Creative Writing Tips ✍️ that Only Work for Fanfiction (How to Write Fanfiction)

One thing I emphasise in my content is that fanfiction is not a “lesser” form of fiction writing. It’s a separate medium with its own rules and conventions that need to be analysed, discussed, and taught. With so much writing advice out there being about original fiction first and foremost, fic writers are constantly being misled about what would be best for a story in their medium.

That’s why, in this video, I’m covering six creative writing tips that would be no help to your original work, but will make your fanfiction a masterpiece.

A little about me: my name is Cora (she/they) and I'm a creative writing graduate, professional copywriter, and self-proclaimed fanfic writer extraordinaire with over 10 years of experience here to help you live your best fanfic writing life! Subscribe to my YouTube channel for your fortnightly dose of dreamy fanfiction tips. 💞✍️

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Music: music box cover of 'Bolero' by Maurice Ravel. Cover by R3 Music Box

Logo designed by @illustratornow on Twitter and Instagram.

[neon-kqwz]

Haven't watched the whole video yet, but something bizarre I got into my head a while ago was that the piece of fanfic had to make sense/ be a strong piece of writing to someone who knew nothing about the source material (???) 😂 I decided to give up on that though since it was making it too difficult to write lol. I feel like embracing ff as a whole different medium than original short stories really helps me 👍

[moseyonover]

I noticed an example of your first suggestion in a MHA fic just the other day. The author took Shinsou's "You can't help what your heart longs for" quote - which was originally about longing to be a hero despite having a superpower that ostensibly lends itself better to villainy - and recontextualized it to be about overcoming his suspicion of his classmate's intentions and learning to accept and seek out their friendship despite his fears. Was the last line in the story too, so it really hit home.

It's such an earnest, angsty line frim such a well-liked character that I'm surprised this is the only fic I've encountered that's used it.

[mada]

Love this! It’s so refreshing to finally watch a video about what to do in fanfic that it’s not desirable in original work. Most videos I find are about how to avoid at all costs fanfic style writing

[kc]

I think describing pre-existing objects/places/characters can work if they're described in an emotional way (if that's how you say it?).
If a certain character has a certain emotional connotation towards someone, or something, and the fic is written in their perspective, it can work describing them.
For instance, imagine a character loathes a book, they see it on a table and think "there was a horrible book on the table."
For that matter, if the character doesn't know that place/object in canon, it makes sense to describe it.

[Alleyoop-Fanfiction]

Recontextualizing quotes is a fantastic tip. I like when this is used for “history repeats itself, ” where the same quotes are said in a different order, or as you say the same quotes are said in a different context but in a different time with different people. :3

[huntercoleman]

I’ve been coming up with and writing my own stories since I was a little boy and I’ve written a couple fanfics. Like your writing tips. Writing fanfiction is fun. The highlight is reading people’s compliments about your stories and writing. It has made me gain confidence in my writing. Ever tried writing original stories?

[rhonah]

Great video, insightful advice, excellent jacket. Top tier all round. Genuinely, I really appreciate your perspective on fanfic as a separate medium and craft. I think the fact that fanfic has tags, summaries, warnings and author’s notes are all important elements of the medium that you don’t get in typical original fiction. And they enable a lot of the things you’ve described in the video because the author gets to be very upfront about what they’re doing and the reader gets to select what they want to read based on that. So (like you say in the video) the author can skip stuff, laser focus in on other stuff, have no little to no real plot, etc and there’s not need to justify any of those choices in the body of the writing itself.

[glamourrock]

I realized that I did quite a few of that first tip in one of my fics already! It's a canon divergent retelling of one of the canon books with a few twists, and so I snatched quite a few quotes from the original book and put them in a new context. I was hoping that some readers would notice and it would create an even bigger contrast between my au and the source material. And one of the quotes was a prophecy from earlier on in the arc- one I thought would have more of a build up in the book when it showed up but kinda.. idk disappointed me. So I wrote it how I had originally expected it to be, which makes more sense in my fic!

Honestly I was afraid that doing this teetered the plagiarism line, so I'm glad that this is something that this is actually appreciated in fanfic instead!

[charmedvenuss]

Your content has helped my return to writing fanfic so much easier ty

[ngtskynebula]

Finally a great video on writing fanfiction! Thanks for the content, Cora! 🤧💘

[jujuoof]

You have a reddit tread?!! I'm very proud!! So happy so many people participated and helped you with fhe video!! ^^

[jujuoof]

I missed your videos and your beautiful outfit aswell as your usual welcoming and eye-catxing aesthetic!!

[storytellersuniverse]

8:57 This is kind of interesting to me because I wrote a LEGO Ninjago short story at the beginning of the month, and during revisions I decided to imagine what the characters would look like with different skin tones and ethnicities since the characters are all yellow in skin color and the ethnicities aren't stated.

[sirupsee]

One place where you can do the fanfiction stuff (assuming that your reader already knows your context) is mythology. I recently read a poem that starts with the line "everyone forgets that Icarus also flew". I loved that line and it also struck me how 'fanfic' that sounds.

[kiwitealc]

I get a little frustrated with stardew valley fics because they almost all do the opposite of #6. So many of them are about the farmer leaving their job, moving to stardew valley, falling in love with shane or sebastian or whoever. And they all repeat the heart events and describe meeting everyone in town.
It's fun to write so I get it (I've...done it myself, not gonna lie) but following almost the exact story of the game is not that interesting to me! Everyone knows that the farm is overgrown and has a little house, I don't need to keep being told lol.

I want to see Dr. Harvey and Emily fall in love. I want to see Gunther go on adventures. I want to see Abigail actually exploring the mines, or Demetrius's back story, or Jas 20 years in the future!

[jujuoof]

Thank you for all the great tips pal, you're the best!

[beccagregory]

I have written a multitude of Glee fanfictions and each of them are definitely AU

[Bennett-wjvg]

One disagreement with the description. While yes, there isn't necessarily a need to always do it, at least for me, when someone pulls it off well, I get more emerged in the story. However, that is awfully difficult for some people to pull off, so i understand that there is some reluctance. My only advice to people worrying about messing it up is this: Don't take your mistakes as an end all be all, but a learning opportunity to get better. No one reasonable reading fanfiction expects great writing talent off the bat. So use it as an opportunity to improve on the skill if you happen to like it.

That's all for now. Goodnight.

[nessie]

Could you perhaps make the background music a bit quieter? Maybe it's just me but it makes it harder to concentrate on your words :c
Well, I'm a non-native speaker so that could be just me lol

[daniellemcallister]

Can u please make a video on how to put a plot twist in a fanfic story