#call that first time author Mary Sue pitfalls

[cheerynoir]

Armand. Honey baby sweetie pie. Doe eyed manipulator, sainted control freak, the wettest of poor little meow meows.

Keep selling it. But make it believable, huh?

[nanowrimo]

Writing Fanfiction: Tips for Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Fanfiction is an often under-rated genre. Tons of authors have honed their writing skills with fanfiction, not to mention the millions of writers and readers who love exploring familiar stories and characters! Today, NaNoWriMo participant Ville V. Kokko has a few tips for making fanfiction writing shine:

Fanfiction is a popular form of writing and one of the recognized genres for novels on NaNoWriMo. Yet, it’s also stereotyped as an inferior—some might call it silly—form of writing. While denigrating any genre as a whole is never a good idea, there are some common patterns in fanfiction that may contribute to this stereotype.

Of course, one of the popular stereotypes is that fanfiction is full of “Mary Sues”: overpowered, supposedly awesome self-insertion wish-fulfillment characters. I’ll skip that familiar topic and dive a little deeper into what’s behind it and what other fanfiction tropes can appear for similar reasons.

1. Give your characters some depth.

Fanfiction is almost by definition created by people who were touched by the original work enough to want to build something more out of its foundation. This can be a great fount for good story ideas: what if, what next, what about this character’s unexplored story, etc.

However, the writer’s personal love/hatred/whatever for the original story and characters can also lead to stories that are rather subjective. If you’re motivated by your strong feelings about a particular character, say, it may affect your writing them and others as fully rounded characters. A disliked character might be shown as one-dimensionally negative, a loved character as so loved by others that it’s not logical.

None of this is automatically bad by definition. Palpatine in Star Wars is one-dimensionally evil with style, leaving the hidden nuance and backstory for Darth Vader. Hilarious humorous stories may be built around characters reacting to another unrealistically.

However, it’s a good starting point to write your characters realistically. A story that doesn’t do that, and hasn’t carefully considered why not, may feel off to most readers.

2. Include elements that make your story’s plot interesting. 

There’s a more general phenomenon behind this that may turn people off to a lot of fanfiction. The writer is so often writing what they want to happen—maybe because of how they feel about the characters or some other aspect of the story, but not necessarily because it will make a compelling story. This is why wish-fulfillment, while not inherently bad, can be seen as something to be avoided: it may sacrifice other aspects of the story. It’s the opposite of being ready to “kill your darlings.”

3. Try something new!

Another consequence of this is that fanfiction writers may write a lot of the same kind of story—which others might get bored with sooner rather than later. Fanfiction communities may also collectively prefer kinds of stories and tropes that seem repetitive from an outside perspective.

4. Write what makes you happy. 

All of that said… it’s fine to do whatever you like.

There’s absolutely no rule saying you can’t do this or that, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you’d enjoy writing a total wish-fulfillment story, go for it. Even if it’s got a Mary Sue. The reward that you (and maybe a bunch of other fans, too) will like it is reason enough.

I would be hypocritical of me to offer any other kind of advice, anyway. In 2021, I wrote fanfiction for NaNoWriMo for the first time. And it was based on a work where one of the central themes is that anything that makes someone happy is valuable. I was even working on a sequel that makes the ending happier for the characters, even though I think the original ending was just right for the story.

It all depends on what you’re doing. You’re allowed to write for yourself or a particular community. Even if you want to aim for something bigger later, it’s all practice. The only thing is to know what you’re doing. So maybe if you actually want to focus on good characterization, you’ll be careful of some fanfiction tropes that might hinder it. Although, again, nothing automatically does.

Ville V. Kokko is a Ph.D. student and aspiring writer of both fiction and nonfiction living in Turku, Finland. He keeps getting short stuff published in smaller outlets all the time, but is working to make it bigger and publish whole books. He started participating in NaNoWriMo in 2010 and has, separately from that, written a few hundred thousand words of fanfiction. His Goodreads author page can be found here and his general blog here.

Top photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash.

[jade4813]

I love your fanfics so much. The way you write makes me feel like I really am experiencing what the POV character is. I wish I could write like that. Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

Nonnie, thank you so much! I actually do have some tips. Just stuff that’s helped me over the years.

