[Feb 2015] - Fanfic - Discussion Thread

[xiagan]

Last year we had a Fanfic February and we got some great stories out of it, so I'm doing it this year again.

Your challenge this month is to write fanfiction, which means that your story should be set in an already existing fantastical universe.

This time I'm limiting the books you can choose from a bit:
Your story can be set in the worlds from Pratchett's Discworld, Rowling's Harry Potter, Martin's Game of Thrones, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, Sanderson's Mistborn, Brett's Warded/Painted Man, Erikson/Esslemont's Malazan or Rothfuss' Name of the Wind.

You are completely free in what story to write but it must be possible to recognize the world.
If you want an additional challenge, you can try to emulate the original authors writing style.

Rules:

1. This can be prose or a poem.
2. Must be fan fiction set in the world of one of the above mentioned fantasy books.
3. Prose must be 500-1500 words long.
4. Poetry must be 100-500 words long.
5. You will be disqualified if you exceed the limits, full stop. That's why they're called limits.
6. Your entry can't be published somewhere else before.
7. This is a writing contest, not a "I have written something like this ten years ago" contest. So if you happen to have a story that fits one of the themes, I'd like it to have a mayor overhaul/edit. Work for it.
8. Please add your story's word count and, if you have, your twitter handle.
9. Please put your story in [ spoiler ] tags to make the thread easier to handle. You can find them above the smileys next to the 'youtube' symbol:

Entry will close March 1st 2015 and voting will begin somewhere around the same time too.

Please post your entry below. All members are eligible to join. If you are not a member you can join here. Sign up is free and all are welcome!

The winner will have their piece displayed on the main Fantasy Faction website sometime in the next months.

Please post your entry here.

Note: This thread is only for questions or discussing this month's writing contest. Good luck!

[ryanmcgowan]

Oaft! The choices! It may take me longer to decide who's world I love most, than it will to write my entry this month.  I fear I won't be able to do any of them justice.

[SJBudd]

Good subject, I've never done fanfic before but some really great books to choose from!

[SJBudd]

Argh I want to re read all these great books but there won't be enough time. 

[Elfy]

I did Lies last time Discworld could be interesting, or I could come up with another Lies one maybe.

[Elfy]

You're probably going to get this question a bit so I'll ask it now. Three of the listed concepts (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and A Game of Thrones) have TV/movie concepts based around them which can differ slightly and in some cases greatly from the printed word. Now where does the line get drawn? Especially with A Game of Thrones, which is what the TV show is called (well, actually it's called Game of Thrones), and the series as a whole is called A Song of Ice and Fire, so if someone is playing in George R.R Martin's sandbox do they have confine themselves to the first book in the series? Also how does The Hobbit (both book and movies) fit in? It's a prequel to Lord of the Rings and they do have some characters in common.

[JMack]

I'm assuming that worlds of these books are available to us in their entirety.  A LOTR fanfic could deal with anything from Morgoth to Numenor to How exactly did Glamdring and Sting get into the trolls' horde anyway?  And everything in between.  We could tell about the defeat of the Witch king of Agmar or completely invent characters at the fall of one of the great even cities during the First Age. A story based on ASOIAF could deal with the original construction of the Wall. 

Yes to all this?

[Doctor_Chill]

I would ask if I could do some religious fanfic, but that would invariably spawn another denomination. Sooooo, I guess I'll take a shot at....something. I dunno.

[xiagan]

Jmacyk is right. The whole world the mentioned book takes place in is free to use at any given point in its history.
I don't understand the question with the movie adaptations. If you're going to try to emulate the author's style, the movies don't help you at all.

[JMack]

If you're going to try to emulate the author's style...

I didn't get that part (emulate style).  Very interesting.
Takes away one of my more humorous ideas 

[xiagan]

If you're going to try to emulate the author's style...

I didn't get that part (emulate style).  Very interesting.
Takes away one of my more humorous ideas 

These contests are to hone your writing skills. Emulating one of the great ones is a pretty big task but helps you a lot.

[Raptori]

Hmm... out of those I've only read HP, LOTR and Mistborn (plus roughly 50% of the first Malazan book). Not remotely interested in writing HP/LOTR, which leaves only Mistborn - fortunate really since that would've been my second choice if it had been free for all (first choice would've been ROTE).

The problem here is identifying Sanderson's style... the aspects of his writing that stick out to me when I read his books are things that I flat out hate. 

[JMack]

I think I'll need a Harry Potter trivia companion for this month.   Fortunately, I can text my daughter

It took her 5.3 seconds* to come back with "Carrow? Amycus and Alecto Carrow were brother and sister death-eaters.  They were teachers at HW under Snape when Neville was leading his rebellion."

I was very impressed.

Then she wrote: "I can't remember what happened to them."

Say it ain't so.




*may not be true

[Saraband]

This month was harder for me to put something together, as I am not that keen on fanfiction. Perhaps this was why I found it all the more challenging, and, when I finished, more rewarding. It is very stressful to write about characters that are known and loved by many, for sure.

Anyway, looking forward to reading more stories, although I think I already have a favorite from the submissions we've had!

And wow, Harry Potter does seem to inspire a lot of people to write. I was very surprised to see how popular it was on these forums as well.

[Elfy]

Harry Potter seems to be like Fight Club on fantasy forums and among fans. You may enjoy it or be involved in it, but you don't often say so out loud. I'm not really surprised by how many stories it's generated on the topic. If you look at places like fanfic.net it's probably out in front by a long way, there are large thriving fanfic communities that just have HP or HP related fanfic on them. Rowling has created such a rich world with so many possibilities that it's fun to explore them. In some ways it's a little like Star Wars in that there are all these minor characters that you can imagine entire backstories and histories for and you're not really affecting canon or stepping on anyone else's toes.