Chapter 2: Rules of Good Writing
When it comes to writing in either Strike Witches Fanfics or any story for that matter; there are a few important rules to carrying out the hallowed art of the written word that a writer must keep in mind. Such rules are common sense and vital if you intend to craft an engaging, well written, well paced story. In this chapter I will be covering several important rules and common sense tips and pointers that will greatly benefit you and your story.
One of the big rules to good writing that I hear from experienced and even professional, published authors, is that you have one paragraph to do whatever you want (if you pardon the expression), so make sure you say something that can draw your readers in, so make sure to make it count. What that saying means is: make sure you start your story off with a strong, engaging, captivating first paragraph that demands your readers attention. Although in fanfics that if you want to stay true to the story you have to stay aware of the series, the verse and the characters if you intend to craft a good story, but even with these elements in play and working with what you've got, make sure you do so in as strong a manner as possible. The moment you capture the audience's attention by the first paragraph you will have their undivided attention, so start out strong, come out original (or as original as you can be), and as always be creative to get the reader hooked from the outset. Weak starts to your story won't be keeping your readers attention long if at all, so make sure you open up with a way to grab their attention from that first paragraph. Do that and you'll have their attention, at that point you keep them interested and entertained with your story.
Another of the rules to writing a good story is that you must always take time to proof-read and spell-check your story. This is kind of a basic one but is still important regardless: good spelling, grammar, sentence structure and overall mechanics will vastly strengthen your story by leaps and bounds. Spell check often, find others who have more experience in beta reading to provide feedback, editing and overall ironing out the details and it will more often than not keep your story from being weighed down and weakened. It will be hard for your audience to read through clunky dialogue, an ocean of miss-spellings and dodgy story mechanics.
Making sure to keep a story well paced is also of importance. A story's narrative shouldn't be too short and fast, but neither should it be too long and ponderous. Too short and fast and you'll have a story with little to no build up, little if any development and little to no opportunities for the readers to absorb anything substantial; which will make the readers loose interest. Too long and ponderous and you will wind up bogging down the narrative, slowing down events a bit too much to the point of tedium and could sometimes (if written poorly enough) would leave the readers feeling bored or unable to follow for very long and may end up putting focus too much on one character to the detriment of the others if it's a story where POV shifts between the cast. Note that there is a major difference between writing a long chapter and writing a slow dragging, bogged down narrative. The key is to find and maintain balance. It will take some time to figure out, but once you do you'll find your writing will become easier, more fulfilling and less overwhelming.
I'll be first to admit I have fallen victim to long dragging narrative in my story's but it is something that thankfully I have learned from. And that is another big part of good writing: always seek to adapt, grow, change and learn as a writer. Learn new ways to write; always seek to improve and hone your skills, learn new things, become intimate with understanding your characters, learn the nuance of the narrative of your story. Look at examples of movies, anime, books, tv shows, and video games with story's and pay attention to details, the pacing and the narrative within these mediums and find examples that are good; find out and what makes them good so that you can use the tropes being utilized to enhance yourself, and be sure to watch for the bad as well; discover what the problems are, identify those problems, and seek to avoid and mitigate them in yourself and your story. The worst thing you can do as a writer is staying stagnant. The author, characters, plot and narrative should grow together. If none of them are growing; then you're doing something wrong.
When you start a story that you intend to see till the end for a long fic or even a series, make sure you start with an end goal in mind. Where do you plan on going in your story and what do you hope to accomplish? If you intend to have some sort of message at the end, what sort of message are you trying to send the reader? What happens along the way can be thought out, it can happen spontaneously, it can even bounce back and forth between the two, but always make sure you know where the plot is going to go so that you don't end up wandering aimlessly in a foggy quagmire.
