The Fanfic Panel Discussion Chapter 8

The young HTTYD fans filed into the conference room and took their seats around the long, oval-shaped table. They were both excited and nervous – they had been looking forward to this seminar for months! All of them were avid fan-fiction readers, they all wanted to write their own stories, and none of them knew how to craft a good story that would draw multiple views and positive reviews. This seminar, "Fan Fiction 101," promised to teach them the basics. Better yet, it was going to be taught by an HTTYD character! But the exact identity of that character was unknown. "To be decided at the time of the convention," was what the sign-up form said. They sat, fiddled with their convention programs, and watched the door to see who would walk in.

When the door opened, they got not one, but two guest speakers. Both were young women, blonde and slightly plump; one was somewhat plain in appearance, the other very pretty. Both wore Viking armor with hornless helmets, and they carried themselves confidently.

"Are you Thora?" a girl in red asked the plainer of the two.

"A good guess," Thora smiled.

"Then you must be Sukiaqui!" someone else burst out. The other girl nodded with a huge grin. The others in the room stood and applauded.

"Oh, please, stop that!" Thora nearly begged them. "I'm no hero! All I did was marry the real hero!" Su just grinned and bowed to the applause.

Once everyone settled down and returned to their seats, Thora began. "Welcome to Fan Fiction 101. When we're done here, we can't promise that you'll be the greatest fanfic authors since Elfpen and Rift Raft, but we can promise that you'll know what you need to know in order to write an above-average story."

"You all want to create a fanfic that earns lots and lots of positive reviews, and a view count that goes into six figures," Su added. "Who wouldn't? But, as I'm sure you know, not every story is a runaway success. Some stories click with the readers, some find a small audience, and some never have a chance. Our goal in this seminar is to show you how not to write a story that never has a chance. There are a few things that every good story needs, and a few common mistakes that every good story should avoid. We're going to spend a little time on each of those issues."

"Trust us – we've seen it all," Thora said with a rueful grin. "Our stories have been posted on fanfiction dot net for several years now, so we've had time to look at the other stories around us. We've seen some stories that were very good, some that could have been good, and some that never should have seen the light of day! None of you wants to write one of that last kind of story, I'm sure. So let's get started.

"The first thing a good story needs is a good lead character. In our universe, that usually means Hiccup. You can write about one of the other characters, but a story like that has one strike against it before you even submit it. HTTYD fans love Hiccup! He's the one they want to read about." She paused. "Why do you think that's so?"

After a second, a young girl raised her hand. "Because he's cute?"

Thora smiled. "I'll agree with you on that, but being cute isn't enough to make a character as popular as Hiccup is. Heck, I'm not very cute, and people seem to like me in spite of that. What else is happening with Hiccup that makes him so popular?"

One of the few boys in the room suggested, "Is it because of Toothless?"

"There's some truth in that," Su nodded. "One thing that can make or break your lead character is the company he keeps. What are his friends like? How do they interact? Does he have one friend in particular who really comes through for him, time after time? Hiccup has several friends like that. Toothless, of course, is at the top of that list. Astrid and Fishlegs help him out repeatedly, no matter what kind of trouble he finds himself in. Snotlout and the twins help him when it suits their own purposes, which is surprisingly often. I think the reason Thora became popular is because she helped Hiccup grow emotionally. If people like me, it's because of the positive impact I had on Snotlout. So yes, a character's friends can help to make or break a character. What else?"

An older teen hesitantly raised her hand. "One thing that drew me to Hiccup was that he was always trying, and something always went wrong," she said quietly. "Nobody really liked him because of that. I'm kind of like that, sometimes. I guess I sort of looked at him, and... I saw myself."

"Thank you for being brave enough to admit that," Thora said, "and also thank you for bringing up a huge, huge point. Your character has to be relatable! He or she has to have traits that the readers can connect to in themselves. That means both strengths and weaknesses. A character with no weaknesses is unrealistic and unbelievable; a character with no strengths would be too depressing to read about.

