How To Write Mind Blowing FanFiction

Story Outline

There are certain elements essential to writing good fanfic. When these elements are undeveloped or missing from your story, it is going to turn out unbalanced and will fail to impress your reader. You need a good understanding of how to structure the story to fulfill its potential.

Writing a story with structure is like knowing the recipe for a dish you want to cook. The elements are the ingredients that goes into making the dish. When you are new to cooking, you first have to learn the purpose of each ingredient, how much you should add each of them, how to mix, blend and cook to make an edible dish. If you  don’t have much experience with cooking, without a recipe, your dish might end up being a messy tasteless blob.

But once you've gained enough experience, you don’t need the recipe anymore. You know all the ingredients and how to use them by heart. In fact, if you manage to get really good at it, you can even start experimenting with the ingredients and make new variations of the dish. But until you reach this level of skill, it would be better for you to follow the recipe first.

It is the same with the craft of writing a story. When you start writing, you have to learn the basics in order to be a competent writer. There is no way around it.

There are four basic elements for writing a story:

Concept

Theme

Character

Story Structure

All four elements are equally important, but different writers approach the story with focus on one main element. Some prefer to write character-driven stories while others are plot-driven. There’s no right or wrong method to go about it. You can choose what works best for you.

How do you know if you are a character-driven or a plot-driven writer? The clue is in your story idea. For instance, your idea is to write a story about how Exo’s Baekhyun is struggling with singing after he gets vocal nodes. If you decide to write about his thoughts and feelings in this situation, and how much pain he has to go through, then you are a character driven writer.

But, instead of Baekhyun’s feelings, you might want to write about a particular incident that happened during his musical performance because of his voice troubles, then you are inclined towards writing plot-driven stories. His feelings are still going to be explored, but they will not be the focus of your story. It’d be more about the sequence of events that lead to the moment when he screws up during the musical performance.

But whatever approach you prefer, you still need to pay attention to the other three elements to write a well rounded, engaging story. These elements are like vital organs of your story. Just like you need a heart, brain, liver and all the other vital organs to be a fully functioning human being, your story also need these essential elements to reach its full potential. When these elements are missing, your story will suffer and end up mediocre at best.

Let’s look at each of the story elements in detail to know what they mean to your story.

When you get an idea for a story, it is just a thought or an image that inspires you to create something based on it. Have you ever wondered where ideas come from? I have, sometimes.

I think the first inspiration comes somewhere from beyond the veil, the unknown. It is a gift that brings us great joy when we are engaged in the process of molding it into a story and a sense of accomplishment when we finish writing it. But I think it’s also a task that has been given to us, to help us learn and grow in our own life journey through this creative experience.

Your first task is to turn this idea into a concept that would be an entertaining for your readers to read. For instance, let’s say you want to write a story about Baekhyun - that’s an idea.