PyreFly77
 Author has written 7 stories for PAW Patrol. WELL, YOU FOUND ME. CONGRATULATIONS. I'm not really one to talk much about myself, so I'll try and keep things brief. I'm a writer for the Paw Patrol fandom... or rather, I WAS until real life started to get in the way. I wrote some stories, primarily hurt/comfort based about the friendly/familial relationships between the cast, but as I went on, I found it harder and harder to write stories in a timely and well-executed manner. So I wrote one final doorstopper before making the decision to go dormant. For the time I spent writing, I had a lot of fun, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed writing fanfiction for a silly preschooler's cartoon. And to that end, I still want to help people out. To those who might find my profile and want to get into writing, but don't know where to start, I'm going to see if I can offer up some tips... So You Want To Be a Writer... I've once said that writing fanfiction is harder than it's made out to be. And writing good fanfiction? Even more so. Sturgeon's Law dictates that 90% of everything is rubbish (well, he used different wording, but you get the idea). And with such a low barrier for entry, a LOT of rubbish is going to be knocking around this site. But perhaps you want to start writing, but are afraid that you might contribute to the rubbish pile? Well, let's see if I can lay out some rules for you to follow. First and formost... KNOW. YOUR. LIMITS. Seriously. This is Writing 101. You'd think it'd go without saying, but there are several reasons that this title is in BIG, HUNGRY, UNDERLINED LETTERS. Have you ever noticed how many incomplete fics make up this site? Like, there are a lot of fics that clearly aren't finished? Fics that have had a lot of final updates that obviously weren't meant to be such? Fics that have had the author say something to the effect of "I'm not going to leave this unfinished", only to leave it unfinished? Well, I think I have at least one reason for all of that: overextension! I tend to see that said author has a lot of fics active at one time, or one particular fic is extremely long and complex. Either way, the author has too much going on, loses motivation to keep updating, and their story simply leaves another grave of an unfinished fic in the infinite expanse of FFN. Do you want to add to those graves? The smart answer is "no"! So how do you avoid it? Well, first, you need to stop and think to yourself: "Can I see myself writing this story for this fandom in the future?" "Can I see myself committing to finishing this?". Think about what's going on in your life and if you feel like you can devote to truly finishing a fic before you start writing it. And if you're already writing a story, the fergawdsakes, I can't stress the following point enough: EAT WHAT IS ON YOUR PLATE BEFORE ASKING FOR SECONDS. What do I mean by this? I mean to focus on completing your current story first. Now, it can be tempting to start on that cool new idea in your head now while it's still fresh, and resisting the urge to put it into writing then and there is tough, I will grant you. But if you keep dropping what you're doing to start another story, then you won't finish anything, thus leaving a profile full of graves. It's vital that you stay focused if you want to finish a story, and stretching your focus across a large amount of stories only serves to make you look unfocused and scatty. "But how do I know if I can commit to finishing a fic?" I hear you cry. Well, that's something you need to figure out in the... Planning Planning is the backbone of anything, and fanfiction is no different. It also serves as a fine way to make sure your fic doesn't go off-track and too far away from your initial plan. If you get carried away adding to a fanfic, then that's also a fast track to motivation-loss and abandonment. And another thing. It's all well and good that you want to write fanfiction on a whim, but if you hit a wall with it, finding something that you can't quite think of a solution for, that's another good way to cause your fic to wither and die. This is why planning is so important. It lays out exactly what you're going to write and how you're going to write it. It helps to keep you on track, and it helps you to see the scope of your fic and just how large (or not) it's going to be. The chances of you getting carried away and writing multiple stories at once, or writing a story that you hit a wall with/a story that gets too large and complex, are diminished greatly as a result of good planning. So how do you plan? Well, some people say that you need to write the beginning and ending to a story first. The fun stuff comes when you write what comes inbetween. Write out what major plot points you want to cover in a bulleted list. Write out how the fic starts, how the fic ends, and add bullets inbetween that bridge the gap with the other major plot points. Like this:
Just to give a very general example of a story and how to plot it. Character interactions and villain plots, however, are all down to you. But since this is fanfiction, something with characters, settings and lore already established for you, there's something else you need to think of... Considering Canon One of the main draws of fanfiction is that you don't really have to think of much in terms of settings, characters and lore, given that they're already there for you. But some writers can add their own things to the story. Introducing new settings, characters, powers, lore, what-have-you. But that can run the risk of turning people off. If someone comes for the canon characters, then they'll be left wondering "Who is this guy?", "Where is this place?" and "How is this possible?". Or worse. Sometimes, the new elements will completely supplant the canon ones, leaving the canon characters by the wayside if they're lucky! A lot of times when reading fanfiction, I've found myself asking "Why didn't