What to Do If Your Fic Has a Head Wound

Today, we're going to talk about what to do when your fic has a head wound. Like pretty much everything on earth with a concussion, your fic will stumble aimlessly around, grabbing at kitchen countertops, and chair backs, and doorknobs, and completely implausible complications - really, it'll hold on to anything in order to stay upright, because it lacks the great good sense to just pass out.

It's time for some triage. First, sit down with your story. Look it in the eye. Explain to it that in the real world, adults ask each other stuff - stuff like "Hey, Bella, why were you hugging Jake in the middle of the restaurant when I walked in to join you for our date?" instead of automatically assuming that Bella and Jake are having an affair. In the real world, Edward would be given an opportunity to explain to Bella that Lauren was kissing him on the cheek to thank him for listening to her ramble on about how awful her mother-in-law Cruella Newton is. Examine the characters in your fic. Check to make sure that they're breathing and have a pulse, and that they can count backwards from the number twenty to the number one.

There's really only one surefire cure for a fic with a head wound: you need to hook it up to an IV full of ACTUAL PLOT. Cleanse the area with reasonable behavior. Bind the injury with strong and rational characterizations. Encourage growth and progression on a regular basis. Pump the fic full of caffeine and keep it moving.

If this sounds too tiresome for you, take it behind the woodshed and Old Yeller it, then find yourself a new fic. I think euthanizing a badly-plotted fic is truly a mercy killing. In a perfect world, stories begin with a complication and with characters who need to learn something about themselves. If all your characters are learning is how to stubbornly misunderstand one another, get Kevorkian with them, and find yourself some characters with real issues to resolve.

"But, Nurse Nina," you whine. "I don't want them to be all damaged and demented and awful. I don't want to write icky drama. I want them to fall in love and go on awesome dates and have some sex and wear cool clothes and sing cool songs. Why is that wrong?" It's not wrong at all. You can have that, and none of your characters needs to spend any time at all with a crisis intervention counselor, or fill out a police report, or cover up strangulation marks with the kickass concealer that Alice always seems to have handy. But in order to have that and make it readable, you need to figure out some kind of plausible dramatic tension between and among your characters.

There is no drama as compelling as two people falling in love with one another. If the people in question are older than about fourteen, they probably have a bit of baggage. They've been hurt before, or they're not sure how to relax around someone they really like, or they're really focused on other things in their life, or they don't want to be trapped in an "ever after", or whatever. Bella wants to be a partner in her law firm by the time she's thirty, or she's working two jobs to put herself through school, or she doesn't want to leave her parents alone because she knows her mother will miss her. Edward's a doctor who's not sure he's in the right profession, or he's sick of the status quo and wants to buy a motorcycle and Che Guevara his way down Route 66, or he's socially awkward and can only express himself through the letters he writes. The point is, these characters have had lives and made decisions which shaped them before they ever showed up in your story. Those decisions, and the lives they led, will impact what happens when your main protagonists meet. The better the backstory you give your characters, the more real they become on the page. How will you know if your characters are exhibiting out-of-character behavior if you haven't taken the time to give them actual character?

Lucky you - because you're writing fan fiction, you already have characterizations from which to draw. The original source material provides these for you. Pick a character point from the series and expand on it. Blow it up. Stretch it out, and put your own spin on it.

Still with me? Good. It's also important to remember that all story arcs are not created equal. If your characters are reasonably healthy and well-adjusted, they won't have much to learn before they reach the right conclusions in their lives, and this means that your story shouldn't be a million words long. Minor tension equals shorter stories. If shy high school junior Bella has a crush on popular quarterback senior Edward, that shouldn't take 300,000 words to resolve. Regardless, if there isn't a lesson learned or meaningful progression toward a resolution in almost every chapter, what you've got is a fic with a head wound.

Listen, this is fan fic. You should have some fun with it. But if you're spending the majority of your story just wanking around with your characters and rewriting every bit of action from seven different POVs, the reader starts to feel as though they're watching fish swim endless laps in a small fishbowl. Fish are nice, but after a while, you long for a pet that will do something unexpected -- like your average cat, which spontaneously decides that it needs to be in another room ten minutes ago, and scrambles around on your hardwood floor before it dashes away as though the room it occupied a second ago is now engulfed in flames.

Plot tightly. Write with an eye toward advancing the story. Build real, dimensional people with credible obstacles. KNOW THOSE PEOPLE WELL, because you are their only source of oxygen. And don't fall so far in love with the sound of your own voice that you forget you've got a story to tell.