Okay, before we go any further, a disclaimer: not everything you read on the Internet is true. Shocking, I know. This column, the first in a series exploring what I believe are the most important techniques of crafting good fanfiction, is a case in point. I’m not a professional writer and don’t claim to be, but even if I was then everything I have to say is just my opinion, not some kind of gospel. You may agree with that opinion or you may think I’m talking out of my arse, but if it’s the latter than don’t get in a twist about it. The only thing of any consequence is this: if there’s something here that you find helpful, then great. Mail me a cookie. Otherwise, my apologies for wasting your time.
Okay? Okay.
There are five key topics I want to cover. Master them all and I believe you’ll be the kind of writer people love to read. The first of those topics isn’t perhaps the most important, but it is the one that, most commonly, can be improved upon: Fanfic is prose, not comics.
It’s an easy mistake to make; after all, you’re writing about Spider-Man because you read the comics, right? Well, here’s the deal. You only have words, no pictures. A fanfic writer not only has to do the job of a comics scripter – ie, coming up with the plots, the characters and the dialogue – but also the job of the artist. If you want your story to have any kind of depth you can’t just have ciphers standing around talking or punching one another. Not only is this confusing but it’s also dull and lazy, and the worst crimes a writer can commit are to be dull and lazy. Even when you’re writing for fun you need to graft. Sorry, but that’s life.
The fundamental goal is to paint your readers a picture. And I don’t mean set your scene by virtue of a little caption box saying [Somewhere in Gotham City…] followed by you launching straight into Batman saying something sassy and kicking The Riddler in the face. That’s not enough. If Somewhere in Gotham City could just as easily be Somewhere in The Australian Outback or Somewhere in The Bloke Across The Street’s Back Yard, you’ve got it wrong.
How much detail you put into your descriptions is up to you. It’s as easy to do too much as it is too little; there’s no definitive answer, it’s all about what comes naturally over time. However, it’s your remit to bring your scenes to life, and that means giving the reader a strong enough idea of location, situation and character appearance that all of it sticks in their mind. Render an environment well – be it a cityscape, a swamp, a bar, a warehouse or an alien planet – and it will become a character in itself, enriching the reader’s experience of reading your work. Describing a situation keeps the action immediate in the reader’s mind at all times; ie, what time of day it is, what are the weather conditions like, is there a calm atmosphere or is there a time bomb about to off in a building across the street, causing everyone to run around like headless polecats. And depicting a character accurately – and, crucially, maintaining a clear distinction between each character in your scene – means that a reader can not only visualise these people they’re supposed to be connecting with but also lessens the chance of confusion regarding who says what and who does what.
Another way to think of yourself is as a film director. A director doesn’t just point and say “Action!”. He or she is responsible for how a scene is shot – the lighting, the angle, the positioning of the players, what they’re wearing, and so much more. He or she is concerned with texture. When you write you do all these jobs: writer, artist and director. Yes, it’s daunting, but then everything is. Ultimately, it can be quite simple – just don’t go too far.
An example:
1. The crooks were sitting around in an old warehouse, playing cards. Gus had the winning hand.
2. The crooks were sitting round a makeshift table in an old, derelict warehouse down on the docks. It was gloomy and damp, and there was a constant scurry of rats in the shadows. Gus had a full house, Queens over Nines. He grinned and laid with a flourish.
3. The crooks, foul and unkempt, were hunched about a table made of a sheet of filthy plywood upturned on an old oilcan, in an old, derelict warehouse down on the docks. It was gloomy and damp, the black river threatening to seep up through the bareboard floor. Rats scurried about the men’s feet, squeaking, perhaps in displeasure of their territory being invaded. The crooks were playing poker; Gus had a full house, Queens over Nines. Grinning, he stroked the edges of the cards, enjoying his moment of victory. Then, he laid his hand with a flourish.
Now, there’s nothing majorly wrong with either 1 or 3, except that if all your sentences are like this then, overall, you’ll inevitably be too light or too heavy respectively. 1 is the sentence of a writer who doesn’t give a stuffed weasel about detail, or who is in a hurry to get to the dialogue and meat of the scene; the narrative will therefore always suffer from lack of atmosphere. 3 is too much detail; technically it’s fine, but if every paragraph was like this it would suffocate the life out of an audience, like a director relentlessly zooming and panning in all directions at once. 2 presents all the information of 3 without the flounce, whilst fleshing out the bare bones of 1, and – ultimately – that’s really all you need.
Example 1 is far, far more common than 3. It’s the kind of sentence you read in comics, in one of those little yellow boxes at the top of a panel. However, this is because the writer knows the artist will set the scene for him; you haven’t got that, remember. And, no, the answer isn’t that it’s up to a reader to use their imagination to fill in the details. That’s an excuse, it’s feeble, and it’s nonsense. A reader has the right to expect a scene to be portrayed for them, and then to be able to build on what you’ve given them rather than having to start from scratch.
Next time you write a scene – any scene – don’t scramble to get to the dialogue or the fight like Scooby Doo running for the exit when faced with the Neon Phantom. Ask yourself how your description could be better. More vivid. More precise. More interesting. And, on that last point, there’s something quite telling that may emerge; if you’re struggling to make your description anything more than ordinary it’s likely because your location is ordinary. After all, it’s easy to set a scene in a bar, or a bank, or a warehouse, simply because you don’t have to worry about description. Again: dull and lazy. Sorry to be harsh, but there you go. Why not set your scene in a restaurant on the twentieth story of a tower block, or on a construction site, or in the middle of rush hour traffic outside the School For Performing Arts with odd looking kids from the 80s dancing on the roofs of cabs, and drop in a few sentences here and there to remind the reader that the world is still going on around the central characters? Or have your scene happen in a rainstorm, or at dusk? Something, just to bring it all to life.
Or, of course, you could really go to town and take your action widescreen… but that’s another topic, and another column!