Alrighty this will be long, so buckle up y’all.
Fanfiction/Story writing tips
(Tutorial by someone definitely not qualified to be making tutorials)
1. The beginning
One of the harder parts of writing in general is the start of the story — the part that pulls the reader in and makes them want to keep reading.
And how do we make the people want to read our story with the first sentence? Here’s some things that work for me:
— Start in the middle of an action
This works especially well if it starts with a character saying a line. That way readers get the vaguest idea of what is going on, but it’s not enough for them to fully understand, so their reaction might be “Oh wait, what’s happening here?”, and they get curious enough to continue onward.
*Something important about that way of starting is that while you don’t want to prolong the action too much, you don’t want to outright explain what is happening. You just want to write it clear enough for the reader to fill in the gaps themselves after just reading a couple sentences.
— Careful with the amount of exposition
While yes, the exposition is a vital part of the story’s worldbuilding, it can be tricky to incorporate it naturally. Where I suggest not to put it is right at the very beginning. If you have read any of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories (specifically “The Dunwich horror”), you’ll understand what I’m talking about. When a story starts with 10 minutes of dry exposition, most would just go “Jeez, we get it, Dunwich is an old, ugly, smelly town, just get on with it already!” and might stop reading right before the good part starts. A start from the “T’was a dark and stormy night” can work if done right, but it’s still risky and difficult. Instead, what I like doing, is incorporating the exposition through a character’s thoughts — like if they start thinking about the chain of events that brought them to this part of the story, that’s where you explain what is happening, along with the character’s opinion and understanding of their surroundings (that can be used to add some extra depth to them as well).
2. The story itself
Alright, so you got past the scary start, now it’s time for what you came here to do — the contents of your story. The fun part, if you will.
This is where you have most creative freedom, but there are still some things to look out for if you want to add depth to it.
Even before you start writing, you need to decide whose POV (point of view) you’ll tell the story through. If you’ve read fanfiction on AO3, you’ll see the one of the most common POV is the one of the main character, told in 3rd Person (no “I” or “me”, but “he/she/they” when talking about the character) — basically the narrator is speaking on their behalf. There are other kinds of POV, but right now I’ll go over the details of this one.
You only want to write what that character is seeing and hearing, so the reader only knows what the they know. It’s also a good idea to keep in mind the character’s intelligence and understanding of their surroundings — that way they might see something happening, but because it’s beyond their understanding, they either see it as unimportant or completely misinterpret it, while the readers will realise the meaning before them (and possibly be outraged the character missed it).
When writing your characters, you want to make their established personalities stand out, but I get that’s easier said than done. Fear not, I have tips for that too!
A good way to do that is through their actions. Not just the actions that move the plot forward, but their movements as well — body language, facial expressions, or just any micro movement that gives the reader clues about that character’s mental state. Their face and arms are the body parts that offer the most diversity — furrowing their brows, widening their eyes, pressing their lips together, different smiles, talking with their hands, fidgeting, crossing their arms, hiking their shoulders up, etc. You can use those movements to your heart’s content, to the point you explain what they’re doing so well, the reader imagines everything like it’s a movie.
It’s also important to incorporate their personalities through their speech. Their dictionary and sentence structure can speak (hehe) a lot about them — age, literacy, even their origin (accents and languages they have). In literature class we call this a “speech characteristic”, just so you know.
Now, remember when I said writing actions is important for the story? Well, it is, but you have to remember you’re not writing an action marathon. It’s necessary to have a few sentences in between actions to talk about the POV character’s thoughts and feelings depending on the situation. Apart from adding depth to them, it also gives the reader a chance to rest and prepare for the plot to continue onward.
There will be a point in your story where you’ll want to describe something, whether it’s a character’s outer appearance or the scenery around them. Something you need to be aware of is the amount of description you’re giving.
When describing a character, context is important — is it the POV character looking in a mirror and noticing something about themselves, are they looking at someone they know or someone they’re meeting for the first time? The rule is that if the POV character is familiar with whoever they’re looking at, the description will be shorter and will mostly talk about the changes they notice — like for example, wether their friend is wearing their usual style of clothes, or if they’re dressed in a new way. However, when they’re meeting someone unfamiliar, that’s when you can go into more detailed explanations about what the character notices about the other person — their clothes, their build, their face, their overall vibe.
With descriptions of scenery, you are allowed to make longer explanations as long as the space is relevant to the plot, but try making it not longer than one or two paragraphs, or it might become the same situation as the lengthy exposition. And I highly recommend to make your characters interact with their surroundings. That also has the reader keep track of where they are at a certain moment.
3. The ending
There are plenty of ways to write an ending, but one of the ones I like (and use) the most are the semi-open endings.
That’s basically ending the same way you started — in the middle of an action. But the trick here isn’t to invoke the reader’s curiosity and make them wonder what happens next, it’s the exact opposite. You’re ending the story when the main action is already finished, to the point when you don’t even need to write out what the characters do next, because the reader can already picture it without any doubts.
Like if your characters finish an adventure and they’re planning to go home, you don’t have to write them actually reaching their home, because you’ve already let the readers know the adventure has ended and there’s nothing interesting happening on the way, so you just let them imagine how they arrive and what they do themselves. That way you save yourself some work and leave your readers satisfied.
4. Extras
If you study/studied literature in school, you might think that all those things you learned are useless and unnecessary. Well, so did I, and now I’m eating my words.
Using all those literary devices actually makes your story appear more professional. So here’s a few examples you can use in yours:
Make your story end with the same action it started with, but make it apparent that the character has changed throughout the entirety of the story, so while in the beginning they react to the situation a certain way, at the end their reaction towards the same situation changes depending on the lessons they learned.
A character tells the others a story, that either gives them an important lesson, necessary information, or is just a reflection of the situation the characters are in. This one is self-explanatory, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.
Another self-explanatory one. This one basically gives the reader hints about future (or past) events of the story and readers will be very happy when they find them.
And remember, it’s easier to write a crappy story and fix it later than writing a masterpiece from scratch.
Those are just my opinions about writing, so if you have different opinions, feel free to share.
I hope that was helpful, you can always ask if you need clarifications.
