Help:Guidelines for better fan fiction

When you're starting out with writing fan fiction, you'll make the same "beginners' mistakes" others have before. Most of these came from other wikis where fan fiction was being mixed in with the official information or was being added as if it was official information. In those cases, they're mistakes on the part of that person, but here, they're guidelines on how to make what you're writing better.

Ideas instead of stories
A lot of what's posted as fan fiction is just ideas:


 * Boog and Elliot travel to the newly-opened Timberline Zoo, where they meet many new friends.
 * Luke Skywalker meets Calvin and Hobbes and they go on an adventure.
 * Whiffle is a 3D movie that will be released on May 17, 2093.
 * Samson is a character in The Smurfs 6.

That's the full extent of their "story" or character and they stop there. But that's just the beginning. Everything starts out as an idea. Take the idea and work on it until it becomes an actual story or a full-fledged character.

Character or actor lists
Some of these story ideas are accompanied by a long list of characters and/or actors that will appear in their story, usually a movie. The person spends more time at first picking who will be in their story than they do on the story itself. Once they get that pretty much finalized, then they should go on to working on the story so that it's more than just a one- or two-sentence idea.

Verbartim copies
Some fan fiction is made by copying what other people wrote and just changing a few words or names. For example, taking the summary for Hotel Transylvania 2 and changing it so it says Hotel Transylvania 3.

This looks like an easy way to come up with a "new" story or character, but it's actually plagiarism, where you take what someone else made and try to pass it off as your own. Don't do that. What you write may get deleted if it looks like it was plagiarized.

Mixing your wording
Some stories are written with the wording mixed up. It's usually for a sequel or a movie and will typically say it will be released on a date in the future, but everything else on the page is written like it's already been released. A lot of times, that's a flag that the story was plagiarized from Wikipedia or somewhere else.

Plot descriptions and transcripts
When you create your fan fiction story, the more you can put into the plot description, the better it will be and the more likely others will want to read it. Some people come up with transcripts of what's said in the movie.

Both of these show that you care about what you're writing and that you really want to work on it. The only thing you have to watch out for is if you start to insist that your story is true. In other words, you say it's an officially-released story in that "universe" like a sequel to Open Season or The Smurfs.

This is a fan fiction wiki, so anything posted here is automatically going to be fan fiction. If you start to insist that what you write is real and true, remember this:


 * It's real and true to you because you made it, but that's different than being an official part of that movie series or TV show.
 * Movie studios and TV network will never provide a word-for-word description or transcript for something that hasn't been released yet. They want to make money, so if everyone knows ahead of time what's going to happen, why would they bother watching it?

Don't spam
If you've posted fan fiction on other wikis, you may not need to duplicate it here, especially if it doesn't have anything to do with a Sony Pictures Animation movie or TV show. Posting the same fan fiction over and over again can change it into spam, and if you keep at it, it can actually be considered vandalism.

Likewise, changing a couple of details to make it fit onto this wiki is another form of spam. For example, if you had written "Whiffle is a 3D movie that was released by Walt Disney Pictures" and you changed it to "Whiffle is a 3D movie that was released by Sony Pictures Animation", that's trying to force your fan fiction onto a new location.

Make the effort to avoid spamming your fan fiction so that people will be willing to read it.

Wish fulfillment
Some characters are the person who created them just with a different name and some stories are what the author wishes they could do themselves. Both are perfectly fine with fan fiction because every story, whether it's officially published, made into a movie or TV show, or is fan fiction, starts out as wish fulfillment: "I want to see ____ happen, so I'll write that happening."

It's simply something to work on so your story and your characters can be better. If you've got a character that's shaping up to be a Mary Sue or Gary Stu (best at everything they do, super-important to the story, has skills or powers to do anything, etc.), take another look to see if you can make them more grounded and flawed. It will be more interesting that way.

Keep it realistic
The story itself can be as fantastic, wild and amazing as you want, but there's a couple of specific things you need to remember about keeping it realistic.


 * Release date: If you're going to give your story a specific release date because it's a movie, think about how far into the future that will be. Movies can take anywhere from one to three years to make and animated movies can take up to five.          Movie studios would not announce they're going to release a movie on May 17, 2093, which is almost 80 years in the future as of right now. Most people dont know exactly what they will be doing a year from now, so saying something that specific that far ahead of time just isn't realistic.           It's better if you don't pin your story down to a specific date, but if you have to, it should make sense.


 * Instant release dates: The other end of that is a movie that will be released almost instantly after you post it. In the real world, no movie studio would announce a movie and make arrangements to have it shown in theaters in just a couple of weeks. Again, try to avoid specific dates but pick realistic ones if you do.


 * Large casts lists and actor lists are fine for fan fiction. Just remember that if you're going to say your story is an official part of that franchise, how much would it cost the movie studio or TV network to license those characters or hire those actors? Twenty well-known actors are going to be real expensive, so that would mean less money to make the sets and props, less money for the musical score, less money for the advertising, et cetera.


 * Better than 3D: If you want to say your movie will be "better than 3D" by saying it will be 4D, 5D, 6D or whatever, explain what that means. All movies are technically a 4D movie because we see motion and time passing. Amusement parks have "4D rides" that combine a movie with a computer-controlled simulator unit. Anything beyond that doesn't exist until you think about how it could exist and explain it.

Summary
All of these have been done before by other people. Don't look at them as mistakes. They're just things to be aware of when writing your fan fiction and creating your characters so that you can figure out how to make them better.