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rynlingI’m going to be salty about fanfic for a second. This is an extended meditation on what I try to do when I write, but also it’s just me being a petty little hater about a common style of fanfic writing that I find annoying, so feel free to scroll on by.
I should begin by saying that it doesn’t bother me that people write and post whatever they like. In this house we support writers of all interests and talents, as well as writers with all levels of skill and experience.
What bothers me is that bare-bone writing often does huge numbers, and this bothers me because I want big numbers too. Simple as that.
Anyway, the sort of super-popular fanfic writing that drives me up the wall is very literal and simple and leaves nothing to the reader’s interpretation.
To give an example, instead of saying…
Zelda’s chambers were in the highest chamber of the westernmost tower. Even for the women employed to ensure that the princess could present herself according to her station, it was an onerous task to visit her in her rooms, removed as they were from the castle’s kitchens and laundries. Zelda loved the view over the mountains and treasured such moments of peace as she could find, but she sometimes wondered why her uncle had chosen to move her so far away from the bustling center of the castle.
…a fic will just flat-out say:
Zelda’s uncle does not like her because he fears the threat she represents to his political power, so he makes her feel isolated by putting her room in a tower no one visits.
In other words, instead of an actual story, what this type of writing delivers is a basic chain of “this happened, and then this happened, and this is why it happened, and this is how the character feels about it.” Which is essentially what a story is, of course, but you can’t let it walk around naked like that.
Because (a) I love video games, and (b) I’m usually writing fanfic about video games, what I try to do when I write is recreate the experience of moving through an atmospheric space. You might call this style of writing “cinematic,” but I’m aiming less for “omniscient camera” and more for “character-centered subjectivity.” In other words, I want to give the reader the sense of following the viewpoint character through an interactive environment.
To give an example, I’m currently writing a Final Fantasy XII story about Ashe, Penelo, and Fran exploring the ruined Verdpale Palace in the Necrohol of Nabudis, a late-game area that essentially got hit by a magical atomic bomb.
This is my outline for the beginning of a scene:
Ashe continues through the ruined palace. It’s dark and creepy. The architecture is tilted at weird angles, and parts are half-submerged in shallow water. Ashe sees grand furniture and all sorts of treasures, like artworks and armor and such, but it’s all nasty and gross from water damage. Fran is like, “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
This is the actual opening to the scene as I wrote it:
The corridor sloped downward, its cracked marble buckling into a treacherous descent. Support pillars leaned at impossible angles from bases submerged in the streams and rivulets of the encroaching lake. Dark water lapped at Ashe’s greaves as she adjusted her footing.
What had once been a grand receiving hall opened before them like a wound that had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together without thought or care. Sections of the ceiling had collapsed, allowing gray light to filter through the fog. Furniture lay scattered and half-drowned. A long banquet table rested at a crooked angle, one end sunk beneath a shallow pool. Its surface had warped and split, the lacquer peeling away in strips. The velvet upholstery of the chairs overturned at its side had swollen and blackened with rot.
Ashe’s gaze fell on a suit of ceremonial armor that stood slumped against a wall. Above its shoulders, a gilded frame clung weakly to a painting that had dissolved into streaks of color bleeding down the wall. Jeweled cups and bowls dulled with grime sat among the debris, their brilliance smothered by filth.
“Don’t touch anything,” Fran murmured, her voice low but firm. “The Mist clings to more than stone.”
So first of all, clearly this scene has my sticky fingerprints all over it. I really like writing about ruins, especially waterlogged ruins. Let’s make everything a sewer level, hooray!
And maybe that’s not your thing. Which is totally normal and healthy. But still, I think the scene as I wrote it is more enjoyable to read than a basic:
They walk down the hall into a big room. It used to be nice, but now it’s dirty. There’s water on the floor. Ashe and Penelo see some treasure, but Frans tells them not to touch it. She says it might be dangerous.
I mean sure, the basic outline version gets you from Point A to Point B, but where’s the fun? Where are the themes? Where’s the environmental storytelling? What do you learn about Ashe through what she chooses to focus on, and what does Fran’s comment say about her? What’s the point of spending time with these characters if you don’t actually spend time with them? Where’s the dramatic tension? Where’s the tone and texture, and the mystery and sense of adventure?
So I guess my frustration is: why is that sort of bloodless, limp-dick style of writing so popular?
But also: what can I borrow from this style without betraying my sense of integrity as a craftsman?
I should begin by saying that it doesn’t bother me that people write and post whatever they like. In this house we support writers of all interests and talents, as well as writers with all levels of skill and experience.
What bothers me is that bare-bone writing often does huge numbers, and this bothers me because I want big numbers too. Simple as that.
Anyway, the sort of super-popular fanfic writing that drives me up the wall is very literal and simple and leaves nothing to the reader’s interpretation.
