Disclaimer: Don't expect too much from me. I think I've proven that I can't be trusted to follow through on all my plans.
Hello everyone. You know how a bunch of authors on this site make Author's Notes in both their main stories, and in some cases in stand-alone stories of their own? Well Diablo Ex Machina is throwing his hat into the ring and making his own version of this cop-out.
Diablo Ex Machina Presents: Of Stories Great & Small
There are rules to a good story, and far too many people these days are breaking them. Marvel is the biggest offender, and even with many of the positive changes they've managed to make, DC is still up there with the problems too. I'm gonna take this time to put together an itemized list of many of the things that can easily ruin a story that once had potential.
Now you're probably wondering why I'm writing things up like this instead of making a colorfully worded interview style story with dialogue, guests, and a whole bunch of other bells and whistles like many other writers do in situations like these. I'll be honest, I'm really tired while I'm writing this up, and I'm probably gonna be really tired for a while to come. I've got a lot of stressful emotional bullshit to sort through right now, and I just don't have the motivation to be clever with all this stuff. Maybe I will later, but for right now I'm just gonna put all of my future projects and plans on the back burner, and focus on establishing some basic rules and guidelines to keep chaos and anarchy from running rampant in all of my future stories. And maybe, just maybe, some of you will take a look at some of the things I'm writing down here and take the advice I'm drafting for your own works. I want to inspire people with the things I write one way or another, and I feel like this is the best place to start.
Story Killer 1: Too Many Cooks - It needs to be said right away that a story needs to be written by ONE person with ONE vision for what they're doing. They can get some advice from people they trust, or even have a co-writer that provides equal contributions to the story, but no more than that. A story NEEDS to be internally consistent from start to finish, and compromising that basic and necessary artistic integrity will destroy any credibility for that story, and all future derivatives of it. Marvel has broken this rule with reckless abandon, DC has broken this rule reckless abandon, and in general it just needs to be more strictly enforced. I get that things like TV series can have multiple different writers and directors for various episodes, but at the very least the franchise NEEDS to have a consistent central focus. Something that anyone from casual viewers to hardcore fanatics can look at and immediately recognize as the central morals, focus, lessons, and ideology of the story. I don't care if your message is an objectively good one or an objectively bad one, but when you have a franchise the message it is defined by NEEDS to be consistent.
Story Killer 2: Time Travel - I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Time Travel eclipses EVERYTHING! If it's part of a story, then it HAS to be the central focus of EVERYTHING! Why bother even TRYING in a conflict of any kind when you can just go back in time to try again infinitely? Or kill the person causing the conflict while they're still an infant? Or any number of hundreds of other ways to abuse time travel? I don't care WHAT rules or limitations you try to attach to it, if time travel is in a story, and it ISN'T the epicenter of EVERYTHING then you fail logic forever. It also demands a narrow focus, with no more than a dozen or so characters sharing the spotlight. Back to the Future did it right. Mirai Nikki - despite being more about prophecies and not outright time travel - also did a VERY good job with it. Shared Universes with hundreds, or even THOUSANDS of recurring characters (I'm looking at you, Marvel and DC) CANNOT! The one exception to this rule is Time Travel that goes ONLY forward. The real world physics surprisingly support the idea that one-way time travel to the future is possible, while the same math suggests that time travel to the PAST is impossible, or at least significantly harder.
Story Killer 3: Politics - I could - and did - go on a tangent for HOURS about how Donald Trump is going to destroy America, how he's in Russia's pocket and has no idea what he's doing, how his election will cause a civil war that would make Akame ga Kill look tame (BTW, something with President Donald Trump & Prime Minister Honest NEEDS to be made into a meme, I mean they're practically the same guy. Do as you will internet, it's Donald Trump, nobody will fault you.) and I'd be completely right in every way. Do the fans want to see that though? Not a chance (maybe the memes, but not the rest). Look, I don't care how many points you have to make, or how right or wrong, or well or poorly worded they are, I've learned from hard experience that politics kill stories. It's not that people either do or don't agree with you, it's more a combination of politics making a story dated as soon as it's created, and the preachy nature of politics in general. Let's face the facts; Donald Trump is going to destroy America, the Electoral College has been abused to empower the very sort of monster it was meant to stop from rising to power, and when the dust settles America will be no more, or at least it won't be the most powerful country in the world anymore. I DON'T and SHOULDN'T have to put this in my stories, and neither should you. It's a very different case if the story you're making is already labeled as a political story, but if it isn't, then why hurt people like that?