1) Remember that even the best writers weren’t born that way. The absolute best writers had to get there. They had to practice their writing. They have to go through editing processes. Nobody ever gets the sudden desire to write, sits down, and writes War and Peace - or even Harry Potter - on the first try, with no need for editing or rewrites or polishing. It’s a process of gradual improvement. A lot of what you write, especially at the beginning, is going to suck in your opinion. And that’s okay! You have to suck a little to figure out why you think it sucks to figure out how to make it better! Seriously, you love my writing now, but believe me when I say that before “Year of a Relationship” (the first real story I posted online) were over a hundred really, really bad stories that nobody ever read but me.

2) Read a lot. Not only is it the best way to get a sense of voice and flow and plot structure, but it also is a great way to analyze writing without the pressure on yourself of self-critique. Find a story you know really well. Find your favorite part of it. Why is it your favorite? Why does that speak to you? Then take a step back and take a critical look at how it’s constructed, how the author used their words to create something you really loved. (It is also very useful to do this with writing that annoys you. You can analyze what you consider “bad” writing and it tells you a lot about what pitfalls to avoid.)

3) Embrace the thing in your writing that you hate the most. When you find something you think you “suck” at, it’s easy to try to avoid it. But that’s what you have to embrace and push yourself to improve. When I first started writing, my dialogue was…whoo. Let me tell you. I have a friend who I tried to write a story with, very early on in my writing career. She has since become a writer herself. We still call each other sometimes to remind each other of just how unimaginably bad our dialogue used to be. Seriously. So painful. But you can’t always write stories with no dialogue, so we forced ourselves to write dialogue. Lots of dialogue. Endless streams of dialogue. And we eventually got better. (But that first attempt was…wow. Seriously. You wouldn’t believe. So. Bad.)

Every time I find something I’m less comfortable with writing, I force myself to write it more. It started with dialogue. Then it went to character perspective. Chapter stories. Humor. And, most recently, NC-17. I’d written NC-17 stories before but I was never comfortable with that aspect of my writing. I didn’t think it was very good. So, recently, I’ve forced myself to write a lot more NC-17. It’s the only way I’m going to learn how to improve.

4) Remember that even the writers you love still think there are things that they are trying to improve. There are things they still think they suck at. (Or times they think their writing just sucks in general.) So if you look at your writing and compare it to others and think, “Oh, my stuff is so much worse than theirs,” or even “they do this type of thing better than I do” then remember that every writer feels that way. It’s okay! Just don’t let that feeling stop you from writing.

5) If you’re really feeling like there’s a certain area of your writing that you need to improve but doesn’t seem to get better no matter how hard you try, be creative about ways you can tackle them. You can always ask for feedback from readers. I wrote before I wrote fanfiction, but fanfiction is where I learned to write. Because it’s where I learned what worked and what didn’t and where I got feedback and support I needed to be better.

Constructing a Scene: Having problems even knowing how to construct a scene? When I first started writing, way back when, my friends and I did something we called “storylining.” We created characters based off ourselves. (I know self-inserts or “Mary Sues” get a lot of flack and at a certain point, they should. But when you’re just learning to write, go ahead and create a character loosely based on you! Learning how to write is hard enough if you break it down into chunks. If you’re trying to figure out narrative structure and how to even relate a plot, you don’t need to add an extra burden of characterization and finding a different “voice.” Figure out how to structure a plot with a character you don’t have to think about. When you get that down, you can move into more complex and dynamic characters.) Then we’d figure out what kind of scene we wanted to do and we’d “storyline it.” It was a cross between improvisational acting and writing. We’d play the characters and act out the scene - and since we were all doing it, it didn’t take long before we lost our self-consciousness. Not only did that help figure out how scenes are constructed but because none of us could dictate what the others did with their characters, it was phenomenal practice for those moments when you’re writing and “this scene was supposed to just have Barry talking to Iris and amping up the tension a little bit but now they’re having sex against the door when it was just supposed to be a kiss and oh my god what are you guys doing this isn’t at all what I had planned?!?!?!?!?!?!?!” (As an author, you’d think you are in control of what the characters do. You would be so incredibly wrong.) Plus it was just fun.

Dialogue: Dialogue is one of those things you just have to do. You have to listen and write. For something most people do practically every day, I found it surprisingly difficult to learn how to write dialogue that sounded like something humans would actually say. What helps when you’re starting is just to write the dialogue and then read it out loud. By yourself or with a (supportive) friend. Did it sound natural or jilted? If it sounded jilted, how would you say what you just wrote? Even if that’s not in the voice of the character, the first step is to just make it sound like something that a human being would actually say. Then you can ask yourself if it sounds like something that character would say and tweak it until you can hear those words in that character’s voice in your mind. But even if you miss that, if your reader isn’t left wondering why your dialogue sounds like two aliens trying to approximate human speech (unless that’s what you’re going for), you’ve at least kept them in the story.

