So, I'm pretty sure the "welcome to my journal" entry isn't supposed to have a cut in it, but if it doesn't it's going to eat up my entire page. I wrote this a little while back after happening upon too much hurt/comfort gapfiller, and I'm afraid that now that I'm active and planning on posting to some of the communities that write the very stuff I'm criticizing I'm going to bruise some feelings.  I can get a bit strident when I'm in a ranty mood, so depending on the comments I get as I begin to publish, I may revise this post.

Who am I?  Well, the penname says “Celeritas,” but that’s really only half the story.  Celeritas is one of two driving forces behind this blog and the fan fiction written therein.  The other is Sagitta, who is much more at home when she has a red pen in her hand and generally gives some semblance of plot to Celeritas’ rambling thematic and character elements.  Both of us are portions of a young woman’s personality—the portions that cause her to write.

 

Who is that young woman?  Ah, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?  But since you ask, I will give you two more answers.  She is an American, but for her hobbit fan fiction uses the British spellcheck because “Travelers” just looks wrong on the page.  (The username has an extra “u” in it because it gets her an extra point in Scrabble.)  She is also a confessional Lutheran (a much more edifying term than “Christian”), and hopes that, when she reaches heaven, she will be able to learn once and for all from the Professor’s own lips whether or not Balrogs have wings.

 

The above questions are actually quite mundane.  The interesting one is,

 

Why am I here?

 

( and it will tell you significantly more about Celeritas, Sagitta, and the young woman than any sort of autobiography. )
 

I've always been fascinated by the upright desk (which is why I put one in Bag End's study) because it's rare these days and it challenges our notions of how one writes. The notion behind the upright (at least for some people who used it... I want to say Churchill was one) is that the standing position is more invigorating than a sitting one, and so more blood flows to the brain and stimulates more ideas. Or something like that.

Of course, with spiral notebooks and laptops and ballpoint pens and pencils we aren't even limited to desks. One of my personal favorites is writing in bed, on one's stomach (although, given the way that ideas come to me, I'm tempted at some point to do a writing session on the toilet!).

If your routine is getting a little stale, try changing it up. Write outside (if it's warm enough!) and see if ideas come to you more easily (because the inspiration's right there) or if it's just a wee bit distracting. See if it's easier writing full or on an empty stomach, or somewhere in between. Even an act as simple as shoving your back up against the back of the chair so that you sit upright can help.

If you normally draft on the computer, try drafting longhand. If you normally use ballpoint pen, try pencil, or an ink pen, or even crayon. See if the difference shakes up your mind a bit and a few new ideas come loose.

~Sagitta

Amazing amazing amazing video comparing Bakshi to Jackson...

I agree on most but not all of the reviewer's assessments... you can guess which ones I disagree with.

As in, use your nose, not as in, "don't take a shower for weeks".

I'm usually not the one to suggest writing exercises (that's Sagitta's job), but try thinking about five specific characters you've spent a lot of time with. What do they smell like? (If you can't describe it, that's okay.) Does that smell link you or other characters to certain memories?

Now turn that around and think of each character's favorite scent, and what (if anything) is associated with that.

Smells are so strongly tied to memories and emotions that even if we can't consciously pin down any defining traits, if we can pin down a specific smell that helps out a lot.

Describing smell clearly enough can also help cement ideas in the reader's mind and evoke certain sensations that support the mood of a scene. The smell of Shelob's lair, for example, is downright oppressive and makes the chapter that much worse. On the fanfic front, one of my favorite scenes of all time is "Don't Panic" 's Latrine of Doom, in which a modern woman's nose and sensibilities are heavily, heavily assaulted by... well, you know. And of course there's the olfactory power of athelas.

How often does the society you're writing about bathe? How does this affect smell? Are people used to the scent of human sweat, to the point that things smell wrong if they're clean? What about cross-society encounters (the basis for the Latrine of Doom)? How about baddies--or goodies--that rely on the sense of smell?

One parting weird thought... apparently when Tolkien was first drafting LotR, the cloaked sniffing figure that Bingo & co. encounter (eventually one of the Nine) was initially Gandalf!

