Valkyrie diaries writing guide for fanfiction: part 7 and 8

7. Plan your work, work your plan:
This is originally a battlefield adage, but it applies to the world of writing as well. If you know where your story is going and how you're going to get there in advance, writing it becomes easier overall. I have seen too many potentially good stories peter out into nothing because the author didn't plan the plot out properly. Not planning it out leads to loose plot threads and sub-plots that never get closure; these things will lead to a lot of disappointment amongst your readers and are known to start wars.



Jokes aside, knowing where you're going is very important. My main complaint about Lord of the Rings is just this: large portions of this epic saga are clear padding, when Tolkien just wrote away, with no clear idea of what was going to happen next. The Tom Bombadil-sequence in particular smacks of this. In anime they talk of filler episodes, which only serve to make watcherse furious: can you imagine what a few chapters of this in a book or in fanfiction can do to your readers?

Having a plan and sticking to it is key, especially when writing a mystery story, which suffer even more than a regular narrative if you have no clue on how to reach the end scene, if that is possible. You see, mysteries are sort of written "backwards", with you as the author having to plan down and most likely write down the central act of crime before writing the rest of the story. You need to plan where clues are dropped and later found; how various characters become involved and how the criminal tries to trick the detective. Essentially, you write the same story, twice. It's just that one of them never gets shown to the public. Agatha Christie's novels featuring Hercule Poirot are particularly good places to start if you want to see this method in action.

What I'm basically saying is that writing a synopsis before setting to work on the actual story is always a good idea. This is the modus operandi of the actual publishing world, where nothing gets done without synopsi. If you have to, write down a short (about a page long) synopsis for every chapter in the story.

And if you don't know where to go with the story, leave it for a bit to mature or alternatively, rewrite it in places. Don't ever let the story meander about like a noodle, just so that you have something to put up on fanfiction.net. If people truly like your story, they'll come back. If they understand writer's block, which can happen to anybody, they'll forgive you for the lack of updates. Fans and author should have a relationship of respect between themselves. Fans who claim you owe them anything aren't fans; they are leeches.

8. Internal consistency and coherency:
All worlds run on an internal logic. And I do mean all worlds. Our own world does (it's called physics); Discworld does (it's called Narrativium). Twilight doesn't, which is why it has been critically panned worldwide. Sorry, Twitards, but the word of SMeyer lacks internal consistency, and once you become aware of these, the suspension of disbelief, which is so important for fiction, goes *poof* in a cloud of vampiric diamond-dust. It's the same with the Dan Brown-novels, come to think of it. And the two last Harry Potter novels as well...

What it all boils down to is to be consistent as an author and to write in a coherent manner. This point walk hand-in-hand with the Grammar-Nazi up there and good old "Show, don't tell". Don't tell the audience that the antagonist is evil, show it through his/her actions. The Hero is heroic through his/her deeds, not words (unless they're a politician).

Also, concerning antagonists, give them more of a reason to be evil than "Because!" or "I want this guy/girl to be EVIL!!". Even the Nazis, who most people will agree were evil smeggers, had reason and logic behind it, although a warped logic. They didn't eat babies, but they certainly killed them. Yet, Nazis were humans, not blood-sucking monsters- Okay, okay, in Hellsing they are both baby-eating and blood-sucking monsters, but that is beside the point. The historical Nazis were human beings like you and me. Wicked human beings, but humans nonetheless. Goering was a fatass, Goebbels a womanizer, Himmler a neurotic hypoconcriac and Hitler had constant stomach problems. Still evil though.

Consistency also spills over into writing style. If you're going to write an epic saga about robots, aliens and gallant heroes in power armour, make certain your writing style is up to it. Nothing can rip you out of the experience as a trivial quote or a flat line of dialogue. I know this from my own experience.
If you're writing a story where the fate of the world, nay the universe, hangs in the balance, you don't want to break this scene with, dare I say it? a childish turn of phrase. Rinoa's entire dialogue in Final Fantasy VIII does this. Every time she says something, you're pulled out the immersive experience, because she acts like a six-year-old.

Either way, these things kill immersion stone dead and can make people stop reading the story altogether.