When it comes to the art of writing there are some who find the allure of authorship to be appealing: to craft a world and characters to tell a story for those living in the world around you. As an author myself it is a craft that I take pride and joy in. It's a hallowed act that gives me happiness and fulfillment in both in following through on the creative process and also see the impact it has on people. And while there are a great many impactful anime out there, one of the most impactful anime in my mind is Strike Witches: no other anime has had me feel so invested, so passionate, or even I dare say obsessed with it as Strike Witches has. However, there are both new and inexperienced authors who have approached me and asked how they could best craft a good fanfic story featuring Strike Witches.

And as far as fanfics for a series go, Strike Witches fanfiction is a series that has many authors I have seen and have been approached by who struggle or are unsure of how to best write of a narrative involving this unique, original and amazing series. To be quite frank, quite a number of Strike Witches fics fall flat over time or are complete failures at launch. With that in mind I have decided to craft this guide in how fanfiction writers can best craft a Strike Witches fanfic. Having written stories for over seven years, I humbly offer my knowledge to my peers so they too can learn the tools and rules and develop the skills and qualities to craft a good Strike Witches Fic.

Chapter 1: Research

Before an author does anything; before they bring up their word document and start typing errantly about whatever series they enjoy, they must first acquaint themselves with some of the important, basic rules of writing. The first rule that any writer worth his salt must know is Research: a good writer must always research the subject and material they are going to write about. Any story to be written must be properly researched so as events and scenarios depicted are accurate and realistic to the subject and genre being written in, and that is quadrupley true for war stories.

War stories feature the age old tail of conflict of arms: standing armies trading blows on the battlefield. It is a story filled with drama, action, suspense, nightmares, heartache, terror, horror, courage, honor, duty, barbarity, and often questions the morality of warriors in battle and even the act of warfare itself. It's a subject that is demanding of respect due to the scale, scope and subject matter. For an author writing a war story it is required that they research everything regarding military life and warfare. Everything from military history, strategy, tactics, military law, military culture, weapons of war, wars impact on the psychology of soldiers; everything. All things regarding military life and warfare must be researched. Readers of military stories have very critical eyes for detail and look for researched stories that are able to maintain a sense of immersion.

You must show that you as a writer know what you are talking about in your story otherwise you will find that your target audience will find glaring errors that will make things difficult for the readers to stay invested in the story. You can't have surface fired anti-tank rockets easily taking down aircraft, you cant have a A-10 Thunderbolt dog fighting with an F15, nor can you have an early twenty-something year old admiral leading an entire carrier fleet after spending two years in the navy. Stuff like this is egregiously unrealistic, breaks any sense of immersion for the readers and shows that the writer has done no research into the stories subject, and can also be construed as they didn't care enough about either the subject nor the story to do said research.

Strike Witches is ultimately at its core a war story. And seeing as it's a war story that is set during the timeframe of the Second World War, all matters regarding WW2 are to be researched, from the formation of troops, tanks, ships and aircraft, the weapons fielded and their abilities, Second World war tactics and strategy, slang and vernacular used during the time period, the trends of the time and everything regarding life during the late 1930's to the entirety of the 1940's.

But research for a Strike Witches story doesn't stop there...

You must of course also research the Cannon material of the series that you intend to write about itself. If you want to write a true Strike Witches fic: you must research every facet of strike witches source material. And not simply what we see of the Anime or movie either: there are doujinshi, light novels, expanded materials and other such resources that come directly from the creator and author Humikane Shimada or material that has been endorsed as cannon by Humikane Shimada himself: such cases of the latter include examples of Tiger in the Desert, Witch in Africa, Witches of the Sphinx, One Wing Witches, Witch of Capuzzo, Witches of Andorra and other such stories.

While each of these will be addressed in future chapters in greater detail, other important things to research are witches, striker units, magic, Neuroi, the Strike Witches World, the culture of the world and what the nature of Human on Neuroi warfare entails and is like. Again, the best thing that you as a writer can do is Research EVERYTHING. It may take time researching everything required to write a Strike Witches Fic, but it is to be seen as an investment. Investing the time and effort to research the source material and historical references will greatly enhance and improve your stories by leaps and bounds.

