How to write fanfiction

3 ✽ Technique, paragraphs & mistakes

Writing technique is something you develop over time. I'm writing stories for 28 years, and I can tell you that it took a long time to get where I am now and confident with how I structure my sentences, choice of words, and all of that. Howbeit, even I still find new things out as I go. You are never to old to learn something new. Especially if you're passionate about it. 

If you are starting or have a few years of writing experience, I have one thing to say. Do not compare yourself with others. You will find your voice and your way of writing. Never stop looking on how to improve it. Google things, watch video's on YouTube on other writers, but it's your story and you have to find a way to make it work for you! It's okay to learn from others, but you need to make the technique yours in order to write your story. 

Say you get comment on how to do things differently then this could mean two things:

1, the comment is feedback because they found something and wanted to point it out to you or 

2, they want you to copy and paste, these idiots are better left ignored. Why? They are jealous and don't want to see you get better. 

Learn the difference when someone is offering you advice or when someone is being mean to you. I'll leave it at that because criticism is for another chapter. 

Now, let's dive into paragraphs. 

If there is one thing that annoys me, and others as well (I'm not the only one, and I know it) is when the text, dialogue, narrative, description, and thoughts are all put in one big giant piece of text. This is so heavy to read and hard to separate the speakers. 

Breaking the text up in smaller parts, and we're talking about paragraphs. Please, do yourself and your reader a favor and break it up. If you don't know what I'm talking about, pick any book from your bookshelf or bookcase and open it. See how the author is separating one speaker to another. See when the author jumps to the next paragraph. What happens that made the author move to the next line? Try to read as a writer instead of as a reader. 

There are different reasons for when to move to the next line or when to skip an extra line if you make a small time jump. Note, I will talk about time jumps later. This is about paragraphs. So when do you change paragraphs. Just remember TIPTOP, I'll take this as an example. 

Time, pretty obvious because there's a time jump of some kind. This can be hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. 

Place, you move to a different place and/or location. 

Topic, you move from one topic to another. Think dialogue or a lecture if the story takes place in a educational facility in this case. 

Person, when you introduce another person or when there is a change of perspective. 

Mistakes 

Making mistakes comes as we write a story but there are different kind of mistakes. You have the technical mistakes as grammar and spelling mistakes. I've addressed this earlier, there are many software and editing programs out there you can use. Yes, some are paid programs but there are free versions as well. Hemingway, ProWritingAid, Grammarly all have a free version. Another technical mistake is all about punctuations. Let me put it like this: punctuation is a bitch. I struggle sometimes where the damn comma belong. You're not the only one. 

The other kind of mistakes is about the content of the story. Also known as the plot of the story. For the sake of your story, if you write about something you don't know anything about, Google it! Nothing is more annoying than having to read about a boy and girl in bed together having a good time, and the next morning, the girl is nauseous and throwing up. She takes a pregnancy test and it's positive. This leaves me wondering on; 1, those symptoms don't come so fast (it usually take 7 to 8 weeks). 2. how on earth does this girl have a pregnancy test ready to take?

A few examples would be: 

1 (coming from my own book A Little Twist (Diabolik Lovers)): Risa, an 18 year old girl who is pregnant and brought back to the mansion while being high pregnant. Now, for someone doesn't have children or even experienced a pregnancy, I had to look up how others had their pregnancies, symptoms, and other related matters. 

2 A character with a job that isn't your job. 

3 Write about pets when you never had any. 

4 Someone who's depressed, but the character is portraited as a sunshine character who laughs and smiles all the time. How is this believable? Even if we follow that character back home where they talk to their parent(s) with a smile, hang out with friends like nothing's wrong. Sure, depression can come in may shapes and sizes but their outlook on life is different from someone who doesn't have a depression. Did you know that a depression and self-harm go hand-in-hand? Let them go through therapy to battle it. (This happens to a lot of people out there so if you use self-harm in your story make sure to mention it in your description box with a phone number for help.) 

I'll stop here, but you get the point. If you don't know anything about it, ask Google. But don't make things up. All I'm saying is that the story you're writing should make sense.