The following is a composite of advice and precepts I've picked up over the years. It may sound patronising if you're a more experienced writer, and was written with my own younger self in mind more than anything else.

I by no means set myself up as any sort of expert or genius in this area; if you have a problem with any of the items below, please mention it. Additional disclaimer: I don’t believe there’s a single ‘rule’ of writing which can’t be broken for one good reason or another. If you recognise yourself as doing something the list doesn’t appear to approve of, and you have a strong reason for it and/or write well enough to carry it off, I’m not going to criticise you unless I disagree with the strong reasoning and good writing. The list is arranged in what I consider to be order of importance and logical flow of subject matter; in other words, largely arbitrarily.

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1. Spellcheck. If using a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, F7 is your friend. Or try spellcheck.net or any one of a number of spellchecking programs out there. Dictionaries (online and otherwise) also come in handy, as do thesauri. Check at least twice through your work to make sure it’s readable before posting, or else your audience isn’t even going to be able to understand you (and check even if you are a Grammar God/ess; it really does improve the final product). Try waiting some time before re-reading and change the font so that you don’t fall into the trap of reading what you think you’ve written rather than what you actually wrote. Make sure grammatical errors are corrected, and beware of homophones (similar-sounding words meaning different things, for example, there and their; these don’t usually get picked up by spellcheck). Once this is done, you may rest assured that regardless of any style, plot, character, canon or other problems, at least people will be able to view it without bleeding eyeballs.

2. Original Characters. When they’re the random guy/girl in the street gaping at Our Hero’s latest deeds, they’re perfectly fine (though it’s nice when these aren’t two-dimensional stereotypes); it’s when they’re in the centre of your story that you have to start feeling concerned. The majority of readers read fanfiction because they like the canon characters; include an original character in starring role and you may be asked to justify yourself to readers if they don’t like the character. Questions to ask yourself: do you know what a Mary-Sue is? Have you thought about whether your character is one? Does your character have key flaws and limitations? Does your character canonically exist (Zulay, bit-part Crew-members and mag-vision reporters canonically exist; the heiress to the rich Wulfrid Stables does not)? If so, is it likely the character is as you’re writing them? If not, is the fact of the character’s existence plausible or does it bring in several new plot contrivances and personnel that haven’t been shown to exist in canon? Is your reason for writing the character to make him/her the new star of the show, or to illuminate some neglected area of canon?

3. Canon Characters. Are they reacting the way they do in canon? It’s a good idea to try to visualise whether the canon character would behave in the way in which you write them, thinking about any previous reactions to similar circumstances in canon and remembering the details of their personality. Have you changed them significantly (eg. unusual ancestry, new powers they’ve never shown before)? Do they retain their canon relationships as they are in canon? If they’re changed in some way, do the reasons for this change involve authorial whim or time passing and changes in circumstances? Special Note: if the canon is not a romance series and in your story the hero and heroine (or hero and hero, or heroine and heroine, or hero and heroine and hero, substitute favoured ‘ship of choice) are acting as though they are protagonists in a certain type of novel, run, do not walk, away from the computer and take a cold shower. (Especially if you use ridiculous euphemisms such as “cream-filled twinkie of love”.)

4. Plot. Do you have one? Does it make sense? Are all the strands of it neatly wrapped up (Chekhov’s maxim: if you mention a gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, it must be fired by the end of Act Three)? Do you include large amounts of material irrelevant to the plot or characterisation? Cut it. Is your plot compatible with canon (or canon up to a defined point)?

5. Style. Does your writing resemble “This is Spot. See Spot run.”? Or “In the pellucid dawn light the canine oft addressed as ‘Spot’ scampered ebulliently across the verdant grass”? If so, consider either toning up the description or toning down the thesaurus use. Are paragraph breaks double spaced and used for every new speaker and concept? (Long text blocks are very hard to read on screen; it’s amazing how many writers make that mistake.) Is description adequately interspersed with action? Are the style and the language (flowery, colloquial, simple, conversational, complex) appropriate to the genre (mystery, drama, horror, adventure, romance)?

6. Tense. You will generally use past tense. Do not use present or other tenses unless you have a definite stylistic reason. Past tense (“We went, he saw, she screamed”) is conventional and generally convenient; present tense can be appropriate for action-oriented stories (“I run, the dagger’s weight heavy in my hand as I prepare to throw…”).