~Celeritas

I hope every one of you has been lucky enough to have access at some point to the OED--whether through a library or online resources.

One of the really cool things Tolkien does throughout his writing is recover the old meanings of words: Doom doesn't mean evil; it means something important and earth-shaking, for good or ill. Pity isn't just a synonym for shame; it's a true, deep emotion that manifests itself in action even when heart and head both say nay.

So it's important for us to know and understand the histories of words themselves, if we want to get anything close to the "inside language" approach that Tolkien takes (maybe you don't... but poking around at etymologies is still cool!). There is nothing quite like having an actual paper copy and just flipping through it to see what you happen upon, but if there are any strange words that you want to learn more about, there is a nice free site called etymonline.com.

For a fine example of what such research can yield, I post the full OED online results for "pippin." Scroll down to 4. if you don't want to read it all.

1. a. A seed or pip of any of various fleshy fruits. Now Eng. regional (chiefly north.).
The use of pippin appears to have included all the kinds of fruit seed for which pip (PIP n.²) is now used, and other kinds in addition.

b. A part of a pea embryo, perh. the radicle. Obs. rare.
c. In extended use: a grain of gold, resembling a pip in size and shape. Obs.
2. A grape. Obs.

3. a. Formerly: a kind of sweet apple, typically late-ripening, fine-flavoured, and having good keeping qualities. Now (freq. with distinguishing word): any of numerous fine-flavoured varieties of dessert apple.
Blenheim, fall-, golden-, Newark, Newtown, orange, Sturmer pippin, etc.: see the first element.

b. as sound (also healthy, etc.) as a pippin and variants: in perfect health or condition. Now rare.
4. a. A person. Originally derogatory: a young, foolish, or naive person. In later use chiefly as a term of endearment: a dear; a darling; a pet. Now rare.
b. colloq. (orig. U.S.). An excellent, pleasing, or beautiful person or thing. Cf. PIP n.² 3.


Hoping that this inspires,

I remain fondly yours,

Sagitta

There is only so far, sometimes, that one medium can go. I remember wanting, so badly, after reading The Hobbit, to recreate some amazing and rather priceless artifacts like the Arkenstone and Sting (I didn't, but it's the thought that counts).

And there's something to be said in that. Drawing or creating can help you visualize things; if you're musical that can help you get your emotions in line (even if, as it is with me, it's just listening to music and trying to see which one evokes the right mood for a particular scene). The Observation Deck also recommends the impermanence and fluidity of Play-Doh, to give your hands a tangible part in the role of sub-creation. Think of what other creative things you do well... knitting? Embroidery? Jewelry-making? Gardening? Baking? There are so many things that can work really well to help inspire your writing, even if it's not directly inspired by the same.

If you don't think you're terribly good at these things, it doesn't really matter. Even just going through a magazine and ripping out pictures that work to make a collage, using powerpoint to make "wordclouds"--even surfing Deviantart to try to see what the latest visualizations of your characters are (this is where I've found my elusive, rare samples of brown-eyed Frodos) can help.

And if this isn't working, try to think of what characters you envision as doing the hobbies you're doing. Why do they do them? If the tasks require little mind, what does this character think when she does that? What sort of things would they create at what point in their lives?

For this post, I've switched to the icon I used for all of my Keep Alive the Memory updates. The blurriness actually isn't wholly unintentional; I used watercolor pencils and then dripped water on the final product. It's actually an illustration from the story, and knowing that helped me keep up my spirits for updates. I'm hoping eventually to get something similar (though not the same) for AWS. I can't illustrate the whole darn thing, but at least I can do a couple of detailed drawings of key objects that don't look terrible outright.

~Celeritas

As writers of derivative fiction (actually, everyone writes derivative fiction; we just admit it) we kind of have to do our research, at least as far as digging your nose into the depths of canon (and deuterocanonical works like History of Middle-earth and Letters).

So that's not what I'm talking about today.

I'm talking about all the other kinds of research that will not only not tick off your readers who may know more about this or that than you (the negative), but also may lead to new and strange insights and/or gems to put in your work (the positive).

