You know what I don’t get? When fanfic authors apologize for long chapters. It’s like? You gave me bonus content, for free, and you’re sorry about it? Bruh. I have already named my firstborn after you. Dude.
You know what else I don’t get? When they apologize for short updates. It’s like: look at these new words I gave you! Sorry I didn’t give you even more free words. Bro, that’s at least two words that I did not have yesterday. For free. Dude. Thank you.
And another thing: when people drop out of nowhere with a surprise update and then apologize for it taking a while. Like, dude, I wasn’t expecting anything, and you gave me words. I thought this fic was abandoned, but wait: there’s more. You just popped in and reminded me that this is a Good Fic that I should probably reread. You made my goshdarn day.
Basically fanfic writers are under no obligation to publish anything so when they do update it’s always a net positive because the story is longer now, and I have something to read, so thank you so much to everyone who writes fic at whatever pace or quantity they want.
“If you’re going to make good art, it’s likely that you’re going to go to the place where things are dark, and use that to shine light into your life and, if you’re doing it right, into other people’s lives as well. For Terry [Pratchett], it was always anger. There was a deep rage in him that allowed him to create. For me, it tends to be sorrow or loneliness or confusion.”
Like all of you, I live in several worlds at once–different communities of people who seldom if ever interlink. It’s weird, and one thing I love to do is connect folks from different communities together.
I’m here on Tumblr right now to be a writer and a reader, specifically of Legends of Tomorrow fanfic. I am also part of the world of writing centers–college and sometimes high school and sometimes community-based places where writers go to get help from tutors (we also call them writing consultants in my writing center). There’s a whole bunch of amazing people throughout the world talking about the best ways to do this work, in journals, at conferences, on blogs, and in person. So, the blog I attach above is a reflection on writing and pain from that community that I offer to my small community of writer-friends here on Tumblr.
So I watched the first episode of The Dragon Prince last night and I must admit I wasn’t terribly impressed. Which is not to say it might not improve in later episodes but I wanted to quickly address what the issue was with the opening, since it’s not a bad object lesson.
(Spoilers for like, the first 5 minutes of Netflix’s The Dragon Prince)
We open with a classic fantasy prologue in which we are introduced to all the magical powers and lands of this magical kingdom that has elves and dragons and humans. Genre fans will recognize this trope of the prologue that introduces the fantasy setting, it has echoes of this team’s other work “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in the introduction of the four lands and the conflict that exists between them, but it’s an unfavorable comparison.
This is because The Dragon Prince does not start us out with a character.
As I mentioned in this essay about the strengths of My Hero Academia, a modern audience needs a character to latch onto! Yes the Dragon Prince gives us some Sauron-ish figure, but he’s clearly not a main character or someone we’re supposed to be rooting for at this point. Mostly it’s just sweeping references to magical people and places we don’t care about yet. We don’t care about them because we’ve been given no reason, no character, to whom these conflicts are central.
In contrast, Avatar: the Last Airbender also has an introduction but that introduction contains an “I”statement by a character that’s going to be one of our central protagonists. We set up the nations, the conflict, but then Katara ends, “But I believe the Avatar can save the world.” – This sets us up immediately the relationship our narrator or main character has with the conflict and magical world you’ve presented. Katara (we don’t know who she is yet in the first episode) is someone who lives in this world at the center of its conflicts and she believes that this other character, who will certainly be relevant and central to the story (The Avatar) can save the world. Boom! We as an audience know what we signed up for and have been introduced to the promise of this story, the central issue that these characters will address.
I know prologues are out of vogue in novels right now. I think in many instances this is wrong and pure fashion. But when it comes to the classic fantasy setting prologue where all we get is a long diatribe about where this place is and how it works with no characters introduced I can completely understand why that kind of prologue needs to die.
TL;DR: When starting your story, especially a genre story that’s in a world removed from our experiences, start us out with a character. Preferably a character we can root for or identify with on some level, even if they’re awful, and one who is going to be relevant from the beginning of the story so we’re not wondering why we just met this person. Then you can give us your long diatribe about how your magical world works through their eyes and that way we can care and also understand wtf any of this has to do with the story. For such a team of expert writers I was shocked that The Dragon Prince didn’t follow this simple, obvious rule, and at the very least start us off with the kid characters and then have the prologue given to them as a history lesson so we could get their commentary on it and relevance to their life, jfc.
Sometimes it’s really lonely being an author. Because when you’re writing, you’re doing it alone, and there’s no one there to gush over silly feelings with you.