7. Structure. Is it linear? Circular? Replete with flashbacks? Whatever structure you choose, does it all hang together in a way that doesn’t lose the reader’s interest due to predictability or lack of information? Is the structure chosen fitting to the type of story (eg. imaginary episode—probably told like the real episodes, in linear form; eg. General Fyrie Grimal of the Red Draconium Empire remembering the story of the war—the end is effectively the beginning).

8. Point of view. Multiple? Make sure it’s not confusing to readers. It helps if you identify the POV character in the first line of each change. Single? Be aware of the limitations; your character is not permitted to be omniscient unless they are God. Are you using the character’s speech patterns and personal biases, or only limiting the authorial view to their perspective? Keep it consistent. Third person omniscient (“he did this, she did that”)? Try to avoid confusing readers by jumping too quickly from inside one head to another. First person (“I smiled, I ran”)? Again, be aware of limitations. Second person (“you bring your hand to your mouth in shock”? Avoid. Only very gifted writers can bring this one off. Especially if the POV is that of an OC.

9. Betas. Get one if you can. They will read your work before you post it and make corrections, suggestions, and give you an idea of how other readers will respond to it. Caveat: get a good beta. They should be at least as good as you are at spelling, plotting, and characterisation. They should not be people who write things along the lines of “im a gud riter ill be yur beta!!1!” Many good writers use more than one beta to help correct for different things such as canon, grammar and plot. Note: a beta is NOT a substitute for a spellchecker. It is extremely discourteous to hand a beta something filled with simple mistakes for them to waste their time on. Proofread it yourself both before and after it’s beta’d; you should be deciding for yourself whether you want to incorporate the beta’s suggestions. A beta is also not responsible for the final product; they may be a good beta or may be a sucky beta, in which case you should either shower them with tribute or find someone else, but you still have full responsibility for your own story.

10. Persistence. Practicing writing is the only way your skills will improve. Listen to criticism and decide honestly whether it’s correct. If it is, consider asking the critiquer for further suggestions. Ignore or laugh at flames. Don’t be discouraged by bad reviews or no reviews but instead focus on getting better. Write for love of it and pride in your work rather than hit counts; popularity is no guarantee of quality and vice versa. Enjoy it; it is fun, even if annoying pedants such as yours truly like to attempt to pin down the fantastic ephemera of creative writing with lists and nitpicking.

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“In the pellucid dawn light the canine oft addressed as ‘Spot’ scampered ebulliently across the verdant grass” :wub:

May I use that as my MSN name? :P

Good list, I can only add: Drug = the stuff doctors prescribe and junkies are addicted to. Dragged = Past tense of drag, dammit! The confusion of the two frustrates me greatly. And it's happened a lot lately. <_<

Sure. :)

Agreed, though I personally find "rapped"/"raped" still more offensive.

Le Sigh. I have many many OCs. Which isn't a problem, even though poor Artha is surounded by them I know they aren't Sues, I write them well as people, and though the story is perhaps more about them (Themay's egg), it is about Artha's view of the new situation.

A good hint is if you have people shapes hole to plug up in the background, use canon background characters. And don't do "The civillians always around when..." Just don't.

I needed a stable owner, an elite stable owner. So instead of inventing one I had Lorius own it. See? If you need a person obsessing after DragonBooster years into the war the same way Tim Drake did for Batman, don't invent him, have one of the babies he saved do it. Or have his older brother do it. Canon links are important.

My sigh was not for my OCs, I wish I had more canon characters in on it too, but still, we don't know any elite racers, thus is impossible for the story I wish to tell.

The Sigh was for my perpetual lack of Beta. I always go over it in my head, write in MS Word, talk to people about it to make up for the lack. but still....

You may note I said that "most people" read for the canon characters. :P In this particular fandom? With Sues and cliches out the wazoo in terms of the canons, it's not like OCs can be that much worse--and likely better. I'm much more interested in reading and writing about OCs in this fandom than I would be in others. Often, the rare minority of good OCs are dragged down by the fearsome reputation of the Mary-Sue, though in general I think that the majority of characters accused of being Sues at least have some Sueish qualities that could be toned down. And, let's face it, DB is practically a field day for the Sues--invent your own speshul dragon, choose your personality colours, and join in the horror!

I figure liking OCs is a preference similar to obscure pairings in that only a minority like to read fics based on them, but that says nothing about the quality of the specific fics in question. The only trouble is that OC too often means "Mary-Sue". (True, the majority of rarepair fics are also crappy; however, I think that due to Mary-Sue's tendency to stick out in a fanfic like a pustulent blister rising from leprous skin, she's 'worse' than many other qualities of bad writing, though in her more extreme incarnations she can be amusing.) At the moment, I'm writing a story for a ficathon with a lot of OCs, because I really do need them for the story I need to tell, and am very much enjoying creating them.