Story Killer 4: Omnipotence & Cosmic Beings - Any tools or characters that are either All-Powerful, or grant Omnipotence by any measure will kill a conflict. They make for broken villains like Yhwach from Bleach, or Madara from Naruto. They make for heroes that can only come off as lazy in hindsight like...I can't think of any good examples right now, but rest assured that they exist. It doesn't even need to be total omnipotence, it just needs to be so disproportionately more powerful than their opposition that a Deus ex Machina - my archenemy, if my screenname wasn't enough of an indication - is the only way to resolve the conflict. Cosmic Beings like Galactus or Dormammu break the acceptable limit for a power cap, while somewhat "Lesser" but still very powerful gods like Odin or Zeus are just BARELY acceptable on the scale of power limits. And Superman. Superman is a disproportionately powerful hero that comes off as lazy when compared to the problems he solves, ESPECIALLY when stacked against the problems he could POTENTIALLY solve!
Story Killer 5: A Wizard Did It - A total moron once said "It's Magic, we don't need to explain it!" and that's a giant load or rotten, rancid tripe if ever there was. EVERYTHING needs to have some sort of rules attached to it, some sort of cost, or cause and effect connection. Magic A is Magic A makes for a MUCH better application of this, and while the rules of some things like the last story arc of Bleach or EVERYTHING Joe Quesada did under his despotic rule make absolutely NO sense, there are just as many stories that get magic RIGHT! Fairy Tail has certain rules and training for each type of magic, and recent arcs show that Mages have a VERY horrific and war torn history like what you would logically expect from a world where superpowers are real. The Doctor Strange movie in particular is very subtle about showing that magic in the MCU is actually just photon manipulation - check The Film Theorists on YouTube for more details - and that's AWESOME!
Story Killer 6: Viewers Are Morons - Almost as bad as politics is treating your fans like they can't follow a storyline. So long as you don't make a story too convoluted - looking at you and your COUNTLESS Tie-Ins Marvel and DC - then you NEED to trust that your fans can follow what you've done so far, and that they can comprehend what comes next without having it over-explained. Fans are fans because they are loyal to the stories they follow, and know their lore and history.
Story Killer 7: Tie-Ins - This is the opposite extreme to Viewers Are Morons. If you have a storyline, then it needs to be just that, A storyline, emphasis on the singular. I'm not saying that stories need to be completely linear, but if a franchise has a title, then THAT'S the extent of the franchise. Manga and Anime aren't a smelting pot of a thousand different storylines. Each one is its own thing, and their countless different storylines don't overlap. A video game or visual novel may have branching paths, but it's all contained in a single convenient package. Yes, a good series can have many different plotlines running parallel, but for the casual observer it's important to have ALL the information you need to know to enjoy the story chronicled in a single anthology of books that all have the same title on the spine of the book. American comics - ESPECIALLY Marvel and DC - are guilty of violating this rule HUNDREDS, if not THOUSANDS of times over! It's not about over-saturating a franchise with dozens of separate yet interconnected stories, it's about the simple CONVENIENCE of it all! People can follow a complex storyline, but only if the borders and limitations of the storyline are always and clearly defined by the simplest method possible: THE TITLE ON THE COVER!
Story Killer 8: Character Shilling - Good Guys are Good Guys, Bad Guys are Bad Guys, Grey Guys are Grey Guys. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then no matter how much someone behind a typewriter or keyboard says it's a camel, it's still gonna be a duck. I get that everyone has their own visions of how various things and people are, and that no matter how much the creators try they'll NEVER be able to please EVERYONE. I'm fine with that, and despite it taking me six years of writing to fully realize it, I get just how deep this rabbit hole goes. Rorschach from Watchmen was written to be an offensive caricature of everything the writer despised, but instead of coming across as the pitiable asshole, eternally wrong, and overall failure he was MEANT to be, he instead turned out to be the fan favorite, with everyone admiring everything about him that the writer tried to make people HATE about him. And don't even get me started about the Mutants vs Inhumans thing at Marvel. Look, Mutants were created as the allegory for oppressed minorities, and every victory their community had at pushing for peaceful coexistence was seen with JOY. Inhumans were created as the allegory for oppressive racists, assholes, elitists, slavers, entitled bastards, and pretty much every negative stereotype about white trash, first world problems, and the 1% ever conceived, and their defeats at the hands of heroes were met with applause. No matter how much money you THINK you can make by flipping these positions and sabotaging the X-Men just because you don't own their movie rights, people aren't gonna bite at the foul smelling bait, when they've long since gotten used to the roles they're SUPPOSED to be filling!
Story Killer 9: Death Is Cheap - Let's face facts people; Joe Quesada got EVERYTHING subjectively wrong while he was the editor-in-chief of Marvel comics. Hell, the one thing he got RIGHT was something he didn't even have the balls to follow through on. That one thing being that death has to MEAN something! If someone is dead, then they tend to STAY dead more often than not, or at least that's how things are SUPPOSED to be. I get that some characters might have the power of revival, or that some stories have the goal of reviving the dead. This is fine, reviving the dead as the main goal of a story, or at least a difficult side objective, or just plain old rule of drama, is pretty damn kickass after all. Exploring the consequences of breaking the border between life and death is also fun, even if the consequences aren't so much a force of nature that doesn't like to be crossed, as they are just natural reactions from the living to the dead rising from their graves, or things like rotting corpses or outright skeletons walking around. Basically, with VERY FEW exceptions, Dead is Dead, and we need to respect that.
Story Killer 10: Loads and Loads of Characters - This one is a little iffy, because it varies from person to person. There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and you need to accept that sometimes you won't be able to put in everything and everyone you want into a story. Some writers are able to pull this off, while others either aren't, or just lack the experience to do it right. Know your limits people, and make sure all the characters you use get the focus you want them to get. Major characters get major focus, while bit characters get bit focus. Most of all though, just remember to give the characters you want the attention you want to give them, no more, no less.
Story Killer 11: Sexuality - This one is pretty minor since it really only applies to fan fiction writers. Let me make something perfectly clear for all of you. Gay is Gay, Straight is Straight, Bi is Bi, and so on and so forth. When a character has a canon sexuality, it's NOT our place to change it. Hell, when it comes to American comic books, it's not even the place of the CANON WRITERS to change it, because most of those characters were originally made by other people with other intentions for them. So unless they are YOUR original creations, and you originally designed them with the express intention of making them a certain sexuality, then it's NOT your place to change who they are. If their canon sexuality is never addressed, then it's best just to air on the side of caution and make them straight, because despite homosexuality becoming more and more socially acceptable everyday, it's still statistically a minority of around one or two percent of the population. I have no problems with the LGBT community myself: Korra and Asami from The Legend of Korra were a very realistic look at a bisexual couple. Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland from Gravity Falls are a similarly forward thinking look at a homosexual relationship. Mr. McBride and Mr. McBride from The Loud House, Princess Bubblegum and Marceline The Vampire Queen from Adventure Time, Ruby and Sapphire from Steven Universe, all of these and increasingly more examples in fiction are realistic looks at same sex relationships. They aren't insulting, they aren't two-dimensional stereotypes, and their sexuality only defines a small part of their character rather than the entire thing. It's actually quite refreshing to see such forward thinking open-mindedness is taking hold of our media. At the same time though, it's important to use same sex relationships in moderation. As I said before, about one or two out of a hundred people today qualify as LGBT themselves. Many more than that are in support of their rights, but that doesn't mean we need to try and force ourselves or others to try and experience it firsthand. I guess what I'm saying is that you can't force someone to be something that they so clearly aren't, not even fictional characters.
Story Killer 12: Mary Sues - This is the last and final straw. If your favorite characters, your little pet project, the apple of your eye and the center of all of your positive attention gets so hated, so reviled, so disgusting to your audience, be it of the target variety or otherwise, then there's no hope for you. Carlie Cooper - brought to you by who else but the man who outshines cancer as one of the most horrible things in the world, Joe Quesada - was a Mary Sue from the moment of her creation, as were Maria Hill, Miriam Sharpe, and Ulysses Cain. Iron Man became a Mary Sue in Civil War I, Captain Marvel became a Mary Sue in Civil War II, Captain FUCKING America became a Mary Sue the moment his past was altered to make him HYDRA's new secret spokesman, Hawkeye became a Mary Sue the moment he killed the Hulk, the entire Inhuman species became Mary Sues from the moment the first Mutant died of the Terrigen Plague. Doctor Octopus, Kamala Khan, Riri Williams, Falcon, Jane Foster, Amadeus Cho, Moon Girl, Sam Alexander, Nadia Pym, and who knows HOW many others ALL became Mary Sues the moment they falsely thought that they were worthy of the monikers they were stealing! I'm not saying that legacy characters can't be a good thing, but Marvel isn't doing them right in any way except with Miles Morales. The list just goes on and on and on, and there's no end in sight! I'm sorry for bogging this particular entry down with Marvel characters, but they're just such goddamn awful offenders of this particular Story Killer that I just had to bring it up. Remember everyone, if you're going to do any fan fiction based on Marvel, NOTHING HAPPENED IN MARVEL COMICS from 2000 IRL and onward! All they did was make a bunch of new characters and a few TV shows for fan fictions writers like us to pick and choose from at our leisure, and they never did anything else with them. If you REALLY wanna be anal about it I suppose you could bump the timeline all the way back to 1991 when Marvel started selling stocks and thereby DESTROYED any and all creative integrity they once had, but I digress.
Anyway, that's all the Story Killers I can think of at the moment. If you can think of any that I missed here then feel free to bring them to my attention, and I'll see if I can gather up enough for a sequel chapter on this topic. Enough about sins that can kill a story, it's time to get down to other business. Namely, what my future plans are now that I've wiped all my other plans off the slate.
First of all, I'm gonna make a few more installments in these author's notes. Some will be about possible future projects that I may or may not do, while others might be story suggestions that I invite all of you to browse and adopt at your leisure. Hell, let's just drop the distinction between these two subjects entirely and go whole hog! I'm gonna jot down a bunch of rules, guidelines, and story ideas that EVERYONE - including myself - are free to use and/or be inspired by whenever we all want. From this point forward, EVERYTHING in this story will be up for grabs! Each chapter will either have story suggestions, or a set of suggested rules and guidelines for any number of franchises frequently used as fan fiction material. From big name American comic books like Marvel and DC, to epic novels like Harry Potter, to massive video game franchises like Mass Effect, Legend of Zelda, Capcom, Mortal Kombat, and Pokemon, to beloved cartoons like Ben 10, Steven Universe, and Generator Rex, and even to the best our neighbors in the land of the rising sun have to offer like One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, Mahou Sensei Negima, Naruto and Bleach!
Please note that these will be my personal set of rules for making fan fictions of various forms of media, and not yours. I make these guidelines as just that: Guidelines. None of these lists are completely concrete, and you are all free to take my advice or not, or even just pick and choose which tidbits you want to use and which you don't. I make these lists in the hope that people looking to make fan fictions in the future will take a look at both this intro chapter, and all subsequent chapters for tips and tricks on how to make the best stories that they possibly can.
"One more thing!" If you're making a purely comedic story like an old rerun of Animaniacs or Pinky and the Brain, or a purely education story in the vein of The Magic School Bus, then you can just completely ignore Story Killers 2, 4, 5, 9, and 12. Those Story Killers only apply to a story with serious and cohesive narrative and continuity, or at the very least something with an antagonist. If you're just making something up to teach kids about chemistry, or taking a page from The Simpsons and Family Guy, then there's really no harm in using these otherwise fatal Story Killers for purely comedic or educational value, just so long as the plot isn't driven by something or someone that threatens the main characters. Also, if your name isn't Deadpool, then works of satire and/or lampshade hanging will only get you so far.