![]() Generally, selling a character means showing their likable traits in action during the opening scenes of the story. ![]() Since you didn’t have to do that before, there’s a good chance your story could use strengthening in that area. Once you change the names of your characters and market your work to an outside audience, this burden falls on your story. In a work of original fiction, much of the beginning is devoted not only to introducing protagonists but to showing the audience why these characters are worthy of their love and attention. This takes a huge burden off the beginning of the story. The biggest distinguishing factor between fanfics and original fics is that in almost all fanworks, the protagonists are already known and loved by the audience. Their presence won’t be very meaningful without their original names, anyway. If your fanfic has references to a dozen minor characters that appear in the parent work, think about who you can part with. But an outside audience has to learn all of those things for the first time, and that can be really confusing. Because your former audience was familiar with the parent work, they already knew who all the characters were, any important facts about their relationships, and how their world works. Unfortunately, you may also need to cut some things. Your new audience needs to understand the elements of your story while simultaneously watching your protagonists deal with the problems in their lives. If you add scenes to your beginning to fill readers in, make sure those scenes are as engaging as the opening you had before. Fanfic generally has a much quicker opening than original fic, * and that’s a good thing. While you may need to include more explanation for your new readers, insert it into your piece carefully. Recruiting beta readers from outside the work’s fandom will be very helpful. So, while specific areas of your story could use extra attention when making the conversion to a stand-alone piece, there’s no replacement for looking through the whole thing for references that won’t make sense to newcomers. Once you branch outside of that, your new readers won’t understand things that are obvious to a fan. However, if that’s all you do, you’re not giving your story the best chance of succeeding in the original-fiction market.įan fiction is written for a specific audience of enthusiasts who all share knowledge of the parent work. Conventional wisdom says doing this just means “rubbing off the fingerprints” – changing names and other obvious references to the parent work. To financially benefit from all that labor you put in, you’ve decided it’s time to retool your piece as a work of original fiction. ![]() While success is great, it’s not paying the bills. You’ve poured your heart and soul into a fanwork, and lo and behold, it’s caught on with other fans.
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