To give an example, instead of saying…
Zelda’s chambers were in the highest chamber of the westernmost tower. Even for the women employed to ensure that the princess could present herself according to her station, it was an onerous task to visit her in her rooms, removed as they were from the castle’s kitchens and laundries. Zelda loved the view over the mountains and treasured such moments of peace as she could find, but she sometimes wondered why her uncle had chosen to move her so far away from the bustling center of the castle.
…a fic will just flat-out say:
Zelda’s uncle does not like her because he fears the threat she represents to his political power, so he makes her feel isolated by putting her room in a tower no one visits.
In other words, instead of an actual story, what this type of writing delivers is a basic chain of “this happened, and then this happened, and this is why it happened, and this is how the character feels about it.” Which is essentially what a story is, of course, but you can’t let it walk around naked like that.
Because (a) I love video games, and (b) I’m usually writing fanfic about video games, what I try to do when I write is recreate the experience of moving through an atmospheric space. You might call this style of writing “cinematic,” but I’m aiming less for “omniscient camera” and more for “character-centered subjectivity.” In other words, I want to give the reader the sense of following the viewpoint character through an interactive environment.
To give an example, I’m currently writing a Final Fantasy XII story about Ashe, Penelo, and Fran exploring the ruined Verdpale Palace in the Necrohol of Nabudis, a late-game area that essentially got hit by a magical atomic bomb.
This is my outline for the beginning of a scene:
Ashe continues through the ruined palace. It’s dark and creepy. The architecture is tilted at weird angles, and parts are half-submerged in shallow water. Ashe sees grand furniture and all sorts of treasures, like artworks and armor and such, but it’s all nasty and gross from water damage. Fran is like, “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
This is the actual opening to the scene as I wrote it:
The corridor sloped downward, its cracked marble buckling into a treacherous descent. Support pillars leaned at impossible angles from bases submerged in the streams and rivulets of the encroaching lake. Dark water lapped at Ashe’s greaves as she adjusted her footing.
What had once been a grand receiving hall opened before them like a wound that had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together without thought or care. Sections of the ceiling had collapsed, allowing gray light to filter through the fog. Furniture lay scattered and half-drowned. A long banquet table rested at a crooked angle, one end sunk beneath a shallow pool. Its surface had warped and split, the lacquer peeling away in strips. The velvet upholstery of the chairs overturned at its side had swollen and blackened with rot.
Ashe’s gaze fell on a suit of ceremonial armor that stood slumped against a wall. Above its shoulders, a gilded frame clung weakly to a painting that had dissolved into streaks of color bleeding down the wall. Jeweled cups and bowls dulled with grime sat among the debris, their brilliance smothered by filth.
“Don’t touch anything,” Fran murmured, her voice low but firm. “The Mist clings to more than stone.”
So first of all, clearly this scene has my sticky fingerprints all over it. I really like writing about ruins, especially waterlogged ruins. Let’s make everything a sewer level, hooray!
And maybe that’s not your thing. Which is totally normal and healthy. But still, I think the scene as I wrote it is more enjoyable to read than a basic:
They walk down the hall into a big room. It used to be nice, but now it’s dirty. There’s water on the floor. Ashe and Penelo see some treasure, but Frans tells them not to touch it. She says it might be dangerous.
I mean sure, the basic outline version gets you from Point A to Point B, but where’s the fun? Where are the themes? Where’s the environmental storytelling? What do you learn about Ashe through what she chooses to focus on, and what does Fran’s comment say about her? What’s the point of spending time with these characters if you don’t actually spend time with them? Where’s the dramatic tension? Where’s the tone and texture, and the mystery and sense of adventure?
So I guess my frustration is: why is that sort of bloodless, limp-dick style of writing so popular?
But also: what can I borrow from this style without betraying my sense of integrity as a craftsman?
no subject
Date: 2026-03-22 03:26 pm (UTC)2. I was thinking, "thank goodness I haven't seen this style you're talking about," and then I remembered, I have. I like playing around with fanfic forms that have strict word count or sentence count limits: your drabbles, your three-sentence ficlets, etc. Sometimes I participate in events where a whole bunch of people get together and make these miniature fics, and it's fun! But I think the strength of these forms is getting to zero in on some really specific image or experience or vibe. They're well suited to very small stories like "character (who is not doing well since the upsetting event happened) congratulates themself on how well they're doing since the upsetting event happened" or "what if there was a spooky house?"
But there are people who approach it differently. I dunno if it's a belief that stories need to be crammed with events, concern over running out of space, or fear of leaving anything ambiguous, but in these events you also tend to run into stories that hit a very rote kinda pattern of... "A thing happened. A character felt a way. This had some kind of meaning for the future." Or just 100 words of short declarative sentences in which some new external thing happens every sentence. I don't care for it! I can only imagine how numbing it would be to deal with long-form fiction written in that way, when space isn't even at a premium.