On Writing Fan Fiction (Rules & Advice)

[RedPiggy]

Well, every time I try using anything but 8pt Veranda, I get tons of formatting errors when I try to post. So, I gave up. I use 12pt New Times Roman at ff.net, though.

 

[Slackbot]

Heh. I paste it in, then switch to code mode and copy and paste that into another Word documen. I do a search-and replace on all font codes, replacing them with nothing, then paste that back into the post. Presto, all the font codes are stripped out, and the rest--like bold, italics, etc--remain.

 

[Ruahnna]

Hi--I'm guess what I'm really looking for here is a conversation about writing thoughts. (Translation: I'd like to hear ideas and opinion--not laws.) If anyone interested in writing muppet stuff would like to comment/join in the conversation on any of the following points, I'd love some creative give-and-take here.
Point 1: How do you feel about the characters aging? Does no one age? Robin's still a child. Piggy's still looking fabulous. Kermit's not wrinkling. Scooter's still wearing a school jacket.... What do you think? What are some ways--or what are YOUR ways--of dealing with this issue?
Point 2: Do you have a single consistent worldview of the muppet family? And if you do, do you deviate from it to tell other stories that don't fit into that cannon. (I do.) Does it give you continuity whiplash, or do you find it freeing to try out other scenarios? I'd just like to hear from others.
Point 3: What do you do about food? I mean, in a world of singing cabbages, steering wheel fricassee and an out of control chef, do you put much thought into what you have them put in their mouths? Do you avoid the topic of what (or who) they eat?
Point 3½: Does anyone else find it, er, weeird to cook/eat common foods while writing with frogs and pigs and bears and The Linguini Brothers? (Looks around guiltily after our Fourth of July picnic...) Just asking.

 

[RedPiggy]

Point 1: How do you feel about the characters aging? Does no one age? Robin's still a child. Piggy's still looking fabulous. Kermit's not wrinkling. Scooter's still wearing a school jacket.... What do you think? What are some ways--or what are YOUR ways--of dealing with this issue?

I age them, but I explain that as a species or whatever Muppets could be classified as (including Muppet humanoids), they age far slower than the creatures they're based on (if they're based on creatures anyway). For me, I tend to see Robin as an older child, maybe not quite a tween yet. I thought Piggy explained her looks as "plastic surgery", LOL. I don't see why Scooter can't wear his favorite jacket so long as it's not tattered and still fits. Normal humans should be so lucky, LOL.

Point 2: Do you have a single consistent worldview of the muppet family? And if you do, do you deviate from it to tell other stories that don't fit into that cannon. (I do.) Does it give you continuity whiplash, or do you find it freeing to try out other scenarios? I'd just like to hear from others.

I have, I think, about four canons. There's my Comeback King Saga canon, which is an attempt to merge just about every Henson property I've seen. There's Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Farscape, Dinosaurs, Labyrinth, and Dark Crystal. I've always been a fan of the Muppet Family Christmas, but by having an almost-complete universe (heck, I even included Tinseltown), I can happily imagine what an updated one might be like. And the weird thing is that most of the important plot points should've started by now, since I don't really get down to business in the plot until the year 2011, which it now is. There's my current canon that's in my signature, which is a troubled alternate universe to the above canon. I also have a "video game" canon, where I tried to write Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth (specifically, an adaptation of Forbes' Return to Labyrinth comic, which I sadly didn't finish) as video games. I also have a Kingdom Hearts: Dinosaurs story that fits in that general universe. Finally, I was going to write my own movie scripts. I have a Dinosaurs movie I wrote, Spring Forward, I think. At any rate, the first two canons are obsessively detailed, the first more than the second, I admit. I spent MANY hours watching DVDs, youtube, and reading Muppetwiki to create a uniform timeline as much as humanly possible.

Point 3: What do you do about food? I mean, in a world of singing cabbages, steering wheel fricassee and an out of control chef, do you put much thought into what you have them put in their mouths? Do you avoid the topic of what (or who) they eat?

In my usual canon, I've noted a theory (I don't know if anyone else shares it) that from Dinosaurs to the modern Muppetverse, it appears that "singing cabbages" are relatively new. I tend to waffle or wemble between such things as being natural evolutions or the products of magic. For example, in Dinosaurs, you'd most likely have, say, a "real" dog (and indeed we see that real Labs exist there). You now have "real" dogs, "creature" dogs, "semi-Muppet" dogs (such as Sprocket, who can't speak human well), and "Muppet" dogs, such as Rowlf, who speaks human perfectly. So, I tend to have most eat "regular" food and have "Muppet food" be considered sentient beings in their own right, though naturally predatory creatures wouldn't care very much.

Point 3½: Does anyone else find it, er, weeird to cook/eat common foods while writing with frogs and pigs and bears and The Linguini Brothers? (Looks around guiltily after our Fourth of July picnic...) Just asking.

Not really. To mostly quote Spike, "She's an animal, you're an animal, so act like an animal." I am a member of an omnivorous species. I'm not likely to eat frog, but it's certainly not because I associate with Kermit ... I just think it's icky.

 

[Slackbot]

Point 1: How do you feel about the characters aging? Does no one age? Robin's still a child. Piggy's still looking fabulous. Kermit's not wrinkling. Scooter's still wearing a school jacket.... What do you think? What are some ways--or what are YOUR ways--of dealing with this issue?

