The Ten Commandments of Fanfiction, by God

transcribed by his loyal prophet, Chris Davies

I. Thou shalt not take these commandments or any others too seriously.

The first real rule of writing fanfiction is that there are no rules of writing fanfiction. Nobody can say "objectively speaking, this isn't good" -- they can say, "this isn't as good as something else", or "this isn't as good as the original was" or even "I don't like this". But none of that means anything, ultimately, because writers don't write things in order to please others -- they write to please themselves.

So ignore advice that says "No story about [insert plot element here] can possibly be any good!" Maybe no story about that has ever been any good, but that doesn't mean that you, with a fresh outlook on the subject, can't give it a new and better spin.

II. Thou shalt receive commentary and criticism in proportionate amounts to that which thou hast given.

This is basic economics. If you want people to say good things about your work, you should try to offer positive advice about theirs. This in turn will give you a chance to read up on the work of your colleagues.

At the same time, don't *beg*. Letters which read "Wow, what a great story! Could you take a look at mine?" will piss more people off than they'll draw to look at your tales.

III. Thou shalt remember the English language and keep it holy.

Things like spelling, style and proper pronunciation *matter*. One or two little, easily overlooked mistakes won't bother anyone, but swaths of them will make people sigh and move on. Know the difference between "there", "their" and "they're". PLEASE.
(I realize that English may not be the first language of a lot of the writers out there, and I apologize to them. They aren't the ones I'm attacking with this; they have a good reason.)

IV. Thou shalt go easy on the Nihongo.

It is tempting to use Japanese terms and words in stories which were originally created by Japanese people, and which (for the most part) take place in Japan. But the thing about including any kind of foreign vocabulary is this: unless you *know*, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what you're doing, you can end up with egg on your face because you used the wrong term.

Want an example? There's a long-running (interminably long, in my opinion) story that started out having Usagi continually refer to Chibi-Usa as "daughter", for reasons which I will grant made sense in its context. But the author messed up -- instead of using "musume", which means "daughter" (or "girl", really), he uses "mesume". He continues to do so, even after the mistake has been repeatedly pointed out, because he's too damn stubborn to go back and fix early mistakes. All of this could have been avoided if he'd just been careful enough to look up the proper spelling.

So go ahead -- use Japanese words and honorifics. But be careful. And there's no point in writing something that someone will have to buy a Japanese-English dictionary in order to understand!

V. Thou shalt post thy work into a proper forum.

What's a proper forum? (No, it's not one that corresponds to Aristotle's architectural unities. That's not funny.) A proper forum is one that a large number of readers can access, and which can archive your work for an indefinite period. That includes the newsgroups rec.arts.anime.creative and alt.fan.sailor-moon, as well as the webpage "A Sailor Moon Romance" and the Fan Fiction Mailing List.

My definition of proper *specifically* doesn't include any other webpages. In six years on the net, I've seen too many of them come and go to regard them as "indefinite" for archival purposes.

Occasionally, I encounter a yahoo objecting to posting his or her work to rec.arts.anime.creative on the grounds that the group is "moderated", and thus will reject the work on the grounds that it isn't up to someone else's standards. This is bologna. The r.a.a.c. moderating team only exists to keep inappropriate postings -- spam, in other words -- off the group. They *will* *not* reject any anime-based or anime-inspired story or artwork submitted.

Learn this stuff. As an extension of the above, read and learn the FAQs of all of the aforementioned "proper" sites. Having guidelines for their use is as much a part of their status as their longevity.

VI. Thou shalt not kill. Much.

It is a truism that "dying is easy; comedy is hard". This is true. What is also true is that it is far, far too easy to turn an important event -- the death of a character -- into a melodramatic re-enactment of the final scenes of Les Miserables, with final monologues and vital revelations. In the real world, death isn't nearly that clean. Unless there is a very good reason that the character should die -- such as he/she's the villain and it's the final act -- avoid death.

In particular, don't, for the love of God, kill off established and canonical characters just to show how tough your own characters are. This won't impress anybody. Trust me.

VII. Thou shalt beware of pop cultural references.

Quick poll: Who knows what the number 1 band in Japan is at the moment? Me neither. Actually, I don't know what the number 1 band in North America is, either. This illustrates a point -- you should never be too sure that your readers will catch the references you make. If you mention a song, a movie or a TV show, some part of your audience might well wonder what the hell you're talking about.

That needn't stop you -- as the crew of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 commented about their pop references, "We don't worry `Will anybody get this?' We tell ourselves, `The right people will get this'." I've slipped a reference to a certain song by Leonard Cohen into two stories now, and no one has ever commented on it ... but I know that someone out there recognized it. Now, if you don't know who Leonard Cohen is, that's your problem.

VIII. Thy characters shall be neither too stupid to breathe independently, nor omniscient.

Think your plots through. If they require the characters to act or react in stupid ways -- *without* giving the characters a reasonable explanation for their actions -- you should think of something else.

IX. Before thou divergest from canon, thou shalt know what that canon is.

Don't write about the Sailor Star Lights if you've never seen anything beyond the eighty-odd episodes of Sailor Moon that DiC dubbed! Don't write about characters that only appeared in the manga if you've never read it!

Although web-based information about Sailor Moon is not all that hard to find, that data is of necessity filtered through the biases of the people who created the pages. And there are still people out there who buy the whole "Prince Uranus" story, if you know what I mean. The old saw "Write what you know" applies just as much to fanfiction as it does to regular fiction.

X. Thou shalt not plagiarize more than once, get me?

Go ahead. Steal the characters that someone else came up with. Go ahead. Rip off someone else's plot. Go ahead. Take whole lines out of another author's fiction, change a few names, and post it as your own work. Go ahead. Do all of that, and then claim that the author you plagiarized stole from *you* first.

Go ahead. Make my day.

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The AFWC v. 2.0 © 1998 & 1999 Laura Christian and Sue Mei
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