Oboebyrd's Guide to Writing Formulaic Fanfiction

For those of us who look down upon Mary-Sues, writing crossovers that involve your friends are often our only outlet for humor, romance, or poking fun at our friends in ways that they can't really get back at you for. Everyone has written a story that involves a friend, or someone like them, interacting with the protagonists from their favorite story- but not everyone has the courage to actually post them on Fanfiction.net where everyone and their literate dog can read them.

For those few, brave souls who wish to improve their crossover skills, and for those who wish to write a crossover involving their friends that's good enough to post on Fanfiction.net, I humbly present to you…

Chapter 18: Writing Crossovers that Involve Your Friends

We all have to do it- after all, our friends are central in our life, perhaps even closer to us that our life-sized card-board cut-out of Orlando Bloom. So writing, and posting, a story involving your friends and their exploits in Middle Earth, or the Fellowship and their exploits in Wal-mart, your house, your bedroom etc., is inevitable, and should be required of every fanfiction.net author in the databases.

These forays into the minds of your friends can be humorous to readers, as they sit back and watch the Fellowship go insane with three or four people they have never met before and know nothing about. But can they be masterpieces of fiction? Follow these rules, and I guarantee you will have your audience laughing until they hurt themselves- or maybe just hurting themselves.

1.) Invent an unrealistic reason for the two character-sets to be interacting.

Has a portal opened underneath your friends, and they fall into Middle Earth? Did you use your Author Powers to zap Legolas and all the other Hot Elves in the movie into your living room? Or, my person favorite; Have you and your best friend tried summoning salt demons out of a Morton's ™ Salt Bag, and ended up with the Fellowship instead? The reason that your friends and the Fellowship meet must be the most implausible reason you can come up with. That creepy lady in the house down the street is a witch and teleported you to Middle Earth! The Valar decide to send the Fellowship to help you do housework! Anything, really, is implausible enough to work.

2.) Take your anger out on your friends.

Fighting with one of your best friends while you're writing the fiction? Don't waste this opportunity- take it out on them while the taking-out is good. Have your friend be killed repeatedly by Gollum, or make him/her marry Sauron! Don't worry- you can always resurrect your good friend later, when you're no longer angry with them. Besides, if the friend you're brutally murdering with smelly Hobbit-feet reads the story, they'll just laugh, think you're joking… but you know the truth, and can laugh at them behind their back… mwahaha.

3.) Don't worry about making anyone act like they really would.

That includes both members of the Fellowship and your friends- after all, why would they continue to act like they do now if they were taken to another dimension? So your friend Eggbert is a road-scholar and has traveled around the United States twice? There's no reason he can't get you hopelessly lost in Middle Earth! So what if Celeborn is a mighty, respectable king of Elves- he can still giggle like a ninny as he discovers a bike and rides up and down the aisles of Sears! Keeping your portrayal of characters both consistent and true to their actual characteristics is time-consuming, both for you, the writer, and for your readers… what you all really want to do is get to the funny.

4.) Don't bother trying to make it funny…

Because unless you can clearly develop your friend's personalities before-hand so the readers all know who they are and what they act like, and unless you can make Tolkien's characters similarly true to form, it won't be funny to anyone except you and your friends. Or at least, to your friends who aren't being killed by Gollum. Those few people who don't know you but laugh at your story are probably just frightened of you.

5.) …instead, make it completely insane.

There's no humor like humor that gets you locked up in a white, cushiony room, I like to say. Since stories that involve under developed characters can't be funny in more than a peripheral way, you must get your laughs by invoking utter fear. Crossovers are only funny because we see the unusual antics of our beloved Aragorn, Legolas, or Frodo; so make everything they do completely out of character. That insanity is what gets you your laughs, and your Almighty Reviews.

6.) Use a script-writing format

Don't use paragraphs, quotation marks, or really anything that shows you have a proper grasp of dialogue and descriptive language. Crossovers involving your friends are meant to be quick (though some can stretch on for 50 pages), funny (if read by people you know) and most importantly, easy to read (though grammar mistakes usually even trump that). Thus, the only proper format for these is script format- each character spews out 'funny' lines one after another. Action (meaning movements) should be sparse, and rarely well-explained enough to make sense to the reader.

7.) Make everything an inside joke.

This is the bastion of all good formulaic fanfiction- including jokes that make no sense to anyone but the people involved. Sometimes these jokes can be funny regardless of if people understand, because they're just so insane… usually, they're just tiresome and confusing.

I hope this guide helps you to write the perfect crossover involving your friends. Next week, another chapter that will shock and delight you. Or maybe nothing, because that would also shock and delight you.

And now, a chapter from my own, hideously long, unfunny, and still uncompleted crossover…

Chapter 2: The Magic Apple

The Cast:

            The good guys: Aragorn, Boromir, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, and Gimli

            The bad guys: None yet

            The strange guys: Ice_ur, Oboebyrd, Marilyn, Vicki, John

Setting: The ruins of Orthanc, very late at night. Our heroes sit around a fire.

Pippin: And then Treebeard stepped on the Orc and crushed it into slimy goo!

Merry: And then they shot flaming arrows at this beautiful thin roan tree called Quickbeam. He went up in flames, and that angered the Ents even more. They pulled the very stones down with their hands alone.

Legolas: It seems you have quite the story to relate to us.

