The Marketing of Fanfiction

The Product
Part Two

by AgiVega

Once you’ve made up an interesting, unique plot, it’s time to start writing your story. However, if you feel the need to do some research for your plot to work, then research before you start to write. Does your story include Greek mythology? Be sure to look it up on the web or find some books on the topic (and by no means base your fic on the ‘knowledge’ you acquired from the TV series Xena or Hercules – find a more trustworthy source of information – Wikipedia, for example, is always a good choice). Your readers will appreciate a well-researched fic from which they can learn. If you do some thorough research, you might even get reviews in which your readers tell you excitedly that they managed to surprise their teacher in school with their immense knowledge on Greek mythology, thanks to you and your fanfic.

The next important thing you need to pay attention to is characterisation. The only advice I can give on the characterisation of canon characters is to not steer too far from the original author’s description of them. Don’t turn Hermione Granger into a slut who sleeps with Draco, Snape and Lucius at the same time; but making her slowly, gradually fall for Draco (or even Snape) still fits her character. Don’t make Artemis Fowl swoon over Teletubbies, but you can make him like Lord of the Rings. Don’t make Voldemort wear a pink tutu for the Death Eater Costume Ball, but you can make him show his ‘dark sense of humour’ by dressing up as Emperor Palpatine.

It’s not at all difficult, and strongly advisable to keep the canon characters in character. The fanfic readers expect to see the characters they’ve learned to love from various movies/books portrayed exactly as they have got used to them in canon. With OC’s (original characters), however, you need to be more careful. It’s not easy to create an OC that your readers will like. Actually, it’s one of the most difficult things in writing fanfiction, because even if your OC is an interesting person, he/she can easily be regarded as a Mary Sue/Gary Stu by your readers. And that’s something you want to avoid at all costs, because it ruins your Product’s reputation.

How to avoid writing a Mary Sue? First of all: don’t make her perfect. You can make her pretty, but not exceptionally so. You can make her clever, but not exceptionally so. And, by no means make her very pretty and very clever! That’s exactly what makes the reader flee. In other words, make sure your OC has faults. Also – if you intend to write a popular fanfic – be sure to not make her (him) end up with the main canon character! There’s no such thing that repulses the average reader as much as Harry Potter falling for Draco’s so far unknown, perfect sister or Artemis Fowl hooking up with some random genius girl (we are not talking about Minerva Paradizo here, but about genii made up by the fans).

Ever wondered why fics with summaries that mention ‘Arty/OC’ or ‘Anakin/OC’ barely get any reviews? It’s simple: the readers are not interested in them. Readers don’t mind if a minor canon character hooks up with your OC, but making the central hero of the story fall for your OC is dangerous and strongly discouraged. It makes your Product unpopular, and the customers will not buy it. If you want to sell your Product to the crowds, then it’s best to pair Arty with Holly or Juliet (or even Butler…), and Anakin with Padmé (for slashers with Obi-Wan), and no one else.

The question might run through your mind: ‘hey, Agi, in your first article you were talking about being courageous enough to write differently and be unique! What is this idiocy about writing popular ships that everybody else writes, then?’ The answer is simple: you can write your fic with a popular ship, and still make it unique with an interesting plot or a twist on the characters’ relationship.

With OC’s, we have (at least partly) handled shipping as well. I don’t want to go more into this topic, as shipping is the only aspect of a fanfic on which I can’t give you advice (besides reminding you that main character/OC doesn’t work well). Shipping is something that no fanfic author really takes advice on, and it is not my place to try and persuade anyone of any of my shipping preferences. When choosing a ship for your fic, just listen to your heart, and write the pairing you like most. If your plot and characterisation are good, you will very likely be able to make the reader like your fic, even if they dislike your ship of choice.

Now, let us move onto more technical questions, such as chapter length and detailing. When asked about this, I’m always saying that the ideal chapter length is 5-15 pages in Word, Times New Roman, size 12. If any shorter than 5 pages, then it’s too short and can barely be regarded as a chapter. If longer than 15 pages, then it might bore the reader. My attention span, for example, is 20 pages per chapter. If a chapter is longer than that, I might not even read the whole thing in one sitting but split it up and read it in two or three parts, which results in the fact that I surely won’t submit a review for it. If I manage to ‘sit through’ a chapter (that is to say, if I can read it in fifteen or twenty minutes), then I’m likely to review. Otherwise… no. I’m quite sure I’m not alone in this. Therefore, write chapters long enough to make the reader think they are worth reviewing, but short enough to make them want to read the whole chapter in one sitting.

Detailing. Again, the same goes for this as for chapter length: find the golden mean. Don’t write your fic only consisting of dialogues – make sure to put description lines among the lines told by the characters, for example informing your readers about their facial expressions, their cadence or their posture. Some description of their surroundings doesn’t hurt either. However, don’t overdo it, because that way your story is going to become boring. The only fandoms I think it might be a good idea to write lengthy descriptions are Lord of the Rings and Eragon, as both Tolkien and Paolini write lots of descriptions. If you want to imitate their style, then you may do so, as the readers in these fandoms surely like long descriptions. In other fandoms, however, try to avoid boring your reader with too much detail. Don’t write about the grass growing or you will lose your ‘customers’ because they will fall asleep in front of the computer screen.

Grammar and spelling are also very important ingredients of your Product. No matter how wonderful your plot is, how good your characterisation is, the reader might abandon your story if your spelling is lousy. Bad spelling gives the impression that you’re too lazy to use the spell-check. There is a reason why Microsoft built the spell-check into Word. They did it in order to help you, so let them help you. It’s not a hundred percent sure that you’ve spelt something wrong whenever Word underlines certain phrases in your text, but if it does underline them, then at least be suspicious that you might have misspelled something. If in doubt, use a dictionary.

If you’re writing your fic in a language that isn’t your native one (like I do), make sure you get a beta whose mother tongue is the language you’re writing the story in. A grammar beta points out your mistakes and helps you learn from them. You will notice that month by month your grammar beta will find less and less mistakes in your writing.

The last thing I’d like to mention when talking about the Product part of the 4P’s is the cliffhanger.

It doesn’t matter how well-written your chapters are if they end lamely. Try to avoid lame chapter endings! Either finish your chapters with a funny line that makes the reader smile, or use the nastiest tool in a fanfic author’s hand: the cliffhanger. It doesn’t hurt if at least every third chapter in your story ends with a cliffie. It makes the reader even more interested in your story, and if you ended your chapter with a particularly evil situation, then it will make the readers clamour for more (which means you’ll be getting more reviews than you normally do) and it also makes it impossible for them to forget how your last chapter ended.

It often happens to me that by the time one of the fics on my update alert list is updated, I completely forget what happened in the previous chapter. However, if the author ended their latest chapter with a nasty cliffie, then I will surely remember it, and when I’m getting four-five update alerts from fanfiction.net at once, I will be sure to first click on the new chapter of the story whose last chapter ended with a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is an excellent trick to keep your reader’s attention, so use it to your heart’s content. (More on keeping your reader’s interest in the ‘Promotion’ part of the series, coming in two months).

Next month: Price and Place.