My approach is that time passes, and characters do mature and age. However, in the world of the Muppets, time is as squishy as continuity, so the Muppets may not have actually aged 30 years since TMS. One could argue that Muppets are a subspecies of Toon, and Toons stick at whatever age is convenient. It's convenient for Miss Piggy to remain the same but for the Fraggle Five to reach adulthood, so that's the way I roll.

Point 2: Do you have a single consistent worldview of the muppet family? And if you do, do you deviate from it to tell other stories that don't fit into that cannon. (I do.) Does it give you continuity whiplash, or do you find it freeing to try out other scenarios? I'd just like to hear from others.

I have one continuity for all my Muppet/Fraggle fanfics, not because I want to restrict myself, but because it is the one made up of the opinions that I believe in. Fraggles and Muppets live in the same world and are about the same average size. Scooter is now a young adult but somehow Robin is still teeny-weeny; the Fraggle Five have a few whelps of their own, but otherwise are pretty much the same, just a tad mellower. Gonzo is an alien--or not, depending on your definition of alien--and he and Camilla have tied the knot and had a kid, not necessarily in that order. And so on and so forth. I don't have to make myself stick to my own assumptions; those are simply the boundaries that make sense to me.

Point 3: What do you do about food? I mean, in a world of singing cabbages, steering wheel fricassee and an out of control chef, do you put much thought into what you have them put in their mouths? Do you avoid the topic of what (or who) they eat?

The characters eat nonsentient food. If it has a face and/or talks, ya don't eat it in real life. You just pretend to treat it as eatin' food on the stage. And Fraggles are vegetarians.

 

[Collgoff]

I explained it in my post.

Oh right!

 

[Ruahnna]

Even Muppet movies have OCs in them. Max, Ms. Bitterman, Gary, Mary and Walter are all OCs when we meet them. The difference is that they appear to serve a particular function in (mostly) well-plotted stories and they come into the lives of those characters, serve their function/role and then depart, leaving our core characters pretty much intact. We'll have to see what becomes of Walter, and whether or not his time with the muppets will "take." I would like to see that, because I think Walter's function extends beyond his movie role and could continue to be a vital part of the muppets.

I think the objection most folks have to OCs is that they usually end up receiving a disproportionate amount of attention in the story, which leaves less time for Kermit and Fozzie and Robin and Gonzo to do what we want to see them do. Also, many OCs are instantaneously (and often, inexplicably--to the audience) fallen in love with, or begged to perform a spotlight/solo act at a critical event or cure cancer...you get the drift. (Walter is actually a pretty good example of what usually doesn't work, but--somehow--he manages to pull it off and be lovable and endearing.)

OCs should be like side dishes, and the muppets should be like the main dish. (We will ignore, for the moment, that many of the muppets have often been threatened with being turned into a main dish!) Keep your stories well-balanced and you'll have a healthier audience. Keep in mind that--even in the "real" stories, movies, etc.--it will sometimes be necessary for an OC to take center stage (figuratively or literally) in order to move the plot along, but the focus always returns (or should return) to our lovable felt friends.

Also, and I'll say it here in the fan-fic board where it won't bother the majority of the fans here at MC--MOST fans don't read the fan-fic. Sorry. It's true. Most fans aren't really interested in anything that isn't commercially produced, and many fans don't come onto the fan-fic section at all. Even old-timers (like Beau) who used to write fan-fic here don't drop in and read unless something unusual happens. Some places make a point of not allowing anything "original," Those of us who write are pretty much the ones who read, with some exceptions. (There are always exceptions.)

Write the story that you want to write--that's the beginning of your creativity. Write a story your chosen readership wants to read--that's the other part. Good luck! And post happy!

 

[Your Worship]

Just chiming in with my two cents--you guys should really post this stuff on ff.net. I know it's not a perfect site, but when it comes to archives, it's the most comprehensive, organized, and easy to use site out there. Plus, it lets you search by pairings and gives the reader a synopsis before you open the link. I admit, when looking for muppet fic, I looked there first and found a dearth of muppety hijinks. We should fix that!

 

[charlietheowl]

I'm batting around some ideas for a Muppet fic, and had a few character-specific questions I wanted to ask before I proceeded with the story. They are fairly obscure and random, but hey that's why we're on this board, right?

1). Does Sweetums, in any Muppet production of any kind, have an age, implied or otherwise?

2). What episode of The Muppet Show perhaps best shows off Beauregard's personality?

3). Has anybody on this board ever written a story that features Nigel as part of the cast of characters?

4). Did Sam the Eagle's family get mentioned anywhere else aside from the Andy Williams episode of The Muppet Show?

Thanks!

 

[RedPiggy]

1. Hard to tell. Monsters seem to have, on average, a very reduced and halting way of speaking. However, everyone from Elmo to Thog can sound alike, so it's difficult to use speech mannerisms as a clue. Size also doesn't really help. I can imagine a toddling Junior Gorg might be around Sweetum's size. Unless you see what "kid Sweetums-like monster" and "senior citizen Sweetums-like monster", you can't really gauge off of that either. Just on his interactions alone, I would be hard-pressed to consider him much younger than what for humans would be late 20's-early 30's, and that is my bare minimum. His clothes don't just get that way overnight, too.

2. Personally, I liked the closet gag in the movie, myself, LOL. He just sorta assumes the basics. He's either really, really uneducated about even elementary-school stuff or the "actor" Beauregard is a genius who loves to play that kind of role.

3. I know I've seen him somewhere in fanfics.

4. Dunno.