Fact of the matter is, we're writing about people who lived a completely different way of life to the way we live now, which means that sometimes it can be very, very hard to write as if we did (I'm definitely guilty on the grounds of distance-shrinkage in this regard).

Fortunately there are a ton of resources out there, on every site imaginable. Some of the ones I've actually found most favorable come from the SCA, which does a great job of translating most of the realities of pre-industrial life into our terms so that we can conceptualize them. I've used SCA information for everything from bodice boning (you use reeds if there aren't any whales in the vicinity) to trying to develop a precious metal currency system that holds up under the knowledge that Bill the pony cost 12 silver pennies.

The other stuff I've found incredibly helpful is the more folksy, almanac-type resources, which gives a completely different perspective to your writing than the modern scientific knowledge that creates, say, the "Aragorn cures cancer" trope.

And you can't not find secondary benefits to this information. Comparing the very restrained monetary market that rose out of the "12 silver pennies to buy the best pony in town" system to the fact that Minas Tirith had gates made out of mithril suggested that with the defeat of Sauron, there was some sort of increase in liquidity (maybe they found Sauron's treasury?) which would certainly help account for the economic prosperity that resulted from Elessar's reign. Since my Shire is more isolated than most, I've also decided that currency within that land is depressed--making it economically profitable (not to mention that pesky ban) for Mannish merchants to hire hobbits who will drive their goods across the Shire. Which in turn influences the negative opinion of said drivers within the Shire--they consort with Men for cash!

Or sometimes gems will just pop up out of nowhere. A folksy herb gardening book purchased for a quarter yielded the delightfully disgusting practice of liquid manure, which has made its way into two fics. I'm still waiting for the chance to use dried blood to guard a garden against rabbits, though.

My best advice: for those who want to do research, or for those who want to do their research a little differently: go to a used bookstore, preferably one that smells so you know that the books are old. Just glance by the titles to see if there are any books that could help you out in some way, shape, or form. The books will be cheaper, and you'll be finding them a new home--and you just might get some inspiration out of the deal.

~Sagitta

I just got caught up in matters beyond my control.

And also this.

All stemming from a conversation that went like this:

Me: I've always wanted to read a good Harry Potter fic about what happened to those who stayed behind at Hogwarts during Book Seven.

Friend: Actually, I know a really good one.

Me: OOH! SEND ME THE LINK!

And so she did.

And so I tore through it.

The rating is "Mature," but it is for violence. Aside from describing the Battle of Hogwarts in more graphic detail (and there's a tamer version in the author's fic list), the author follows JKR's same standards with profanity and snogging. I haven't read Deathly Hallows since it came out, so I'm definitely not qualified to do a full-fledged Sagitta-style review, but I do recommend it. It's incredibly compelling, follows the books fairly well, and has the same sort of actiony pace to it that lets you tear through a full-fledged novel that JKR's best writing does.

It also reminded me how much I love Hufflepuffs, who I have decided are basically the hobbits of Hogwarts (heck, their common room even has hobbit doors!), down to the association with the badger. Yeah, they look kind of weak, but if you get them in a corner...

About the only downside is that it's pretty Americanized, by which I mean that we read about sweaters and Moms. Despite this the author has done a LOT of research into various cultures, and you really get a much better picture of all the "bit" characters in the HP-verse. I'd say that even more students were acknowledged killed in this book than in Deathly Hallows, but because of their characterization and the way that we learn of their deaths it actually works better than in DH.

So, yeah. Read it. It's incredible.

ETA: Reading a good fic should make you want to write. This one certainly did.

With all our lovely modern conveniences, I, at least, tend to forget that walking is how we got from place to place for most of human history. Driving shrinks life into hours, minutes, and seconds as the world rushes by.

Walking, on the other hand, automatically makes you more hooked into the world: sights, sounds, and smells. And walking as a writer, trained by long practice of craft to observe sight, sound, and smell, is even more powerful.

Not only can walking help give you the time and circulation to think about writing (working out those all-too-important plot points), it also gives you so many stimuli for newer ideas.

