10 Tips for Writing Fan Fiction or Granny Weatherwax in 'No Game of Chance'.

Romantic Friday Writers have hosted another great writing prompt. To write up to 1,000 words of fan fiction into a romantic scene. I'm always suggesting writers try genres outside their comfort level. I'm not strong with the romantic scenes (and you'll discover that hasn't changed yet) and I've never written fan-fiction, so I figured the exercise would test me. 

What are the rules of writing fan fiction? Here's a few:

1. Remember the characters have already existed elsewhere. You can put them into a new situation or setting, but you can't change their past (unless you introduce a Doctor and TARDIS, then you probably can).
2. Know the voice of your character. Don't try writing about a famous character you've never read or studied. Learn them. Become an expert. Fans will know if Ron Weasley speaks out of character.
3. Study your setting. Not just the layout, but the feel, the mood of the setting.
4. Try to keep to the writing style. You don't have to exactly keep the genre (although fans will appreciate it if you do) but don't do a serious drama based on characters from a comedy. That's not the type of fiction the fans are after.
5. Add a little something. Despite what I said in number 4, you should add a little touch of your own style to the piece. Otherwise readers may as well just stick with the original text.
6. Share! There will be fans who will get a lot of entertainment from reading their favourite characters.
7. Toughen your skin. Die-hard fans may love your work, but some may hate it because you've dared to toy with their beloved characters. Don't take it personally. It really is them, not you.
8. Cite the original work. Be open and let people know who you stole your characters from. Don't take credit for someone else's work, otherwise it's not fan-fiction, but a sneaky form of plagiarism. Some people like to use a disclaimer (there's some debate over wether this is helpful or not). You can find an example here: http://www.ehow.com/how_8532096_write-disclaimer-fan-fiction.html
9. If it's erotic fan-fiction, warn the reader. And if you're taking characters from a children's novel for erotic fiction, be very very careful. You may spark anger from the original author (or their lawyers). Parody is legal, but it could still be a pain.
10. Have fun! Fan-ficiton is for enjoyment. Don't try to live up to the original author, or prove yourself better, just have some fun while you strengthen your writing skills. I had a real laugh writing my scene between Granny Weatherwax and Death.

If you've still a moment and want a giggle on me, here is my fan-fiction based on characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. 

Disclaimer: I do not own Discworld or any of the characters in this story. They are owned by Terry Pratchett. It's hard to believe any mortal could own Granny Weatherwax, but I believe her and Sir Pratchett have an understanding. This story was written for my own perverse fun and I shall not profit from it in any way (a little like my own writing then).

The prompt was to be a romance scene between famous lovers, but I may have wandered off from that idea, not sooo romantic, but hey, there is the suggestion of almost nudity. Shudder.

If you're one of those poor people who've never read Terry Pratchett, but you're curious, these are the characters I nicked, um borrowed, okay nicked, from Pratchett (click on them to see their Wikipedia page):

Nanny Ogg

Granny Weatherwax

Death

No Game of Chance

'New wrap?' Nanny Ogg ogled the soft black fabric replacing the worn battered coat usually draped about Granny Weatherwax’s shoulders.

'No it ate’nt.'

'Now you mention it, I do remember you wearing it once or twice before.' 

'No you don’t, you remember me wearing it many times before.'

'Uh huh.' Nanny Ogg nodded, but when Granny turned she leaned in with a pair of shears drawn from her knickers (where she keeps everything she needs) and snipped off a price tag dangling down Granny’s bony back. Always better not to argue with Granny, or you’d likely find yourself wanderin' the forest void of memory, or craving shell-fish even though you’re allergic, or… well, it was just best not to.

Granny paused at the door. Just a moment, but long enough to show a mix of smugness, sadness and nostalgia in the crinkling of her eyes. Strange combination, but Granny was the oldest witch to ever live, and she’d plenty of time to master these unusual amalgamations, like her infamous 'mischievous-amusement, gleeful-hunger mingled with disappointing resolve to kill you' gaze.

Then her knobby hand turned the… knob and she was off. At this time of night? Granny claimed to be a traditional witch, but she couldn’t abide late nights. Nanny Ogg peered up at the grandfather clock (who’d once been a young wizard). Its hands inched close to twelve. They wobbled with fear, because although Granny insisted it be set to gong at midnight, it would infuriate her if it woke her. Only wood and mechanics now, still, the clock retained enough memory to fear aggravating the old crone.

