So what should you be looking for in a good fanfic? Here's a list of features, and examples: [the examples have been altered to protect the guilty ;p] The opinions here are obviously my own, but based on my background as a writer, my education as an English major, and an enormous amount of reading of books and Net surfing.

Incidentally, I often use literary terms to describe what makes a work of fiction well-written, or not so well-written. I'd like to recommend this link as an excellent resource on literary terms, and writing in general--it's the University of Victoria's online writing guide. I am going to use hyperlinks from that site to terms worth getting familiar with, like "bathos."

PLOT

You might think that it's obvious that a work of fiction needs a plot, a story, but especially when it comes to the more violent or *ecchi* fanfics, often, all we have is a couple of scenes, packed with action and then...nothing. The story goes nowhere after those couple of scenes. It doesn't progress, it doesn't go anywhere, and it doesn't appear that the author has any message, point, or moral he or she wants to convey.

LEMON, ACTION, or ROMANCE; THEY ALL NEED A PLOT

Yes, even a lemon fanfic should have *some* kind of message in it, or it's not a complete fanfic, it's only one or more *scenes*. And believe it or not, if you're writing an action fanfic, and all that happens is that A attacks B, and B retaliates against A, and A then attacks B again, and so on, ad nauseum, I don't care how spectacular and bloody the attacks are, it gets B - O - R - I - N - G!! For romance writers, please remember that Sailor Moon is not a *Harlequin Romance*. This is a story about superheroes, the 10 Senshi and Tuxedo Kamen, and you have to have some action somewhere, or you are not being true to the series.

ORIGINALITY

A WORD ON PLAGIARISM, AND ETHICS: Beware of stealing other writers' ideas--unless you are very talented, people will detect the plagiarism, and either be irritated by the poor imitation, or bored at seeing the same plot devices again. If you want to use someone's ideas in a new way, the polite thing to do is to e-mail the author first, to seek his/her permission. If the author says no, please understand that a person's written work has a very personal meaning to them, as something he or she created. You liked that person's writing enough to want to use the ideas, so now, respect that person's right to his/her intellectual property.

Avoid cliches like the plague, would-be writers! The worst cliche is calling your fanfic "Sailor Moon X", where "X" is a letter of the alphabet. Yes, I know there are some well-known fanfics called "Sailor Moon *LETTER*", but now that everyone has used it, what do you think the chances are, of a search engine, or a human being, for that matter, pinpointing the "Sailor Moon *LETTER*" fanfic that you wrote. My friend, you will get lost in the crowd ;p

Romance writers, be wary of having everything between your lovers too perfect, and beware of cliches like titling your fanfic "Love's Secrets Revealed", "Rules Of Love", etc. Those are so unbelievably overused. Also, if I see the author's nickname is something like "Lady BLANK" or "Sailor True Heart", I'm turned off before I even start to read. It sounds too sickly sweet, frankly. You wouldn't drench yourself in a vat of perfume when going out on a date, would you? The overuse of romantic phrases and symbolism has the same queasy effect as too much perfume--it's overpowering. So don't let your readers succumb to a *Pink Sugar Heart Attack*--season your romance with some realism, and humour, to balance things out.

Other cliches it is best to avoid: The characters Sailor Earth and Sailor Sun. A few talented writers have used these characters successfully, but unless you *really* know Sailor Moon and its characters very very well, these additions will not sound authentic.

Sailor Earth doesn't exist for a very good reason: Tuxedo Kamen is the the Senshi or Prince of Earth. I recently read a discussion where it was argued that a Senshi can only be *female*. Well, excuse me, but Senshi just means *soldier* in Japanese, and does not denote a gender. Why is he the only male Senshi? Best to ask Naoko-sensei that question ;-) , but I suspect it's so he can be the only male hunk in the action. Yeah, I agree that Sailors Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus have been robbed, but if you are being true to the series, you can't introduce another male Senshi. That is also tired, and overused.

As for Sailor Sun, it could be argued that Tuxedo Kamen, with his Golden Crystal, and the character Helios [who in Greek mythology, is the Sun God] represent the Sun element as well as the Earth in Sailor Moon.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Here is where we separate the wheat from the chaff. A mediocre writer writes as if the story were a sports play-by-play, or the script for the voice actors to follow. Sorry, but it's not true fan fiction, unless you can describe the main characters' emotions and reactions to the point that they come alive, as three-dimensional characters.

RESEARCH YOUR CHARACTERS FIRST! SOME LINKS FOLLOW.

Before you begin writing, have a very strong sense of just who your leading characters are, what he/she would do, or not do, and what he/she would say, or never say. If you haven't seen most of the episodes the character has appeared in, you're at an immediate disadvantage. You would be very wise to read Hitoshi Doi's or one of the other Net synopses of the episodes the character has appeared in, or Alex Glover's or other Net manga translations before you begin writing. Remember, many of the characters' features are determined by their respective planet or gemstone's mythical qualities--you'd do well to bone up on those first, too!