Also, reading it out loud will catch some absurdities that even professional writers sometimes do. Like having two characters engaged in conversation in a room with nobody else around say each other’s names every two lines. (”Iris, what do you want for dinner?” “I don’t know, Barry. What about you?” “How about pizza, Iris?” “Barry, I don’t know. How about tacos?” “I had tacos for lunch, Iris. How about Thai?” “Thai sounds good, Barry…” Seriously. Read that out loud and see if you don’t want to scream.) Just skimming the story, you won’t necessarily catch that you’ve done it. But if you read the dialogue out loud, you might notice how ridiculous that sounds. Of course Barry’s talking to Iris! They’re the only two people in the room! Who else would he be talking to? McSnurtle? Iris knows her name! She doesn’t need him to say it! (Seriously, think about the number of times in one-on-one conversation that you’ve ever said the name of the person you were talking to. It just isn’t something people tend to do in everyday life.”

Fleshing Out the Character/Scene/World: Once you’ve gotten the basics down, you can tackle more complex issues in writing. Take a romantic scene between Barry and Iris. On a basic level, you can have them say that they love each other (and there’s nothing wrong with that, particularly when you’re learning to write!). But at some point, you’ll want to set the scene in a way that gives the reader a complete sense of their love for each other that goes beyond words. It’s not just Barry and Iris saying “I love you” but the two of them sitting together on the couch, relaxing after a long and stressful day. Her curled up against his shoulder, Barry playing with Iris’s wedding band as they link fingers together. How you convey that they love each other without needing them to say it.

It’s another thing that takes a lot of practice. But a lot of that starts with just observing - other people and yourself. One way I learned how to do it was to just watch people in public. When I was at a restaurant or a park or a food court or anywhere that I could take a few moments to do so, I’d watch a person or couple or group across the room - far enough away that I specifically couldn’t hear their conversation. What relationship did I think they had to each other? What mood did I think they were in? And specifically what made me think that?

Of course, a lot of that is visual, but don’t forget the other senses. Someone who’s rushing down the sidewalk because they’re late to work is going to be visibly distressed. Their steps are going to be brisk. If they’re wearing a long coat or a dress, the fabric of those items of clothing may be whipping around their legs from the force of those steps. But there are other things going on, too. They may be muttering under their voice. If they’re in heels, maybe their footsteps are louder because they’re walking forcefully as they lengthen their stride. Or you don’t hear their heels at all because they’ve lifted their weight onto their toes, ready to break into a jog at any second. All of that adds to painting the scene.

And there are some things you have to observe about yourself. Have you ever gotten so scared that you could taste your own fear? What did that taste like? Or when you got scared, did you shut down, your brain unable to process what was going on? What was that like? Have you ever gotten so angry that you could swear you could hear the blood rush in your ears? If not, what have you noticed about what you do, taste, hear, etc. when you’re angry? How would you describe that to other people?

It takes a lot of practice. If you don’t know where to begin (when you get to that point), pick a type of sentence or scene you might set using an adverb. For example, “Barry saw Barry look sadly out the window.” Then break it apart. What does she see that makes her think that he’s sad? Are his shoulders drooped? Head bowed? Eyes filled with tears? Does she hear his heavy sigh? Why does she think he’s sad? 

If he’s anxious, how does she know? Is he unable to sit still? Moving his legs restlessly? Tapping his fingers on the tabletop? Running his hands through his hair? Biting his lip? Breathing fast? Are his words quick and running together? Is she having a hard time catching his eye? All of that will set the scene.

Anyway, those are the writing tips I thought of off the top of my head! I hope they helped a little, at least!

[sweetandunholy]

YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies… And one component that I very often see and very much throughoutfully despise: First person switching Point of Views.

If you didn’t skip your middle school literature classes, you surely are aware of what a narrator is: The voice who tells the story and the determinant of the point of view. If the narrator is a full participant in the story’s action, the narrative is said to be in the first person. A story told by a narrator who is not a character in the story is a third-person narrative.

