#imagine how cool it would be if i made a full coffee pirates game tho?

[pagesofkenna]

so what if i write a coffee pirates game

[seraphym100]

100 Days of Writing

[Day 5] Worldbuilding

The prompt we were offered today by @the-wip-project was to describe a worldbuilding detail in our WIP that we really liked.

I’ve been writing fanfiction only for the past few years. I hadn’t written for decades and fic was what got me writing again. I haven’t moved away from it yet.

So I thought I’d write a bit about that. Specifically, what writing fan fiction is like versus writing original fiction.

The amazing thing about fanfiction is that the world has already been built. Depending on the fandom, there might be centuries of history, an entire planet, countries and cities, races, and political systems. Dragon Age, for example, has all those and religious beliefs, human rights abuses and champions, several wars, a rebellion, I mean, it just goes on and on. For me to come up with a world even half as rich would take years and years.

Another thing that’s already in place when it comes to fanfiction is the plot. Again, depending on the fandom, there could be a huge, winding plot full of endless loose threads to explore (and exploit), or it could be a loose, overarching plot with lots of room to make up things that happened ‘behind the scenes’. But like the worldbuilding, it’s not something we have to come up with from scratch. We can add things, insert things, expand things, all of which is easier than building the scaffolding of the plot and making sure it works well and there are no holes or draggy bits.

If you don’t write fanfiction, I can hear the question forming in your brain even as you read this:

So… if the world exists, is already populated, and there’s a plot.. what’s the point of writing fanfiction?

I live and breathe analogies, so humour me, if you will. If you’ve ever been tasked with entertaining a group of children outside, you will likely be familiar with their amazing ability to have fun with next to nothing. I worked as a nanny a few times in my teens and 20s, and then became a parent much later, and kids have this incredible capacity to bring life and stories to a backyard littered with a few foam noodles, a three-wheeled skateboard, and a broken dump truck.

For a while. But if they see the same backyard day after day, eventually their enthusiasm wanes and you need to switch it up. Or sometimes, the kids have never actually played outside before… they’ve grown up in daycares and are overscheduled with lessons and activities and have no idea what to do when faced with an empty backyard or a bare field.

This is when a smart caregiver will take the kids to a playground filled with equipment or a water park. Then the bored kids and the clueless kids have two things going for them: there are structures to explore and interact with, and they have examples of possibilities from the other kids already playing there. They give each other ideas and they build on them and it’s really fun to see how pirate battles and alien invasions and touching ‘playing house’ narratives are spun out between kids who have never met before, but who are drawn together by the cool shit they’re playing on and their ideas.

The kids are writers. The empty backyard and bare field is original fiction and the playground and water park is fanfiction. Most kids can handle both the bare field and the playground equally adeptly, but one brings something to their play that the other doesn’t. We don’t ask ‘what’s the point’ when kids are playing in a playground. We don’t think their play is somehow limited or ‘lazy’ because it’s utilizing an environment or structure that already existed! In the same way, writing a story that uses an existing world and developed characters is still deeply creative writing.

Just like kids can adapt structures to their play - such as inventing games to play with the foam noodles - they can expend the application of existing structures to accommodate their imaginations. A swing becomes the launch pad for a rocket. A slide is now the preferred way to get from the bedroom to the kitchen. In the same way, a writer can invent a world made up of things they find in their heads, and they can adapt and extend existing worlds to accommodate their own stories.

It’s kind of fucking brilliant, in my opinion.

But… if the world already exists, and it’s already populated… and you know what happens… what exactly are you writing?

I get it, I do. I don’t know any fanfiction writers in real life, so I’ve had to try to explain it a few times and the question is genuine.

And the answer is, just about anything we want to. We invent our own original characters and then make them play with the canon (established) characters. We take a scene from the movie, or book, or game and we change a detail that gives the whole scene a new meaning. Or we take something the original content mentions in passing and we go to town on it and develop it to our heart’s content. Did you think those two characters deserved more than a chance meeting when their shopping carts ran into each other? Then write a whole story on how they helped each other deal with the mess, how they teased each other about the contents of their carts, how they stared at each other for a minute and a half because neither of them were ready to walk away until finally one blurts out ‘do you wanna get coffee’ and then they become best friends for life.

Should those two not have broken up? Write the characters working through their problems and staying together. Was the ending absolutely fucked up in that movie? Of course it was. You can do better. So do it and share it with all the other people who feel the same way you did about that ending. Oh, holy hell did you see what that writer did with this character and their OC? What if they… yas, Royal, you go!

I still feel like it’s lazy, tho. Like, are you really developing as a writer if most of the imagining has already been done?

This took me longer to understand. But the short answer is that yes, absolutely you are developing as a writer. I can say this so confidently because worldbuilding, plot-developing, and character invention are still just some aspects of what good writing is all about.

Being able to move within and build upon a world, recognizing opportunities within a plot for expansion and development, and character development are also important. And many writers who have ample skill with the first things actually struggle because they’re weak in the next few things. They spend a lot of time constructing a whole world and peopling it, but the rest of the story is cobbled together.

Fanfiction hones certain skills extremely well. In order to write a fic that resonates with other fans of the same fandom, you have to write the existing characters consistently. Which means you have to know this character so well that you can introduce new people and new scenarios and the character can grow and develop while still retaining the voice and features that make up who they are. Most fans like their fic to be at least somewhat canon-compliant (following the original plot, lore, etc.). So you have to be able to identify which scenes or plot devices in the original lend themselves to your story idea and the characters you’re writing. And anytime you’re doing these things, you’re practising your writing skills, and that is never wasted.