Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop ✒ Writing Tips

Lesson 13: What are AUs and how to write them?

A relatively newer concept in fanfiction, Alternate Universe fanfics (commonly known as AUs) are becoming widely popular by each passing day.

An AU is a fanfic in which the fanfic author alters one major event that happened in the original book or movie series, as a result of which the whole story is altered from after that event.

AUs are extremely interesting to read because these fanfics deal with altering the stories we know and rendering them in a whole new outlook, due to the change of one event or through addition/subtraction of characters. From an author's perspective, AUs bring with them numerous possibilities and allow much more creative freedom in the fanfic.

In this lesson, I will be explaining AUs to you and providing tips on how to craft and effectively execute such stories. We'll be discussing the difference between normal fanfics and AUs first, then we'll proceed on to different ways of creating AUs and how to keep track of all the chaos that might ensue by disrupting an already existing series.

Grab your pens and notebooks for we are about to begin!

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Difference Between AUs And Ordinary Fanfics

There are many differences when it comes to AUs and contemporary fanfiction, the most prominent of which are as follows:

1. Creative freedom: Like stated earlier, AUs provide a lot of creative freedom to authors as compared to normal fanfiction. While writing fanfiction you can not change entire timelines or mess with the plot but in AUs you can do pretty much whatever you like, provided that it doesn't disrupt your story entirely.

2. Deviation from original plot: With AUs you don't have to follow the original plot, which is a relief to most authors. Since you are changing major events, introducing or removing major characters, the whole chain of consequences awaits you. Therefore you will have freedom to redesign the whole story and write it according to your own perspective.

3. Plot twists: AUs contain loads of plot twists and are best when they provide an unexpected but completely different experience to the story. Plot twists happen usually when some even is changed in the actual series/books.

Different Ways To Come Up With AUs

Here we will take a look on what is mean by altering major events to create AUs. There are a few basic and widely used ways of altering events discussed below:

1. Saving a canon character from death: One of the most popular and widely used method, in this step the fanfic author prevents the death of a canon character as a result of which the whole story is altered. For example, consider writing a fanfic in which both Lily and Harry survived Voldemort's attack at Godric Hollow due to James's loving sacrifice for his wife and child. You can clearly imagine the vast impact Lily's survival could have on the whole HP series; Harry wouldn't have been given to the Dursleys, his childhood could have been different, Snape may not have been a good guy at all etc etc.

A perfect of example of such an AU at Wattpad is Godfather by acciodogstar-. In that AU, the author has prevented Sirius Black's death and rewritten the entire story post Order of the Phoenix. It is a well written AU and does justice to the whole concept. Honestly speaking, I liked Godfather more as compared to Rowling's take on the books after Order of the Phoenix.

Another example is Nepenthe by Kitty Bell (kmbell92) in which Lily died in the attack at Godric Hollow but James had survived. I haven't yet read it but just knowing that it's written by Kitty is proof enough that it will be great.