The Writer's Guide to a Good Story

Fanfiction

Inevitably, since this is Wattpad, I'm going to start with addressing One Direction Fanfiction. Alright, alright, keep your shirts on. I am not going to diss the band, nor am l going to insult those of you that like to write One Direction fanfiction.

The only thing that confuses me about 1D fanfiction is that 1D is not a story or movie, which fanfiction mostly revolves around.

The only reason I'm singling out One Direction fanfictions is that they're the most famous and popular genre of fanfictions on this site. Does it bother me that 1D is extremely prevalent on Wattpad? Sometimes I do wish there were more variety in the fanfictions here. Despite that, I've seen many One Direction fanfictions that were well written and to be honest, they're not the worst group of people to obsess over or write about. They're all upstanding citizens who don't break laws, go around insulting people, and for now, they don't seem to think they are all God reincarnated. All in all, they are much better than writing Hitler X Stalin fanfictions (I swear to God if those actually exist...)

Being the most popular kind of fanfiction, you start to see some of the more disturbing aspects of these stories.

And by disturbing, I mean I've seen stories involving these boys abusing women, doing inappropriate and sadistic things to women, and things like that. If you look up "One Direction s_x slave story" in the search bar right now, you will probably find several results that lead to detailed stories of how young girls are inappropriately abused by members of one direction. And yes, I just censored that word because I do not want the rating of this book to go up.

Look, I actually don't mind if you like to write stories like that. It's not my place to decide whether or not someone should be writing those stories if it's part of their fantasy. But there's something that makes me uncomfortable about these kinds of stories that use the real names of real people and portray them as violent and abusive, or even r_pists. To be clear, I'm not just talking about smut or sensual stories. I'm talking about stories where real life people are very specifically portrayed as abusive and take advantage of young women.

There isn't much to say besides that, in my opinion, I think if people are going to write s_x slave stories, they shouldn't use the names of actual famous people in them, but I don't know if everyone else on this site would share my viewpoint.

The only other advice I have here is that if you're going to write One Direction fanfiction, do it because you actually want to, not for more reads. As I've said before, quantity does not always mean quality. The reality is that sometimes badly written stories get a lot of attention because they're in a genre people like. However, that does not mean it okay to insult One Direction fans or act like every single One Direction fanfiction ever written must be bad.

Moving on from that, I'll probably take some time right now to put down some general advice for writing fanfiction. To be honest I've only tried writing fanfiction once, but I have picked up some tips.

1. Stay true to a character's personality. Obviously this does not apply as much when you're writing about people in real life. But as I said earlier, do your best not to portray a real life person as an abuser. When you're using a person's real name, whether it's Harry Styles or Beyonce, you should tread a little more carefully. I know it doesn't seem likely that a world-famous celebrity has time to read stories on Wattpad, but you honestly never know.

2. You can stretch limits. It's fiction, after all, and since you can't read the author's mind or spiritually enter their brain space, people will forgive you for making up new characters or placing the characters in a different world.

3. Be realistic according to the standards of what you're writing. Yes, I know I just said stretch limits. However, if you were writing a Harry Potter fanfiction, you ordinarily wouldn't write about how aliens suddenly invaded the planet and took over Hogwarts. Although, I admit, that may actually be quite interesting to see.

4. You'll probably have to accept, especially if you're writing about something very popular like Harry Potter, that there will be people out there who think you're not writing the characters "correctly" or something. Don't be quick to take this literally. A lot of people have their own perceptions of how characters and fanfictions from a popular story should be like, and don't automatically assume you're doing a bad job because one other person gets mad at you.

Other than that, my advice is much the same as it would be otherwise. Build good characters and stay consistent with them, have a hook, strong plots points, and a solid ending.

People tend to think that fanfictions are automatically weaker or not as well written as original stories, but I haven't always found this to be the case, and it doesn't have to be.