this person just write an original story? Don't we have Fictionpress for that?". Or worse, sometimes people will add something that makes absolutely no sense in the context of the source material. For example, giving someone the ability to fly in a fanfic about a more-realistic setting. And then there's the problem of making the canon characters act... well, out of character. The characters already have set personalities, and yet people can quickly disregard them on a whim. So how to avoid this? Well, aside from making the characters act... well, in-character, this isn't to say that you can't add anything new at all to the source material, but you need to take care with both what you add and how much of it you add. Stop and reflect on what you're adding. Be it a new character, setting, power, etc. If it makes little to no sense in the context of your source material, you're probably better off drastically-overhauling it, or just straight-up leaving it out. And in terms of adding a lot of new stuff (settings, characters, lore, etc), if you add too much of it in one go, then it'll make your story harder to follow. Or worse, it may completely supplant the canon elements. Always remember that the canon elements exist, too! Think about it; if you're going to leave the source material's universe and laws by the wayside, you've always got Fictionpress if you want to write an original story. Speaking of new content, that brings me to my next point... OCs Now, OCs are a touchy subject among many. Despite the general reputation OCs have, their inclusion does not automatically make a fic bad. However, hero or villain, doing them wrong is very easy, especially since there are so many ways that they can be written poorly. Here are some examples:
Now, this isn't to say that an OC can't be written at all. It's just that there are a lot of ways that they can be done wrong. So how can they be written well? For one thing, they need flaws and shortcomings. But they shouldn't be made an absolute failure and a screw-up, since honestly, that's just as bad as making them a total Mary Sue. Flaws and shortcomings humanise a character. They make them more relatable. No-one's perfect. And that needs to be reflected in an OC having genuine faults. Not things like "She's too heroic" or "She cares too much". But above all, make it seem like the OC belongs in the world. From something as small-seeming as their name, to their backstory, to their abilities, to their role in the plot. Always remember that the OC needs to share the spotlight with other characters, too. It's easy enough to make an OC, but doing an OC well is another matter altogether. And in order to do an OC well, you have to make sure that their inclusion seems natural. Make them feel like a part of the source material's world. I've said that OCs are a touchy subject. Now here's another one... Character Death There are many fics out there where character death is handled carelessly. But this is not something to be used lightly. Done incorrectly, character death can seem cavalier and spiteful at the best of times. It's not exactly something that can be easily-taken back. And worse, sometimes it can be used as a tool to simply get a character out of the way so that an OC can fill their spot. Very rarely is character death handled well. And by that, I mean that any survivors barely seem affected in the face of a character dying. They simply move on with barely any angst shown. Sometimes, they will give a "life will never be the same without them" or "they will never be forgotten" or words to that effect. However, this is cold comfort in the face of a character dying. ESPECIALLY if it's a canon character. Once a canon character is killed, it becomes far harder to end a story satisfactorily. So what can you do? Well, I'd say that character death is something to avoid unless you absolutely, 100% have to use it. And if you must use it, then make sure that the death has a lasting impact on people in-universe. Make the death matter. Don't just kill someone to get them out of the way, go all "bloo bloo how sad" and then just leave it be. The characters shouldn't move on just like that. If you absolutely have to use character death, then HANDLE WITH CARE. Improperly-handled character death can very easily give a fic a hopeless air. Speaking of hopeless airs... The Importance of Tone The tone of a story is basically its bread and butter. A story can be dark, light, or somewhere in-between. Getting this right is crucial if you don't want an audience to get confused, bored, or laugh at the dark moments/cringe at the light moments, then you need a story that is consistent in tone, along with knowing when to lighten up and have fun, yet at the same time knowing when to do get serious. What do I mean by this? Have you heard of "Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy"? The long and short of this is when a story is so unrelentingly-grim and hopeless with nary an ounce of fun that the audience simply tires of it and switches off. After all, what's the point of reading on if you know everything's going to turn out crummy? It may be a slog for the characters, but it shouldn't be a slog for the reader, too. A reader usually reads on with hope that things will get better. If that hope is ill-founded all throughout or gets mercilessly crushed at the end, the audience will NOT be happy. So it's important that you know when for a story to lighten up and have something more humourous or uplifting or exciting in it. But there's a time and a place for everything. To keep your tone consistent, make sure you don't include lighter moments where they would be inappropriate, or dark moments out of nowhere. Otherwise your viewers will be switched off from the drama, find the comedy unfunny, etc. By all means, Mood Whiplash used effectively can be a great thing. Making a scene funnier, or a dramatic moment hit doubly hard, but let's say a character is really