So I’m doing a Fanfiction 101 panel at a local mini convention and I’m trying to get a bunch of advice that all novice fanfic writers could use. Care to share some important tips?
Honestly, my #1 tip: LEARN HOW TO WRITE LIKE A GROWN UP. Learn punctuation, and use it in the right spots. Capitalize, use commas and quotation marks in the right spot, use paragraph breaks. I don’t care how amazing and original and incredible your story is, I won’t read it if it’s full of distracting ugly errors. I just can’t handle it. Typos happen, of course, but it takes two seconds to google ‘how to punctuate a sentence’, like seriously. Or just, you know, pick up a book and look at it and see where the punctuation is…. Getting a beta reader is super helpful for this, also, especially if they’re a better writer than you are. You’ll learn a lot.
Grammar and punctuation are crucial and a great start. I think I might also suggest:
- Write something you want to see. If you’re just writing to be “popular” you’ll quickly burn out. Write something you’re passionate about, and people will find it. I’m not saying notes and reviews aren’t important, because they are, but don’t write something you’re not interested in just to gain them. Be enthusiastic about what you’re doing and engender enthusiasm in others.
- Which goes hand in hand with being as good a reader as you are a writer. Engage with other people’s stories. Learn from them, beta them, and review them. DEFINITELY review them. Fanfiction is a great community, and it is always so encouraging to receive a review (as you’ll see!) and leaving them in return is absolutely essential for being a positive part of that community.
- Keep track of what you write and where you publish it. You can write on as many platforms as possible, but it’s a great idea to keep track of it all, perhaps especially chronologically. That way you can look back on previous works and see how much you’ve progressed.
- Tag smartly. Tag accurately. You want people who would be actually interested in your story to find your story, so use the tags that will guide them there. The more accurate your tags, the more likely the readers you want will discover you.
I would add: learn homophones and apply spell check. It sounds like a tiny nit-picky thing, but I can’t express how helpful it is in both feeling confident in your own writing and reading someone else’s. It’s humiliating to have someone point to that one misspelling in your writing (and there will always be that one asshole), and it’s hard to get through a fic full of spelling errors/syntax errors. For example: there, they’re, their; ore, oar, or; and (for those of you writing smut) wanton and wonton is a vital difference, because I’m assuming you are not writing about East Asian dumplings.