"Take Hiccup, for example. In the first two minutes of the first movie, we see one of his strengths – his sarcastic outlook on life, which helps him cope with discouragement. We also see some of his weaknesses. He's smaller than everyone around him, and everyone thinks he's a nuisance. In the next few minutes, we learn that he's a clever inventor, he's determined, and he's aware of his physical shortcomings, but won't let them stop him. We also learn that he messes up a lot, no one understands him, he repeatedly causes problems for everyone around him, and it's hard to say if anyone really likes him. There are a lot of people in this world who can relate to a character like that."

Su motioned for attention. "For another well-known example, consider Superman. When he was first created, he had no weaknesses at all. The drama in those first comics came from threats by ordinary people, and it was just a question of when and how the Man of Steel would show up and solve the problem. The only real problem he faced was maintaining his secret identity. As the character grew, though, the comic writers made his life a lot more complicated. They came up with super-villains who were a worthy match for him. They came up with Kryptonite, which could do him some serious hurt. And they developed the fact that he cared about ordinary people, so a villain could gain an advantage by holding a hostage. That was one of the main plot points of the second Superman movie. In short, they didn't weaken him, but they strengthened the environment around him, so he could possibly face defeat. Without that, he wouldn't be an interesting character."

"True," Thora agreed. "A good character can't be omnipotent, or there's no drama as he deals with problems. Even the Norse stories about their gods play on the fact that they can't do whatever they please. There has to be some humanity, or something like it, in there somewhere, or you'll wind up with a boring, unbelievable character."

The boy who had spoken before raised his hand. "Does that apply to villains, too?"

"Absolutely yes," Su said. "Even your most wicked villain has to have a motivation that people can understand. Alvin of the Outcasts wanted revenge against Berk for casting him out. Drago Bludvist enslaved the dragons because he hated them for taking away his arm. To use an example from another fandom, consider Anakin Skywalker. He turned into Darth Vader because his fear of losing his loved ones destroyed him from within."

"And then that same fear made him kill the Emperor to save Luke in episode 6," a girl in the back said.

"Exactly," Su nodded. "His motivations were consistent from beginning to end, so when Vader turned against the Emperor to protect his son, it wasn't completely out of character. People could relate to that. People have to be able to relate to your character, or your character won't make people want to read about him."

"But is that a problem in fan fiction?" someone asked. "I mean, we have Hiccup, and he has all these relatable traits, so we don't have to worry about this relatable stuff the way an author of original fiction would. Do we?"

"You do have to keep it in mind," Thora warned her. "You don't want to write about Hiccup doing things that are out of character, like fearing dragons or mistrusting his friends, unless those things are signs that something is wrong with him, and that wrongness is part of the plot. If Astrid punches Hiccup in the arm, the readers will accept that because it's in character for her. If Hiccup punches her in the arm, you've lost half your readership right there, because that's not Hiccup. He'd never do that.

"So we've covered the main character, and we've touched on the secondary characters. Now comes the second major point that a good story needs. There has to be at least one problem for the main character to solve. The more complicated the problem is, the better the solution needs to be, and the more interesting the story can be.

"For example, take the first movie. The Vikings had a problem – the dragons were attacking them and killing them and stealing their food. Hiccup found out that there was another problem – people misunderstood what dragons were really like. They finally learned that the hidden cause of the first problem was the Red Death forcing the dragons to steal food from people. If they killed the Red Death, but they still hated all the other dragons, then the movie would not have ended on such a happy note. They had to solve both problems, and Hiccup led the way in both solutions."

"At the same time," Su took up the narrative, "there was yet another problem, and that one was internal. Hiccup had to prove himself. He had to show people that he was more than just a walking disaster magnet. If the Vikings killed the Red Death and learned to get along with the dragons, but they still mocked Hiccup whenever he walked through town, what kind of happy ending would that be?"

"I didn't realize that the movies were that complicated," a younger girl commented.

"Up to a certain point, 'complicated' is good," Thora told her. "There were multiple problems that Hiccup had to face and solve during that movie. Some were internal and some were external. The second movie was similar. There were external problems, like Drago trying to take over the world. There were internal problems, like Hiccup's doubts about whether he could become the chief of his tribe. He had to work them out, one by one. Very often, like in the case of the second movie, he had to solve the inner problems before he was ready to take on the outer ones. Giving the hero more than one problem to solve is a good way to make an interesting story line, and it makes the hero look that much more heroic when he or she can solve them all."

A girl with glasses asked, "Is it okay to have just one problem in a story?"

