to your reader in some way that your POV character isn’t always, in your opinion, right. But if done well, writing a story from a POV conflicting with your own can be a terrific experience. In no way, for instance, do I agree with Lyta’s choices at the end of B5’s final season, but crawling into her skin and trying to understand the why from her own perspective was a very satisfying thing for me. In the same way, a recurring motif in my TP fic is that Albert blames both Caroline and Annie for being the cause of so much anguish for Cooper, which is certainly not what I think of both of these women, so I’ll need to have Albert second-guessing himself, or get rebuked by another character, in order to make my own opinion clear. It’s not always easy to do, but it’s a great source of character exploration.

 

Time isn’t linear. Or at least, in writing, it doesn’t have to be. Even if it’s the most obvious choice to be telling your story in one go, from start to finish, there’s nothing wrong with playing around with the sequence of events. Fading to black, for one, isn’t just a handy way to avoid writing sex scenes you’re not comfortable with (though it is that, too. *g*). It can also be a great stylistic device. What I find myself doing quite often is skipping a scene or part of a scene, and then treating it as a flashback afterwards. Apart from making your story more compact, that creates a whole different mood sometimes, because you’re not describing the scene as it happens but through the filter of memory.

 

Less can be more. In the same vein, I’m a firm believer of the ‘less is more’ principle. Especially for stories that are supposed to push the reader’s buttons in some way, be it through sex or humor or some other intense emotion. Different readers have different expectations of, say, a good sex scene or a good angsty moment, and by making stuff explicit you run the risk of clashing with a lot of your readers’ expectations. On the other hand, you can formulate certain bits in such a way that every reader can fill in the details according to their own imagination. For instance, in my latest Five Times Albert Rosenfield Lied I had a scene that has, basically, Albert crying. Now whether or not stuff like appeals to you, and what makes it appealing, is pretty personal. For myself, I prefer it if characters, especially the cynical kind like Albert (or Londo or G’Kar for that matter) don’t break down entirely. Instead, I want to see them grit their teeth and try to bear it. But I can perfectly imagine some of you do want to see that moment of genuine breakdown. If I make it explicit, one way or the other, I end up disappointing part of my readers right there. So in the end, I didn’t make it explicit. I just skipped those ten or so seconds of scene, hinted at them so it was clear what happened but not how it happened, then went straight to the aftermath. In hindsight, I think I pull that kind of trick very often when things get emotional. And I’m aware that the opposite, that euphemisms are something to avoid at any cost, is argued as well. But for me, both as a writer and as a reader, they often work.

 

The tension of tenses. Present or past tense, first or third person – there’s a difference, and it isn’t just grammatical. Ideally, a first-person present-tense fic isn’t just a third-person past-tense one with some verbs and pronouns changed. In part, of course, it is, but there are things you can pull off in first-person that you can’t do in third or vice versa. In a fic where you exploit your POV well, you’ll notice that after a few paragraphs it’s no longer possible to just switch to something else, because you’ve slipped into a mood that draws from your grammar as well as your vocabulary. A lot of it is about habit too, of course, and the breaking of habit. Third person past tense seems like the obvious choice for most people, including myself at first. But present tense is great as well, to give your fic a sense of urgency, or to make it more tactile. I find myself slipping more and more in present tense these days, especially when there’s sexiness involved – because honestly now, who as a reader doesn’t like the feeling of being right on top of the action? *g* And first person can be great for comic effect, or to create a connection with the reader. Third-person alternating POV – that discussion is a can of worms in itself, so let me just say I’m not against it, but I do think it should be done with care. I’ve done it myself, most often in humorous pieces, but I try to do it in a very controlled way. Like, do 1000 words in character X’s voice, then switch to character Y for about another 1000, then switch to X again, then to Y, etc. Keeping the pieces about equal in length, so it at least shows that you’re doing it intentionally. That, to me, is a key word in a lot of these so-called ‘principles in writing’. A good writer can pull off a lot of things, but it all starts with being aware of what you’re doing, how, and why. That, or you just need impeccable instincts. :)

 