I go out of my way to research and cross reference information regarding warfare and Strike Witches from multiple sources in order to craft an entertaining and realistic experience... or at least as realistic as Magical girls with magi-tech on their legs and no pants carrying big guns to fight laser shooting, regenerating machine aliens during the 1940's can be. If I didn't take time to research everything required for the subjects that I write my stories would not nearly be as good. As a writer it is my responsibility to research what I am going to write, as is the responsibility of any writer really.

And for a war story the responsibility is the greatest: although I write about factious characters in a war setting; real people and real soldiers have died in real wars, and I feel like I owe it to them that when I write about a war story that I treat and handle the subject with humility and respect. To not do the research of military life and of warfare shows apathy for the lives of those who had to live though, participate in or experience in general; warfare and battles in combat zones, as well as being disrespectful of those who lost their lives during times of war.

And on top of that, I also has a responsibility as a Fan of Strike Witches that I research the series at length and in depth. I love and respect the series so much that I want to ensure that I don't end up hurting, derailing, defiling and disrespecting the series, characters and world that I so love with a passion. Thusly, I spend a great deal of time researching everything before write If there is something I don't know of: I research it. If do know something, I look back at references to refresh and confirm that my information is correct and up to date, maybe even expand upon what I already know.

As authors we must research, research, always research; to ensure that everything is grounded in accurate fact and realistically depicted. If we don't we have to work with a weak starting story that will grow brittle and crack, if not outright break overtime. The Paradox Timeline is one such example of what happens when someone doesn't do research: American, British, French Japanese and Russian ships all amassed to participate in a training exercise even despite this being extremely unlikely if not impossible for reasons of logistics and global, geo-political issues, Air force aircraft launched off of Navy Carriers when it should be Navel aviation aircraft launching from said craft, a single supply ship supposedly supplying munitions for several dozen ships, originating from various nations and all with differing types of munitions and fuel types, not to mention use of clear costly Hollywood tactics. The fact that 50,000 men and witches are KIA, Armored loss at around 10,000, and half of the air force wings destroyed... and it's declared a crushing victory when in actually would be a resounding, catastrophic defeat that would be almost impossible to recover from. In reality these examples show a lack of attention to detail of events, logistics, military structure, strategy, ect. Also the fact the protagonist's history towards his first love interest has quite a few issues involving military laws regarding relationships in the military but also the fact that the woman he loved was tortured, raped, machine-gunned to death and her corpse left to rot in his cell for months and somehow he shows little to no emotion or crippling psychological damage as a result is also unrealistic, showing a lack of research in both military protocol and the psychology of soldiers and warfare and on the subject of PTSD.

Understand when I site this story and the examples therein it is not to "flame" or "bash on" but simply to educate and cite as an example to avoid emulating. Because the authors research in this story is questionable if not outright non-existent, it shows how little care and thought was put into the story, which I hope gets better for both said author and my peers in the Strike Witches Fanfics. There are other examples that suffer from lack of research but The Paradox Timeline is a rather well known example of such a hang up.

Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that for any story a writer intends to craft: the first and most important thing to do is to conduct as much research and homework as possible. In this day and age of information and the convenience of technology has made it easier for us to educate ourselves in all manner of subjects, so there is no excuse at all for any writer to not conduct any researching sessions for their stories.

Lack of research hurts and can evil kill stories. To strengthen and enhance stories AND help build strong foundations: research the subject matter, the genre and the source material. I can assure you that anytime spent researching will not be time wasted. See research sessions as an investment that will provide great returns... with interest. and in war story's; researching the subject and genre is pretty much required, if not mandatory. Because in a subject as serous and much-fasciated as war, it must be carefully studied. And for a Strike Witches fic this still holds true: the Strike Witches wiki is one great place to find the information you need to better conduct research into the Strike Witches Characters, world and the series in general.

Take heed of this passage for Sun Tzu's the Art of War as a bit of sound advice on the topic of Research: "If you know the enemy and know thyself: you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know thyself, but not the enemy; for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy of thyself: you will succumb in every battle."

