Ersatz Sobriquet

How many Fan Fictions have you had published on the internet?
Well, let’s see. About a total of eleven. That really means nothing since I’ve been writing and publishing on the net since ’99.

How do you get inspiration?
From various sources. If I read a really, really good story that has a unique idea, I sometimes wish I could do something like that… and then do it! TV shows that present some various ideas also cause inspiration. I remember while watching The X-Files, they brought up a very interesting idea that aliens are going to come and destroy the world in the year 2012. That was also an idea presented in a song before, about waiting around till 2012. Looked up info on that and got mad inspiration.

Most of the time, I get ideas, tons of them, while waiting for the bus. Since there’s nothing else to do, might as well think about ideas for stories.

Describe the type of fanfics (themes, characters, etc.) that you like to write.
I like to write dark, somewhat twisted tales of lesser talked about characters. You won’t normally see me write something about Squall when I write about a FF8 story. I also like to write about the villains, though trying not to make it seem so typical.

I also like to explain why certain events happened to certain people, how they wound up the way they were portrayed or a possible result of actions we saw in the game, and the end result further along down the road.

Right now, I’m basically on a trip of writing things that makes you want to care about the character so much that your upset or shocked, or any other radical emotion you might experience when you read about something that was totally unexpected. That’s the only way, I feel, you can really tell a story, if you care about characters.

How often do you write?
I would love to write everyday, but that won’t be for sometime now. Most of the time, I write a little bit every month. I want to work on that much more soon.

What is one of your pet peeves about writing fan fictions?
Not making certain scenes seem alive. I want to start bringing out mad detail when it comes to the surroundings and what’s going on. I want to mention that a character who’s having trouble talking to this girl is folding a piece of paper, unable to look at her the whole time. Mention how much he’s fooling with the paper. Y’know, just make the scene come alive, thus helping the characters come alive even more.

What are your pet peeves about reading Fan Fictions?
The titles and the first paragraph, honestly. The titles to a lot of these stories leaves much to be desired for. “An Alliance With Evil” or something corney like that won’t make me want to read it, no matter how much people rave about it.

And also, the first sentence should pull the reader in, letting the reader know what’s to be expected. It’s not a good thing when it just lies flat on it’s face doing nothing to want to inspire any further reading.

And, if I could ramble on a bit more, I also don’t like the HUGE paragraphs some authors like to have in their stories. Multiple chapters when the story could obviously be a one-shot is a bit troubling as well. And having characters act out of content is something that kills me.

Ex:“I’ll kill you, you motherf*&*#!!” Marle yelled.

That’s so unlike her, it’s not even funny.

Do you have any advice for soon-to-be writers?
The only thing I’ve always pushed on people is to read. Read other peoples stuff as much as you can, especially people whom you like to read. You’ll see how to construct decent paragraphs, have characters acting in character. Any kind of major disaster that occurs, you can see how they handled that. So many things you can learn if you read other peoples things.

That’s the only way you can expand your mind and write things that are truly enjoyable. And go beyond the realms of fanfiction. Read such people like Robert Zelazny, George R.R. Martin, Mark Twain and, dare I say it, Shakespear. You’ll learn much more valuable lessons on story construction that has been tested over time.

Do you have any questions that you think should be asked that are not on this form (And answer them please)?
Yeah, I have a few:

What inspired you to write fanfiction? I always liked to write stories. And then I found that their was a way to have stories that you wrote available to the public and feedback could be available and I jumped all over that.

Were there any stories that you knew were pretty bad, but still published it, or later looked back and realized it was bad? Yeah, most def. The very first fanfic wasn’t too hot. I totally messed up on a MAJOR timeline fact which would make the whole fanfic totally pointless. And the second fanfic I wrote was just one huge fight, with clichés running around like it was some kind of marathon.

Have you ever wanted to do a collaboration project? Always! Right now, I finally got it going on with two very excellent fanfic writers that I hope will be finished soon (as soon as I start it. ^_^) Wanted to do a colab. Effort for sometime now to see if some of the skills of other fine authors would rub off me and just to see how the story would turn out.

Do you write epics or one-shots, and whichever one you favor more, would you ever consider doing the other? I do one-shots more often than epic stories, or long stories in general. I really just write the story as long as I need to tell the story. I don’t set out saying, “I’m gonna write a nice 50 page story with eight chapters!!” It just doesn’t work like that. I don’t know HOW many pages a certain scene may require. So far, the longest, completed story is three chapters long, 20+ pages. Uncompleted, I have a 50+ pages story that’s been sitting here since ’00 and is nowhere near completed. It’s just whatever tells the story, without it feeling rushed.

What are some links to your stories so that people will be able to go read them? Com'on A little self promotion never hurt ^_^. Also, if you have a site, list it here (Indicate that it is your site though)
I post at various sites. Icybrian.com, Rpgamer.com, fanfiction.net and of course, here! I’m trying to build my library here at RPGC since I like the people who run it (Weiila’s the best!) and the people who peruse the forums. FF.net has pretty much everything I’ve written posted, and Icybrian.com is where I started my writings. Look under FF1 and you’ll see me immediately.