How To Fanfiction (Tips for new writers)

Tip 3 + 4: Planning & Plot

Tip 3: Planning Out

Now, this is sort of a rule for general writing: Always know the end of your story before even starting it out.

This whole tip is about structured writing.

You must know where you want to go with your story, otherwise this will be a huge mess.

To do that, I personally like to roughly plan out my story by scribbling down some main events after I wrote the first part.

That way I give myself creative freedom to come up with additional events and what ever happens between my key events or whatever, but at the same time have sort of a guide to look at when I don't know how to progress with my story.

Especially plot twists will be so much easier to perform if you planned them out before hand and thought of foreshadowed them in some way. Like I said; if you know where you want to go with your story, you'll be able to progress to every point in a structured way, that doesn't confuse the reader and doesn't leave any plot holes.

I used to be too lazy to plan out before hand and just full on threw myself into writing.

But this ended up being hella messy, so I learned how to do better.

Plus, planning out and playing around with the plot beforehand is super fun!

So, don't be scared to find out for yourself what happens at the end of your own story and note it down. Keep a structure in your writing!

Tip 4: Subplots

A thing I see a lot of fanfiction writers do is stubbornly concentrating on only the main plot. I'm talking about authors not including any more characters and story elements than absolutely necessary.

Example?

Guy meets girl. Guy falls for her. Guy tries to win girl over. Girl ends up with guy. The end. Nothing else. Nothing more.

Doing this is like drawing a single, straight line. It's kinda plain and boring to look at, right?

Now, if you add multiple, smaller lines that stick out of the original line and connect them with it later on? This is a whole different story.

By adding subplots that maybe handle different, smaller challenges the protagonist (or other characters) have to face, that connect with the main plot, or maybe writing about the relationship between the protagonist and another side character you make the whole story a lot more lively.

In real life we don't just have one problem to solve either.

We have like 1000 problems to handle, mostly at the same time.

Consider that.

Here a few examples for possible subplots:

- Bonding with a small child

- Overcoming a fear

- developing a best friendship

- moving to another place and making it a home

Those are just to make you understand what exactly I mean by subplot.

Keep in mind that those should  influence the out come of the story; Either in a positive or negative way - or just to clarify the importance of the protagonist's goal.

For instance, if we add the 'bonding with a child' subplot to my lovestory example from earlier, it'll maybe look like this: The girl befriends the guy's baby brother over her job, without knowing whose brother it is and ends up involuntarily connecting with the guy through his little brother.

Well, I think you get what I mean, right?

The point is, that by adding subplots, you also add authenticity and thrill to your story.

Usually in fanfiction, people tend to concentrate on only the character the story is about, but this ends up making the fanfic look plain.

Subplots make the whole thing more vivid!