The Final 3.1 - Story Types Specific to Fanfiction

(for real this time)

3.1.7. PJO Characters Read the Books

Right. Here's the revised opinion.

I will admit that the whole PJO-characters Read the Books was never one of my favourite story types, and I haven't really sat through the entirety of any of them. Even when I was reading through the better ones to get some inputs for writing this, I never really got past the first one or two chapters.

In other words, I am biased. I am wholly and throughly biased for no discernible reason. This isn't like the T/D fic-thing,which was just me being disillusioned. So you may want to take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

These fics are actually not that badly written in general. there are people who have added in well-characterized sarcasm, which is definitely a winning point. So yes, they can be done well too. Just like eveything else.

*cough* Anyway, from my limited (and trust me when I say limited) exposure to the things, here are a few points;

One. There is a suspension of disbelief thing happening here. People instantly accept and believe a bunch of random books which just dropped in from somewhere. Since I classify this under crackfic, I really shouldn't be whining about it making sense. But it would be nice if some disbelief, skepticism and other synonyms could be implemented.

Two. Not everyone is going to be gathered together without some reason. God-demigod combo reading sessions are particularly huh-worthy. Use that imagination, people. Find a way to bring them together. Honorary guard half-blood troops at the Winter Solstice, a sudden shortage of godly foods leading to an emergency meeting at Olympus, whatever.

Three. Randomness can be funny, but not if it happens all the time. Too much of it stinks of desperation. Avoid.

Four. Again, reading the books is not a platform for Percy and Annabeth to suddenly go into embarrassed declarations of 'I like you too.' I was happy to see that declarations of 'I love you' were rare in this case, though.

Five-

Well, okay. Five is not really a point, but I noticed that most people who write one of these things have pretty much the same dialogues going on. I think I saw three SoM fics (none of which I could really find much fault with) which had a character asking Percy why his Mom would be happy about him making it to the last day of school, followed by someone explaining his educational track record.

It may just be an isolated incident, but I doubt it. After all, in the given scenario, there are only so many ways you can react to the books. This might make writing a halfway original CRB story hard. Fair warning.

Notes: We will be moving on to Plotting: Incredibly Overused Ideas, once we're done with our detour into Character Mutilation City. This is mostly because Character Mutilation plays a large part in why plotlines get screwed up, and I really should cover it before I go on to anything else.

Stay tuned. 8D