"In a short story, yes," Su said firmly. "In fact, a short story should have only one problem. It takes a lot of words to properly develop a good plot point. In a short story, you don't have room for that many words if you're going to do a decent job on working out the solution to the problem. If you have multiple problems that you want the hero to solve, then either let the story grow into something big, so you can spend the right amount of time and words on each problem, or write multiple short stories, one for each problem."

"There's a third possibility, once you've had some practice at writing," Thora added. "You can have your hero face a problem that the readers already know about, so you don't have to spend much time describing it. That way, you can spend all the time and words you want on the solution.

"For example, the author who created us wrote a popular little story called 'Man in the Middle.' It's four short chapters, but it contains two problems for Hiccup to solve. He doesn't want any official witnesses for his most private moments with his new wife, and he has to get Toothless and his new wife to stop seeing each other as a threat. It doesn't take many words to set up those problems, because nobody wants witnesses to their most private moments, and all HTTYD readers know that Toothless can be very possessive when it comes to Hiccup. The author set up the plot and the first problem in the first chapter, added the second problem in the second chapter, then spent the rest of the story on how Hiccup worked out those problems. That's not a trick that many first-time writers can pull off. But once you've gotten a few stories written and you've settled on your style, then it can be a fun exercise for you."

"And that brings us to the third feature that every good story needs," Su said. "You need a character that people can relate to, you need that character to face one or more problems, and you need solutions to those problems."

"When you say solutions," a teen-aged girl asked, "do you mean, like, two problems and two solutions?"

"What I mean," Sukiaqui said, "is that, to make things really interesting, your hero may need more than one solution to each problem. It draws the readers in if the main character comes up with a great-sounding way to fix the problem, and then it doesn't work for some reason, so he has to try something different.

"Again, let's go back to the first movie. One other problem Hiccup has to deal with is how to get Toothless back into the air with an injured tail. One of the more interesting sequences in that movie is all the different ways Hiccup tries to invent a new tail for Toothless, and how each attempt fails, but he learns things from each failure that both help him in the training ring, and help him improve Toothless' flying rig, until we finally get to that amazing 'test drive' scene. If his very first attempt, where he rode Toothless backwards and worked the tail with his hand, had worked, then the 'test drive' never would have happened, and we never would have seen one of the most powerful scenes in the whole franchise."

Thora nodded. "Then consider one of the big problems Hiccup had to face, which was making the Vikings see that they didn't understand dragons. His big plan to fix that was to train the Monstrous Nightmare in the ring, in front of the whole village. That plan failed spectacularly, and it led to the lowest moment in Hiccup's entire life. He got kicked out of his tribe, he got disowned by his father, and his best friend Toothless was taken prisoner. From there, he had nowhere to go but up. If he'd succeeded with the Monstrous Nightmare, he still would have needed a plan for stopping the dragon raids. When he decided to ride the training dragons so he could fight the Red Death, he solved both problems at once. It was because his first plan failed that his final plan was so awesome."

"Are you saying that a story has to be complicated if it's going to be good?" a dark-skinned girl asked.

"A short story can be simple and straightforward," Su answered. "If you're going to write something longer than a few chapters, then yes, you need more than one thing going on at the same time. Multiple plots are good; subplots are good, and wild plot twists can be very good if they're handled well.

"For instance, many fans of animated movies will tell you that few plot twists were more shocking that in the original 'Frozen.' They spend most of the movie making us think that the Duke of Weselton is the big villain. Then, when Anna needs Prince Hans more than ever, it turns out that her hero is really the biggest villain of all. It was plausible, it was in character for him, and it worked because the screenwriters set up every scene to fool us, right up until the moment when Prince Hans turns on her.

"That's also an example of a different kind of complexity," Thora continued. "Elsa is fighting her fears and her lack of control over her powers. Anna is looking for love and for a relationship with her sister. Kristoff is trying not to go out of business when the weather turns against him, and he's in love with a princess who can't see how he feels about her. The kingdom of Arendelle needs a queen they can be proud of, not a queen who freezes and destroys anything she touches. Each character is facing just one or two problems, but because there are multiple characters interacting with each other, it becomes quite a complex, interesting story."

"I'm not sure I'm ready to write one of those," someone murmured from the far end of the table.

