Anesor

It depends on the source and your tastes. I generally prefer a majority of characters to be canon, but some settings that really isn’t possible. I attempted writing for the Neverwinter MMO setting, but those plots and characters were so loosey goosey within the setting that, aside from mentioning an event or character in passing my story didn’t even feel much part of that setting. By the time I had created that many OCs to be the entire cast, I realized I wasn’t writing fanfic anymore but an original fiction. I wasn’t attached to the canon-weak characters and events that I didn’t want or need them, I was doing ALL of the work of writing an original story without being able to take credit. It wasn’t hard to file off the original setting. (BW knows that hiatus’d story) MMOs with the generic nature of character interaction and repetition, seem very unlikely to build a gripping foundation for fanfic. The original Guild Wars had the bones for some gripping sequences, but with the very fluidity of the interative and constantly retconned canon, it’s not stable enough or even accessable years later to refresh the canon. Now single player games like NWNights and Dragon Age are released in large enough chunks they are stable enough for replay for fun or research as you have a copy of the game you played on disk. Canon characters are far better developed and rich for exploration and use in fiction. Few games have made as good characters. Too many characters mean they aren’t 3D enough to tempt my muse. I had hopes for project eternity game, but the supporting cast was too generic and boring, I believe that it is the canon characters (and lesserly- events) who drive my interest in fanfiction. If the significant cast is all original, I know I’m not as interested in reading. Writing about the adventures on the SS Vanguard that has no impact on the world just feels futile. What would be different if this happened instead of canon? Sometimes I’ve read even a single OC who can break the setting completely, the OCs need to play mostly by the setting rules too. (and not outshine canon) Some settings have so many minor characters that there’s usually an existing character for most any purpose, and these characters are already woven into the setting, OC’s need more work to get them to fit seamlessly into the setting and existing cast. (A small part of why Rey is a Sue is that her background is basically to be plopped into a saga that deals heavily in lineage and fate. She’s a rehash of early Luke without any real past, brought forth from the brow of the Mouse with less past than the leads of computer games) A good OC needs to be part of the world and have a good significant reason for why the character was offstage during canon. (wandering away again, sorry) I like using canon characters, and the challenge to keeping them in character but still have them deal with new problems and people. Banter and interaction with OCs is fun. It’s very therapeutic to have someone slap someone who’s being stupid in canon. But then many good stories can just reshuffle canon, like one where Kirk might have kidnapped Edith Keeler to the future. Few canon characters are that developed that you cannot develop them in a new way... or just better depicted than canon. We can show their thought stream better than video. In practice, my OCs seem to hold below about 25% of the significant cast. Mainly because the canon cast is as much a part of the settings as phasers and mithral. I find I cannot keep up with stories about the characters I like, and by definition I don't know OCs in OC laden stories. So I move on.

I also read other books, related or non-fiction, watch videos. I never know what wilfix a broken plot point. Working on something else, chore or another craft can also help. Most of us are not depending on this for bread on the table, so relax.

I find antagonists with similar goals can cause the biggest problems. They may be heroes with their own flaws and hurdles. Or just plain careless and dumb. But those aren’t the villains, the ones involved in selfish and cruel agendas. I know their major goals, but I still work on intermediate steps and remembering to show those results subtly. I want to show how the big bad is hacking city infrastructure, enough to make problems and get his jollies after earlier losses, but not enough to draw the heroes’ attention fromthe antagonist who’s a pain but not the real big bad. I’m rather pleased about this villain compared to my usual. I have had some flat villains, but thinking back on the first, I did give him some background and a wife killed earlier by the heroes. He wasn’t that clever on the fly but he was a pain...

Hmm. I get very attached to mine, even the neutrals/supporting if I develop them beyond a certain point. And my leads? Nah, I don’t think I could kill them, outside flash or one-shots. (even that is rare) I prefer centering on growth and hope so true-death is rare. [my first story had the lead get resurrected a lot, so it wasn’t anything permanent] Many of my stories are slice of life epilogues, so it’s more about rebuilding after the big bad is gone. I don’t want to lessen the ‘big badness’ by new big bads to kill, just smaller bads. Deaths, messy deaths, get in the way of healing and growth. (#screwPalpy) So I am very light on deaths of named characters, I may even be surprised when I’ve started redemption arcs for demi-big bads. Even more when I see a place for them in the post saga plot that is especially fun… if I kill Dooku after all, he cannot be on the Council on Earth after the end. I’m hoping to work on my treatment of villains, but I’m terrible at killing all my characters. It’s probably a bigger weakness in my writing. Plots are problems to solve, and I like elegant solutions that minimize death and destruction. Deaths don’t cure many problems or character flaws. Sure, killing me would stop my nail biting, but that’s just an obnoxious development and has no meaning. Memorable stories have meaning. “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.” The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Professional is not all knowing. He’s not writing for us, people already with some experience and thinking about technique. I maintain it’s a marketing tool for his service. Active blogs are advised for building an audience in multiple sites. I would be more impressed if his advice was detailed and insightful enough to be useful to more writers, and features what value he adds to my writing. Fanfic thrives on angst and melodrama, mainstream maybe not so much. He’s suggesting less, and I really wonder what story he read that triggered this less than cohesive blog of frustration. There have been a few stories I read in the Pit where it was all door slamming and tearful accusitions of the LI instead of making the lead interesting or plot engaging. (Nor is he writing for my one college friend who didn’t understand why I didn’t want to take his rambling unconnected trope-fest into a book or books. He had the income for services, but not the interest in doing the writing.) The blogger’s not writing to editors or readers like telling a war story, there’s no juicy details to make the story interesting in its own right. Who do you think he writing this for?

