How (not) to Write a Sonic Fanfic by Jared Spurbeck, Murr-Quan Lord #2, with sincerest apologies to Dave Barry for mangling his style. Unlike NetRaptor, I have never been asked how to write a work of fanfiction. However, also unlike her, I am very opinionated and loud-mouthed, and will therefore proceed to outline my thoughts on the matter anyway. First off, I'd like to clear up a common misconception, and the biggest one that I can think of is that a story needs a plot. Forget it! Throw that assumption out the window - it was probably even thought up by an adult, and of course they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. No fanfic, especially a Sonic one, really needs a plot. All you need are a bunch of explosions and mayhem. If your story isn't as large as you want after you're done, THEN you can add a bit of a plot. But only then. So, one might not ask, how do I go about this whole "explosions and mayhem" business? It's a very simple matter, if you just follow these steps: 1) Take the most two-dimensional adversaries you can find; namely, Doctor Robotnik and his Mechanized Legions of Mild Amounts of Fear That Almost, But Not Quite, Approach Terror. (The more logically-inclined among you may feel compelled to point out that Robotnik is hardly two-dimensional, but I would remind them that I am referring to his psychology.) 2) Put Sonic on the good guys' side. And only him. Supporting cast will just clutter up the story, and bring it dangerously close to having a plot. 3) Give Robotnik a new weapon or plan of some sort. (It doesn't matter whether or not he, or anyone else, has ever actually tried it before; Evil Overlords have a notoriously bad collective memory.) If you're stuck for ideas, go watch Saturday morning cartoons for a little while and use any idea from the show with the most explosions on it. 4) Have Robotnik try to implement his plan. Also, since people can have really short attention spans sometimes, be sure to have him explain it very clearly so your readers won't get bored trying to figure out what's going on. And have Robotnik laugh maniacally several times during his expository monologue - it adds variety. 5) Now have Sonic stop him. This is normally where most of the explosions and mayhem take place, so it should be the largest part of your fic. Tensions should be high here; and remember, the best way to raise tension is to change things unexpectedly (i.e. by having Robotnik deploy a Really Big Robot With a Fatal and Highly Obvious Vulnerability). Of course Sonic will win. Normally, anyway. Some of you may want to kill him off, along with everyone else on Mobius. Go ahead! This makes your story's ending depressing, and writing really depressing endings to one's stories is a sign of Talent and Insight. People will applaud your social commentary, right before they kill themselves and/or eat way too much chocolate. But, one might (again) not ask, how do I go about killing things off - whether for a depressing ending or not? Answer: It depends. If you're getting rid of some of Robotnik's 'bots, try for big explosions. Remember, you don't have to be really descriptive in your writing; just use lots of capital letters and odd punctuation marks. Here's an example of a bad explosion, taken from one of my works. I might have quoted one of NetRaptor's stories, but they're all so poorly written that I would never, EVER dream of exposing you to them, even as an example of poor writing. **Sonic continued leaping about the engine, dodging sporadic plasma bolts and precisely aiming attacks at pillars that weakened visibly, metal warping and buckling. Finally the whole contraption ground to a halt, tiny explosions visible across every column.** See how ridiculous that was? There was hardly an explosion at all! Well, actually there were several, but it explicitly states that they were tiny. Now let's look at a much better explosion... **sonik ran into th badnik --<<<>--!** (Those of you who have studied the German language may want to tell me that boum is their word for tree. Well, you're quite wrong. The actual word is Baum, pronounced "popsicle".) See that? The wonderfully creative spelling, the inventive punctuation - I love how this author distributed the < and >'s asymmetrically! It's a work of art! Especially since I wrote it. On a side note, you need to be careful about your spelling. Make sure that you never use a spell-checker, and don't even think about studying spelling on your own. We live in an Enlightened age, and that means that all absolutes go out the window, including Webster's dictionary. Of course, if you still don't like someone's spelling, be sure to flame them mercilessly and make as much fun of their work as you can. It will discourage them from writing anymore, and that's a good thing. Because if they continued writing they might actually improve, and that means more competition for me. Anyway. Back to the topic of killing things off (one of my favorite things to discuss, being an Evil Overlord). All you really need to do is remember this simple rule: If you're destroying a robot, use a really big explosion... and if you're killing a living being, use copious amounts of blood and gore. Some of you may be protesting at this point. We don't want blood and gore, you say. Well, tough! We live in an Enlightened age. As people grow up, they become psychologically mature. So, to demonstrate your own maturity, be sure to use enough violent and explicit content to merit your fic at least an "M" rating (for software; think "R" for movies). And if you can go even farther, it is a sign of great Talent and Insight! People will once again applaud your wonderful narrative, right before they try out your ideas on their schoolmates. Besides, it's more realistic this way. Just as everyone knows that sparks fly out of evil monsters when they get hit on Power Rangers, everyone also knows that blood and gore fly out of anything when it gets hit in a M-rated fic. For example... **Amy hit the Whack-a-Mole game with her Enchanted Mallet of Beatdown and BLOOD AND GORE FLEW EVERYWHERE!!!** Amy? Where'd she come from? Oh, she must be a supporting cast member. I would remind you once again: NEVER use supporting cast members! Well, okay. There is one exception, and that's the self-insert. What is a self-insert, you might ask? It's a character who represents the author, through which he/she (usually) pretends to experience the story. And there are several types... 1) A character with the author's exact name, appearance, and life history who lives on Earth and somehow gets mysteriously transported to Mobius through a tear in the space-time continuum (aka "plot hole"). They normally turn into Mobians and/or join the Freedom Fighters, demonstrating combat prowess far beyond that actually possessed by the author. This kind is indescribably cool, because they cause a lot of explosions and mayhem. 2) A Mobian who bears some psychological resemblance to the author and demonstrates combat prowess far beyond that actually possessed by him/her. These guys cause explosions and mayhem, too, but they aren't as cool because they don't actually turn into Mobians. A lot of people consider their own species to be somehow inferior, and like seeing humans get turned into something cooler. 3) A character - Mobian or not, combat prowess or not - who bears some psychological resemblance to the author and participates in furthering an actual plot. Stay far away from this kind! And watch out that you don't make your Type-1 and -2 self-inserts too realistic, or they might actually turn into Type-3s right before your eyes. Well, that's about it for now, except for one minor issue - swearing. Using lots of profane and obscene language is a way of making people take your work seriously, especially when you've followed my advice and kept all semblance of a plot out of it. It's also realistic. We all (especially Michael Crichton) know that everybody intersperses their everyday language with words that are rated at least PG-13. So if you don't have all of your characters, right down to the little four-year-old orphan, cuss out everything they come across, your story will be unrealistic! Once again, I would remind you that we live in an Enlightened age; never, ever censor anything in the interests of taste or decency, because people will consider you to be un-Enlightened. And now, to demonstrate my own Enlightenment, I present a wonderfully explicit and profane except from a story which I wrote just negative-twenty-five years ago: ---- The preceding essay is copyrighted by Jared Spurbeck, but he encourages that it be distributed and even printed out so long as nobody modifies it or (horrors!) takes it too seriously.