If your walk needs focus or a new perspective, here are a couple of pointers. Walk looking for particular emotions, or symbolism. Walk as if you were one of your characters and try to see the world the way they would see it. Or, try to imagine the way where you're walking looked 50, 100, or 1000 years ago.

If you walk the same path outdoors daily, and can't spare time for a bit of variety in your itinerary, try to focus on how the environment changes with the seasons.

Especially in an environment like Middle-earth, where people are generally more tuned into the natural world, it's important for us as writers to be like the characters in this respect so that we can present the world the way they would have seen it.

~Celeritas

One of the huge problems with writing, especially longer pieces, is that the tasks that loom before us in our minds are as far off and intangible as Mordor is to the Shire.

It takes time, and the returns--while great--are so far away!

Which is why it's important to break things down into more realistic, manageable chunks. Don't get all the way to Mount Doom, just focus on getting to Rivendell (which will still take you a sixth of the way through the book, lol!).

That's part of why I'm doing this, because writing about writing is a much more realistic, manageable goal for me than trying to, say, churn out a 50,000 word novel.

The next time you have a few hours, determine what sort of small, but concrete progress you can make, and then make it.

Write it down: Tonight, I am going to figure out this OC's name.

or, Tonight, I am going to sit staring at this blank screen for one hour until I begin writing just so I won't stay bored.

or, Tonight, I am going to write another 100 words for this scene that is currently killing me (this is my goal for tonight; hopefully I'll finish the scene as well).

As long as you're making some sort of progress, that's what matters.

At least, it matters a lot more than spending your time thinking about getting the whole thing done, quailing, and then doing nothing.

~Sagitta

(entry name totally stolen)

Fandom is lucky in that it has a specific, limited audience. We know exactly who we're writing for, although sometimes innocents and people from other fandoms will step in.

We even have audiences within our fandom. Has anyone ever gotten this review before? "I don't normally read [Silm-fic, Gondor-fic, hobbit-fic], but..."

Knowing your audience can help out a bunch... even if the audience is just you, or just a friend. Which might be why this particular bit of advice doesn't particularly mesh with my writing: my audience is fans of Lord of the Rings--people who care enough about the Red Book of Westmarch that they might flip out a little if the original copy is dangling over a river. Period.

But sometimes that's not enough and that's where this comes in. Think of how a letter that you write to a dear friend differs from, say, a public blog post. If your fiction writing is for just one person rather than everyone, is that going to change your writing? Udun, yes.

And sometimes that approach works really well. Consider (sorry, but this is the most obvious example I can think of) Larner's prolific output based around the birthdays of people she knows. Through dedicating fics to specific people she 1). boosts output, and 2). manages to deal with specific topics that she might not have otherwise.

Narrowing--or expanding--your audience does different things. Try writing a specific fic for a specific person, based on what you know that person wants to see--or what you want that person to see. Sometimes that can give you the right amount of focus to improve your writing.

~Celeritas

Just to be absolutely clear from the start, this is Sagitta here (spelt with one g and two t's, and no e at the end, thank you very much).

You don't know quite so much about me, because when I don't like something about a story, I can't let people know politely. And most of my publications thus far have been so character- and theme- oriented that it's only been fair to post just under the name Celeritas so that things aren't confusing. Even if I do manage to draft something that's mostly my work, it'll still be published under her name. And that's only fair.

But sometimes it is nice to step out from behind the curtains and speak frankly.

Celeritas writes for the usual reasons most people write: I just plain want to, there are these characters in my head and they won't leave me alone, the plotbunnies made me do it, etc.

I write because I like taking disparate elements and weaving them together. I like figuring out how this or that happened, and why. I like crafting plots. But, more often than you'd think, I write because I'm ticked.

The Jackson films are actually very inspirational to both of us. Celeritas is inspired because the music and the emotions are so darn beautiful. I'm inspired because someone made some very wrong interpretations of plot and characters a part of mainstream culture, and by golly someone's got to fix it.