'She looks like she’s got a date with destiny,’ Nanny Ogg confided to the trembling clock.

'Oh I wouldn’t call 'im that,' Granny Weatherwax mused as she approached the old barn up the hill from the cottage. There was no point questioning how Granny could hear a mumble from the other side of the property and yet not respond to the calling of her name up close. Sometimes whispers were just louder than everyday talk. Like his whispers. Oh she knew he was coming and she knew what he wanted.

Granny lit every lamp until they flickered brilliantly. Good. Strong lighting was very important for this rendezvous.

She sat at the small fold-up table and smoothed her hand over the iron-hard grey bun. Not a hair out of place (it wouldn’t dare). She pinched her cheeks and the last few surviving capillaries cracked.

I may not 'ave the curves and complexion of a young woman, but I’ve me own allure. She was wrong. There were curves. Just not in the right direction.

She didn’t hear his arrival, but felt it.

'Esmerelda Weatherwax?' A deep voice resonated through Granny’s bones.

She didn’t turn. Wasn’t quite ready to gaze into that face. She knew what she would see, or wouldn’t see.

'Call me Granny, or Esme if you must.'

'Uh, alright, Granny Weatherwax?' but the theatrical air of impending doom was lost on the second attempt.

'You’re late.'

'It’s been a busy night.' His voice echoed everywhere and nowhere.

'Ave a seat.' Granny waved to the chair opposite.

'We should be going—'

'Come on, said yerself you’ve had a busy night, rest a little.’

'I… uh… thank you.' Death smoothed his robes and sat. 'Now Granny, you’ve had a long life, don’t you think it’s time you came along… peacefully?'

'No. I don’t.' She wiggled a gnarly finger at the place where his face should be. 'You’ve been around longer, I reckon you know the world needs people like me. I’ve still got a lot to do.'

Death sighed. 'I don’t make the rules Granny—'

'No but you can bloody well break 'em.'

The elderly were always the hardest, they could be so stubborn. 'I can offer you a challenge, that’s the best I can do.'

'I know.'

'It’s not really a chance, I never lose.'

'I pick the game?'

'Yes.'

'Good.' Granny reached into her carpet bag, pulled out a deck of cards and started shuffling. The cards flipped and arched through the air then were skillfully dispersed.

'Poker Granny?'

'Strip poker.' She winked.

He shuddered.

Just as the sun began to push pink and orange through the sky, Nanny Ogg knocked on Granny’s door. No answer. She went in. Granny wasn’t there. She stepped out again  and peered up and down the lane. Nothing. She turned her gaze up the hill to the old barn. Nothing. Wait. The door was open and there was a flicker of lanterns in the dim morning light.

Nanny Ogg hitched up her skirt and hopped from foot to foot through the long grass in a straight line for the barn. Just as she arrived huffing, a figure emerged. Or didn’t. Or he did emerge, but he wasn’t there. He most definitely wasn’t there and he was grasping his bundled black robes. He looked guiltily at Nanny Ogg, or didn’t, and hurried on his way.

Nanny stepped into the brightly lit barn just in time to see Granny doing up the clasp of her brassiere. 

'Don’t you knock?'

'Um, sorry Granny, it’s only, was that Death leaving just now?

Granny chuckled. 'Yep, don’t think he’ll be back for a while.'

'He come for you?'

'Tried to, but I bested him.'

Nanny Ogg helped Granny into her wrap—it was still brisk out. 'But how? Death can’t be beat at any game.'

Granny wore a smile combining knowing, victory and gas. 'Yep. But he didn’t want to win this one.'

Nanny Ogg saw Granny snatch up the cards and it all came together. 'Ooh, you’re a sinful old hag Granny.'

'I still ate’nt dead.' And Granny winked.

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Setting Rules Story

Snoopy's world was limited in space, but imagination meant anything could happen!
Click on the picture if you want to get this as a wallpaper

Setting is often a key element in our story. Sometimes it can even be a character in the story like the big old house in Tim Winton's Cloudstreet. But often new writers overlook this and just have the setting as somewhere for stuff to take place.

I have an exercise I do with students when I run creative writing workshops for kids, it helps them to understand how setting can affect our story. I thought I'd share it with you now. Try this exercise with the setting to your WIP, but first use a few of the random ones suggested here as a warm up. We did this exercise in my writing group today and there were some interesting writing prompts from it.

