Check Your Story!
By Ardath Rekha
Synopsis: New to writing fan fiction and hoping to get a positive response from readers? Ardath walks you through the things that you should look for, and fix, in your work before you post it.
Note: This article was originally written in late summer 2001, when the Art of Vin Diesel message board was still brand new and many new writers were asking for help with self-editing. The instructions given here were designed for new fanfiction writers with little or no proofreading experience, but who were worried about being derided by more experienced writers on the site. Over the years, as the article was picked up for use on other sites, additional fandoms were substituted to make the references a little more universal.
Category: Non-Fiction
The views expressed in these articles are solely the views of Ardath Rekha. References to specific works, actors, and writers are done in keeping with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s fair use policies. eBook design and cover art by LaraRebooted, drawn from a photo by Ann Nekr, licensed through Pexels, the Great Vibes font from 1001 Fonts, and background graphics © 1998 Noel Mollon, adapted and licensed via Teri Williams Carnright from the now-retired Fantasyland Graphics site (c. 2003). This eBook may not be sold or advertised for sale. If you are a copyright holder of any of the referenced works, and believe that part or all of this eBook exceeds fair use practices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, please contact Ardath Rekha.
Rev. 2022.10.09
Check Your Story!
We’ve all been there. It’s one in the morning and you’ve just watched Pitch Black for the twenty-seventh time, and your mind is buzzing. A “what-if” scenario with Riddick and Jack has popped into your head. Or maybe you just finished watching the season finale of Angel for the tenth time and you have this powerful idea for a story in which Illyria and Spike embark on even more outrageous adventures. You grab some paper and begin to scribble frantically, or boot up your computer and begin typing like a maniac. Hours later, the idea setting your brain on fire has been transferred to paper or disk, and you sit back feeling a sense of inordinate satisfaction. You’re done. Now it’s time to post it to your friends on the Internet!
Just a minute, though, because you’re nowhere near done.
A great deal of Internet fanfiction, for whatever reason, gets posted just like that. Right after the initial creative frenzy is over, the writer puts it up on their favorite boards, without a single editing pass or even checking their spelling. Most of this fiction is difficult – if not impossible – for others to read. This defeats your purpose – you want to share your work with others, right? So, before you put it online, here are a few things you should do first:
1. Check your spelling!
This is one of the most common omissions of new writers, despite the fact that it’s one of the easiest mistakes to correct. If you’re using a word-processing program, chances are it has a spell-checker built into it. Find it and use it. But don’t rely exclusively on it. It won’t tell you when you typed “too” but meant “to.” If you’re using technical language, it may not have a particular word in its internal dictionary. If you’re serious about writing, it’s time to get yourself a good dictionary anyway. Print out a copy of the story and go through it. Try reading it backwards – that will help you concentrate on the spelling of the words, and help prevent you from unconsciously interpreting an incorrect word as the correct one. If you’re not sure whether the word you’re using is the one you mean – or even one that really exists – look it up.
2. Check your grammar!
>Once again, your word processing program should have grammar tools that you can use. However, once again, do not rely exclusively on the program. Use it, but think about what it’s suggesting. Microsoft Word comes up with some pretty bizarre suggestions from time to time, so don’t just hit OK to everything or you’ll give yourself a huge headache. There are several useful grammar reference books out there for writers. All writers should own a dictionary, a thesaurus, and one or both of these:
This book is small and concise, and can almost be considered the Writer’s Bible. After the dictionary and thesaurus, this should be at the top of your to-buy list. And, given its size, it’ll be the cheapest of the books you buy, too. This is another excellent reference book for grammar rules. Like Elements, it features many examples of grammatical errors and the ways to correct them.Spelling and grammar errors happen to everyone. All writers misspell words. All writers make typos. There’s no shame in it, as long as you’re willing to take the time and make the effort to correct your mistakes. When you read a story with no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, don’t think “oh, that’s way beyond me.” What you’re seeing there is the result of the writer’s hard work, and that’s well within your reach.
3. Check your Tense!
A lot of new writers have trouble with tense. One sentence will be in present tense (“Riddick grabs his shiv and lunges forward.”) and the next will be in past tense. (“Jack flinched back as one of the creatures flew by.”) Sometimes, a single sentence will move from one tense to another (“Riddick laughed as Jack wipes the mud off of her face.”) This is a fairly common mistake, so don’t be ashamed if you catch yourself making it, but it’s one that you need to correct. You need to choose your tense, past or present, and stay in it. There are a lot of other rules that govern the use of tense, but we’re not going to get into them now. The books listed above will help you deal with tense issues in greater detail – use them.
4. Check your Point of View!
Do you switch perspectives with no warning? Do you go from First Person (“I”) to Third Person (“he” or “she”) and back again? This is another common mistake.
If you’re writing in First Person, you need to stay in it. Your narrative perspective needs to remain with the one character you have chosen. You see only what he or she sees; you know only what he or she knows. The only information you or your readers can have about the thoughts, emotions or motivations of other characters is what can be interpreted from their expressions and actions. And remember, the character whose perspective you’re writing from isn’t always going to interpret those expressions and actions correctly.