But narrators do so much more than just telling your story, as the type of narrator you use can do so much more for you. YA novels tend to focus on the likability of their main characters (often turning their protagonists into Mary Sues, sigh) while doing the least amount of work possible and thus it has become a very common occurrence for these types of authors to choose first person narratives because of several advantages they always wish to exploit: ➜The spoon feeding of your main/secondary character’s ambitions, thoughts and motivations through letting them explore their thoughts.

➜The cheap shot at immersion with your readers by allowing them a generic character. Because of how hard it is for main characters to describe themselves without sounding like they’re roleplaying on Omegle (F, 20, brown hair and green eyes) most authors avoid giving characters a clear description of themselves and more of a blank slate personality that’s described through other characters (“But MC! You love going to the movies with us ! Are you really going to pass on hanging out to help rescue animals instead?”)

An overplayed phenomenon in romance oriented YA is this precise blank slate main character who attracts the handsome, new bad boy in school and he finds himself unnaturally drawn to her. This is nothing but lazy play for uncaring readers— Your reader projects onto the main character and swoons as her love interest is here to sweep her off her feet and thus become too busy fangirling over how sexy the love interest is and how much you root for him. (Bonus points if you thought of any novel that wasn’t Twilight, because I could easy list a few many, many more)

It’s cheap, its lazy and its such an over used YA trope.

➜The bias of first person narrators, as the stories are filtered through their brains and emotions. Thus, making it easier to be able to quickly flag characters as “Good guys” and “Bad guys” without having to spend any time developing them as to us to figure it out by ourselves.

➜The unbelievable ease by which first person narrators are able to dump exposition on you without having to resort to the intelligent pacing and logical cohesion of explaining the world as events unfold and make it properly that third person forces you to do.

➜If the novel is thoughtful or intelligent enough to include some good mysteries or complicated plot twists, a character’s musings are a simply way to spell out what’s going on and move on without allowing the reader to discover it for themselves.

Now at this point, I have only spent some time describing why I think a first person narrator is lazy— Not even mentioning the more obvious disadvantages like self-indulgent novels can become within the narrator’s emotions by overreaction and making everything about themselves, the limiting POV by not being able to create action where the character isn’t present, making perspective and perception on the bigger picture almost impossible, the lack of focus and inability to work on secondary subplots as you’re only focused on one story thread, the unreliability of the narrator because of the bias of its brain (which in cases this can be worked wonderfully into a novel, but this is what I call a literary device for non-lazy authors) and the extra time needed to be spent figuring out the narrators voice without being out of character: Alas, a “creative” mind like Tahereh Mafi’s Juliette using heavily complex and scientific terms in her descriptions. Then again, just like Mafi, many YA authors don’t care for this later point and tend to ignore it all together.

But notice how I mention the “limits” of what a first person narration can do to your novel, and backtrack on the immediate thought that’s plaguing your head: “But Hime ! That has a very easy solution !” And it does ! It’s precisely the object of this essay this fine morning: Multiple Person POVs.

If you haven’t clued in into what they are just yet, allow me to explain. Multiple Person first person POVs is a phenomenon that occurs when you narrate a tale in first person, and then switch up the character narrating most commonly when entering a different chapter i.e. Maria narrating chapter one, and Pancho chapter two and Pedrito chapter three and switch back, back and forth. Surely, this phenomenon solves many of my aforementioned problems like: The limiting view of only one person’s bias now extended to multiple, the new found ability to throw some focus and spotlight into other character arcs and subplots and the convenience to narrate situations that are going on outside the main character’s perspective.

If you are doing this, let me tell you one hard truth: Your novel most likely reads like fanfiction.

Those who have spent their years in Wattpad surely understand what I’m saying. There isn’t anything more distracting than beginning a novel and first thing reading the character’s name on top of your page. It is very, very off putting.

It’s lazy, and when not developed properly, really brings out the amateur in a writer. You might think that many readers of YA don’t mind this, and that is the cold hard truth, but there are many other writers and readers out here that still value writing as an art form and not as a self indulgent check-list of how to get a best seller. Put effort into what you do. 

Dual POVs are the most common occurrence of this phenomenon, and usually indicate a clear romance between both parties. This is by far the easiest and the laziest because it avoids having to go through the trouble of really giving each of your main characters a voice: One is a boy, and one is a girl. They do boy girl things until they encounter each other and then think about each other when they are apart. Fun.