So take heed my fellow writers: Always do Research. It will help you and your stories in the long run, it will make your stories more engaging and believable and your readers will notice and appreciate the time, care and effort you put into the large and small details. You have access to libraries, books, television and the internet as reservoirs of comprehensive compendiums of knowledge. They will be indispensable tools in your arsenal as a writer. And if you can get information from first hand sources then that's even better. A writer has an obligation to know that he/she is writing about, so be sure to take that responsibility to stay well informed and educated.

However, as a digression, it's important to also remember to be sure that any research doesn't end up overshadowing your story writing. It's all well and good, encouraged and applauded to research for the story you intend to write (accuracy is important in your work after all), but it's also important that you also remember to write to begin with. It's advised that you start with a basic foundation of research information to get started and while you write and as you start to get into particular details relevant to your story that you supplement your foundation of knowledge with a little extra information here and their so your able to best represent what you intend to display in your work. And remember to make sure you research what you know you need when you need it and that what you show serves a narrative objective outside of showing off your knowledge.

Spending endless, endless hours doing far more research than you do writing will be overwhelming and overloading, will burn you out and take up very large amounts of time, and it will be time your investing that once spent you will not get back. It's important to clarify that I'm not saying you shouldn't do research much or at all, but i am saying be sure your researching what will be of key importance for your story or at least some relevance to the story you intend to write and that you pace yourself carefully.

Doing these things to help keep you as a writer and bring out your story will require feeling out a good balance between both the research and writing but finding that perfect balance will be vital to your repertoire as a writer and been a potent tool in your writing arsenal.

Do Research for your story: it's the best favor you can do for your audience, your story, your characters, your favorite series and more importantly: for yourself. And don't forget to apply that knowledge and write your story while doing so. Balance is key.

And so ends the first chapter of the guide. This will be a bit of a project, so I'll be taking a partial hiatus on some of my writing projects to work on this guide since I'm often approached by people asking for help.

Their will be Twenty chapters total that will go into detail of specific subjects. I have provided a chapter list below so everyone knows how many chapters this will be and what topics will be covered in the guide. I hope this helps everyone. Thanks so much for the support and as always; stay frosty.

Chapter List (Updated):

Chapter 1: Research

Chapter 2: Rules of Good Writing

Chapter 3: Writer Mindset

Chapter 4: The Witches

Chapter 5: Magic, Magical Science, and Physics

Chapter 6: Striker Technology

Chapter 7: The Neuroi

Chapter 8: The World Part 1: History

Chapter 9: The World Part 2: Geography

Chapter 10: The World Part 3: Culture , Politics and Society

Bonus Chapter 1: Familiars, Spirits and Creatures of Myth, Folklore and Legend.

Chapter 11: Witch/Conventional Forces Part 1: 1940's Era; The Second Neruoi War.

Chapter 12: Witch/Conventional Forces Part 2: Modern Era; Cold Winter: 1947, War of The Empty Desert Region 1950-1953, Vanran war 1955-1975, The Gulf Neuroi War and beyond.

Bonus Chapter 2: Witch/Conventional Forces: The First Neruoi War, 1914-1917.

Bonus Chapter 3: The Ancient History of the Strike Witches World

Chapter 13: Crafting Original Characters (OC's) Part 1: OC Witches, Soldiers and Civilians

Chapter 14: Crafting Original Characters (OC's) Part 2: How to avoid the dangers of Gary Stu's and Mary Sue's

Chapter 15: Plot

Chapter 16: Heterosexual Relationships

Chapter 17: Homosexual/Lesbian Relationships

Bonus Chapter 4: Bisexual Characters, Polyandrous Relationships and Asexuals

Chapter 18: Loli Witches and characters that romance them.

Bonus Chapter 5: X-11 Witch Type Neruoi/Human-form Neruoi, the facts, theory's and potential.

Chapter 19: Stressors in combat, PTSD and Soldiers heart.

Chapter 20: Writing Strike Witches Crossovers