YOUR ONLINE GUIDE TO WRITING YOUR OWN OBIFIC!!
1)SETTING THE SCENE.
It really improves a story to
preface it with a mood enhancing extract (some opt for poetry, but I find
that the works of Celine Dion do just as well.) as you can get right into the hearts of your readers, and make them feel the deep inner pain of the character(s) you are writing about. For example:
If it's new beginning,
Then I don't want to know,
If it's not worth pretending,
Then I don't want to know,
I feel so sick of listening,
What should I want to know,
I've lost my fifteen minutes,
On Eurodisco...
Evocative, huh? WARNING: Some people will try to tell you that such
prefaces are self-indulgent, pretentious, and downright irritating, not to mention embarrassingly twee and cheezy -
ignore them, what the hell do they know?!
2)CHARACTERISATION.
"What?!", I hear you yell. Well, characterisation is
basically the way that you develop your characters and make them seem like
real people who exist in actual real life, or at least in a 'real' piece of fiction. Difficult? Well, fortunately for you, Lucasfilm have
done all the hard work for you! All you need do is keep the characters
close to how they were in TPM (or the appropriate movie). However, some poetic
licence is allowable - as long as it doesn't go TOO far. After all TPM
blatantly INFERRED that Obi is liable to get nekkid every couple of
paragraphs, with whichever random woman/man he's met only a page before. (Come
on, you *saw* that scene in the swamp didn't you?!) So don't think that such
plots are going to competely undermine the nature of the charcter,
replacing him with a totally different version spawned in the sick mind of
some crazy hormonal menopausal woman.
3) DIALOGUE.
Uh-oh! There are some who would argue that since Obi has SUCH
an English accent, it's stupid to let him use Americanisms (ass, pants,
aluminum, etc), but that's just crazy talk!! Just because it makes the
phrasing sound clumsy and unrealistic in the mind of the reader, doesn't mean it's bad!!
Sure, you KNOW that anyone with THAT accent would be tripping up all over
those words, but hey, it's only a fic!! Also, feel free to use words that
look silly to the British ("pants" is a favourite), after all, they owe us for winning the war for
them. Also on a dialogue note, remember that you walk a fine line...it's
easy to get confused, so remember that there are TWO safe ways to go here;
Firstly, you can opt for contemporary ("Yo, my homeboy, the Empire is menacing the hood.") speech, which contary to popular
belief WON'T jarr with the setting, and WILL keep the story tight and
coherent. Or, secondly, you might try overly grandiose, fake-mediaeval language, which
fits well with the spirit of the movies, and lets you show off while making
cumbersome - yet natural sounding - sentences.
4)GRAMMER AND SPELLING.
What the hey! Who need these! Get a life!
Seriously, NOONE will notice if you make the odd spelling mistake or
twelve. Also into this catagory comes punctuation. The protcol is that //
indicates telpathic communication - a vital element of any Obific - and
that ( ) indicates private thought. Feel free to play around with this though. And remember, the internet doesn't do italics (well, not without effort), so use *this* to
indicate stress, rather than CAPITALS, which are easier to understand, and therefore more intrusive. Also, feel free to experiment with language, dispensing with quotation marks, capitals, commas, and even full stops.
People will question your artistic integrity if you don't.
5) VOCABULARY.
(Argueably, this could come under DIALOGUE, but I feel that it
deserves it's own section.) Personally, I find that the more times you can use the same word in a paragraph the better. Try to use complicated words that you cannot spell and
don't understand, as this will make you look clever. If the fic you are
writing is about *that*, and requires euphemisms, try not to use more than
two for each thing - only one if at all possible - as this will make your
story flow better. Repitition is *good*, as it will not scare people. If
you have to make up proper nouns (ie: names) make them
unpronouncable, or better still use your own name, because this shows what
a great imagination you have. Words composed entirely of consonants (such
as "nnnghhh") are also good.
6) STRUCTURE.
One of the best structural techniques is to switch suddenly
and randomly between the viewpoints of several chaacters. *Don't* attempt
to signpost this in any way, just throw it in - readers will appreciate
the challenge this presents. Similarly, jumping round in time and space
without warning can add spice to an otherwise dull story. Remember,
continuity is unimportant, even within the confines of one paragraph. Who
cares if the spelling of a character's name changes halfway through -
noone will notice, trust me! In fact, try doing without paragraphs
altogether, as this will be an exciting experiment in literature. A
beginning, a middle and an end? Don't be crazy! That's for wimps! Start at
some point in the middle, do several intrusive flashbacks, and only end
the plot in *the very last line*. To use a classic example, Ami and Obi
should be in bed at the start, think about how they met in the middle, and
realise Ani is evil *in the very last sentence*. (eg: "Suddenly, she
realised with the full sadliness of her womanly heart that he were to be sadly
found to be evil and bad.") All the greats use this structure, and readers
appreciate the lack of tension in it, after all, we all know he
goes evil in the end.
7)DO'S AND DON'TS:
*Do* base stories on the Jedi Apprentice books, as they are masterworks
of contemporary fiction, and remember, hardly anyone remembers that Bant
turned out to be a fish, so noone will get scared if she "does it" with
Obi.
*Don't* spel-chek - the randomness makes the fic more funn!
Random Fic Generator
Not scared yet? See such ficage at fanfiction.net, or any of the fic places on the links page.
Monkeychild Main