Whenever I get on my fandom high horse, that's mostly me, not Celeritas, talking, because when people don't let LotR stretch their minds it irritates me.

Anger and irritation are actually great motivators to write, though. I think our emphasis on the notions of inspiration (and indeed the positivity of our communities) means that these motivators get played down a lot of the time.

But anger in and of itself, especially righteous anger, can be a good thing, if you use it properly.

Which is why I'm not let out of the cage in full force very often. I tend to disrespect other people and downplay their humanity or their intellect when that happens. And that is not a healthy application of anger.

What is a healthy application is writing something to counteract or "fix" the problems that I see in fandom and in popular culture in general. That's why so many of my fics gently snub fanon: because overdone fanon irritates me. Write something that counteracts it, and suddenly I feel a lot better about everything.

And it's great fodder for inspiration, too.

So go ahead and seek to read something that will tick you off (if you need any help, I can send you some really crazy-weird Tolkien criticism articles that should do the trick). Then respond to it through your fiction. Just don't get too didactic on my butt, and don't get too pejorative. Then I'll get angry, and I may not be able to let it out through fic in time...

~Sagitta

The reason we find good writing so much more compelling than, say, good TV or a good movie, is because writing does not always have to show you things. It merely evokes, and we fill in the rest.

Even when writing does show you things, it doesn't do so in the form of visual art. It gives you just enough of a sketch so that your mind can fill in all of the blanks. And because of that writing will always be much more personal than the more visual forms of storytelling. My Shire will never fully resemble yours, even when you're reading about my Shire. And that's the way things should be. The true meaning of a story will always exist in some sort of vague bubble between the author and the reader. (Where exactly that bubble should lie is the source of all the "canon debates" that are out there.)

So keep that in mind as you write. We're not directors. We're writers. Our medium comes with its own beauties and its own pitfalls, and we should be aware of them and thus use them to their greatest effect.

I still find highly fascinating how little Tolkien described his characters. This is the extent of what we know about the Fellowship's physical appearance...

Frodo: has brown hair, and at least when he's still fresh on the quest has the rosy cheeks you'd expect from a hobbit, as well as a cleft in his chin. Taller than some and fairer than most, whatever that's supposed to mean. Bright eyes, too, which could mean anything.
Merry: Brown hair. (I think; I can't remember where on my last readthrough I found that)
Sam: Brown eyes.
Pippin. Smaller footprint than Merry's.
Gandalf: Dark eyes; eyebrows of hyperbolic doom. Looks old.
Aragorn: Dark hair, grey eyes.
Boromir: Dark hair, grey eyes, of doughtier build than Aragorn.
Legolas: Nothing
Gimli: Nothing

And yet...

and yet...

we all had clear conceptions of who these people were, before any visual adaptations ever came in. (I understand that the greater and lesser visual variety that the Jackson films introduced helped provide some authors with the fodder to do better fanfic, but we're just talking canon at the moment.) Even weirder is that most of the time that we do get descriptions of hair and eye color (which is about as far as Tolkien goes for anyone) it's just used so that you can better identify people with certain nations/ancient houses/whatnot. My point is that our concepts of Tolkien's characters are fundamentally based more on personal identity rather than physical identity.

And this allows readers to fill in the bubbles as they see fit. Think of a room that exists in one of your stories, something that's mostly if not entirely your own creation. Now, write a description of it, but leave it vague. Describe a few things in detail, so that that way the reader gets the feeling that the entire room is detailed. But leave the rest of it blank or only loosely sketched so that those remaining details are in the head of the reader.

It is a creepy feeling, because you have to trust that whatever the reader will fill in will work with the rest of the story. But it really pays off. The more you show that you trust the people reading this, the more they will be able to exercise their imagination in such a way to prove themselves worthy of that trust.

~Celeritas

This one comes straight from my source material, because there are only so many right ways that you can title something about choosing the right name "Choose the Right Name."

Names have a lot of power in Tolkien's world. Treebeard is concerned that Merry and Pippin will let out "their right names." The name of "Aragorn" must be kept secret because it has the royal element "Ar-" in it, denoting his kingship.

