Eighth Day of Class

"Hey there, everyone!" KRenee greeted as she strode into the room a good ten minutes late.

"Morning, professor." Several of the student chirped in reply. KRenee dumped her laptop and several sheets of paper on the table at the front of the room, before hastily opening the computer and dealing with the attendance. When she was done, she straightened up and clasped her hands behind her back, a bright smile on her face.

"So, today we're going to go over changes. I have in my curriculum that we would go over "changing the universe to suit your needs" and "changing the characters to suit your needs" separately, but after giving that some thought, I decided that was a stupid idea, because you can't do one without doing the other." She told them as she gazed around the room, "Unless you want to write badly, that is. Hopefully, you don't want to do that."

"With that in mind, I'm going to start by talking about the changes you might want to make to the universe, and we'll work into changing characters from there." Several students bobbed their heads, pencils and pens poised to take notes.

KRenee glanced over at the notes sitting on the table beside her, humming absentmindedly before returning her attention to the class. "If you're going to change a universe, you have to be thorough about it. In all of the stories I've written, I've changed something in the universe that resulted in me changing the characters. That's because that's the nature of fanfiction; the point of it is to change something and make a story out of it, whether you're adding a character or taking out an event or anything else."

"Everything that you change will have a ripple effect. It's like going back in time and altering the past. Even something as simple as moving someone's couch two inches to the left sixty years ago could result in the end of the world or the beginning of a world-wide golden age." She said, watching her class as they scribbled away in their notebooks. "So when you make a change - any change - you have to think about how that would affect the entire canonical universe. If you went into the television series Supernatural and had Sam and Dean Winchester's mom live and killed their dad in her place, you'd have a completely different story."

"A good example to use for this is actually AUs. AU stands for Alternate Universe, as I'm sure many of you know. In an alternate universe, the characters from one world are plucked out and placed in a completely different world. The most common one, I think, is probably the high school AU." KRenee told them. "In a high school AU - and we're going to use Naruto for this - Itachi wouldn't have killed his entire clan. He may have killed his parents, but even that is unlikely because of the canonical circumstances behind his motives.

"And if Itachi hadn't killed his parents, Sasuke wouldn't have grown up alone. He would've had a loving family to take care of him, and even if you killed Mikoto and Fugaku in a car accident or a disease, Sasuke wouldn't have grown up to be an avenger, because that's not what people do when their parents die of illness. He would've been taken care of by Itachi, and while he may have developed sullen teenaged boy disease for a while, he would've gotten over it and become a productive member of society." She explained, looking around the room. "It's things like that that will make or break your story."

Professor KRenee took a breath, leaning back on her hands and waiting patiently for the students to stop writing. When they did and looked up again, she beamed and continued. "As usual, it's important to think, and think hard about the story you want to write. Think of the changes you want to make and how they would change the characters and the universe. Consult someone else who's watched or read that series. They might notice an inconsistency that you never even considered."

"Most importantly: write it down." The professor lectured. "Don't rely on your memory to help you organize all those details. It's better to take obnoxiously detailed notes than it is to take no notes at all and wind up forgetting six or seven reasonably important details that make the story consistent."

"Alright, to be honest, I don't really have anything more to say on the subject, and if I try to I'll just end up repeating myself." KRenee conceded with a grin. "So, I'm gonna go ahead and give you your homework and send ya'll on your merry way.

"For this section, I want you to write up one change that you would make to any universe of your choosing, and then write up all the things that would have to be altered to accommodate said change." She told them, glancing at her watch briefly. "And if you're going to share this homework with me, I'm going to ask that you tell me what the canonical thing that you're changing is. For example, if you're changing Naruto's hair to green, let me know what his original hair color is."

"Okay then," she smiled brightly at them. "That's all for today. I'll expect to see you all whenever I hold the next class. And make sure you check on the blackboard on your way out!"

The Blackboard

- write down one change that you would make to any universe of your choosing.

- write up every single thing that would have to be altered to accommodate the change you're making to this universe.

- make sure you tell me what the thing you're changing is like canonically. For example, if you're changing a character's hair from blue to red, tell me that it was originally blue.

- take your time with this! Try to think of every single thing that would have to be altered to accommodate the change you want to make. Don't be narrow-minded about it; most changes will have a LARGE ripple effect.

- if you have a question, please ask for clarification!