Be descriptive, but not literal. In other words, descriptions are great as long as they don’t get too – well, descriptive. Too clinical, is another way of saying it. This may be a personal thing, but fics that I quite often give up on after a few paragraphs or so, are the ones that contain only factual descriptions. “He walked to the door and turned the knob. There was a gust of wind when he stepped through it. He felt cold, so he took his jacket and wrapped it around him.” That says perfectly what happened, but there’s nothing to tell us it was character X who experienced this. Of course you don’t want every sentence in your story to be emotionally loaded, especially not in an action scene, but finding some kind of middle ground is usually a good thing. For instance, you could say “The doorknob was cold to the touch, and stepping through, he shivered. Damn, it was freezing in here. It was  a good thing he’d brought a jacket.” The same information, but now it’s no longer just recounting the facts. This, for me personally, is often what makes or breaks a fic for me. If it’s just bam-bam-bam, a succession of verbs and actions, I will start feeling distanced, uninvolved, and most likely lose my interest. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good story, but I, as a reader, need the emotion to keep me interested. Something that can also work miracles is dropping an unexpected peek in the character’s head into the fic – a memory, an isolated thought, something that doesn’t even have to be directly related to the action. It doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve found that stuff like that is often what my betas and readers will pick out as their favorite parts. As for the debate about descriptive verbs, I’m neither in favor nor against – it all depends on how you use them, how often, etc etc. In my own fic, too many “said”s or “replied”s make things sound too clinical to me, so I alternate those with more descriptive verbs, or just drop the verbs altogether. For instance, you can just as easily say “I’m out of here,” he said, sweeping up his coat, as “I’m out of here.” With a scowl, he swept up his coat. Personally I use the second option the most. On the other hand, I’ve seen authors (penknife is the first who comes to mind) do the “said”/”said”/”said” without it ever bothering me, so once again there’s no black-and-white.

 

Keep ‘em consistent. Of course the first thing everyone mentions about writing good fic, is that it should be in character. But I daresay things are more complicated than that. To me, even more important than whether or not a character acts IC, is whether the character’s motivations are clear and consistent within the logic of the story. Now I should say, I’m a canon girl at heart. I’m compulsive like that. :) I don’t often read AUs, for one, not because I have  a problem with them but because what grabs my interest in fics is how it handles canon, improves on canon, fills the holes in canon, etc. So my favorite fics will usually be the one where the characters act as closely as possible to their canon selves. That said, I could still enjoy, say, a somewhat softer version of X or a kick-asser version of Y, as long as it fits the story and the fic keeps its own characterization choices straight. In a humorous story, situations or character reactions are often overplayed, same as in smutty fics, and I’m more than fine with that, even being as picky about this as I am. *g* Of course, a certain degree of IC’ness is appropriate, but within limits, I do believe one can tweak characterization for the purpose of a fic, as long as you keep certain character traits alive and consistently stick to whatever it is you’re overplaying for the sake of the story.

 

Have a theme, or at least a goal. Even in a short fic, it’s always good to have a recurring theme, something you can use to guide your direction, or to come back to over the course of your fic. Personally I like to have things come around full circle. I very often have several little themes in a fic, and then try to tie them all together. Even if it’s steamy sex you’re writing – it’s even better if your fic has something to define it by. Try this: can I describe my fic in a few words? A PWP can be about a kink, but it can also be about setting limits, or about manipulation, or about finding comfort where you didn’t expect it.

Canon's your friend, if you let it. Like nearly everything that relates to characterization, this is a delicate one, but personally, the fics I love most are the ones that work with canon rather than against it. I love my ships as much as any other fan (well, maybe not that, but I do love them *g*) and engage in wishful thinking as much as the rest of you, I’m sure. That said, a big part of the challenge (and fun!) is to try and make my pieces of wish-fulfillment fit into canon in a way that’s consistent with it. Sure, that’s not always easy, especially when the characters have other canon relationships, or if there are parts of canon you just plain dislike (as in, personally, I loved Torchwood COE, but I can understand that many fans would rather erase it all from collective memory). Of course it would have been easier to write post-canon Londo/G’Kar had Londo not been practically a prisoner in his own palace for years, or to write Londo/Timov if the two of them didn’t appear to have detested each other since they were married, or to write Cooper/Albert if there hadn’t been Caroline, and Annie, and, well, the whole of the series’ finale, really. But still, even then I try to see it as a puzzle that I need to crack, rather than a dreadful obstacle the writers have seen fit to throw at me. That philosophy has saved me a lot of frustration already. *g*

Well – a lot of weighty words, this. :) And let me reinstate here that that’s all this aims to be: words. I’m not in any way trying to impose my norms on the rest of fandom – just trying to formulate what, to me, have been helpful tools in writing. As I’m far from infallible myself, I don’t always follow my own principles, even when I try to. Some things I still do consistently wrong. I’m pretty sure use italics far too much. That, and commas. I need to focus on making my sentences shorter, but don’t always manage to. Very often I slip into some kind of rhythm, and then when I re-read, I realize all my sentences have the same cadence and length. And sometimes my dialogue falls flat, but I leave it like that anyway, because I can’t find any better way of saying it. *g*

So if any of you have writing tips of your own, or a reaction to anything I wrote here – let ‘em come! Discussion is what makes the world go round – and fandom too. :)