March 5, 2022
This section covers how I go about writing Warriors fanfics. Specifically, the process I use to get my ideas from my head to a completed story. It's entirely based on my own writing process and some advice from various sources. Nothing in this section is objectively correct, as there are many ways to go about writing stories. Take it as just another person's writing preference. I follow my methodology quite rigidly and prefer a lengthy process from start to finish. As a Base section, it has little to no examples drawn from canon Warriors.
There are many, many ways to go about writing fiction. Some people are able to churn out novella after novella and never slow down while others take years or more to finish just one story. None of these processes are wrong, technically. I can't speak to the methodologies of others, unfortunately. Nor can I really critique them if they put out content for whatever purpose. I can only say from my perspective.
So here's a start-to-finish guide to how TytoNoctua writes Warriors fanfics.
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WRITING PROCESSES FOR CANON WARRIORS
Warriors is written by Erin Hunter, a pen name for a collective of writers making content for the same franchise, mostly novels. The series started in 2003 with two writers and an editor who came up with the idea and has grown to several series of novels spanning dozens of novels over a decade with spinoffs, a massive fanbase, and merchandise. The writers who make up Erin Hunter have changed over the course of it all, but the original trio, Cherith Baldry, Kate Cary, and Victoria Holmes, saw Kate and Cherith write novels individually and have them checked for consistency by Victoria. This process allowed them to make each book feel somewhat unique and keep up with the scope they wanted to achieve (cited in an archived interview by Kathleen Bolton for the blog 'Writer Unboxed'). The end goals have changed as new writers come on board and old ones step away at times, but Erin Hunter has always been a group of people.
That's the big difference between people writing fanfics and Erin Hunter: most of us are just one person. It would be difficult to compare the writing process of an entire group to just us. To put out a series with the same scope as canon Warriors would be difficult solo. Most fanfics, however, aren't a series. But those spanning multiple books often take longer to write. This is not a problem; the Erins write fiction professionally and fanfic writers usually write for fun, often in their spare time. Myself included.
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MY PROCESS: TOOLS
I find many in the Warriors community write directly in the word processors included with services hosting fanfics, like Wattpad or fanfiction_net. While usable, they offer a fraction of what a proper word processor has, like a limited spellcheck dictionary and, often, no grammar editor. I'd never recommend writing a whole book within the Wattpad or fanfiction or Deviantart editors. It's a quick way to lose progress if there's a service disruption and causes you to miss simple errors like punctuation. But that's just me. As for the tools I use:
Microsoft Word (2016) - My preferred word processor because of its robust grammar dictionary and auto-correct features, like automatically capitalizing the first word of each sentence or adding apostrophes to contractions. I prefer it over Google Docs, its main competitor, even though Docs has a far better online version and has no paywall for features. I use the paid, standalone version for Office 2016 (paid a third party on ebay; not recommended), not Office 365. Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs (and any other word processor I don't know about) is better than what Wattpad or fanfiction_net could offer.
Google Drive - I use this as an offsite backup for everything I've ever made under this account and it gives me access to my stuff while away from my personal computer. Eventually, I'll outgrow the 15 GB free storage they give, but that's because I use it for 4k images. No amount of written fanfics will fill that up.
Google Sheets - Used mainly to store ideas and do outlines. There are other programs better at outlines than Sheets, like Campfire Blaze or OneNote, but Sheets is free and can be formatted in enough ways for what I need from outlines. It's also free and tied to your Google Drive account, so it goes wherever the rest of your stuff does.
Other tools I use but don't contribute directly to the writing process:
A browser with an adblock. I prefer Firefox, Chrome, or Edge private windows with 2 separate adblocks running.
A Windows PC running Windows 10. The OS is probably the least important part, but I'd personally never write on Android or iOS devices.
Adobe Illustrator for my covers.
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MY PROCESS: THE IDEA
All of my fanfics start with an idea that's written down somewhere safe. For me, this is a Google Sheets document backed up with an offline copy. From what I've seen in author's notes and firsthand accounts, most fanfics live in the heads of their writers until written down or forgotten. I strongly suggest keeping an idea notebook of some kind to keep track of ideas, good and bad. I personally prefer paper, but use digital for this account. When I think of the idea, I record the date I first thought about it, a name for it (if I can't think of one, a placeholder is used), a genre or literary concept the fanfic falls under, the primary themes, if any, and a short synapsis. Small notes are made if needed, like songs that inspired the idea or events I really want to write. If I decide to go through with it, I build an outline.
For the rest of this section, I'll use the first fanfic I put out, Warriors: A Reign of Thunder and Lightning. There will be no references to the story.
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MY PROCESS: THE OUTLINE
I already have a section all about outlining a fanfic in full versus writing the fanfic as you think of it, so I won't discuss which is better and why. I always use an outline. I always recommend using outlines.
