Worldbuilding: Meeting Characters vs. Meeting Worlds Part 2

Generally speaking, your readers will have fewer preconceptions about your characters than they will about your world. When it comes to a world, a reader will assume it’s like the Earth they know, unless it’s explicitly described otherwise.

Fanfic Writing: Some Common Specimens, Part 2

Worldbuilding and action fics have some less-obvious labels. The Blanket Scenario, for one.

Fanfic Writing: Some Common Specimens, Part 1

If you’re just getting into fanfic, especially if you’ve just stumbled into a big site like Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own, you may be overwhelmed by the sheer variety out there. It’s like walking into Disney’s Fantasia. Sure, you recognize general categories from regular fiction, like romance and action and SF, but what are all these other tags?

Fanfic Writing: Up to Eleven

Much of fanfic becomes clearer when you’re familiar with the trope, Up To Eleven. I.e., taking one thing and amping it up beyond the impossible. In fanfic, this is often specific character traits.

Edward Elric of Full Metal Alchemist being sensitive about his height

Writing Crossovers: Cowboys & Samurai

I’m far from the first to point out the mutual attraction Americans and Japanese have for stories of the Old West and wandering ronin. To the point that stories have been used for inspiration back and forth; Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven being one of the best-known pairs of examples. But there are also stories of cowboys and samurai.

Fanfic Writing: For Want of a Nail

One interesting subcategory of fanfic is that of the For Want of a Nail story basis. Basically, keep all the canon background and characterization except for one small detail.

Random Weirdness: Xianxia Zpoc

So what do cultivators do in the zombie apocalypse?

Myth Humor: Gilgamesh

So there I was, innocently minding my own business after Red’s Trope Talk on Immortals and a Magi-Fate: Grand Order AMV (with Alibaba and Gilgamesh). And my brain decides to reprise part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Worldbuilding: Braided Threads

Characters, plot, world. All three are essential to build a story. A lot of us as writers have weak points in at least one of these,

Worldbuilding: Crazy Prepared

Luck is no substitute for a good plan.

I have a hard time writing, or sympathizing with, characters who blithely trust in the universe to take care of them