Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

In & Beyond The Canon

June 13, 2019

There are not many guides out there that deal with how much inspiration to draw from canon. As a fanfiction, obviously, it must draw a lot from canon. But is there a guide that delves into acceptable practices when venturing beyond the canon? This section is that guide.

It is not like I hate Warriors. I wrote a whole guide and fanfictions on it. But there is one thing I have seen with fanfictions that parallels across genres and fandoms: a lack of exploration. Fanfiction pulls much from the work it is based on. Themes, characters, worlds, most fanfics pull these things directly from the canon. But in this fandom, much of it stays the same. The exact same. Same clans, same location, same characters (often post-Bramblestar, which the A Vision of Shadows arc canonized). While this is not a bad thing in of itself, it does stagnate the writing side of the fandom. Many of the best fanfics are born out of the idea that writers can fulfill a desire not met in canon, and it can be literally any desire. However this fandom, and to a certain extent the canon it draws from, does not allow too much creative flexibility.

While it is debatable what makes a good fanfic, we could all benefit from at least knowing how flexible we can be with the base content in canon. Or why this fandom, and many others, can stagnate while a few take an 'anything goes' policy.

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WRITING WITHIN THE CANON UNIVERSE

Some fanfiction, especially in the Warriors fandom, is written within the canon universe. By this, I mean the story, its characters, and their setting all exist in the established canon universe of Warriors. It usually retains few to no canon characters (taking place between or after major events) and almost always include an original character as the focus, and OC's as the supporting cast.

Here is an example summary for our nonexistent fanfic:

StarClan has spoken. "Your world's masters will drown themselves from a terrible mistake, and take you all with them. The only way to survive is to bury yourselves alive and let this tragedy unfold without you."

Otherleaf, the ShadowClan medicine cat, is baffled by this prophecy. She discusses it with her friend and senior warrior, Catclaw, who becomes engrossed in it. Nothing will stop her from piecing together the long history of the clans to try and form a clear answer as to why they have been damned. Perhaps it is the mistakes of former leaders, or a long-standing problem that must be brought to light. Catclaw feels she must bring the truth of the prophecy to light before all pay for mistakes none of them were alive to commit.

That was a pretty standard description as far as Warriors fanfics go. If a description like this were on the back of one of the canon books, it would seem far-fetched for not mentioning established characters, but normal for staying with the same ambiguous plot setups and its use of the lake territories for its setting. But mostly that it uses the canon setting for its story, as well as clearly taking place in the same universe for its mention of ShadowClan. Though our fanfic uses the canon clans, most use original clans with the same territory of a forest or a lake surrounded by forest.

In most fandoms, stories like this are written. It is much more common in fandoms that have large character pools to potentially use. Incidentally, the larger the character pool, the less likely we are to use it. If you dabble in other fandoms, check how often they write stories in the canon universe starring their OC as the main character. Given the characters in Warriors, especially common here. Because most/all of the characters and plotlines are original, they require less knowledge of the source material and are a bit easier to write than stories that use an all-canon cast.