100 Things I Learned By Writing Fanfiction #7-Nobody Knows Everything

I know a lot about Stargate: SG-1.  It's my favorite television show ever.  Even so, it took me a long time to feel like I was capable of writing fanfiction for SG-1.  I didn't feel like I had enough of the characters' life stories or understood enough about the Goa'uld or 'gate technology.  If you don't watch Stargate and have no idea what I'm referring to, then substitute details from your own favorite franchise.

Can you write in the characters' voices and hear them the way they sound on the screen?

Can you remember details of their lives or the things they've said about "how stuff works?"


No?

Well, neither can I--at least not perfectly.  Neither can a TV's show's writers or the script writers for sequels.  (Look at the Highlander film franchise and its huge continuity problems for an a movie-related example.)

I first got involved in the Stargate fandom around 2005.  I met people who were way more knowledgeable about the show than I was, and when I started thinking about writing fanfiction, I asked a lot of questions.  I was probably annoying.  That's okay, because it made my stories better.

There were times, though, when I found that nobody knew what the answer was--or there were so many different answers circulating the fandom that I might as well just pick the one I liked best or make up my own and run with it.

You'll eventually get flack for that.  Somebody will come along and leave a review to tell you what you got wrong.  It may even be someone you know--someone you normally go to when you have questions.  That's one of the things that makes transformative writing different from most other kinds.  The audience gets to interact with the source material and with the new stories that are being created around it.

So am I saying that fanfic authors should just make up whatever they feel like? Not at all, but here's what I've learned from all the questions I asked:

Sometimes the answers you need just aren't available in canon.  If nobody seems to know for sure, pick something, make up as much detail as you need to, and go with it.  Just make sure that what you decide on is plausible, and stick with it.  Also, don't obsess too much about the things you don't know.  Fill in as much detail as you need to and leave the rest alone.  In most cases, nobody else knows either, and fanfiction is supposed to be fun.

Index| Masterlist

100 Things I Learned By Writing Fanfic #6: Give Me The Background

I just want to start out by saying that the "me" in the title is "me, the reader of your story."  I'm using myself as an example because I've been reading fanfiction for a long time, and there are some things that will consistently turn me off.

One of the biggest objections I hear about fanfiction is that fanfic authors ought to just make up their own stories.  In some cases, I agree.  I have a post planned in this series called [When It's Better As Original Fiction].  It's about a story of mine that started as fanfiction and, over time, became so divergent from its source material that I decided to make it an original novel instead.  In most cases, I think the problem is that authors need to give their audience a familiar place to start, and then take the audience along with the characters as they experience events that change them.  I see a lot of fic where the author just announces in the description or the author's notes that HUGE changes have occurred in the background or that the canon characters are somehow different-- "OOC"-- with no explanation as to what changed everything around.

You may think that's "innovative" and "different."  You'll probably find an audience who likes what you're doing too.  You'll absolutely lose me though.  There are some things (like one or two specific events) that you can just say are different and go forward, but if you've made drastic changes to a lot of things and people are behaving in weird, unusual ways, I'll feel cheated and stop reading.  Here's why.

100 Things I Learned By Writing Fanfiction # 5: You Will Lose Things

I just came across a comment that someone left me here about a story that she had written and lost.  I wish I could help, because I know this pain well, and there's nothing less satisfying than trying to reproduce something you wrote that you don't have anymore.  It seldom works.  If you manage to get something worthwhile, you're lucky.  You'll probably still feel a hollowness in your gut because it's not really what you want your readers to see.  It's just the best you can do the second time around.

Confession # 8: I Used To Be Terrified of Darth Vader

So, I don't like Anakin.  I love Darth Vader.  And I used to be terrified of Darth Vader all at the same time? Yes.  Well, technically no, I suppose.  I didn't know anything about Anakin for most of my life.  I already loved and was terrified by Darth Vader long before the Prequels came out.  Never let it be said that I am an uncomplicated woman.

I had a recurring nightmare about Vader for years.  It began in my early childhood, after I saw Star Wars, and it continued well into my adult life.  In the dream, Luke and Leia had been captured and were being held on a spaceship.  I think it was supposed to be Vader's flagship, Executor, but I'm not sure since Executor appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, and the ship in my dream looked more like Tantive IV, the one where Leia was boarded and captured in the original film.

Anyway, I snuck on board the ship and was trying to rescue the twins, but Vader knew I was there and found me.  The bulk of the dream consisted of me running through the white hallways with Vader chasing me.  Eventually he would draw his lightsaber and close in.  There were sometimes more details, depending on whether or not I made it to the twins.  If I did, there were some lines of dialogue, but only Vader did the talking, and the only other sounds in the whole dream were his breather (getting closer) and the snap-hiss of his lightsaber.

I didn't stop having that dream until around 2008, when I was deep in the heart of a Vader related project with Aruna7.

Short Personal Update

I've re-injured my arm.  It's doing all right, but I've gone back several steps in terms of my ability to type.  The 8 Confessions series is finished--I wrote up the last one a couple of weeks ago.  I've got a few posts in the 100 Things I Learned From Writing Fanfiction series and some informative/tutorial content on my other blog that I've been working on here and there.  I'll get those up in the coming weeks.  After that, it will depend on how my arm is doing.  Let's hope it's not another 4 month ordeal.

Confession #7-I Love Darth Vader

Earlier in this series, I wrote at length about how much I dislike Anakin Skywalker.  It should follow then that I hate Darth Vader, but I don't.  I was afraid of him for a long time (I'll talk more about that next week) and I always thought he was horrible to Princess Leia, but he intrigued me.  His dialogue with Obi-Wan in A New Hope showed me someone who was, for all his apparent strength, still trying to prove that he was better than his old teacher.  His interactions with Luke showed me someone who was capable of acting with honor--in a bizarre, twisted way.  So, I came to like Darth Vader a whole lot by the time he died.  I just wish that Anakin Skywalker had lived up to Vader's potential.

I learned to love him a whole lot more by writing about him.  I'll (hopefully) be talking about that again when I return to my 100 Things I Learned From Writing Fanfiction later this year.  Granted, the things I wrote about in my fanfiction were based on my own inferences and observations, so, maybe I love my own ideas of Vader's character a little more than the person we see on the screen but I'd like to think that I learned a little something about the Dark Lord from all the time I spent exploring that character.

Confession # 6-I Wanted to Marry Lando Calrissian

This is going to be a short post in comparison to most of the others in the series.  There really isn't a deep confession here.  Remember that I was a little girl when I first watched Star Wars.

I think I shipped Han and Leia before I knew what "shipping" a couple meant.  The term most likely hadn't been invented yet.  Either way, I knew that Han and Leia were going to get married someday.  I never liked Luke, so even though I thought it would be awesome to be Princess Leia's sister, there was no way I could marry him. 

Somehow, it occurred to me that I could marry Lando.  Lando was pretty awesome.  He was charming, funny, a little bit dangerous and prone to getting into trouble.  He probably needed to have a wife to keep him in line.  If I married him, I could have all kinds of adventures, and I'd probably get to hang out with Han and Leia all the time!  So, there you have it.

...I feel the need to mention that I also wanted to marry Michael Knight,  Danny Williams from the original Hawaii 5-0 and James T. Kirk.  I guess I was going to be a polygamist.