One thing to be made aware is that in any sort of literary work; it is that meaningful conflict is the heart of good drama. Any conflict that is created for the sake of conflicts sake is usually not a good idea: within literature there must be a reason mechanically and narratively speaking that pushes the plot forward. Unless it does then all you do is weigh the plot down with a clunky and pointless attempt at fabricated drama that does nothing to progress the story. The conflict must have a reason for being there, wither it be to ramp up reasonable tension, to establish a character or group's motives and alignment, to provide motivation for the cast, show a moment of introspection for the characters, ect. Two best friends starting a fight over wither the dodgers or the browns are good sports teams, trading blows and then never speaking to each other again is no way to provide meaningful drama for your story.
Something else to be aware of is that sometimes you must ground yourself in reality, be objective and sometimes that even means dropping certain plot elements and story paths if they weaken the story, derail the narrative, make little sense or just have no real place in the story. Ask yourself: how does this advance the plot? What do I set out to accomplish? Does this provide meaningful conflict to my story? Will this derail my characters or narrative? Where can I put this and how does this fit with both what I have and were I intend to go? Will me adding this weaken the plot? If an idea you have feels like it might not work, makes little to no sense, or overall provides nothing that adds to the story or drive the narrative forward, then it would be best to either re-write it or scrap it altogether. This may be difficult sometimes, especially if it's something you thought long and hard on and might even like a little bit, but sometimes a good writer knows what to leave in and what to send to the cutting room floor. Because if it seems like something might be a bad idea: nine times out of ten it probably is.
Another thing is that characters that are written into the story have to have a purpose for existing in the narrative, they must have some role to play, a position to fill. They have to give something to the story otherwise, why would you write them? A character that serves no purpose in any way shape of form is just an extra useless body on stage and more unneeded effort to write. Avoid creating or adding new characters if you're not sure what is accomplished by adding them to the narrative. Charicters should have a role to play, they shouldn't just "be there" for the sake of being there. Think things out before adding them.
Conversely be equally as carful when deciding to engage in the act of killing off characters. I'm not saying not to (even though I find the idea, act and experience of death involving a canon Witches from the strike witches series with to be utterly soul killing, not to mention that it would end up drastically shifting the tone of a Strike Witches fic by leaps and bounds); I'm simply saying think long and hard who to kill, when you kill them, how to kill them and wither you really should kill them. While character death can provide a measure of drama, suspense and even indicate a changing of either genre, tone or simply increase the grave sense danger and give an element of tragedy; it isn't something to take lightly. Characters are a source of narrative potential, they provide opportunity for new events, interaction, plotlines and development of new, interesting ideas. The death of a character signifies the death of potential, a death of future ideas and opportunities. Just like you shouldn't add characters if they don't add something to the story, you should be careful when it comes to axe off characters that you don't kill characters off or weather you shouldn't at certain places, ways or even at all in cases for similar reasons as well as if you don't want to close a door at having more potential in these characters being explored, or if the death serves no point in the story other than for a cheap shot at shock value. I have heard of a couple cases of writers who have killed off particular characters and have regretted doing so, wither at all or simply at certain points that they felt were far to soon to kill the character in question. Treat character death as a solemn event. For either adding or killing characters: take your time, use good judgement, think long and hard and, in order to segway into my next talking point... and I realize this may sound like a weird, alien sounding statement but: ask the characters what they want.
Yes, you heard right: ask the characters what they want; let them tell you what to do. I'll explain what this means and what I'm talking about in a moment but first I must lay something out real quick.
This is a pretty big one for a story and especially for a fanfic , but the important thing to remember is that in order to write better stories in fanfiction that to start; the characters must not be seen as puppets to dance on strings or as slaves to have jump at your beck and call, or as a vehicle and stand in for you and the audience to live vicariously through or as rewards for some Charicter/OC/Gary Stu/ect to covet: they are people with their own thoughts, hopes, dreams, desires, strengths, weakness, virtues, vices and psychology. So allow them freedom and agency to act in ways that are natural to them. Whatever sort of event that they experience, that they can be allowed to grow, but it must be in a way that adheres to their overall character personality. The question a writer must ask isn't so much how "the writer " would act, but more of how the characters cannon-selves would act if placed in a particular situation.
