How to Fanfic

Tip 6 - Idea List

Whew! It's been awhile! Like, a long while. I haven't added a tip in here since 2015.

I'm not expecting this part to get a lot of reads, but I figured I'd add this tip in here anyway. I do still see people stumbling across this How-To book when looking for help on their own fan-fictions. Please note that while this tip can obviously be used for any genre of fanfiction (or original novel), I wrote this tip based on Warriors fanfiction help, since most of my readers are coming from my Warriors fanfiction series.

So, the tip I have here today: make an Idea List.

An Idea List is something I've been utilizing a lot since I've returned from two year hiatus of writing my Warriors fanfiction series. Upon re-reading the work I had already published, I made note of certain things that I wanted to address in my upcoming writing. If I found a part of my story that I could potentially work with later in the series, I jotted it down on the notes app of my phone. I marked what chapter this event was in so I could easily find it and review it later, and wrote down some possibilities of what I could do with it later on. 

Now, most of you won't be re-reading your own work after two years of inactivity (but if you are - great!). Fortunately, this tool can be used at literally any time throughout your writing process. If you're just beginning your fanfiction, jot down some plot events that you may want to implement into your story at some point. What I mean by plot events is NOT major story events, like a prophecy, or the fulfillment of said prophecy. You should already have a major plot outline before you begin writing your story, to ensure that your fanfic doesn't wander off into space. When it comes to minor plot-events, I mean things like omens, events like battles that don't necessarily pertain to the main conflict of the story (border conflicts, etc), the death of a secondary character, the birth of kits, an illness striking a Clan, or even the love story of two cats.  These are things that spice up your writing, and give off the allusion of normal Clan life for your main character, especially if your story focuses around a life-altering prophecy. It's important to maintain the fact that your cat is still a Clan cat, despite everything else going on in their life. An Ideas List can help you both edge towards the climax of your story, and can provide other events for your story that keeps your writing vivid and interesting. There's really no limit as to what you put on your Ideas List - if you have a good idea that you want to use in the future, whether it's for a side conflict or the major one - jot it down.

If you've already began writing your fanfiction, and are stumped with writer's block, an Ideas List can also help with that. It wouldn't hurt to go back and reread what you have written and see if there's any unfinished business that you alluded to, but never did anything with. Or if you didn't intentionally allude to anything, see if there are any "hints" within your story that can foreshadow an upcoming event, even if you didn't necessarily plan anything. Come up with a list of potential battles, potential love stories, etc. that can help keep your story interesting. The main conflict of a story needs a whole book to be fulfilled (sometimes even multiple books, as in a series), so to avoid rushing to the end of your story, you need these secondary events to provide distractions and to provide "beef" while your main conflict unravels. Remember, your main character has a whole life that it must live - its whole life cannot center around one main conflict. That's like saying your life is focused towards graduating from high school or college, but all you do is school work (you don't eat, you don't converse with other people or hang out with friends, you don't have hobbies, etc). Obviously, your life is more than your schoolwork, even if you feel like it consumes your life entirely. That's how it's like for your character - they still have other life events they must live through, and you need to describe them in your writing. An Ideas List will help you brainstorm these minor conflicts, and when you feel like there's a lull in your writing or you're stumped with writer's block, it's there for you to pick and choose ideas from. 

I'm not sure if this will make sense to anyone. It was a lot harder to explain than I originally thought it was, but I thought I would share something that has been very useful to me since my return to Wattpad. If anyone needs any clarification, please don't hesitate to say so in the comments. As I said, I don't believe this is going to reach very many people right now, but I hope it helps people in the future who stumble across this book and decide to binge read it.

Till the next tip!