When I write a scene, I look back over it and ask myself, "Is that how Mamoru would react? Is that what he would say?" and do the same thing for all the other known characters. Sometimes, I re-word or change the scene, after deciding it's not true to the characters as written in the anime or the manga. It's a good exercise for writers and I wish more people would take the time to do this in the editing/re-writing portion of writing fan fiction.

DESCRIPTIVE PROSE

You are writing a story, boys and girls, you are not doing the play-by-play for the big action-packed game, *Sailor Moon Vs. The Youmas*, nor are you writing a dialogue for the anime voice actors!

So it's not enough to write:
"The man in the cape took Neo-Queen Serenity away. He told her he would kill her if she called for help. He blasted the Sailor Scouts with an energy blast. Then he teleported Neo-Queen Serenity to BLANK."

If you don't know what's missing in that paragraph, you are not a writer, you are a color commentator ;p And what's wrong with being a color commentator, I hear a few male voices asking? Nothing, except, in sports, you know what the game is, and know the rules of the game, and how it's to be played. You may even know many of the players and how they tend to play. So it's OK for a color commentator to just give the minimum narrative necessary. But my friends, you can't assume your readers know what the game is, let alone the players [your major characters].

So what's missing is: the descriptive prose. What did the man in the cape look like [hair, moustache, or the lack of same, expression, eyes, mouth, etc.]? What was he wearing [colors, full description]? When he said this to NQS, in what sort of voice did he say it? [threatening, cold, expressionless, vicious, snarl, quietly, etc.] How did NQS react to him? If she did not speak, what was her facial expression, or body gestures [i.e. did she flinch and look frightened, was she angry, rebellious, defiant? etc.]

He blasted the Scouts with an energy blast. Oh dear, how lame--no description of the attack or its effects, or how the Scouts reacted to the attack. They deserve better than that! There is a whole scene waiting to be described here, in a whole separate paragraph. The more you can describe, right down to the small details in the setting, the more alive this scene will become for the reader.

The teleport scene deserves a whole separate paragraph, describing how that was done and the after-effects. If you don't do that, the action loses its dramatic effect.

Without descriptive prose, there is just too much going on here in a few sentences. It may work for a play-by-play, but it is lousy, lazy writing.

CONTINUITY/FLOW

This concept is harder to describe, but is related to plot and descriptive prose. If both of those are working well, the action should proceed smoothly from one scene to the next. If you find yourself saying, "Whoah! How did we get from a scene about X to discussing Y?" then there's a continuity/flow problem. There needs to be *bridging* sentences which warn the reader that you're about to change the scene, or the subject, or the reader gets confused, and annoyed.

ACTION/SUSPENSE

Doing this effectively relies, again, on plot and descriptive prose. If you don't have these two going for you, then not all the cliched phrases or use of CAPITALS or italics is going to create excitement for your readers. What you may get, instead, is melodrama, or even worse, bathos. Yes, I said bathos, not pathos. Pathos is what you want in a sad scene. A sad scene written so badly that it makes you laugh, is *bathos*. MiSTers, take note: bathos is a word you may not have heard, but you are all too familiar with what a *bathetic* fanfic is like to read ;p

Cliched, hackneyed phrases to avoid:

"It was a dark and stormy night...." This one is well known as a trite way to begin a story. "It was a quiet night in Crystal Tokyo." is not an improvement, believe me.

"...No one knew of the danger. No one but him...."

Having an italicized sentence like this, all by itself, draws attention to that sentence. If it were a startling, dramatic, original sentence, this would be worth doing. However, this sentence is so cliched that using it like this becomes melodrama. Be very careful of using one sentence paragraphs or ... to convey suspense; you may achieve the opposite of what you intended, and make your readers groan.

EFFECTIVE OPENING

Ideally, you should have an opening sentence that *grabs your reader's attention*, so he/she wants to go on reading. Originality really matters here, because you have to get the reader hooked right away. However, don't have the major action happen in the first paragraph. You have to build up to it, and set and describe the scene fully. If you have set the scene well, your reader should easily understand, (WITHOUT having to read your explanatory pre-amble, that all of this happens in a parallel universe), where and when the action is taking place, and why.

If you need a lengthy pre-amble to explain why the Sailor Moon characters are behaving differently, or who the new characters are, it's a sign you're in trouble as a writer. A good writer doesn't need a pre-amble--everything should explain itself in the first few paragraphs.

EFFECTIVE CONCLUSION

This, again, should *grab* your reader, but in a different way. He or she should be left with a vivid impression, with an emotion or message that you, the writer were trying to convey. The last sentence should reinforce the message contained in your plot/story. The best writers are absolute artists at writing both the opening and the conclusion.

Helen Szeto's fan fiction information sites:

My friend Helen has probably read more anime fan fiction, especially Sailor Moon fan fiction, than anyone else. That is her life! So if you want to write *good* fan fiction, you can't go wrong reading what Helen has to say.

Lennie's Home Page--An avid fanfic reader

The Outer Senshi Trio: A Guide to Writing Outer Senshi Fics:
- written jointly by the fanfic authors Jackie Chiang, Amanda "Greenbeans" Anderson & Tim Nolan, who specialize in fics about Sailors Uranus, Neptune, Pluto & Saturn.

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