They're also very powerful on the level of author and reader. "Galadriel," "Nerwen," and "Artanis" all refer to the same person, but each one stresses a different aspect of the character's personality. Likewise, try to imagine Lord of the Rings with the title character still known as "Bingo."

If you are stuck on your OCs, you might want to look into what name you've chosen for that person and see how well it fits both the character and the setting.

And if you're writing canon characters who have multiple names, try to see whether each time you use a certain name it fits the situation.

Names are a very tricky business, and they deal a lot more with the gut than with the brain. For characters that only show up briefly, sometimes you can get away with poking your head on a naming site or in a dictionary and naming one. Others will require more time and energy. But spending that time to find the right name is a lot easier than trying to proceed with the wrong one.

A final word of advice: sometimes the right name does not meet the standard "right name" rules. One of my favorite OC hobbit names of all time (from Gilfanon's The Hobbits) was "Caractacus 'Cracky' Boffin!"

~Sagitta

We fanauthors are more aware than others that writing is not done in isolation. We have reviewers, support groups, people whose writing we love, people whose feedback we love, betas, readers, and friends.

So today's tip is to explore your own web of friends a little further, and explore yourself. There are some days when you're feeling incredibly lazy and need to get someone to make you write, or at least make you think about writing. There are other times when you just plain old need encouragement and hugs. And there are days when you're feeling unsure about something you just wrote and need an honest, academic opinion.

In these situations, help is one email or instant message away. Think of your friends and think of who's good at encouraging, who's good at analyzing, who's good at ranting on your behalf, and who's good at just plain old listening and letting you think your own ideas out loud.

Conversely, think of yourself and how you interact with people. What roles do you have in the community? Can you come up with some particularly vicious plotbunnies that will spark other people's minds? Can you weigh the pros and cons of a literary decision? Can you write a plethora of reviews that let people know that their work is appreciated?

Now, when you read this, please do one thing that you're good at to help someone else along the way.

And remember, when you need help, don't be afraid to ask!

~Celeritas

Let's engage in a little thought experiment.

What if Gollum, in a fit of repentant shame, had not shut Sam up when he was yelling to Frodo "Look out! The spider's back!"

Assuming that Frodo and Sam manage to make their way out of there alive, then what?

Sam gets his hands on Gollum at Mount Doom and kills him, because he hasn't had the Ring and thus cannot pity him. Then he sees Frodo, who's claimed the Ring himself, and Wow, it'd sure be great to have someone here who could maybe see invisible!Frodo and bite his finger off, thus destroying the Ring, saving the world, and saving Frodo, wouldn't it?

Suddenly, the whole "Shelob's Lair/Frodo is dead oh noes/Not really, let's go bust him out in a supreme display of Awesome" sequence makes a whole lot more sense. No, folks, Tolkien wasn't just throwing more plot points at you just for the heck of it; this sequence was necessary so that Sam's character could develop far enough to spare Gollum.

This is why I appreciate Tolkien so much on the plot level. Nothing is superfluous (not even Bombadil and the Barrow-downs, since both sequences do some very impressive character elucidation before Frodo gets incapacitated by a Morgul blade). And the easiest way to make sure that your plot is just as meticulous is to narrow the path that your characters must tread in order to reach your desired objective. Make it razor-thin, if possible.

If you need more good examples, take a look at any Shakespeare tragedy, and be on the lookout for points where if a character had done this or that differently, it would have had a happy ending (if only Romeo had monologued for five minutes longer...).

In fact, the setup works best when you have huge stakes at hand, when either outcome will be so powerful it will make you cry. Then you can have, without even trying, the overtones of Fate and Providence, guiding the tale to its end. But it can also work for smaller things, like the fate of a friendship or a romance. Making the path thin stresses that all of our actions have consequences, even the ones that we don't think matter.

There are other advantages to making the line between dyscatastrophe and eucatastrophe so thin. If your plot could cross from one to the other at any given moment, people reading it are going to be a lot more clued in. Try watching the romantic comedy Serendipity sometime. Even though we all know how it's going to end (because it's a romantic comedy) it is stressful just watching the darn thing because the characters keep on getting so ridiculously close to running into each other, but never quite do. But it's also very engaging.

If you don't have a longer work that you can try this with, try applying it to characters and their past and their personalities. Are your OCs polar opposites, or are they mostly the same except for one difference? If a couple of key conversations had gone properly, would Bilbo Baggins have married and settled down, and thus been unavailable for an expedition of burglary? Show me where it would have gone right--and then how it actually did go wrong.

Be aware of all the possibilities and AUs for your stories, even if you never write them out. Doing so will show you exactly what to do to make sure that what the story needs to happen happens.

~Sagitta

If you have ever taken any sort of class or attended any sort of seminar on fantasy theory, you know that YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE LITERARY BLACK HOLE THAT IS JOSEPH CAMPBELL.

Seriously.

Most. Overused. Scholar. Ever.

With the possible exception of Freud.

But. There are some points to what he and other archetypalists say. We expect the stories we read to go a certain way, and we expect a certain familiarity in the narratives and characters we experience. Every story out there can be boiled down to one of a distinct number of plots.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, though--although if you want to go ahead and bust some stereotypes you're more than welcome to (it's fun!). The variety in stories comes in how we combine these various elements, sketch some areas more fully than others, give people who start out as stock characters a life. But the fact of the matter is that we continually draw on a number of the universal elements available to us as storytellers.

Today's tip once more requires some small analysis, preferably in a longer work. Who in your stories is a mentor figure? Who is an underdog? Does your story cross any thresholds into a different world? Sometimes recognizing the hints of universality in our stories can help us define things a little better in our own minds. I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I realized that a tentative plot choice of mine felt right because it followed (in a very subtle fashion) a universal trope. I was also able to justify it on reasons of character development, but realizing that this is something that's done all the time gave me the confidence to figure out a way to incorporate it.

Alternately, you can go pull a middle-school book report and sketch out the way the plot is supposed to work. Where's the first complication in your story? What gets the action started? Where's the turning point? At what point is the conclusion of the story inevitable?

Structure can be a very good thing in a longer fic, because all too often stories can turn into "the one that got away." Find out whether your stories are following any universal archetypes or structures, and that can help you make sure you better adhere to--or explode--them.

~Celeritas

We like focusing so much on good writing that sometimes we forget that bad writing can teach us things, too.  Sometimes it's more of a personal preference thing than anything else, but if you haven't read something that's rubbed you the wrong way... well, you're a much more fortunate individual than I.

Looking at good writing tells us how to write well.  Looking at bad writing tells us how not to write poorly.  So, for example, if I have a male character who is trying not to show that he's attracted to a female character, at no point will I use the word "frustrated" to describe him, unless he geniunely is frustrated about something entirely different (thank you, Stephanie Meyer!).  The Dragonlance books taught me never to luxuriate in something I think is "deep."  I also learned not to overdescribe characters' physical appearances from a surfeit of fan fiction, although as I mentioned that's a bit more of a personal preference.

The trick is not to read something that's terrible, but something that's almost or mostly well done.  Those are usually the pieces that will give you more concrete ways to improve your writing, since you'd be looking at smaller issues than "spell!"  Then, be as evil as you want while you're reading it (just for now; it's a good way to get the evil out of your system).  Take notes on what you think doesn't work.  Try to figure out if there's a way that it could be made to work, or if it's too woven into the story that it can't be taken out (if it can't, then the question is, "Is the annoying thing worth the rest of the story?  If it is, then you've actually found an okay book).

If you really want a challenge, try specifically to write poorly, including the same errors that you just found.  The plan here is not to write a "troll" but rather to write something so on the line between success and failure that people can't tell if it's satire or not.

One final note: especially if you decide to look at someone whose writing is unpublished, whom you analyze should be your own private personal business, because whoever this writer is, that person was trying (we hope) to write well.  Let that person improve, or not, on his own time.  In the meantime, learn from his mistakes.

