Grumbles Guide to Bad DP Fanfiction.

Hi there. As stated above, my penname is Grumbles. You might know me as the author of such works as Ultimate Danny Phantom or Red vs. Blue: The Master Chief Saga. I thought I’d take some time out of my busy schedule to bring you this; my first guide.

Please note that this is, in no way, designed to copy the ideas of cantdecideonaname’s guide, although it will be hauntingly similar in some aspects. I was inspired by it to write this one, and several other works I’ve read recently. Where cantdecideonaname is showing you how to write better fanfiction, I am going to attempt to show you how to write bad fanfiction. I asked him if he would be cool with me writing this, seeing as how they're so similar. If he isn't, I'll pull this one from the site or re-title it or something. Until then . . .

Also note that I don’t want you to take the information in this guide and use it to write your story. As with the DON’T examples in cantdecideonaname’s guide almost everything here is cautionary, meaning that you should NOT use it in a story.

I’ll start out talking about how to make a better writer out of yourself and move onto other topics from there. Like cantdecideonaname’s guide, reviewers can bring up topics that they think should be addressed.

Another note: please do not take this as offense or a direct attack on your ability as a writer or on your story. If your story falls into any of the categories that follow, it is not because I selected it. Perhaps, though, you could learn something from it.

Bettering Yourself as a Writer

I said almost everything in this guide would be cautionary. This will be advisory, meaning that it is meant to advise you.

Nobody is perfect. It does not matter if your religion mandates that your deity is the only perfect being in the universe, or if you have no religious affiliations at all. Nobody is perfect. As humans, we should not sit back and accept our imperfectness. While there is nothing we can do to achieve that state of being we can, at the very least, strive for it.

But how/when to start? Well look at it this way. You are about to give a presentation in front of your class. You get up in front of everyone and start to read. Only problem is, your presentation is written in l33tspeak, it’s poorly structured, and most of it is spelled improperly. After several seconds of speaking in run-on sentences that make no sense whatsoever, your classmates begin to laugh at you. Your teacher becomes angry and orders you to sit down. You fail the assignment.

When has that ever happened? I don’t know. I have seen it happen on term papers, and the results? Let’s just say many a red pen was sacrificed to give that individual an F they rightly deserved.

The How– you can easily improve your writing by, well, writing. One of my first stories, a Star Wars story titled Inner Machinations, was so full of everything that makes a bad fanfiction that I think my eyes bled when I read over it after having successfully gotten Ultimate Danny Phantom off the ground. By some benevolent act of mercy, it was never flamed, but I wish it had been. I would have seen it for being poorly written and structured earlier.

“But Grumbles,” you ask in a confused tone, “why on Earth would you want someone to flame you?”

That’s an excellent question. You see, I was never discouraged by my own horrible writing. I saw it as a step. If some unbelievably attractive person of the opposite sex was standing at the top of a flight of stairs waiting for you, you wouldn’t take one step up and expect to get lucky, would you? I certainly hope not. A flame would have opened my eyes to what was wrong with my story. I may not have known how to fix it right then, but I would have learned. It’s a process. After Inner Machinations, which is now deleted, I started writing The Master Chief Saga.

It’s interesting to see how much better my Halo story did as compared to my Star Wars one. IM had 2 chapters and fifteen reviews. TMCS has thirty six chapters and 125 reviews (at the moment). What made #2 so much better than #1?

1) Knowing your Source Material

I love Star Wars. It is what started my interest in the wonderful world of science fiction. I’ve watched all the movies dozens of times and, despite the lackluster acting in the prequel trilogy and the poor special effects in the original trilogy, I still enjoy it. But just because you know about something doesn’t necessarily mean you know it well. I had seen the movies and had watched the animated Clone Wars series before I started writing IM. But there was much more I should have done in preparation. Comic books, I later learned, featured some of the characters I was using in my story. And the comics dove deeper into the characters’ personalities that the movies or the cartoons could ever hope to do. So did books, and other materials in the Expanded Universe (EU) of Star Wars.

That’s right, kids. Writing involves research, a.k.a. knowing your source material. Every time I sit down to write a chapter of UDP, I have Firefox up and ready to go in case I need some information. More often that not, I need it. Why? Because I don’t know everything there is to know about Danny Phantom. Sure I have all the episodes on my computer available to watch at my earliest convenience, but that sometimes isn’t enough either.

2) Learn From Your Past Mistakes

Do you currently have a story posted that you think might be somewhat less than good? Well your instinct might be spot on.

“Well I think its bad,” you say, “and some of the reviews are kinda critical.”

This might be a good time to look over your story. If you aren’t entirely sure, you may want to compare it to another story to see how it stands up in terms of sentence structure, grammar, and so on. But don’t peruse your favorites and pick one of those. It is likely that, if your story is bad, you have developed a taste for stories like it, so comparing your story to one that is just as bad, if not worse, won’t help you. Just because you like it doesn’t mean everyone else does.

So what should you do? Use the specific search functions at the top corner of the page; the ones that allow you to narrow your selection by rating, characters, etc. What you will probably want to do is to search stories that are longer than 100,000 words. Why? Well, I don’t generally tend to honk my own horn, but stories that have made it into the 100,000 word category are usually better that ones with less. This is not necessarily true, and I have been captivated by works with far less. But it is easier to search for the 100,000 word category.

What you will want to do from there is to find a story and go to a later chapter. If you want to read the whole thing that’s perfectly fine. Later chapters tend to be better as the author nails his or her writing style down, and this is what you will want to compare your story to. This is why longer stories are better. With shorter ones, the author doesn’t generally have much room to improve over time, whereas a longer story usually shows significant improvement.

Now obviously your style is going to be different from the author’s style whose story you’re reading. But take note of the sentence structure, grammatical style, spelling, word usage, and so on. If you want a really good one to compare to, I strongly recommend Links in the Chain. This story was my inspiration (along with Ultimate Spider-Man) in writing Ultimate Danny Phantom.

So, after you have figured out what you did wrong in the story, apply your newfound sense of understanding to your own story in later updates. Maybe rewrite it or, if it so pleases you, start a new story altogether.

The When – How does right now sound? If you have enough time to be reading this, you could take a little time to go and better yourself as a writer. There really isn’t too much else to say for this. If you can’t do it right now (coughprocrastinatorcough) then find some time for it. You won’t only help yourself; you’ll likely make a story that is enjoyable to read. And that’s why you’re here.

So, thoughts? Next chapter will be cautionary. I will be writing this in a somewhat humorous way to accentuate my points. I haven’t decided on what I will be talking about, so review and your topic might be discussed.