About 33.9K fanfictions emerge when you directly type DC in the search bar at Wattpad. However, if you type Batman in the search results, the results go up to 41.8K and on typing Superman you get 42.8K stories so here I'm assuming that these heroes...
So I know I didn't post in a really long while but that's because I couldn't find any time to write in the past week and even my fanfics were put on hold. Going for seven days without writing a single thing is the worst kind of torture for me and even now I am compromising stuff because if I don't write, it will drive me insane.
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So yeah, it has been a long time since you guys heard from me and I hope you all didn't forget everything we've discussed in the earlier chapters.
By the way, let's just continue.
One of the mostly found errors of writing fanfiction is scarce or probably no research.
It actually pisses me off to read fanfics where the author thinks he/she is too cool for carrying out research on the said topic. And trust me that's where the whole plot goes downhill.
Now I am not saying that for the DC you have to read all the comics and watch all the movies before you start writing because I know there's a lot of content on DC and you can't possibly watch it all.
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But you should research on the setting you are basing your fanfic in, on the timeline the story is based in and on the characters who are involved in the story.
You can very easily search the content most relevant to your fanfic using the DC Wiki pages, the Batman fandom pages and many other sites based on DC.
Mostly all the researching drains us out and nobody wants to spend a full two or more hours stuck to a laptop screen googling facts and at the end of the research process, everyone's like:
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But what's worse is that if you don't pay any heed to research, then your work turns out crappy and cringe worthy. More so, you get hundreds of comments each of readers telling you to go learn your facts or something.
And trust me, you don't want to see criticizing comments in your Notifications.
Because it lowers your self esteem and confidence at writing.
There is one thing I have observed though in the DC fandom that unlike other fandoms I have written in, the readers are very less picky about the timelines and the canon relevance, which might be a good or a bad thing considering your own style of writing.
But whether or not the readers are picky, we as writers have to make sure that the work we provide is the best. And in my opinion, a well researched fanfic deserves to be called the best out there.
So take some time out for researching and trust me, it will help a lot in giving your story a solid foundation, keeping it relevant to canon and avoiding a couple other Don'ts of writing that we will be discussing later on (and some that we've discussed already) such as OOC Syndrome, Deviation etc.
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Stay tuned for the next chapter.
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[Also for those of you who have read my previous helpbooks and are wondering why I have included this chapter as the Don't no. 5, it's because I am merging the chapter focusing on lgbtq representation with the overall character representation chapter. I have not forgotten about it or intentionally skipped it, I am just reorganizing stuff for this helpbook so it will be featured in the upcoming chapter].