Heh, I doubt most of my readers are aware of this. Guess my just acquired copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves may be obsolete...

Having an editor or several betas is an ideal, but the world doesn’t seem to provide as many of them as are wanted. The college bud who ‘did freelance editing’ never really responded to a heya to catchup, before I could sound her out about professional help. So it’s more ghosting. I find editing short and flash stories to be less wrenching in editing. I haven’t invested as much and criticism is less painful. Paid editing would be cheaper for short works, too, if I went that route. As a reader, I’ve noticed far fewer grammar and usage issues in shorter stuff than longer. That seems to hold for pro and fanfic. Some genres, the short story was the traditional gateway for new writers. That starts pro contects and lets some bootstrapping work for you. Once established as a short writer, the publisher may offer editing like for BW, or you will have acquired some fans for betas. A LOT of recent books list multiple betas in the forwards. But it still comes down to grabbing your readers, enough to give reviews, enough for editors want to acquire the story, and enough for buyers to throw money.

Agreed, but some fans are weird enough to like it for the creepy, cloying feel.

I had to think about this a bit, but stopping writing altogether is not the way to stop the stagnation. That only ossifies the problem and makes it even harder to start again. I think stagnation is another flavor of block. I think a writer or two that I really liked in an earlier fandom, kept reskinning the same period and setting. The writing was still good, the new leads had different issues, but the spark was either missing in the writing or the reading-repeating. If you don’t figure out why you’re in a rut, you will just repeat that cycle later in a new rut… until you find the off-ramp by luck. Some paperback writers make solid careers of a marketable rut. Stopping writing is like selling your car because you’re sick of the daily commute to work. It misses the issue with dramatic overkill. It only makes new problems, especially if you live somewhere without a good rapid transit. Is the stagnation because you keep writing the same kind of story over and over? (does it shift back to ‘a script’) Or because no noticeably different stories appeal to your muse? (you can’t force your right brain to follow your logical plans) Listen to that muse, it doesn’t speak clearly, but it gets bored in ruts. Look for fresh air in a new fandom, new genres, or even strike out into original works to sell. Those will refresh everything. The basic romance that is the core of a large portion of fanfic is a formula, a rut, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel stagnant. Pride and Prejudice are as much in the genre as Twilight, so there is a LOT of elbow room in that genre. A new penname is only useful if your fans will not be willing to accept a change in your writing. And maintaining them as separate can be a lot of work, and alienate them anyway. One writer I liked their earlier penname better, and since then they abandoned that subgenre, I’ve gradually stopped reading them and the newer ones are really in ruts. Chasing after the other pennames got too confusing and tiring. (I plan to keep only two, fanfic and original fic) If all you write are kidnapping hedgehogs and are thinking of changing but afraid your fans won’t accept your story of stopping the evil milkmaid empire, start with a smaller story to test it. Your fans may surprise you and thrive on buttermilk! (this was supposed to be a short answer but...)

(I usually write a rotating first person POV, I still have to work much harder for 3rd person) Nope, I’m caught between Mandolorean and Huttese these days. Tho Mando has some lyricisn to it, especially for military&marriage oaths. I guess the trick is to show subtitles without slowing those who don’t need them. Maybe I’ll use subscript for less common fandom languages. That seems to be a decent platform independent way to make a translation close to the source but less obtrusive...

The trouble with made up languages is that it’s very hard to guess how much your audience will tolerate or enjoy. I was having fun making up language/culture for my original story, but realized much later that it was going to force readers to keep referring to a glossary or they miss important emotional context of the story. I hate that myself, and it takes a really special story to make me put up with it for long. When a published romance opens with a eight page phrase book, I put it down. Few there avoid pretentious overuse, instead of a spice. Yeah, there’s some geek subcultures where there is an existing language or two. (I would not like to get caught between some klingons and elves) but I want to remember that I want to appeal to more than the ubergeeks. (so next time I tackle revisions of that novel, I’m going to gut the language) I use an occasional existing slang or invective from my current fandom, but even now I’m considering using a longer quote because using that other language has an extra emotional weight for the one character that literally cannot be said by that character otherwise. I’ve been testing it in snippets for my own use, and expect to put translations in a chapter afterward… for that chapter. But how common does a slang, or how clear the context have to be, before I’m a sleemo if I don’t offer a translation?