badly hurt and everyone is worried. And then that character starts suffering pratfalls despite being badly injured. This is meant to be funny, but given the circumstances, it just comes off as jarring. Similarly, if characters are having a pie fight, only for one of the participants to suddenly trip and break their neck, causing a tearjerking death scene, that's not only completely killing the comedy, but comes off as extremely silly at the same time. The character just died in the middle of a PIE FIGHT! It may be possible to make black comedy out of this, but not many are up to the task of making the above kinds of situations funny. Oh, speaking of endings... The Ending Changes Everything Some say it's important to start off on the right foot. This is true. Some also say it's not the destination, it's the journey. To an extent, also true. But how many people give the same regard to the ending? Debatably, the ending is the most important part of a story. It all comes down to how a story ends, and the ending has got to be one that at least gives a sense of closure and satisfaction to a reader. A poorly-ended story can retroactively sour a reader on the whole thing, no matter how good it was beforehand. They'll feel like everything up to that point was for nothing, leaving them feeling cheated and angry. Some examples are a dark, dramatic story basically having every last bad thing undone at the end (for bonus suck points, it could also end with "And they all lived happily ever after"), a lighthearted story suddenly ending with everyone dead and/or the bad guy winning a complete victory, or possibly something happening that renders the whole story up to that point moot and pointless (including, but not limited to the dreaded "It was all just a dream"). Now, writing a good ending will depend heavily on the fic in question. Not all endings have to be 100% happy. And in the case of some stories, happy endings would be unfulfilling. Imagine if 1984 ended with Ingsoc being suddenly overthrown despite everything, for example. But for most stories, the story has to feel like there was a point to it all. There can't be loose ends left untied. Make sure to pay attention to detail and give your story the satisfying ending it deserves. On the subject of detail... Law of Conservation of Detail An important law, this one. To summarise, it basically says that every given detail is important. If it didn't matter, then you wouldn't be telling us. A few fics tend to either not provide enough detail in their stories (either making everything seem flat, or making it seem like new revelations and gear are pulled out of the writer's... erm, cavernous regions), or providing so much useless detail that the story becomes incomprehensible and impenetrable, since said detail is nothing more than pointless fluff. Now, of course detail is important. But the more important something is, the more attention you'll want to give it. Naturally, you'll still want to describe how a character looks and how a setting looks. But you don't want to spend all day on it. If a detail isn't terribly important, then don't spend all day rambling on and on about it. That's a ticket to a boring fic. If you have to describe something, try to fit it into few words and move on. Summarise what's important. An example of how to use detail well is by mentioning something seemingly innocuous, only to reveal later on that it has plot importance. For example, a hero sees that a masked villain has a gold bracelet on their right arm. This doesn't seem important now, but later on, when interacting with a minor character, that same hero notices that he has a gold bracelet on their right arm. They then start to get suspicious. If the fact that they wore a gold bracelet was unimportant, you wouldn't have told us, would you? And as a side note to all of this: SHOW. DON'T. TELL. Though this rule mostly applies to character interactions, that doesn't mean it doesn't apply elsewhere. Rather than simply saying "he felt very sad", do something to show that the character is feeling very sad. Like having them cry or be too lethargic to do anything. This method will have far more of an impact than simply telling us that a character is feeling sad. Remember, give your audience some credit! Written correctly, the above example can evoke good amounts of sympathy. But... You Can't Spell "Sympathetic" Without "Pathetic"! A character having sympathetic motivations arguably drives almost all good character interactions. Bob's intention to protect a group of villagers might stem from him watching his own village be massacred. Emperor Evilstein might have so much hatred for everything because everyone he met hated him for no reason. But it's easy to say that a character should be felt bad for. Actually making the reader feel bad for them is another matter. Sometimes, a character will be written in such a way that we're obviously supposed to feel sorry for them. But oftentimes, these same characters will commit such reprehensible actions or act like such a tool that feeling sorry for them becomes impossible. Always remember: there's a big difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic. Just to give one example, say a character goes through a nasty breakup. But then he or she turns into a complete and utter jerk because of it. They'd usually be a likable sort, but this breakup causes them to start lashing out at any kindness done unto them, abrasively pushing people away for no reason other than "heartbreak" and even going so far as to commit physical assault in some places, with the provocation being flimsy at best. And what about a villain? It's all well and good that he lost people close to him, but him responding to that by committing mass genocide and acts of terror without so much as a lick of remorse is going to simply seem disproportionate and monstrous. If you want to make a character sympathetic, I implore you to consider their actions