"Then don't," Su said. "Every story doesn't have to be a complicated epic. Consider another of our author's more popular stories, 'Snart's Saga.' It's 126 chapters long, and the overarching theme is Snart's slow discovery of who he really is. Between the beginning and the end of the story, there are literally dozens of problems for him to solve. But he doesn't face them all at once! He finds and solves some problems in the space of a single chapter. Others take three or four chapters to resolve. A few of them take even longer. But Snart doesn't try to solve all of the world's problems at once, which means the author didn't have to write about all those problems and solutions at once. There's a lot happening as you read the story, but there usually isn't that much happening at a single time. If you drew a chart of the plot, it would be a fairly straight, single line, not a bowl of spaghetti like some stories."

"I've got a question," the girl with glasses said. "You mentioned that the main theme of Snart's Saga is him discovering who he really is. That's kind of a main theme of Hiccup's life, isn't it? Did your author rip off Dreamworks?"

"There are some definite similarities between Hiccup and Snart," Thora said with a hint of a smile. "But the theme of discovering yourself is as old as the hills. It's called the 'coming-of-age story,' and countless other writers in all genres have made use of it. Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Last Airbender, The Lion King, A Wizard of Earthsea, Huckleberry Finn... the list is huge. It's a popular way to tell an effective story."

"Are there other popular themes we can use as a starting point?" the dark-skinned girl wondered.

"Yes," both women chorused. Thora gave way to Su, who went on, "There are many common themes. You can look for them in the legends and stories of antiquity, and then see them in the most popular stories today.

"Another common theme is the 'hero's journey,' in which your main character goes on a long, difficult journey through many trials in order to achieve a goal, or to find something worthwhile to bring back. It's often a journey that no ordinary person could survive, and the fact that the hero makes it proves that he's a hero."

"What kind of journey are we talking about?" the boy asked.

"It could be Jason recovering the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology," Su replied. "It could be Odin bringing the knowledge of reading and writing to men in the Norse myths. It could be Phineas Fogg, traveling 'around the world in eighty days' in order to win a bet. It could be Luke Skywalker, training with Yoda and ultimately facing Darth Vader in order to become a Jedi knight. There are all kinds of goals that are worth taking a long journey for.

"The point of the hero's journey is that the hero doesn't come back the same as he was before. He is changed by his journey; he's a better man, or she's a better woman, because of the things they've gone through. It's common to make new friends along the way, and to keep those friends after the journey is done."

"Are there more common themes than those two?" the girl in red asked.

"There are hundreds of them!" Thora said. "You can look up a list of literary genres in wikipedia if you need ideas. There's the romance, the bromance, the mystery, and the war story; there's the Robinsonade, where the hero gets stranded on a deserted island and has to learn to survive there; there's the origin story, where we learn how a character came to be the way he is; there are countless others. They're all fair game to borrow from, if you want an idea for a new story.

"Just keep one thing in mind. As a fanfic writer, your main audience is 21st-century young adults. Writing a HTTYD version of an old opera might give you a good springboard for a worthwhile story, but most of your audience won't be familiar with your source, so they won't 'get' many of your plot points and story references. A problem like that could ruin people's enjoyment of the story.

"Also, writing a HTTYD version of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' might seem like a good idea, but some of that story's plot points won't transfer into the HTTYD universe. For example, a Viking dragon rider won't willingly die for the sake of honor, the way a medieval knight would do. If you tried to cast Hiccup as Sir Gawain, either he'd have to act out of character, or you'd have to substantially change the story.

"So yes, feel free to borrow the classic story lines. But use them as idea-starters, not as rigid templates for your stories."

"Those are the Big Three points that a good story needs," Su finished. "You need a relatable main character, you need problems, and you need solutions. But you need a lot more than that to make your story a good one. If you want nothing but a character, a problem, and a solution, then you could write 'Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,' but that story probably wouldn't get many positive reviews if you posted it online.

"First off, and this is critical: if you're writing for an English-speaking audience, then please, please learn to write good English! Many readers will stop reading after the first paragraph if the English is bad. The spell-checker and the grammar checker are a good start, but they are no guarantee of good writing. Look for examples of good writing in published books and magazines; work with a beta reader on this site; maybe work with a friend who gets good grades in English; do whatever it takes to learn how to write correctly. Fan fiction isn't a text message or a tweet; it's more like literature, and the people who read it have higher expectations of what they find here than what they'd find on Twitter."

