Hey, I just wanted to say I really like your writing! It's so engaging, in character and fun to read! Do you have any tips? (I find it kind of hard to keep characters in a fandom in character in my own writing.)
Thank you! I’m so glad you like it.
Tips tips tips.. Hm. I mean, the main thing is to just keep writing because that’ll help you get better in general. You start noticing patterns in your own writing and figure out where things you do need polishing. That and the more you write, the higher your writing endurance. The higher that endurance, the more you can write and the easier it is to scrap pieces that need to be scrapped or rewritten. And being able to toss out things that don’t work after writing it for a while is important. If it’s not working, if it’s writing you into a corner, if it isn’t doing something to move the story forward and advance character development then you need to be able to ask yourself, “is this necessary? Is this worth keeping? Why?” And be honest with yourself.
Keep reading books. Fan fiction is good to read and compare to in some cases, but fully polished novels can give you a different point of view with writing styles all in one chunk of reading time - especially since novels are complete and not all fanfics are finished works (looks at a lot of my older works hhhh). Compare and contrast. How do you describe things vs how the novels do? What don’t they describe that you fill in on your own based on what they’ve established as the setting? How do you shape dialogue vs how dialogue is used in the novels? Foreshadowing! How do the novels use foreshadowing, tone, and writing flow to build up to later events in the story and keep you engaged? You’ll get stuck if the only thing you read is your own work. So keep reading stories that aren’t yours. You can learn a lot from them.
If you can find someone - friend/editor/coauthor - who keeps you focused and can exchange ideas with you, that’s a huge help. My current writing wouldn’t be the way it is without @aoimikans keeping me on my toes. She makes it more like a conversation and you get so much more out of your ideas when you have someone to talk to about them and who adds to and/or challenges the weaker ideas. You might think you have a good idea, but having someone challenge it may help you realize where the idea is lacking and/or how to make it stronger.
As for keeping in character, just research.
Reread the canon and figure out who they are at their core. How do they talk? How do they express themselves in quiet moments? How do they handle difficult situations? Do they put themselves or others first? Pay attention to how they carry themselves.
Question your ideas and assumptions. Would that character really react to the situation you put them in in the way you want them to? Or are you writing them out of character for the convenience of it? Are you using “smart sounding” dialogue to convey that “oh yes, this character is smart”? Or have you got a hang of how they really talk? (One thing I used to do as a teen - and I think it’s just a phase for every writer at some point - is writing with overly proper or fancy words to sound grown up or smart regardless of whether or not the characters ever talk like that.) How a character speaks is just as important as how they look and move, if not more so since writing doesn’t have the benefit of visuals. Accents and word choice can inform the reader about who is talking before you write “[so and so] said.”
Scuba divers have a saying, “plan your dive, dive your plan.” Plan out your story. It doesn’t have to be every detail from the start, but it’s important to know your main events and ending. Things can of course change or adjust, but knowing where you are going allows you to hint at things. Sneaking in little foreshadowing details or having a piece of dialogue with double meaning gives your work reread value. And you can only really sneak those in if you have some knowledge of where you are going (and sometimes you can surprise yourself with accidental foreshadowing - trust that gut!) Having a skeleton to build around can help you when your story starts growing beyond your initial ideas. In the “I Am…” series that Aoi and I are writing, we had a whole plot line we cut out because it wasn’t satisfying and it would have honestly undone a good amount of character development. And before that we had to ramp up a scene (the beach scene in Collapse) because the first version of it… didn’t have lasting impact. And what is the point of a scene without some kind of impact? If it doesn’t have good oomph, then give it oomph!
Use real life experiences. People recognize when there are real things in stories. I know that when I write, I put a lot of myself into the settings and the characters. Some of it was subconscious too. If you want to put something in the story that you don’t have much experience in, research it. Fiction needs facts to ground the readers somewhere they can stand and suspend their disbelief.
Don’t forget to ask “why?” Why can’t this happen sooner? Why do they have to do it this way? Why is he/she/they reacting this way? Why not some other way? Having answers to these kinds of “why” questions will help you fill plot holes.
Oh! Rules. Make and follow writing rules. Aoi I had a set of rules when we were writing Canvas that translates into how we write the later parts of the series. For Canvas, every chapter: added a quirk, added to Toshinori’s struggles and showed how he adapted, showed how Isamu became slowly braver, all to culminate in chapter 6 and at the end of chapter 6 to plant a seed of foreshadowing/reread value.
In future chapters that translated into: Always remember the big picture and each chapter moves something in the big picture plot forward. Remember to advance character development - characters have mini-arcs of their own. NO WASTED SCENES - as in no scenes that were “just fluff”. Each scene moves the story a step forward. Each chapter is both episodic (complete within itself) and a part of the whole (keeps the overarching plot going). That way readers are both satisfied with the chapter, but left wanting more.
Um. Other that that. Edit edit edit. Use good grammar and writing rules - I mean correct capitalization, comma use, paragraphs, etc. Nothing takes a reader out of the story more than a block of all lowercase, no paragraphs, weird dialogue placement text. Reread your story when you forget details. Give yourself breaks when you get stuck. If a scene feels off but you don’t know why, give yourself time to figure out why your gut is telling you something is wrong/missing. You’ll find a way to fix it. Never delete things you scrap, just move them down. You can recycle or go back to them later. Better to have them than delete them. NOTES. Take tons of notes and test your dialogue. Our “I Am…series” is over 225k published words now and we probably have double that in notes, character descriptions, scrapped scenes, test dialogue, etc.
Ultimately, write for yourself. If you aren’t interested in your story, you probably won’t finish it. I love writing the “I Am… series” and I love Toshinoumu and I love writing with Aoi. That’s why almost 3 years into writing and many hard life events and changes, I can continue to write the story. It’s my baby and I want to see it finished.
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