I don't often use betas either, due to small fandoms and a bit of a 'complex' about letting people see my stories before they're posted; I know my writing's not anything special, but I have enough confidence in my literacy and proofreading skills to feel that what I turn out isn't horrendous.

It all depends if someone loves the universe, or the people in it. For instance. Love Hogwarts. Hate Harry.

And total agreement on the OC = Mary Sue usually thing. I wish it didn't it makes it that much harder to get stories based in say america or Australia.

At least the second arc my OCs will be more transient, since it's all about Moordryd crossing the continant. And the third arc, well I'd be surprised if more than three OCs had more than two lines.

*mutters* seven parts now, and still just the damn prologue

wow your good Sarah Frost!! I'm not sure what you would call my fan fic (at this moment i only have one chapter up) Sarina I have been sending the chapter's to Mair but I stopped and now I cant figure out what one I sent her and she hasn't sent me back on a answer on what one I sent here but that besides the point. I'm going to take your pointer's an looking my stuff over and stuff!! you seem to know what your doing in this department and if you wouldn't mind I would like to send you some chapter's to see what you think and if there any think I should work on.
~Shearkin

I think Sarah mentioned that she doesn't Beta in another thread. If you like you can PM it to me and I can at least give it a once over. I'm not much of a technical beta, more of a plot and idea Beta, which sounds like you might need.

Or on one's personal interests--for example, a HP interest combined with an interest in the 1860s might lead to a story about young!Dumbledore (or an interest in a country into developing a wizarding world there). The best OCs work when there's an extremely obvious reason for their existence; for example, AJ Hall's fantastic Lust Over Pendle (HP) is set several years after canon, and the OCs utilised there are pretty obviously necessary for the story to work, with strong, defined personalities and their existences and abilities plausible for the universe.

When a canon involves teenagers, for example, several years later when they're all adults they're not likely to be sticking with their high school sweethearts, and so when there's the excuse of the time period it feels much more natural for an OC to be dating a canon character than if a new character was suddenly dropped into the canons' lives. Compare "twenty-three-year-old Parm is dating a woman called Kaye who works with him at the university department, while Artha has remained single and the shy racer Ellith Blessom is slowly building a relationship with a frustrated Kitt at the Academy" with "Meet Kaye Duvalis and Ellith Bressom! Two new characters who bring new love and key skills to Penn Racing!"

Edit (missed seeing the two posts above): Nemi's correct; while I do some betaing for a couple of friends in another fandom, beyond brief private messaging I don't feel I have time with uni work and my own writing to volunteer to take on further obligations. I'm also not very strong on DB canon, not having seen all the episodes.

very well thought out checklist Sarah :) though I'm a little self confident about writing a fanfic about some of my characters with the canon characters hahaha :P who knows? maybe I will! ^_^ I also like to write slash fanfiction too (got all these ideas for a story! but can't choose one hahaha) :dance:

I like Slash too, to the point where it became the only Genre I read. (note the past tence).

I was drawn to it, I liked it, and so I assumed I liked the images of pretty men being with other pretty men. And so I did, but I don't know if I always did. It's taken me a while but I finally realized why I was drawn to it. And it was these reasons:

Male characters out number Female ones in many fandoms.

Male Characters are often written better/more strongly.

Even my favorite and first Fandom (the one that coined Slash no less!) Star Trek: The Orginal Serries, had Uhura, whom I love now, but didn't make much of an impression because she didn't have huge pivatol parts much. Uhura was, is, awesom. But they had Nurse Chapel, whom I hate, though she is faintly admirable in a certain way. (Savvik, by the by, rocks) Contrast them with Kirk and Spock and Macoy and Sarek and Sulu and Chechov and the rest of the men.

I didn't care about what parts they had or how they fit together, they were people, and sometimes the women...just weren't. And in the end, I cared about seeing people together in my romance rather than body parts--but I enjoy the body parts too. And now, I can stand het pairings, but they usually have to be crossovers.

That's one of the reason I'm...not too fond of Pairings in Dragon Booster. What's Artha's personality? Heroic is not a valid answer. He's...Is he selfish? He helps people, but he's greedy abotu power. So is he childish? Petulant? Brave certainly. Where's his kindness shown and not said? He has personality flaw of the day, he is by definition inconsistant and thus lacking in something you can truely call characterization.

