In my quest to make the leap from fan fiction to original fiction writing, I’ve been noting some lessons I have learned from writing fan fiction these last few years.  You’ll find Lessons #1-4 on the sidebar right… there —->

So we’ve come to Lesson 5 in my short list of the good stuff I have learned from being a fan fiction writer.

#5: Research is King (of the TimeSuck)

You know how it is. You sit down to write a story about… I don’t know. Harry Potter in Space. But you’ve never written about space. Nor have you ever written about Harry Potter. Let’s skip the part where this probably isn’t going to be a good story and note the steps taken. You’ve already figured out what’s supposed to happen in the story, who your characters will be, and where your story takes place (in space, DUH). The first thing you’ll need to know is what they call that thing that astronauts live in, and also how much oxygen is in there, and how big is one of those things, and how many people can you fit in a space ship, and how long would it take for a ship to travel from Hogwarts to Mars… and now it’s 5 hours later and you haven’t written a single word.

I’m BIG on research. HUGE on research. I want the details to be as exact as possible. In AIWD, my main character and his love interest are adopted. I have no idea what that feels like. Cue research. I sent them to Orlando, South Carolina, Baltimore, New York, Tennessee, New Orleans, Phoenix and Los Angeles and GREECE. I have only ever been to New York (but I went AFTER I wrote the story) and Los Angeles. Cue research. My male MC is a musician. He gets a guitar for Christmas. NOT ONE CLUE ABOUT GUITARS. Cue research. My female MC works in Marketing, something I know little about. RESEARCH.

When I am in the throes of a story, the #1 thing that can distract me is research. I will type something, want to be sure  about it, and look it up. I need to describe a hotel, a street corner, a house? Google what I imagine in my head, do an image search, and base my words off of that image. I did this a lot when I sent my characters to Greece. But I would find that, an hour later, I am still looking at pictures of Mykonos and Santorini and also do they speak english there and are there tours and what is the temperature in April and how does a person get from Point A to Point B and how long is the ferry ride and does that fit in my story?

Is research important? YES.

Can it suck your time something fierce? YES.

Is it a great mode of procrastination? YUP.

Tips/Lessons Learned:

1.  Write out my questions beforehand.

1a. Set aside specific time for research that is NOT my writing time. I know what’s coming ahead in each chapter and the details I am going to need to include. I set up some research time and go at it. GO HARD or GO HOME! And then once the majority of my questions are answered and I have my photos and websites bookmarked and information I need, I can start writing.

2. While writing, if something comes up… and it sounds hard to do and it IS..   I skip it. I leave a note to myself to look it up at my next research session. I am an obsessive editor, so likely when I pass it again a day or so later, I will fill in the blanks. This gets easier as time goes on and I lose my ‘it needs to be perfect the first time I write it or it’s CRAP’‘ mentality.

3. Get a good gauge for what is too much information and what is not enough.  When I read a book and my eye starts to wander at the 3/4ths of a page description of a garden, I become more attuned to that in my own writing. I have gone from long drawn out imagery of a hotel room to a scant sentence and a half. And a good tip I have learned is that the scenery isn’t really important unless it’s part of the action. The chair sitting cockeyed doesn’t matter, unless the chair is NEVER cockeyed or your MC trips over it on his way to X location. Using words, imagery, description, just to use them is filler, IMO.

Tighten, lighten, less is more.  

How are your research skills? How do you manage your research time? Is it a suck or do you have it down pat? Share your tips in the comments below! 

Welcome back friends! I’ve been posting this week about the lessons I’ve learned about writing from writing Fan Fiction. Not only has it been great practice but it has taught me some things about writing. In review:

Lesson 1: You’re writing. Believe it. You MUST believe in and treat your work like it is real writing, because it is upon this work that you will improve. One cannot get better at writing without writing– you can read all the writing books you want to read, but unless you put it into practice and take it seriously, improvement will be hard to come by.

Lesson 2: Along with the good (reviews) comes the bad (reviews). Learn how to deal with them both! Don’t engage in criticism that doesn’t help you improve your work, and don’t make readers who love your work feel stupid for loving it. Remove the ‘this old thing’ response and say thank you!

Today we’ll talk about Lesson 3:

How to Stay On Task

Quite often in Fan Fiction, stories are posted as serials, meaning a writer might post a chapter or two, and build on the story as time goes on. Weekly or monthly, bi weekly, or as the chapters/sections come forth, the updates get posted. This builds a following and, if you do it right, keeps your readers on the tip of their toes waiting to find out what happens next.

There is nothing so disheartening as getting involved in a story and finding it unfinished, and that the author hasn’t updated their story in weeks. Or months. There are a few stories that I longingly stroke and nuzzle, hoping the writer will come back and satisfy my need to see the story line end. Sometimes a writer just ‘loses’ the story. Sometimes the writer never had the story in the first place. I see lots of ‘idea starts’ that never end up in completed stories, either because the writer has spread him/herself thin over so many pieces or because the writer was unable to stay on task.

The importance of keeping yourself on task is not  only necessary if you update in real time and want to keep your audience engaged. It also transfers to any writing project that you have underway, including original fiction and blogging. However you plan your stories (build on a concept and then write, outline the entire story, or just sit down and write) or your posts, it is helpful to stay a few steps ahead of whatever point your readers have reached. If I don’t know ‘what happens after this‘, a chapter doesn’t get posted, because I don’t want to write myself into a corner that I can’t get out of.

If it helps to keep yourself on a schedule, do it! I used to plan for a few days, write Thursday, Friday and all day and Saturday, have the chapter Beta’d and then posted by Sunday night. Sometimes this schedule slipped, especially if I was having a hard time, but knowing that people were waiting to read what happened is amazing motivation. This can apply to blogging as well. If it helps to build a schedule, build and establish one. If you want to post about certain things on certain days and it keeps you motivated, do it. Whatever works to keep you on task is what you need to do.

Do you have trouble staying on task, blogging on a schedule, providing timely updates? How do you manage your writing schedule?