Writing Lessons!

Plot&Character Developement

FlightofzFans requested this!
This will be a basic/beginning course thing, and if you want it more in depth or something then you can sign up for the PM thing.

I will split this up into sections by genre. You can skip it all until you get to the genre you generally focus on. They are in bold.

Table of Contents or Guide Thing:
Fanfiction
Fantasy/Adventure/Action Stuff
Mystery/Thriller/Horror
Humor/Comedy
Nonfiction/Historical Fiction
Script

Anyway, here we go!

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Fanfiction

I think Fanfiction is probably among the easiest for plot stuff. Before you start arguing with me about this, let me explain myself.

First of all, people have lower expectations for fanfictions. Second of all, the foundation of most of it is already there if you plan on staying relatively true to the original story. And lastly, it's easy to look at someone else's fanfiction and think, "I'm pretty sure that this character would never do that," and then realizing that would change the whole plot, and then making that new plot into an entirely new story.

Okay, now feel free to argue with me.

So, if you ever get really stuck on a fanfiction, don't think "what should happen next?" and instead think "what would these characters most likely do next?" This will probably work because of you're writing fanfiction, you've probably done at least one of the following:

A) Read the original work, and are therefore already familiar with the characters;

B) Read a bunch of fanfictions, and are therefore already mostly familiar with the characters;

C) Or it won't work because you are a weirdo trying to write a fanfiction for a random you know absolutely nothing about except for the characters names.

Or something else, like you're not really writing a fanfiction but instead you're just too lazy to think of new names for characters or something, but I wanted to keep it at three letters. :)

Of course, you should probably do both of the previously said questions at once, but it will probably be more help if you focus more on the characters' reactions than you do on other things, since the best authors tell the story through actions and the characters, not just tell it with words and boring narration.

Now, since I'm already focusing on characters a whole lot, let's go to the character development side of things!

When it comes to character development, it might be a little bit harder with fanfictions. Before you start writing, you need to become familiar with each character and their behavior, thoughts, relationships on other characters, motivation, etc. If the story is in first person (ex: Percy Jackson and the Olympians) or third person but with a clear main character (ex: Harry Potter), then you can focus mainly on becoming familiar with that character, since the other characters will likely become muddled when going through the filter of the character in question.

At each point in the story, think about these things and how the character would likely change because of the events in the story.

Fantasy/Adventure/Action Stuff

When it comes to plot, you may feel pressured to come up with things that are completely original. But that's the thing: no story is completely original.

For example, the Percy Jackson series is heavily and obviously based on mythologies like Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse. The characters that aren't taken directly from the mythologies (and even some of the one's that are) are a whole lot like the one's in the Harry Potter series. Both of these can be connected back to other books, such as Lord of the Rings, which pretty much every book these days is similar to in some aspects. Lord of the Rings can be taken back to other stories and stuff as well. Even ancient mythologies and legends (and current day religions, but disregard this part of it's offensive) were started by people who looked at the world around them and wanted to both explain it and control other people.