User blog:Zathronas/Author's Advice: Consistency

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Hello and welcome to author's advice.

Consistency, a difficult proposition in a fan fiction. Consistency does not mean avoiding change, it means the art of harmony. here is Webster's definition.

marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity :  free from variation or contradiction

The biggest problem in fan fiction isn't the original characters. Those are easy since you make them up, but getting the characters someone else created right. Free from variation or contradiction, THAT is the greatest challenge of a fanfic writer. That means you must know the characters very well since your story depends greatly on depicting those characters right.

It isn't difficult to get characters right but you need to pay close attention of how they reacted originally. Here's an example.

Ruby: A little awkward with others. she has an intense desire to succeed. She's a klutz. Has a good heart and see the world black and white.

each and every thing I wrote about Ruby is verifiable in the show. I strongly suggest that you do the profile of characters on paper before starting your story. But avoid the trap of wishful thinking, we tend to try and put our values on others and that's a sure fire way to get a character wrong. You might not like certain aspect of a character personality but keep your judgment OUT of the profile. Same thing of the opposite, don't justify bad aspect of a character's profile or even ignore it altogether because you like him/her. Keep all that for your story.

The closer your character profile is to Monty's profile, the more believable your story will be.

BUT WAIT! Consistency doesn't just apply to characters. But to the story as a whole.

That brings us to the first part of Webster's definition. marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity. To get the story right, you need to be able to show the progression. Rarely would your main plot go from A to B. It should go from A to G and pass through B,C,D,E and F before getting to G. Here's an example of what I mean.

You want to show the white fang getting redeemed by Blake. You start by where they are now which is:

A. The white fang are working with Cinder who gave them an incentive.

?. The white fang is redeemed by Blake

As you can see, point ? isn't B because there's no way the white fang would turn suddenly with no reason. So it would be for you to come up with the points that will bring it to ?. When you get them all, ? will become a letter. You know the saying "It's not the destination but the journey" EVERY writers should take it at heart because that is basically the definition of a writer.

All this blog brings me to my point. Point A, what is consistency. Point B, how does it affect fanfic. Point C, how does it affect character. Point D how does it affect the story. Point E, Now that you've shown the importance of consistency explain a way to get that consistency.

So on to point E.

I've been told by several fanfic writers that they don't really need to make an outline since it's a small story. Has known characters. It's not too complicated of a story. etc.

Any story can benefit from an outline, any writers can benefit from one. You don't have to make something complicated but usually, a writer knows where he has problems and the outline will help him greatly in that area because once you know what to write, all you need to worry about is how to write it.

Next time on Author's Advice. How to build an Outline.

See what I did? marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity indeed :)