in relation to the trauma they suffered. If you're going to have a character go too far, then it's going to be very hard to sympathise with them. Unless that's the intention. The problem, however, is that most often, we're expected to just accept that their doings are warranted, no matter how disproportionate. Basically, tread carefully. And on the subject of basics... Paragraph and Sentence Structure Now, this may be an insultingly-basic thing to cover, but you'd be amazed at how few people actually heed this. In fact, even I'M guilty of breaching the rules of sentence structure sometimes! Without good structure, a fic will turn into an unreadable, impermeable mess, most often manifesting in the form of a wall of text. People WILL struggle to follow a story written like this. Not only to keep track of who's speaking, but to follow what's going on in general. So in order to keep things simple, I'm going to offer up a couple of tips for general story-writing. Starting with paragraph length. Generally, about four lines is a good length for most paragraphs. A couple of extra lines more generally won't be considered a crime, but if a paragraph starts to get long, consider breaking it up a little. Or if it's on the shorter side, consider fusing it with another paragraph. These rules aren't ironclad. They mostly serve to give you an idea of when to cut off. And now, here's a couple of extra rules to follow when it comes to dialogue: New Speaker, New Line: This rule is fairly self-explanatory. In a conversation, whenever someone begins to speak, a new line is started. For example:
Why do this? Simple. It allows for someone to see when someone else has begun to speak without having to look for a dialogue tag. This helps keep the fic clean and prevent a wall of text from building up. But if a character's dialogue is interrupted by a description of what they are doing at the time, then a new line of dialogue is not started. Instead it picks up again after the description is finished. Like this:
Note the lack of a dialogue tag in the Lady's speech. That brings me to my next point... Dialogue Tags When?: As you may have been able to glean, a dialogue tag is something like "she said" or "he replied". These are important, right? Well, there's a time and a place to use dialogue tags. Overuse of dialogue tags can easily clutter up the fic and reduce its flow to that of a river of bricks. As for me, personally, I find them best used to denote a new speaker, or to convey a change in how someone is speaking. For example with the tags "screamed", "wailed" or "groaned". In a conversation involving more than two people, then dialogue tags with each new speaker are very useful to keep track of who is talking. But if the conversation involves only two, then dialogue tags can be used more sparingly. Because if the "New speaker, new line" rule is followed, then it will be somewhat obvious as to who is talking. You should only need a dialogue tag for the first line uttered by each participant in the conversation at that point. Now, despite what a fair few English teachers will tell you, the use of "said" as a dialogue tag is not a crime. There are a great many alternatives to the word, true, but sometimes, you just need to convey that a character is speaking neutrally, or you simply need to convey a change in speaker. At these points, the use of "said" is perfectly acceptable. Just be wary not to overuse it, lest it turn the fic into a boring, repetitive mess. But if you want to spice it up a little, then feel free to append adjectives to the word "said" to convey how a character is speaking. Here's an example:
Also note the lack of a dialogue tag in the above for Bob's speech. In the event that a character takes an action before speaking, then a dialogue tag can be avoided. The fact that character A took an action before speaking conveys that they were the one to speak next without rubbing it in one's face. And one final point to make: you can have the order of the dialogue tag any which way you'd like, just so long as you keep it consistent throughout the story. Whether you phrase it as "Bob said" or "said Bob" doesn't matter, as long as you keep it consistent all throughout. Finally, and although this is a more personal tip than anything, if you're struggling to find the motivation to write as you go... Why Not Pre-write? This was something that helped me immensely during my time here. Instead of writing as I went, I always wrote out my entire story before I started uploading the first chapter. This allowed me to slowly drip-feed chapters at a consistent rate on certain days, meaning that people were not only NOT left hanging, wondering if something would ever be updated, but they would always know when to expect something from me, and get an idea of roughly how long something was going to last. This really helped to keep the stress off of me, so that I didn't have an unfinished story constantly lingering at the back of my mind. If you're worried about this happening to you (or perhaps it's happening to you right now!), then don't hesitate to give this tactic a try. Plus, the fact that it mostly staves off the crowd bleating "please update" at you is also a nice bonus. Just don't forget to keep backups until a chapter is uploaded. You don't want a disaster of some kind wiping out your work. And that's it! Obviously, these tips won't cover everything about writing, and some of this will have been coloured by my own opinions, but I'm hoping that these will at least serve as a good jumping-off point for any prospective writer. In fact, these tips aren't just for fanfiction. They apply if you fancy trying to write an actual book, too! But either way, my only hope is that these tips can be of help in some way to prospective authors. And now, if you're here for my actual stories, you may find them below. I hope you enjoy. Happy reading! Sincerely, |
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