If you're in a group, write these settings down on scraps of paper (add some of your own if you like) and disperse randomly. Otherwise, pick out two or three to work with.

Possible Settings:

• Pirate ship
• Prison
• Australian bush
• Homeless gathering
• Skyscraper
• High school
• Space
• Fantasy land
• Ski lodge
• Police station

Now you simply write two lists. 

One list is for plot ideas or motivations that can be generated from this setting, e.g. in a Prison, escape, trying to stay good for parole, guard might on their last day because they're quitting for a safer security job, governor or head of the prison might be trying to meet budget cuts or there could be an alien invasion on earth and the prison is the safest place from land attacks. 

The second list is all the threats that setting presents. In the Prison it could be knifing, drugs, vicious guards, attack dogs, lockdown and left without food in your cell (as all the guards have been killed off by the aliens), riots, lack of empathy from outside community, or losing your sanity.

Once you have a few lists, pick a plot idea and at least one threat then write for 10-15 minutes and see what you come up with, you might find yourself with a decent piece of flash fiction or the start of something bigger!

Now you've warmed up properly, pull out your own setting and see if you can find more threats or possibilities that could strengthen your WIP.

I'm currently working on a story where the little sister of Isis is resurrected in New York City 5,000 years later. So my setting is split between Ancient Egypt and New York City. Here's my list for Ancient Egypt:

Plot ideas

• Mummification
• Prophecies
• Secrets and plots
• Gods
• Superstitions and religion
• Afterlife
• Amulets and protection magic
• Came race

Dangers

• Mummified alive
• Cobras
• Assassins
• Rabid Camel
• Crocodiles
• Heat, sun exposure
• Dehydration
• Floods (The area by the Nile was not a desert but quite lush back then)
• Evil Gods
• Sacrifice
• Sentenced to death

If you try it out I'd love to see some of your suggestions for plot ideas or dangers for setting.

This post is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, challenges are posted once a month, you can sign up to join in here (or click on the picture). Now there's a few hundred participants, so it'll take me a while to get around to everyone, but I'll certainly try before the next challenge!

Realised, I should mention my writing insecurity! Mine is when I've finished that first draft and got all the plot details down, I won't be able to figure out that magic ingredient that adds life and pop to the book, it'll end up a bit bleh. What I do about it is exercises like this one to strengthen different elements of the story.

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Blame the Environment

What Does Your World Do?

I've come across some more insightful information about settings and worldbuilding that I wanted to share with you. You can see my recent post on settings here: Using Settings Effectively For Fiction.

Do you know why your story unfolds in the setting you've chosen?

• it seemed like a pretty place
• you live there, and you know all the locations
• it's a fantasy so you made it up

Any of those sound familiar? You might choose a setting for your own reasons, but WHY is that setting important for your characters and your story?

My current WIP is a mystery set in 1939 in a remote town of Victoria, called Warracknabeal. My reason for picking this location was because an interesting event occurred in this country town at that time. This sparked my 'what if' thoughts and a story idea formed. 

BUT, I could have easily changed the location to suit my story needs. I could have made the location an inner-city football club, or a Polo-club in England instead of the country town racetrack. Changing the location would change my characters, their motives and the way they interact with their surroundings.

I'm re-doing Holly Lisle's writing course How To Think Sideways and applying the steps to my current murder mystery, The Warracknabeal Kids. In lesson 7, Holly addresses the process of worldbuilding. Simply put, she suggests you can avoid a lot of superfluous writing when doing your pre-writing work in building your background world by asking two questions:

• Does this bit of worldbuilding create a conflict for the story?
• Does this bit of worldbuilding force a primary character to change?

Conflict and change. That's it. These are the elements that will add a good pace and interest to your story. The scenery, weather, culture, etc, it's all has to contribute to the plot.

Sometimes there is an obvious connection. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) protagonist's family hides a Jewish man in their basement, and the story explores how this both risks and enriches their lives. This is set in Germany during WWII, and without this setting the story would loose the strong tones of fear, defiance and hope it carries so beautifully. 

In the movie Avatar, we see the visual splendour of the alien planet's environment, not to show us pretty landscape but to make a clear binary for the destruction caused by the humans. We are technology, they are nature and the protagonist must choose a lifestyle because you can not infinitely pass between the two, something must force a change. And it does.

An important thing to remember about your story's world, or setting, is that it includes the location, time and history. A location's past contributes to the story.