Kitt? When from being hip, kick your ass girl to girl in trouble. Went from racing herself, a leader of herself, self determined you might say, to being a follower. No. She's a weak character, not intresting.

Lance? Is a child. Happy lucky, occasionally wise. I like him.

Mortis/Connor? Master manipulator, possibly a control freak "I Said NO!" Over all calm, source of wisdom and solace.

Parm? Parm has a consistant personality. Clever, intelligent, freaks out a bit, a touch absent minded, meticulous, and fond of giving non essential information in a difficult to understand manner. Not a leader, but that's not a bad thing.

Word? Word is the villan, he's a reasonably intresting one too. But his motivations are flat. He feels like Voldemort, and I don't find Voldemort intresting. Some Fanon Voldemorts though.... Likewise a ficcer can fill int he blanks for Word.

Cain? He's consistant and an intresting look at a contradiction. A Coward, but loyal--an archtype occasionally seen as the hero's sidekick by the way. Coward and a Bully, which is normal. Sarcastic despite being afraid.

Moordryd? I have no clue, he feels like Artha but with a longer, more realistic switch time. He goes from blowing up Penn Stables, to being disturbed and annoyed by his father, and in turn keeping things from him, to a revealation or two (furox episode, and the wraith booster) leading to goodness. He's growing, was growing. But then he turned into a crazy maniac, laughing when someone is going to die, violence. Back to square one but nastier somehow. Post RoD I don't like him much anymore.

Haha yea same here :)

My sentiments exactly! I went through a similar metamorphis to the point where I enjoyed pretty guys with other pretty guys into homosexuality is a better and stronger romance than just regular heterosexual pairings. I often feel what would the world be like if we were all bisexuals? just a thought I had and personally would be the best! what do you think?

Yea it is hard to think about pairings in a show that lacks the qualities you see in slash fanfiction stories...I kind of improvise or try to "improve" the pairings. Just by looking at Artha and how he talks/acts/expresses/and moves, he seems always determine, stubborn, bit of egotism, brave yes, loving, and protective. Though I may be wrong about these descriptions...sometimes you just have to improvise haha.

I also used to be a slash fangirl too when I first entered fandom, due to teh pretty and the quality of some of the writing. However, I tend to prefer even reasonably well-written female characters to excellently written males (not without the occasional exception), and so femslash and het are more to my personal preference, though a lot of het can be misogynistic (I don't mind quite so much about the directed-at-het-males lesbian pr0n ;) ).

You're absolutely right that male characters tend to be more prevalent and better written than female characters; even when there are just a token minority of female characters, people often praise that for simply existing. I believe studies show that a 50/50 gender ratio is perceived by many as being mostly female. It's also quite curious that, several decades ago in the sci-fi world, when feminism was a social trend that could have been predicted to have immense influence, most male writers didn't include possible ramifications of that in their stories (ex. Uhura's short skirt and minor character status). Usually, the only stories with female leads tend to be marked specifically to females--and are pink, sparkly Barbie-like things (mind you, I do like Sailor Moon, because the storyline is reasonably complicated and the pink sparkle is just so deliciously overdone, but I do understand why some people dislike it). And yet female readers are expected to read and enjoy things with male heroes and pretty passive token women.

I've mentioned before how even archetypes tend to be male: Hero, Warrior, King, Saviour, Magician, Wise Mentor, are all character types that tend to bring forth masculine imagery, yet women in fairy tales tend to be relegated to either the pretty passive maiden or the old crone/witch. Sherlock Holmes, Gilgamesh, Jesus Christ, Odysseus, King Arthur, (modern example) Superman are all male; how much do we comparatively hear about Irene Adler, Ishtar, Mary Magdalene, Penelope, Morgan Le Fay, and Wonder Woman? Male is seen as default and it's seen as perfectly normal for the only female characters in a book to be minor and/or love interests, yet the same is rarely reversed even in feminist publications (which tend to have reasonably strong male characters as love interests and often male villains). I've written a little more on this in my livejournal.

And even when female characters ARE involved, they seem to be required to fit certain beauty standards (ex. this). I benefit from this more than I should; I can argue it's subversive and feminist to enjoy the fact of the many ads and characters designed to appeal to heterosexual males (provided, of course, they're not too anatomically impossible as in the link), but one more eager consumer is still encouraging the female objectification concerned.

I don't have any DB 'ships either, unless hawt femslash is involved, though I do think that Artha and Kitt deserve each other and should stay together in that lukewarm way they have, because I'd really hate to see an episode focusing on a Love Triangle Of Doom or Getting Them Together. I generally can't stand teenage love lives; have I mentioned that before?