Second Person is, as a rule, something to avoid altogether in fiction. You’ll notice that it’s being used in this paragraph – you are the subject, and the article is written about what you are doing and seeing. However, aside from the “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” books you may have read as a child, or Fantasma’s “Five-Minute Fantasies,” it usually doesn’t work in fiction. Avoid it for now.
Writing in Third Person allows an author to be a little more flexible. Some transition between different characters’ POVs is acceptable, but you’re still playing with fire. Any time your POV switches without warning, it will jar your reader out of the narrative. Stay with a single character throughout your chapter. If you switch POVs, do so at a chapter, scene or section break. A very few experienced authors can successfully switch between POVs in a single scene – during, for example, heated dialogue – but this takes practice and extreme care. Many professional writers who do it are not successful, and it weakens their stories. I’m sorry to say that the novelization of Pitch Black itself is a prime example of this: some of the point-of-view transitions were difficult for readers to follow. When your readers have to stop and think about what they’re reading, they step outside of the story, and that’s the point when you as a writer can lose them. The best rule for now is to pick a character and stay with him or her for the duration.
5. Check your dialogue!
Do your conversations run together? An important rule of thumb is this: any time a new person speaks, a new paragraph starts. If you have more than one person speaking in a single paragraph, you’re just going to confuse your readers.
Remember to indicate who’s speaking. If you have just two speakers, you don’t have to tag every paragraph with their names, but do it often enough to make sure that the readers – and you – are keeping track of who is saying what.
Do your characters talk like real people? This is another place where a lot of new writers can get in trouble. Listen to the words and cadence of your character, if it’s a canon character from a movie. Riddick, for instance, has several “urban” linguistic patterns. I’ve read many fics that had him using a much more formal, “proper” speaking style, and it always jarred me out of the narrative. The more your character’s speech patterns resemble the original portrayal, the easier it will be for people to believe in the character in your story. Also, finding the characters’ natural voices will often help you understand them well enough to portray them convincingly in your narrative.
6. Check it again!
Set your story aside for a day or so and come back to it with a fresh eye. Sometimes grammar errors and spelling mistakes you didn’t notice before will become glaring when you reread your tale. Look for things you didn’t notice before – overuse of a word, for instance (when I edited a recent chapter of my fic, I found myself gasping “good grief, I used the word ‘suddenly’ more than a dozen times!”). If it’s part of a multi-part work, go back over your previous chapters and make sure what you’ve written in your latest chapter doesn’t contradict anything you wrote before. Make sure you’re not reusing a phrase or concept that you’re particularly fond of – many writers have done that by accident. One published author inadvertently reused about six or seven pages of storyline in a sequel to the book those pages first appeared in! That can be a very large embarrassment.
7. Read your story aloud!
A lot of times, just hearing the words spoken will show you where your flaws are. You can hear the hitches in your dialogue, and can feel it when a sentence is too long-winded.
8. Check the board requirements and follow them!
The board you’re posting to may have rules about ratings and content. Some boards (The UVDFC, for example) have separate forums for general fiction and sexually explicit material. Make sure you’re posting in the right place.
Make sure you’re not breaking any of the content guidelines (on the Rhiana Griffith Fan Club site, for example, fiction featuring Rhiana Griffith as herself is strictly forbidden). If you’ve never posted to a particular board before, do yourself a favor and read some of the posts already there, especially ones by veteran board regulars. That will give you a feeling for the kind of fiction they like. If your story’s too different, you might want to wait on posting it until they’ve become acquainted with you through other pieces that are more to their tastes. They’ll be more receptive to something different at that point.
Check the ratings structure, figure out what rating is most appropriate for your work (if you’re not sure, err on the side of caution and use the harder rating) and post the rating in your title. Post it again at the beginning of your piece, along with an explanation of what sort of content qualifies it for that rating (examples: R for violence and language, or NC-17 for extremely explicit sex) so that readers can avoid content they’d prefer not to be exposed to.
9. Be ready for an honest reaction.
Most of the boards out there tend to be noncommittal in their responses. You may hear a lot of “I like it, write more” with no specifics about what a reader likes or dislikes. You may hear nothing at all at first. Or you may get honest responses along the lines of “I really don’t like what you had Riddick doing in chapter 2” or “I don’t think Dom would say that.” Be prepared to take it on the chin, and give serious consideration to what people tell you. You can’t grow as a writer if nobody tells you where your weaknesses are.
If you don’t hear anything at first, don’t assume that means no-one’s reading or that everybody hates it. I would guess that as many as 90% of the Internet readers never say a word about what they’re reading to any of the authors. If you continue your story, and work hard at it, you will begin to get a response. Hard work shows, and the knowledge that you’ve been working hard to entertain your readers will make them more responsive, and more willing to give you genuine feedback on your work.
If you’re not getting enough critiquing and want some serious help, try looking for a beta reader. This is someone who can approach your story with a fresh and critical editing eye and help you improve it. Go here to learn more about what a beta reader is, what one does, and how you can find one.
But once again, don’t just throw your first draft out onto the net and expect the praise to roll in. Check your story, and your readers will thank you.
(And a big Thank You to my beta reader, Tkilmer, for her support and advice.)
August 7, 2001