Well, I think the blog writer is not really writing for us as his audience. He’s writing for the really new people who don’t include much more to this than the drama queen door slam. We’re already adding emotional description and doorjam breaking. His essay is actually pretty short, and half is a shill for his service. The meat is almost in this one sentence: “This involves punctuating the end of a scene with a physical action aimed at evoking an emotional response in the reader.” Putting all the emphasis on the door slam, the gun shot, or the choking of the pregnant Senator instead of the rest of the fight. Focusing on the violence of the scene instead of the meaning. Describing and showing the rest is a lot harder than describing the slam. There’s nothing really wrong with the hint, but it’s a bit simplistic as written. Sort of like coming down hard on a drama queen slam, instead of explaining the whole problem in the scene. I think that makes it a funny slam, because he’s written the same thing he’s complaining about. And it doesn’t do that much to make his skills look good.

Yes, think it though and write it up as a story. Post it with a link to here.

I’m managing to hold firm and not start any more, but my 2 most active are slightly stopped. bah humbug.

I think there’d have to be a massive change of circumstance for it to move outside Stockholm syndrome, rape and abuse patterns. Free will, free movement, and the right to say no without penalty is only the beginning. How would you separate someone saying yes because of a habit/pattern of abuse/fear even if the threat appears to to be gone? Learned patterns, even psycho ones, for survival would persist. How long does it take for prisoners and rape victims to recover to even react to sex, trust and intimacy in a more healthy way. Most accounts I’ve seen is a long time if ever. And I honestly don’t think the abuser has much more than a snowball’s chance in.. after removing personhood and agency over an extended period. I had a rape survivor in an early story, and they had several screws loose back at home during recovery when it wasn’t an abuser who was nice sometimes. In retrospect, I think I probably had her recover too fast, but I had little comments on that part of the story. If I wanted to somehow shift a rape/harem into a romance somehow, I would think there would need to be a more compelling reason why the wannbe sheik thought any of this might be okay, like raised in an isolated cult. In another galaxy. If they/she visited him in prison and they got together when he got out in twenty years everyone would have agency and maybe there might be love. But I have to think about the women wanting Charles Manson free for their HEA makes me sad.

Well (took me almost a day to see this, but it’s in my wheelhouse) for almost ten years I wrote almost exclusively rotating 1st person rotating POV. I liked it because I could control clues to both the reader and the characters. That first cast had really strong personalities, I bet I could write a new scene with their unlabelled POVs and my long-suffering beta could still identify which character was speaking even after five years. A half million words. And that strong personality is the most important thing. These characters had different moralities and ethics, people skills, slang/formal language usage, faith/lack thereof, careers/specialties- especially if illegal, goals. That’s before you even consider traumas and obsessions and backstories. Pick a specific actor/part for their line delivery, think how different Robin Williams was for the genie and in Dead Poet Society. Make a familiar character/person to be the core basis and add setting based stuff. Yes, this is all characterization, but that last bit that makes the character gel and become unique and memorable. It binds the fictional universes together, because without chars, the story is just a checklist of events. (stories like that are so painful) This is why stories heavy in OCs are a challenge, the new characters haven’t differentiated enough to be interesting. I had mental baseball caps I put on the change gears to another character in that first series. I don’t know how I made them the first time, so newer ones are seconds. You need that strong personality and look at the scene/events from their bias and needs. They look out your eyes at the scene you made. You could joke that I have multiple personalities: assassins, paladin, shadewalker, healer, Sith, and Jedi. It would not be that off, and waiting in line causes odd commentary... Later series weren’t quite as strong. And I’m struggling in my current big story. Original flash stories and other shorts just don’t have as strong personalities they focus on revelation/plot.

No, it’s more a RL living situation where nothing can happen on the fly. We each have different physical issues, so no one can jump. At least I have no shortage of ideas.

Oh, I record them in files backed up in the cloud, as I lose notepads and have trouble writing with pencil anymore. The only ones I lose are in the bath.

I’m trying to slowly kill that. You can give two writers, ten writers the same idea/prompt and get at least ten different stories. There are SO many stories that take different paths if X scene went differently. The more annoyed the fandom, the wider the divergence. They may be similarities, but each writer spins it differently. The plagarists aren’t that bright and don’t drift further away as the story goes on. My ideas are stories I’d like to see, and there’s plenty of writers who can do them justice. And if they don’t, I may take a crack in a few months when I get a slot open.