Mine are done in a Google Sheets document. Each story has its own outline with the amount of information used based on how long the fanfic is. For A Reign of Thunder and Lightning, the outline included info for all named characters, research on World War 2, and character development moments. I also store chapter ideas here. As to how far I go with an outline, I write as much as I think I need to make a complete story. The beginning and end are thought of at this point. Character's physical and personality traits are logged for reference here. Things like tone and theme are fleshed out here. The outline is not the end-all, though. A Reign of Thunder and Lightning had no real plan for the middle of the story in the outline (also a section in this guide helps with writing the middle of fanfics). In the sequel, Bleed, much of the outline was scrapped when the middle and a main character were completely rewritten. But I would have been far less organized without it. Formats can be anything, since this program isn't designed for fiction writing. Mine looks something like this:
This isn't the full outline, but it is part of the template I created after writing A Reign of Thunder and Lightning.
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MY PROCESS: WRITING
Now comes the hard part. I simply load up Microsoft Word and get to it. I use default formatting to organize chapters, writing in sequential order; that is, I'd never write the final chapter first. I write in Times New Roman 12pt for those who care, starting a new document when a new part is reached or when a document goes above 45,000 words (for some reason, Word 2016's spell check freaks out past 50k words). I write from start to end with no regards to editing. I write how I envisioned the fanfic in my head. This is the longest, hardest part.
The second draft is most of the editing. In A Reign of Thunder and Lightning, I used Word's comment feature to make notes about things I wanted to change like chapter order or important moments. I do this in the same documents. It takes me about half the time it takes to write the first draft to edit it.
* Note this image is from Warriors: Bleed, not Warriors: A Reign of Thunder and Lightning. The notes for those were not saved. Potential spoilers crossed out.
The final draft is where I take the finished second draft and go over it from an editor's perspective. I've copy-pasted this document away from the first/second draft to avoid any destructive editing. The creative writing is done. Here, I just check for grammar and spelling. To help, I use the text-to-speech function in Word to read the story aloud to me, pausing and fixing mistakes as I go. For more subjective mistakes, like dialogue not sounding right aloud, I use my best judgment. Still, I am not thinking about changing characters at this stage. That's what the second draft was for.
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MY PROCESS: EXTRAS
For those who don't know, I don't talk to people about my fanfiction or disclose any identifiable information about myself under TytoNoctua. While I'm not famous by any means, my real name and other aliases have to be public-facing enough to require curating what I say and do online. Putting a drawing of a cat on my Twitter account is one thing. But I'd get the wrong kind of double-takes if I put Warriors fanart on my timeline. I want this account to be a creative haven where I can write whatever I want without it affecting my life. But it does mean I use a slightly different process than I would if I was writing under my real name (as of March 2022, I have only one short story published under my real name. It was written when I was much younger, is long irrelevant, and not on the internet).
For some relevant bits of information:
I sometimes listen to music when I write. The end of A Reign of Thunder and Lightning was written to "Confusion - The Gathering," for example. Most of the time, I find it a distraction. I concentrate better with ambient mixes or lo-fi sound somewhat themed to what I'm writing.
A comfortable place to write helps with the writing process greatly. In college, I was able to write for hours in a busy, massive library and barely at all alone in my paper-walled creaky dorm room.
I try to do almost everything at night. I prefer less distractions and writing for longer periods of time, which is easier to do at night.
If I have writer's block, I try to power through it. Especially if I am writing a first draft. The idea behind this is I can always change what I've written since I don't publish until everything is final. If I can't think of anything to write, I refer to any source material for inspiration. If I can't concentrate on writing, I stop.
If I plan on stepping away from writing for a while (a month or more), I reread what I wrote before writing more unless ideas are fresh in my mind.
I back up everything I've ever written and drawn in my Google Drive as well as a hidden flash drive. This ensures if I ever lose my accounts or the data on my computer, I never lose work done under TytoNoctua as long as everything is kept in sync.
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IN CONCLUSION...
To summarize my writing process:
Think of and record an idea with broad details
Make an outline featuring characters, chapters, and important events
Write a first draft with little regard to "good" writing
Edit it for a second draft using comments and notes for revision
Complete the final draft as a grammar and sanity check for it all. Release
When it comes to writing Warriors fanfics, I have a pretty cut-and-dry process that I follow close enough each time I do it. I have revised the process over writing A Reign of Thunder and Lightning and Bleed to a point where I am going through the process much faster with the third book. Regardless, there are probably plenty of programs and methodologies not compatible with my process. That doesn't make them bad. Again, my way isn't objectively correct. It's just my way. And none of this may be relevant if I find myself preferring better methods for me in the future. But, for now, this is my process.
There are many ways to write fanfiction. I choose more traditional means, but that's just me.
-Tyto