Great, you know the setting needs to push the story forward but how can you find ways to do that?

James Frey in How to Write a Damn Good Novel suggests once you've made a decision to set your story in a certain time and place, you should do some research to provide ideas for conflict and subplots. For example, while researching Warracknabeal and Australian life in 1939 I came up with a few interesting elements to add to and push the story and subplots:

• The infamous Victorian 'Pyjama Girl' murder was still unsolved, but new information led to newsreels being shown in cinemas. 
• On the 13th January 1939, the 'Black Friday' fires affected approximately three quarters of Victoria.
• Films released in 1939 (I'll have to dig deeper to find when they came to Australia) included; The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver's Travels, Another Thin Man (a mystery) and Gone With the Wind.
• Australia was still recovering from the Great Depression.
• WWII would break out later that year.

Those are just a few points that I can work into my story. This is not just to give the reader a glimpse of country life in 1939, but to create an understanding of the characters, their motivations and their limitations. I like the idea of backdropping my story with the 'Pyjama Girl' investigations and updates, and the experience of the fires would have an impact on residents and may create a lynch-mob attitude to a firebug in their own town.

You could also do up a map of your setting and see what physical barriers and opportunities there are. Google maps is always a helpful tool for that. If you're at the edit stages of your story already, this is a good way to find ways to link the various plots of your story and to revise with setting value in mind.

Old picture of the main street of Warracknabeal

A movie clip I found about the early days of racing in Victoria:

Disappeared Racecourses

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Using Settings Effectively for Fiction

Where in the World is your Story?

This week in my editing course, I have been going over the settings used in my novel, Dog Show Detective. The basic idea is to go through the index cards that identify each scene and make a note of the setting, background items or gimmicks used that relate to the world the novel takes place in. 

What does this tell us? 

The purpose of our setting and how it shapes the characters and story. And it should shape them. In psychology we are taught the importance of nurture vs nature in forming the human psyche (and all living animals). Anything that happens in your novel is bound to be from the seeds of the environment, if a bird flies south for the winter, then it's probably getting pretty darn cold in the north.

I saw a tele-movie recently about a mystery that took place at a dog show. Needless to say I was pretty excited to watch it as my mystery also takes place in a dog show. My mystery took place in the show because that's what the mystery is about. Clues involve breeding of dogs, microchipping, breed related illnesses and more. The movie I watched only barely related to the dog show, it was a murder that could have happened anywhere, but the writers said 'hey, let's stick it in a dog show'. My point is, if your world is not part of your story, but just a background then you may as well have your story play out on a stage with no sets, because it will look fake.

Think about each scene and where it takes place. WHY does it take place there? What would happen if it was somewhere more public or more private. How might that change what happens, or what is said. What obstacles could appear from your location? And how many setting do you have - does your manuscript read like a play on a single stage or is it overflowing with location changes that could confuse the reader?

Another thing to consider with your world is how you portray it to the reader. Don't just describe the room, have a character make an action that interacts with the setting, like picking up an outdated magazine from the side table and glancing at the other patient pretending to be interested in Woman's Day's news that Nicole Kidman was splitting with Tom Cruise. 

Dialogue is an effective tool for describing the location or setting. Having your character order a coffee and cake would pretty much let the reader know where they are.

I've been a little addicted to the podcast Writing Excuses lately, they're informative and funny. There is one on 'roleplaying'. This is a new concept to me (although it's been lurking behind my back for some time). In relation to novel writing, it is when you have actors (or in my case - family) act out a scene you've written to see how well it works. The podcaster suggested a need for flexibility and improv (letting the actors come up with their own lines). This is a great way to find action lines and dialogue to show your setting. 

I'm going to give this a go as soon as my MC, uh, I mean daughter, gets back from her school camp. I should also get a few inspirational actions or lines from her sidekick Miniature Schnauzer (or maybe he'll just nap through it). If nothing else, it should be fun. 

My Muse(s)

I've made the commitment to Scrivener after using my free trial. The biggest selling point for me was that each document you create (which can represent a chapter or scene or just a section of your manuscript) comes with an index card for you to record a synopsis of that section. Then you can view all the index cards and swap them around during editing to get the layout you want for your novel. In both the writing course and the editing course I do, we use index cards for identifying elements like conflict and character. If you are a Mac user and you would like to check out this program go to Literature and Latte - Scrivener and watch the tutorials.

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