And I suppose that’s why reader comments are important to authors. It’s not about the compliments. It’s that we’ve been alone with our thoughts this whole time. It’s an awesome feeling when a friend shows up to share them with you.
If you’re trying to decide whether you should read that favourite fic for the 17,000th time even though you have the whole thing memorized?
If you’ve never read/written fanfic before, but you think you want to try it?
Yes!
How to set up elements in your story to build tension for maximum reader pay off and satisfaction
I keep wanting to try to pull together a writing essay about order of information and how you can use it to build tension, but I keep failing so let’s try again, here goes:
– Most writers have heard of Chekhov’s Gun, the principle in playwriting that a gun that is shown on the mantlepiece in Act 1 must go off before the end of the play.
– But did you know you can do this with pretty much everything in your story?
– And that by doing so, you can raise reader engagement and satisfaction as elements which are introduced become relevant again later?
– This is sortof related to a principle my writing teacher referred to as “the causal chain” which I still struggle with but let me see if I can sum it up here: each action in your story should lead to the next one in an unbroken chain of logical cause and effect. When you do so, the tension builds in your story because your reader can follow the cause and effect, and this allows them to make predictions and have theories about what’s going to happen next.
When something comes out of left field in books and movies, we feel cheated because all of the information we have about the world of your story lies in what you, the author, give us. So if it’s a slasher movie with one killer in it, and a second killer comes out of nowhere and kills everyone ( “rocks fall, everyone dies”) we’re gonna be pissed off because we didn’t get the chance to predict that would happen, because the author didn’t give us that information in the first place.
– Another example is Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood is kind of a bad story from a craft angle, because it breaks the causal chain when the woodsman appears out of nowhere at the end to save Red from the wolf, basically as a “deus ex machine”. If the story were re-written to be tighter, we’d meet the Woodsman back when Red first heads out to Grandma’s house, and for example he’d say he’s going to check up on Red later to make sure she got there safe. That would raise suspense for us of whether the Woodsman will save the day in time, and allow that story element to not come out of nowhere.
(A quick note on endings: It’s worth noting that setting up these elements can be seen as giving away your ending, but that’s only if you stuck yourself with a scenario that “A” will happen or “B” will happen, something you want to avoid as a writer. Will Red live, or will she be eaten by the wolf? Actually, what happens is “C” – Red is eaten by the Wolf, but the Woodsman comes in time to kill the Wolf and free her from its belly. Option “C” should always be surprising, but inevitable in retrospect. It should follow the cause and effect of the story you’ve built to that point, but also introduce a “yes, but moreover…” of an additional fun/cool/surprising-but-logical addition that excites the reader and raises their enjoyment. Setting up the ending early on is how you satisfy the reader, not how you bore or disappoint them, because cognitive engagement (the reader thinking about “how” is this going to end??) keeps them excited and invested in your story.)
– Going back to cause and effect – when you stack character introductions, story elements, even emotional beats and personal tics as relevant to your story, your reader becomes more wrapped up in the story because you’re giving them mastery of the story elements. For example, if you introduce that your love interest has trouble with emotionally opening up, as typified by being reluctant to hold hands with your protagonist, and then after a moment of connection sometime in the story, or after they’ve saved the day together, etc etc, have the love interest take your protagonist’s hand, boom! your reader knows what that means! This little gesture is now packed with meaning that you baked in at the beginning of the story. The reader could anticipate that hand holding might come back again as a relevant display of character relationship development. They can hope and pray that at some point your characters will hold hands, if they’re invested in the relationship as you’ve built it. They’re cheering when the proverbial gun that was placed on the mantlepiece in Act 1 (love interest is reluctant to hold hands) finally goes off (they held hands!).
– I use this as an example because Chekhov’s Gun as a writerly technique is sometimes overly used to mean some sort of weapon or plot resolving doomsday device, when really that’s just one way the technique can be used. The more interlocking set-up/pay-off elements and details you put into your story, the more complex it can become (sometimes necessitating an outline, as outlines are often required when trying to build a more complex story).
This sense of deliberateness can also be useful in winning your readers’ trust, because it shows you are in control and assured in the elements of your story, and that there aren’t accidents or extraneous elements that are irrelevant to the story and to their experience. You win it further the more these elements pay off, as should make sense to you the more you think back on stories that were dissatisfying, usually when they failed to close out relevant story elements (*coughLostcough*).
A lot of this may be obvious to writers out there, but it was something I struggled with and that I’m actively working on now to make my stories tighter and more complex, so I hope they will be helpful and useful for you!
Avelera 