Ignoring this will render flat, shallow dolls wearing masks of the readers favorite characters. By extension the world and canon isn't there to be defiled by the fanfic writer, but to explore and expand. Can there be new elements or developments to the verse? Of course there can: but it must be developments that make sense within the context of the verse. Likewise, any sort of character growth must also make sense to the character experiencing that growth, based on their personality and overall character.
Going back to my statement of Letting the characters tell you what to do it is an abstract concept but it is one that I embrace whole heartedly and those who adhere to this mantra of not telling characters what to do but letting the character tell them what to write is the mark of an exceptional writer. Some say that the author has ultimate sway, dominion, authority and control of a story. To some small degree this is true. But at some point this stops being the case all that much... and it then becomes a case of where the characters have ultimate sway, dominion, authority and control of a story.
The reigns of control must belong in the hands of the characters; it is a difficult skill to learn or develop, for some it is a gift that is uncommon to possess inherently and most fanfic writers will fail to grasp the concept but it is one that I can explain: The narrative has to have a logical and natural flow to it. And the characters must be given agency to act on their own free will: they are not the writers slaves to snap to the writers beck and call. The writers job is simply to scribe and chronicle events that are taking place. Good writing is cultivated and therefore good stories are crafted when this aspect is kept in mind. A good story is crafted when, and this is going back to the mantra again; the writer doesn't tell the characters what to do, but instead when the characters tell the writer what to write. The writer can pitch ideas to the characters for scenarios and vague plotlines but they cannot be forced. In addition, even if the character does accept a suggestion from the writer, they must be allowed to act with their own personal initiative and freewill in mind, do not tell the characters how to act, what to think or what to feel. Allow them to stay true to themselves and act and grow in a way that is natural for them.
Basically what this means in pain English is that when you write a character and any sense involving them that you write in a way that stays true to the central core aspects of the character and that they act in ways that are logical and realistic given any sort of circumstances they would be a part of. The only time a character should ever act in a way that is Out of Character (OOC) is either for the occasional comedic moment, but primarily for the most dire, stressful or otherwise heavily serious moments, and even than it should usually be relegated to one brief moment in a narrative plot point, barring perhaps any process involving guilt, trauma, depression, PTSD, mental instability and other such cases, but than the normal tropes and aspects of character growth and plot development for such points should be developed and gone through in the narrative process.
Also avoid forcing plots, characters and narrative; let it flow naturally through you like water. And let the characters tell you what to write, don't tell them what to do. Just step back and let them go about their lives in the world and see what they can do. Adhering to these guidelines will allow the story to blossom like a flower.
If you do not do this then your characters, narrative, verse and ultimately story will suffer catastrophic damage and be counted amongst the 90% of dreck that litters the internet and be forever held as an example of the garbage that damages and violates the craft of the written word and would be considered an affront and insult to the art of literature in general. In laymen's terms: it will be just another shitty, unmoving, unreadable story amongst a hundred thousand if not millions of shitty unmoving, unreadable story's that have no damn business existing in the first place. Nothing more than an annoying distraction. Good writing moves and changes people. Bad writing is like a car alarm that has been blaring for over a half hour and grating on both your nerves and sanity.
Finally, as was briefly touched on above. The story, characters, narrative and world should have a natural flow. Things shouldn't be forced; a writer who forces characters and narrative and plot elements ends up hurting the characters, the narrative and ultimately themselves. At the same time, there should also be structure, be sure to follow a logical, rational progression and coherence. Use the tropes as tools and guidelines to help you study and become familiar with story elements. Also be sure to take some time to have a break once in a while. If you find yourself suffering from writers block, taking a break for a while may help you get those creative juices flowing again; it's rare for people to power though a writer's block by just bunkering down and trying to focus heavily, sometimes you just need to take the pressure off and approach things from a calmer, relax state of mind. Step back from the computer and read a book, watch a video, play a video game, take a nap, meditate for a few minutes, talk with some friends, grab a bite to eat, do a few jumping jacks, listen to some soothing music or music you really like, whatever it is you do to relax; do it. Then once you've done that for a while, come back swinging. Sometimes you gotta take time to sharpen the saw before you try and cut down the tree.