~Sagitta

P.S.  To give people something to start on, let's look at the Worst Poet of the English Language, who gave us such gems as: 

( THE TAY BRIDGE DISASTER! )

We've all probably gotten flak, at some point or another, from someone, because we write fic.  Sometimes it's along the lines of, "It's unoriginal."  Sometimes it's, "You'll never make money from it."  And sometimes it's, "It can never be seriously well-written."

Which is why today's tip (under the wire!) is "Take yourself seriously."  I don't mean, "Never write fluff," and I don't mean, "Never write something just because you think it's fun," and I certainly don't mean, "Beat yourself up because you're not deep enough."

What I mean is, "Treat yourself as if you've got something to say, and you have the means and talent at your disposal to say it effectively, in a way that you would never be able to achieve under any medium."  Even the crackiest fic can have meaning behind it.

And sometimes you may not want to write something with deep meaning.  That's all right.  But fan fiction can and often does serve a higher purpose than that.

And the best way to make sure that your writing fulfills that higher purpose is to act like it, even if you don't think it right now.  We've all probably had at least one review where someone says, "I really liked that x, y, or z reinforced your point here," and you honestly didn't consciously intend to put it there!

Realize that since your writing is an outgrowth of you, there are hundreds of moments like that in every fic.  Sometimes being aware of them is all it takes to let them blossom a little be more.

The analogue card to this from the Observation Deck is "Act Successful," and that's an understandable thing to want to work on when you're working on original stuff and trying and probably failing to ever get it published.  We fanauthors have an advantage that these people never will: we have a friendly, supportive audience who can comment on our work and encourage us even as we're still drafting.

The disadvantage that we have, though, is our tendency to think of fandom as something that is only self-serving, or, at most, serving others within our particular niche by writing stuff that our ears itch to hear.  It can do that, but more than that, it can do that and teach us something about life (I'm not talking didacticism here, just the good old-fashioned theme).

Today, I'd like you to look over one of your favorite pieces, and pretend that 1). it's actually published, and 2). you're a critic.  Not an "Oh, I liked this" reviewer, an actual critic--only you're not going to be catty and tear it to pieces.  Rather, look at it with these two questions in mind: "What is the theme of this piece?" and "How does the author craft this piece in order to convey this theme?"  Treat it like a book report, if you will, only one that's well done.

Now, write this review--pretend it's for the New York Times, and that this is going to get people who otherwise would never have even heard your stuff to read it and fall in love with it.  And if you ever need cheering up, or need to be reminded that fandom can be more than an idle hobby, or just need the plain old gumption to write, take a look at it (looking at actual reviews helps, too).

Take yourself seriously.  Pretend that what you write is very important.  Because it usually is, and we don't even realize it most of the time.

~Celeritas

(Stolen liberally from The Observation Deck's "Open a Drawer.")

Today we're going to look at character development in the context of the glorification of the mundane (it's one of my favorite topics, can't you tell?).

A simple, everyday object can be a springboard for a host of recollections.  It's often not the curios on our shelves that have the best stories to tell, but the things lurking at the bottom of handbags or run through the wash in a jeans pocket.  That's because they were used at some point, maybe half-forgotten.  They weren't kept to be seen.

So if you need to get something written today, here's something to do: reach into a random drawer, or a random purse, or go through a pocket--in real life, or in your mind.  What do you find there?  Take whatever it is, and make it into something significant.  If you picked up an object in real life, which of your characters (or your takes on canon characters) would likely have it to hand?  Or would it be hidden?  What does it mean to that person?  Or, if you don't have any concrete objects at hand, start with a character, and then proceed to rifle through all the drawers in their room.  What sort of things would you find there?  Why?

Still too vague?  Take a character, tell that person s/he's going on a week-long trip into the Wild, with only a horse (or pony, if we're talking hobbits) and two saddlebags.  Find out what they pack, and why.  This technique's been used with great effect on various members of the Company of the Ring, even by Tolkien himself (look at Sam!).  Try it on someone else.

For me, I need to write a little something explaining why I still have an "I <3 Cheerleading" button lurking at the bottom of my purse.

~Sagitta