"The second thing," Thora said, "is, at least in your first few stories, don't do a self-insertion! It's not forbidden; it's not against any rules; but look at it this way. When you're posting your first few stories and trying to draw some readers, you want to write stories that will appeal to as many readers as possible. In the HTTYD fandom, people mostly want to read about Hiccup and Toothless. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but they don't want to read about you. Your career as a writer of fan fiction will get off to a much better start if you stick to the canon characters until you've built up a base of loyal readers. Then you can start branching out and pushing the limits of what a casual reader might be willing to endure."

"The third thing," Su went on, "is to work on the art of strong openings and strong closings. You want to start each chapter with enough of a 'bang' that people who haven't been following the story will be curious enough to start reading it. It can be a good thing if it also reminds your faithful readers of what just happened in the previous chapter. For the very beginning of the story, you want to write something that will immediately hook in the reader and make him want to keep going. An action scene can be good for this, or some dialog that makes the reader curious.

"Imagine if the first movie had started with Hiccup saying, 'This is Berk. It's cold up here, and we have dragons.' BO-ring! That's not how you hook people into your story. Instead, they started with Hiccup being snarky about the cold weather and the charming sunsets; then they lead into the part about the dragons indirectly. This narration piques your curiosity; Hiccup talks about pests, but doesn't tell you what kind of pests they're dealing with until he pauses, we see a Monstrous Nightmare, and he intones, '...dragons!' It's much more effective that way. Consider that and learn from it.

"As for the ends of the chapters, you want to end each chapter with something that will make the readers anxious for more. It can be a cliffhanger, it can be a joke, it can be anything that goes with the story, as long as it's a clear ending to this chapter and an indication that there's more to come. Very often, a short, punchy sentence has more impact than a long, drawn-out sentence."

"The fourth thing is to make your dialog sound realistic. Listen to the way real people talk! They say 'umm' and 'uhh' a lot; they forget what they're saying in the middle of a sentence; they interrupt each other. Hiccup does it in the first movie when Astrid challenges him about how good he's becoming with dragons. You don't want to perfectly copy that kind of stuff in every sentence of a story, because that would get irritating really fast. But, every few sentences, make it sound real. It's a small change that can have a big impact on how the readers react to your story.

"Finally," Thora concluded, "don't be shocked or hurt if you don't get hundreds of views and reviews in the first week after posting your story. Be patient; keep posting; give the readers a chance to discover you. The last time I looked, there were almost 19,000 stories posted for HTTYD on this site. Getting noticed in a crowd like that is going to take some time, no matter how good you are, and no matter how good your story is. If you're in a hurry to get recognized, then you've chosen the wrong hobby."

"Also remember this," Su added. "Don't write for the numbers. The view count and the reviews and the favorites and follows are nice, but if that's all you want out of writing fan fiction, then you've missed the point. Write for the joy of writing! Write for the smiles you'll put on people's faces, even if you never hear about it. Write because, for every review you get, there are probably a dozen people who read your story and liked it, but who didn't feel like reviewing it. If all you get is one 'like' a week, that still means you've brightened the day of one complete stranger every week. How many people can make that claim? Be happy with small rewards."

"And be thankful that you've chosen a fairly large fandom to write for," Thora said. "You could write an amazing novel-length story for a tiny fandom, and get fewer views than you'd get for a cheesy one-off Hiccstrid tale on the HTTYD page. But what Sukiaqui says is true. Write for the joy of writing, and if you get more rewards than that, then you're ahead of the game.

"That brings us to the end of our allotted time. I think we've covered all the main points, so you all can arise, go forth, and conquer the fan-fiction world! We have time for one question. Yes, the boy in the back?"

The boy in the back stood up, looking irritated. "My question is, has anybody seen my wallet?"

Su acted surprised, then reached into a belt pouch and pulled out a man's leather wallet. "Maybe. Is this yours?"

"Yes!" the boy exclaimed. "Where did you find it?"

"In your pocket," she smirked. "This is a 21st-century panel discussion, but I still gotta be me."

The End