Over-rated aspects of Fanfics?

Hello friends,
I was wondering what you guys think are some oer-rated or over-used things you see in a lot of fanfics? I'd like to write a fanfic of my own but I want to avoid the clichés that most fanfics have.

For example:
What do you thing about shinies in fanfics?
How about OCs?
What annoys you about story lines or characters?

Anything at all helps me! :pink_love:

Alright, I moved this on over to the Writer's Lounge since that's where discussion topics go.

What do you thing about shinies in fanfics?

Ooh, this is a tough one. It's tough because there is no such thing as coincidence in writing. You control everything that happens, so there's no such thing as chance. If you really want to have your character get a shiny, the only way I would go around doing it is to have your character encounter a crap ton of pokemon before, and then he/she finds the shiny, just like how the anime did it with Ash and his shiny Noctowl.

How about OCs?

OCs are perfectly fine, as long as they make sense. Just don't have them be uber-powerful, or a Mary Sue, and I think it's fine for the most part. However, if you have an OC that's replacing a main character, like Brock or something, but the two are exactly alike, it's better to just have Brock in there.

What annoys you about story lines or characters?

When people don't use much originality in their fics. I don't really like journey fics because when people write them, it almost exactly follows the game plot. If I wanted to hear the story again, I would play through the game. If you're doing a journey fic, go through the gyms out of order, start with something other than one of the starters, just do something to get away from the games. I just like to see people really think about their plot instead of copying and pasting from something else.

Ooh, this is a tough one. It's tough because there is no such thing as coincidence in writing. You control everything that happens, so there's no such thing as chance. If you really want to have your character get a shiny, the only way I would go around doing it is to have your character encounter a crap ton of pokemon before, and then he/she finds the shiny, just like how the anime did it with Ash and his shiny Noctowl.

Click to expand...

An alternative is to actually give them a shiny as you please - but with a catch (of course). The catch? That's just treating the event seriously within the story. It needs to come off as more than 'oh hey I just happened to encounter a shiny, have spare Pokéballs and caught it/persuaded it to follow me lalala'.

Alternatively, make it the focus of the story or plot. For instance, does having a shiny Pokémon make the trainer a target for thieves? That could make for an interesting scenario.

The problem is of course that most times you see a character, often a new trainer, find a shiny Pokémon in a fic, it's not really considered and just done to look cool. Which is a shame, but that's the case with many new fics where the writer hasn't considered that. Same goes with them getting rare Pokémon, including legendaries willy-nilly.

What do you thing about shinies in fanfics?

The term 'shiny' doesn't actually apply in fanfics. Generally, I've just seen people just describe Pokémon as being an alternate color or having markings that they normally wouldn't have in the games/anime. Pokémon customization is more the craze than having Pokémon be 'shinies,' in that sense.

How about OCs?

Most people can pull off OCs convincingly so long as they don't follow say...the examples set by Ash in the anime... I usually try and focus less on OCs being trainers and more on them being actual people who have Pokémon as either pets or battle partners. The whole 'trainer' angle alone doesn't always go over as well as people who actually have lives in the Pokémon world. They can still be trainers at the same time, but they actually have personalities all their own and being a Pokémon trainer isn't center of their entire livelihood.

Additionally, not all OCs are human. You have to consider that there are over 700 potential candidates for Pokémon to assume the role of an active or central character in a fanfic, aside from the untold quirks you could add to their personality to really make them your own. Likewise, I have seen people (including myself) introduce their own creature characters in either the form of Fakemon or alternate world creatures into the Pokémon universe. It's far from cliché too.

What annoys you about story lines or characters?

The one thing that gets my goat most of all in stories is when the narration seems to pan out right before a major event. To an extent, it's hard to build up excitement towards a major plot changer in long-running stories, but people seem to underplay the significance more often than they actually try to draw on the fact that it's climactic. It brings down the quality of the story by a far greater margin than overdoing things does, and is a major turnoff to me.