Problem arises when the same lazy author I’m describing attempts to add a third or more POVs into the story and everything goes down into a shit show. If you’re not taking the time to give your character voices, then you will most likely turn your lazy cop out into an unpleasant read. Characters will become nothing but names blending into each other you will force your readers to have to constantly remember to tell them apart (A big problem I encountered with The Thousandth Floor but still gets half a pass because the story sort of premised revolving around these five characters- It was just done very, very incorrectly).

Narratives who do this tend to become very convoluted between every minor character and major character that they book switches to. Authors tend to forget the main point they were trying to make and get derailed between the myriads of new character thoughts, and motivations, and glances into their brains that are simply not needed in the story. You’re spending less and less time with the main characters that the reader came in for in the first place. In fact, the biggest pitfall that authors using this system fall with is very simple:

The simple possibility of ending up with readers liking one POV dramatically more than they like the other. Imbalance occurs between POV characters who are given equal amounts of time on the page and the experience becomes tedious and unpleasant.

Most authors who do this switch and jump between characters only to make sure they cover every piece of action away from the main character and I am tired to say this, but it is simply a cheap cop out that doesn’t push the writer to find a creative way to present all the information it wishes to convey through their book.

So enough complaining, what would you do?

Third person is my go to answer. It doesn’t mean my personal stories are all written in third person, but allow me to explain why I would always recommend going for this style.

It forces you to be creative.

Not only that, but you can very well achieve the same advantages from a first person perspective with a third person perspective, along with several other advantages.

Most writers choose to include elements of first-person points of view by mentioning character thoughts and feelings without using ‘he thought’ or ‘she felt’ next to italicized text. This allows for more intimacy whilst maintaining different perspectives and helps break down the distance between the narrator and the characters. In fact, through the third person can still think, feel and experience, but so can other characters.

I believe writing is all about the subtleties, about showing and not telling and third person can work wonders for multiple POVs without even feeling like a multiple POV. Here’s some examples on novels who did it right and novels who did it wrong and why

Novels who did it right:

The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater The Raven Cycle series tells the story of 5 boys looking for sleeping King in the magical, rural Henrietta. Each chapter opens on a third person limited view focused on a different character. Each book discretely changes main character focus by giving one of the 5 characters more screentime than the others. This is barely noticeable, making it a very subtle and pleasant change. Nevertheless of a great plot, the story is also very character heavy and fully immersive. I perfectly know each and every one of these complex and intricate characters, I’m familiar with their voices and characters and switching their focus to each other was pleasant and almost unnoticeable ! … All achieved through the third person.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Carry On is a multiple first person POV novel that just did it right. The novel doesn’t take itself too seriously in its plot and its mostly character driven. This story in fact depends on it constantly switching out narrators for us to really understand what was going on in characters heads as that was the important part of the novel, not what was going on outside of them and in the plot. As the plot was their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts… A really amazing read that almost didn’t bother me with the constant narrator switch (as I really couldn’t bring myself to care for the bits with the Mage, Nico or Ebb, all minor characters that resulted distracting to me).

Novels who did it wrong:

  Pure by Julianna Baggott

Is also an ever jumping first person multiple POV novel that constantly distracts itself by distancing itself from the main two characters and showing distracting, minor characters POV.

It also suffers from another of the aforementioned problems where for a good 100 pages of the book, one of the main characters is completely insufferable and his chapters result bland and heavier to get through.

  The Thousandth Floor by Katherine McGee

Because this book is all about a web of character driven drama, the first person multiple pov approach to it should be making sense. But it is the lazy and effortless way its written that makes this bad, for the characters lack voices of their own or any sort of distinguishing features other than their names. It makes the reading tedious and just hard and complicated to keep up with who is who. It’s like having homework on a Friday.

  Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

The book is completely incoherent— It is a duality that begins as a third person POV when following Akos, but turns into a into a first person POV when following Cyra, the second main character. It is distracting, frustrating and beats any sort of advantage from using third person or first person as a narrator.

Akos is a blank slate and to make it even worse, his story is told through third person as if we weren’t emotionally disconnected enough as it is because the author refused to convey his feelings and character through action.

So ! What do you think? Are there any other books you’d consider did the third-multiple person POV right? Or more rants about who did it wrong and resulted distracting? I’d love to get more thoughts and examples !

Taking a moment to rant about the laziness I've seen in writing YA narrators & how to fix it.. YA novels are composed by many different aspects and formulas that make them the genre that they are, young protagonists, complex (and often pointless) love subplots or triangles, dystopian type societies...