Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

Prophecies

July 9, 2019

This section goes over prophecies specifically, not the plots they are attached to. It assumes your reader has not started reading your story, so it may be of varying help if you are halfway through publishing it.

Let me get my personal opinion on prophecies out of the way first: I do not like them. As in, I do not like them as an inevitability. If the prophecy has to happen that specific way, then where is the suspense? If it can never be disproven then what is the point? If they are there to throw readers into a series of red herrings or if they are not solid bound-by-lore-magic truth, then they are more acceptable. But that is not the case in Warriors. It was not the case in Guardians of Ga'Hoole. It is not the case in almost every single work of fantasy that has them. And it is not the case for your fanfictions.

That being said, almost every single Warriors fanfic in existence has one. I am in a clear count-on-one-hand minority in my opinion of them. Our canon has dozens of prophecies that its entire universe hinges on, so it makes sense we use them, too. Let me help you improve them.

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PROPHECIES IN WARRIORS

A prophecy is a plot device used as a call to action for some or most of the major events in a story. Plenty of longer works like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter are based on prophetic predictions and omens. These things, whether prophecy or not, drive the story forward by giving a reason for our characters to act. In Warriors, literal prophecies foretold by the universe's gods, StarClan, are used.

The events of the first four arcs were based on the prophecy "fire alone can save our clan." In the end, it told of an orange-coated cat leading ThunderClan through certain ruin. And exactly that happened. Firestar saw ThunderClan through one of the toughest times in cat clan history. The moment the first book referred to Rusty's orange-hued fur, we knew it was him; that and he was the main character.

The first prophecy worked so well because it arguably spanned the series in a meaningful way. No, it does not follow through to A Vision of Shadows, but that is because the Warriors was supposed to end with Omen of the Stars. Through that arc, it follows to the end. There are many events that happen between the first and last book that are not related, but these are treated as subplots or are even given their own books to keep from deviating too far from the main prophecy. The second reason it worked was its simplicity. This does not have to detract from depth, especially from something that may have to span a whole novel or a series of them. In that case, it should not be too straightforward in its execution. Bluestar was just being stupid when she thought her medicine cat was predicting a forest fire instead of the rust-colored cat that she herself made an apprentice (in her defense a forest fire did happen and it arguably changed things for the better, but that is another debate).

There are dozens of prophecies and omens to make examples of, but everyone knows the first one. We do derive quite a few of ours from variations of it, and sometimes we stick a little too close to it. Other times, we just have at it and include whatever we can.

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PROPHECIES IN FANFICTIONS

I find that prophecies in fanfictions are not as well executed as the ones used in canon. Often, they take far too much from canon prophecies or copy them outright. This is only bad because it has already been done in canon. If you copy one of their prophecies but change the words, it is easily deduced by a fan who read the books (which is all of them).