Transitioning, Anyone?

[Guest Sunde]

Frequently I weave my stories around established cannon and then branch off, but I will continue to try and stay within the rules of cannon as much as the changes will allow. Sometimes years will pass before the effect of my changes would be visible so there's no need to rewrite the entire series I'm working in. In fact attempting to do so would be insanely boring for both myself and anyone still reading the fic at that point. I know I don't go and read any story where someone is nearly verbatimely rewriting the story except for a couple of changes in phrase here or there.

So the question is how do you transition from details of things that changed at one point to the time when those changes will actually effect the character? Especially if those changes won't take effect until they are much older?

[greenwizard]

Ok, I think I understand what you're saying.... You're saying that you're staying within cannon for the most part but making small changes here and there? And you want advice on how to write the cause of the changes in later?

If that is the case, you want to think about how your character as you're writting it is going to react to what the changes do. What you should do is plan ahead when you make changes. Use the basic law of cause anf effect if you want your storyline to seem plausable. For example, in my Harry Potter fic... I wrote a while ago that James Potter was raped by a teacher. The effect of that is he bottled all of his emotions up and was a jerk to everyone to protect himself emotionally.

I hope that helps. If you need more specific help you can pm me or catch me on messenger.