Gimli: We too have a tale to tell! Tailing you two was not the easiest task, even though we followed a horde of heavy-footed Orcs and Uruk-hai!

Aragorn: We all have many a story to relate, but it is too late for tale-telling, at least for now. Perhaps we should look at these. He spreads five objects across his Elven cloak in front of the fire. A dagger, a dead mouse, an egg, an apple, and this odd cork-screw type thing. I can find no way in which they relate to each other… but yet, they were given to us by Gandalf, so they must have some meaning.

Pippin picks up the dead mouse by the tail, dangling it in front of his eyes.

Pippin: Or perhaps Gandalf has just gone loony.

Legolas: Silence, silly Hobbit, don't speak of the wizard that way.

Gimli: And put that mouse down- you don't know what it could do. Perhaps it could turn you into a toad.

Merry: Maybe you'd better hang onto that, Pippin. Frog's legs sound good.

Pippin turns bright red and sets the mouse carefully back down.

Pippin: I'm hungry…

Aragorn: Shakes his head, smiling slightly. These… objects… they could be magical talismans.

Legolas: There are five of them- one for each of us gathered here. Perhaps that has some meaning.

Gimli: Are they really talismans? He carefully picks up the corkscrew one, holding it gently in his stout hand. If so, how could you activate them?

The talisman in his hand begins to glow.

Aragorn: Gimli…

Gimli: Oh! He drops the talisman, as if hoping that would turn its power off. Instead, it hits the other talismans. For one second, the talismans turn different colors- the apple becomes a diagram of where they are now, the dead mouse turns into a first-aid sign, the glass egg a doorway and the dagger a skull.

And then, an enormous hole opens in the earth in front of them, and they are all pulled in.

They arrive a moment later, suddenly crammed in, packed in among each other. The box they are in explodes, and they fall to the ground in a cascade of salt. There is one more in their number.

Legolas: From the bottom of the pile. Good job, Gimli!

Gimli: Growls.

Aragorn: Jumps to his feet. By the Valar, where are we?

The Fellowship glances around in confusion.

Boromir: The lights in the ceiling- so incredibly bright! Much brighter than a normal torch…

Everyone else jumps back with a shout, and then…

Aragorn: Boromir! You're alive!

Boromir: Slowly, a little surprised. Yes… I am alive. Should we be surprised by that?

Aragorn: You had died!

Boromir: Looks down at his salt-stained clothing, wipes some white powder from the chain mail. I realize I look a mess, but so do you, you realize…

Legolas: Aragorn has a point, my friend- you died. We all witnessed it.

Boromir is silent for awhile, and then, he just shrugs.

Boromir: I guess I'm not dead anymore.

There are a few more moments of silence as the Fellowship glances around, silent, not too prepared to do anything yet.

Aragorn: One of the talismans must have activated some sort of portal, and that portal took us here.

Legolas: The talismans are here. He picks up four talismans. Where is the apple? That was the one that looked like a talisman to home.

There is another pause as the members of the Fellowship look around. They look twice over Pippin, who is munching on something, before noticing him.

Aragorn: Pippin…

Legolas: … is that…

Gimli: … the magic apple?

Pippin: Stops in mid-chew, glances at the half-eaten apple in his hand. He begins to turn white.

Gimli: Roaring YOU ATE THE MAGIC APPLE?

Pippin: Backs slowly away.

Oboebyrd and Ice_ur had run when the crate exploded, and are now watching this entire situation through the foggy window in the meat butchery.

Oboebyrd: This is really bad…

Ice_ur: Go tell Marilyn and Vicki.

Oboebyrd: Me? Why?

Ice_ur: This is all your fault!

Oboebyrd: You were the one who summoned them here!

Ice_ur: Are you kidding? I didn't know what I was doing!

Oboebyrd: But you waved her hands, shouted, 'come', and they came! This is your fault!

Ice_ur: Let's go tell them together.


Oboebyrd: No. Someone has to watch to make sure they don't go anywhere.

Gimli has grabbed Pippin by the shoulders and is shaking him violently.

Gimli: FOOL OF A TOOK? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Oboebyrd is silent.

Oboebyrd: I'll go tell Marilyn. She starts towards the door.

Ice_ur: Oh, no! You're staying here and watching these sociopaths!

They both start struggling and fighting to get to the door first. Then, the main door to the stock room opens, and John comes in, holding a damp cloth to his eye, stumbling slightly.

Oboebyrd: Pst! John, in here! Quick!

John: I'm not going in there!

The Fellowship looks over.

Aragorn: Who are you?

John: Who are YOU?

Gimli: An Orc! Mistaking John's bruised face for an Orc's face, he draws his ax.

This, at least, gets through his thick skull. John turns and makes a break for the door- Oboebyrd and Ice_ur, unwilling to be trapped there, take off after him.

Aragorn: Hold, Gimli! He grabs Gimli's shoulder before the Dwarf can take off after John. Do not rush blindly into a fight… these people appear to be unarmed. Perhaps they are not dangerous. After all, it appears that we are in their domain.

Gimli 'haruumphs' into his beard.

Legolas: Let us go speak with them. Perhaps they can help us find a replacement for our magical apple.

The Fellowship cautiously pushes aside the doors, and steps into the world of FHF…

Minimal access to a computer makes the posting infrequent- sorry.