I don't see Parm as having a personality; he comes across as an essentially passive character to me, a walking encyclopedia who spills out the necessary information, sticks with Artha no matter what, and gets to be the butt of jokes (because intelligence is so not kewl). How he acts in canon is consistent unlike Artha, but he's too obviously a plot device for me to like. Cain gets to play the buffoon a few times too often for me to take him seriously as a character, and Lance doesn't seem to defy his cliche enough for me to appreciate him. Moodryd's seemed to switch between too many roles--Hero's Rival, Evil Minion, Sekritly Good--on apparent authorial whim for me to take him seriously, nor does he seem more than childish teen to me (perhaps not wangsty enough?). But I think Marianis has a sexy voice. ^_^

I have an odd view on Gender and Race. I really do. I don't notice race very often in real life and gender seems like a tertiary issue if that. At least unlike race I can usually recall what sex someone is. So personality shines to me brightest, and due to hard to break out of gender roles usually the women, no matter how well written, end up being less assertive, or more passive than the men.

The 50/50 being seen as more women thing is because I think men's egos are so fragile. "OMG! There's as many women as men there, OMG there's so many!"

In defence of Sci Fi it was pushing the bounds, they were held back by the Television companies all run by rich white men. But we did get our first interracial kiss courtacy of Sci Fi.

I have a tendancy to think the reason why male characters are still present and strong in feminist publications is because feminists, excluding the hard line ball breakers, are for equality, not for putting men down. That is they are against reverse-sexisim and for the abolishment of sexisim, period.

I remember the Pyrah/Kitt thing. You make me like femslash. And you make me like Kitt.

But at least Parm is consistant.

EDIT:

And I'm trying to write an orginal novel, cribbing a little from my fic here, actually. with a female main character, and more females than males in the main adventuring group. A non human main character at that so I can do away with ze ebil boobies and perfect beauty scott free.

Perhaps because race is superficial skin colour and gender means a certain body type a character's gender can be seen as more integral than their race (and also, because I'm white and middle-class, I don't see much explicit racism, whereas it's easier for me to see the effects of sexism; I get the impression explicit racism is more forbidden than explicit sexism, though both are very damaging and I don't intend to say one is worse than the other). While physical differences between different races are negligible, physical differences between men and women are obvious and are often used as an excuse to make women second-class citizens. But still, both women and men come in a range of different physical shapes and sizes; George R R Martin, for example, writes about both the tall, extremely muscular, flat-chested knight Brienne and the physically weak dwarf Tyrion. So it can be seen as ridiculous to care about whether a character is male or female. Gender does, though, highly inform culture in our own world, and this is often passed on to other fantasy universes even when unintended (ex. supposedly equal universes where women get to be soldiers but the prostitutes are still almost all women). I have a *personal* *preference* for female characters in general above male characters in general; part identification and part attraction, I suspect, but at the same time I think that anyone who's able to put themselves inside the head of a centurion from a different planet is being ridiculously moronic if they claim they can't put themselves inside the head of a centurion from a different planet who happens to be of the opposite gender.

My theory why feminists include strong male characters is that feminists are good writers. :P It really, really isn't good writing to have all the characters of one gender token/cliched/minor, and yet so many writers have gotten away with it when that gender is female. The only exception would be in a society in which only women are permitted to be soldiers/monarchs/mages and the story focuses on a war between two rival monarchs with all the male characters as merely minor but otherwise well-written...and it's funny that what seems to be an OppressiveMatriarchy when women are in charge is GenericFantasyland when men are in charge, isn't it?

I have a few things on the go at present with a deliberate majority of female characters (I'm signed up to the femgenficathon, though in one of them the Minor Male Bad Guy and the Transvestite Gang are grabbing POV sections. One of them is based on a fandom I find rather intriguing: Burn Up Excess, a short anime series marketed to heterosexual men. The basic theme is that "four gorgeous policewomen and token guy fight special crimes by night", and there is female objectification there, but what I really liked about the series (besides that :P ) was that all the female characters had extremely strong, well-defined personalities and were powerful. The male characters were all minor or incompetent while the female characters drove the plot; the main villain was male, but he was largely off screen with his impressively competent female sidekick doing all the work. At the end of the series, the only known powerful characters left standing were women. There were parts of the series I found problematic, like the way the Transvestite Gang were treated by the narrative and the occasional lack of empathy towards other women, but overall it felt to me like plotty, compact, fun. Go strong female characters. :dance: