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scrptrx · 2 years

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Moving On from Fanfiction

A look back, and a farewell.

(Author’s note: all works linked to on Archive Of Our Own are potentially not safe for work.)

In the beginning

I started writing fanfiction in early 2013 while still in grad school working towards a PhD. Until then, I hadn’t written fiction for a decade. I caught a writing bug after being asked by an advisor to write a narrative related to my studies. Around this time, I came down with a serious case of bronchitis. I spent about a week in bed, entertaining myself by reading the entire Hunger Games series for the third time.

I believe it was this combination of being forced to write a narrative and reading one of my favorite works that made me want to write my own stories again.

Getting out the kinks

My first fanfiction piece was in a minor way inspired by The Hunger Games only in that it was an adventure-romance story with a bit of tragedy. But it wasn’t a fanfiction of this series. Rather, I exercised my creative side by writing a story based in the world of the video game Skyrim. I began playing the fifth installment of the Elder Scrolls series about a year after it was released, in 2012. I was enthralled by the game, though it thankfully did not impact my scholastic activities. Much.

The first piece was a novella of about 25k words, and it was arguably evident that an inexperienced writer had penned it. I can see that now, years later. I published the novella online in March 2013 (now deleted). The plot was not all that spectacular: it was mainly a romance story, so much so that I just titled it after the main characters: Ralof and Nyil. The story didn’t deviate much at all from Skyrim’s storyline, except that most of the canonical events happened off page.

Obviously my writing bug was still hungry, and shortly after finishing R&N I wrote another novella. A Healer's Touch ended up with 35k words, and was fun to write. While still a rough work that did not undergo much editing, I can tell that I began to find my writing style with this novel. The plot of this novella still fell back on most of the canonical plot points of Skyrim.

A few weeks later I published the first chapter of the sequel to A Healer’s Touch, titled Dragon Child. At 57k words, this was my first fanfiction novel. I would argue that this was my most sexually adventurous work, if I recall correctly. Raunchy would be an accurate term. But the plot began to differ from that of canonical Skyrim, and this was one of my favorite things about it. I experimented a lot more with original characters other than the main character, including children. I also experimented with what amounted to either multi-POV head-hopping or omniscient third. I’m still trying to figure that one out. 😅

The third and final installment of The Healer Series trilogy (all of which is now offline) I titled Fire on the Mountain. First published about a month after the sequel, it ended up with almost 70k words. I was extremely impatient to finish this novel, as somewhere near the end I’d started on my most ambitious project, and I wanted to work on that all day, every day, even more than my PhD dissertation. Fire on the Mountain gave me the inspiration and ability to break almost entirely from the canonical plot of Skyrim, and also gave me a taste of what it felt like to make readers cry.

Constructing a style

As I wrote the previous works, and clocked hundreds of hours in Skyrim, I began to wonder what life would be like in a world like that of Skyrim. So, naturally, I wrote about it.

Cover art, book one. Modded in-game screenshot, anonymous.

The Hero series

Not two weeks after I first published Fire on the Mountain did I also publish the first chapter of my next project, Hero by Mistake, the first novel in a four-part series with a grand total of 668k words. Though there were a handful of canonical elements in the overall structure of this novel, much of the plot and all of the dialogue was nuanced.

Many, many fanfiction works involve the main character(s) being inserted into the canon universe, such as the video game Skyrim. My concept differed from the others in that

the modern-day main character had zero applicable skills in combat or a medieval world,

the video game Skyrim didn’t exist, but the universe did indeed exist,

nobody in the land of Skyrim spoke English, nor did the main character speak the language of Skyrim, and

the novels were written so that anyone could read them and understand the universe, whether they played the Elder Scrolls video games or not.

Initially, my main character was going to slip on an icy sidewalk in her modern world, hit her head, and wake up in a land with the Skyrim character Ralof having found her (if it isn’t obvious by now, I like Ralof). Oddly enough, Ralof was going to speak Old Norse to her. Myself not being fluent in Norwegian let alone Old Norse or even Icelandic, this concept was a problem. So I changed it up a bit, and constructed a language.

Verb form examples in Norren.

Norren, my conglang named after the Nords that Skyrim is largely inhabited by, is a mix of various Scandinavian languages including Old Norse mixed with another conlang, named by fans Dovahzul: dragon speak. Dovahzul is a language created for the game Skyrim, used by dragons and ancient Nords. The language has nothing to do with Old Norse, but in my conceiving of this novel, I developed the idea that the ancient Nords from Atmora (canon origin) and the ancient Norse of Earth were one in the same, and eventually, the ancient Nords, speaking a dialect of Old Norse, infused words from their dragon overlords into their own lexicon. (Dragons lording it over humans is canon.) I supported my development of the lore based on the fact that most if not all Nord names in Tamriel have Germanic roots in their names, like Ulfric.

Naturally, my Anglophone main character had to slowly learn the language of the land, only becoming fully naturalized after a life-changing event in the third installment. This meant that there were occasionally words that both the main character and the reader did not understand which, frankly, was a joy to write, even if painfully slow.

To my knowledge only one reader ever guessed the origin of the first novel’s title, Hero by Mistake: it was directly inspired by a favorite of mine, Divine by Mistake, a novel by P.C. Cast. As any writer knows, titles are hard. But the concept of this fanfiction leaned into this title perfectly. Other than the title and the concept of a modern woman being pulled into another ‘ancient’ land to fight a big bad, the plot of Divine and Hero have nothing to do with one another. (Okay, there is maybe one other thing, but I swear there are no centaurs or doppelgangers in my fanfiction.)

This novel was my first try at writing in the first person. (It was also when I learned that some people don’t like reading works that are written in the first person.) First POV was absolutely necessary for telling this story, even if I had to leave it behind at the end of the final novel. I had to figure out ways to depict delirium and catatonia in the first person, so if nothing else, this novel was an excellent learning experience.

Keeping in theme, I titled the second novel Hero by Choice, and the plot very much mirrored this title. The third novel broke free of this trend, however. After much deliberating on how to keep the “Hero by” theme going, I eventually conceded that I needed to change the preposition, and Hero of Light was the result. The title is both ironic and iconic given the main plot, and an allegory to her divine benefactor.

Hero by Choice alters and adapts several canon plot lines, taking into effect deep dives into and adaptations of Elder Scrolls lore. There are certain subplots (AKA side quests) in Skyrim that leave the player wanting more, and wanting closure. The second novel of the Hero series offers this. It also made readers cry. Hard. Which is one of my utmost goals, apparently.

Breaking away from the main series, I wrote a companion short story (I wrote several of these, actually, but those were very short). Dragonbane is a prequel to the third Hero novel and takes canon Dragonborn DLC plot aspects and runs away with them.

Hero of Light works with the Dragonborn and Dawnbreaker DLCs together. Initially this book wasn’t going to exist at all, but an idea discussed between myself and a friend quickly became “YOU HAVE TO WRITE THIS”, so I did. It might be my favorite of all four novels in the series, probably because I wriggled the canon lore around so much that it was very much nuanced. This novel might also be my favorite because I developed bits of another conlang, because, honestly, how can a vampire sleep for hundreds or thousands of years and suddenly speak the same language as the player? Nah. Not buying that one. This second conlang was mainly the same as Norren, except that it more mirrored Dovahzul; I called it ancient Norren.

The final installment of the Hero series, Hero of Legend, is titled so because the Dragonborn is, indeed, a hero of legend in the Elder Scrolls universe. The novel is very short at 63k words, and has almost nothing to do with canon plot — except for the final appearance of Alduin.

I had some difficulties with this novel. Not just because it contained a time jump of about a decade from the introductory chapters into the main book (the prelude, in hindsight, should have been an epilogue to the third novel), but because at the end of the novel I struggled with inspiration and execution. It took me almost a year to update the novel online, I’d realized one day in shock. Too much going on in my life, yes, but also I’d found it difficult to write anything at all.

NaNoWriMo 2019 had just started, and I was at a loss for what I was inspired to write. Someone gave the great advice to not only just write (typical good advice), but to write what you can using your current state of mind. One day, I had a realization. One of the biggest reasons I was struggling to write the end of Hero of Legend was because the main character, who is also the narrator, would have found it very difficult to narrate, given the events that happen. I’d been “acting out” or essentially watching these scenes play out in my imagination for years. So when it finally came time to write them down, I struggled, because they wouldn’t work as I’d hoped they would. I’d written plenty of battle scenes, and mentally out-of-sorts scenes, but something fairly epic had to happen to the main character, and I had to make the difficult decision to break from first person and enter a perspective of third person observation as well as epistolary. Could I have written out the final chapters in first person, in style with the rest of the series? Probably. But whenever I sounded it out, or “head drafted” as I like to call it, the result was even weaker than the resulting third person perspectives. In the end, the final chapters that switch to another character’s perspective work very well, because of who that character is and their connection to the main character.

When I got ready to post the epilogue to Hero of Legend, I nearly had a panic attack. I know I felt a rush of something when I finished the previous novels. This was a similar nervous rush of gripping energy, but stronger. I’d felt nothing like this when I finally submitted my PhD dissertation, because I still had other projects to work on, then. Namely, this fanfiction series. But this past year, during which I barely wrote anything at all, I kept telling myself: you’ll have much less anxiety if you just finish it. Was that what the rush of nervous energy was? Did I want to be rid of this project? Or was the rush more of a fear of severing? I suppose this entire article is a postmortem of sorts. Closure I’m giving myself.

Other works

Other than Skyrim fanfiction, I wrote quite a few Dragon Age stories. Mainly short, and one series unfinished. I had big plans for Steel and Roses, but I have no intention of finishing it.

I also wanted to write about the adventures of an assassin elf, and also a love story that had no real plot to speak of.

These short stories that I wanted to write, which were conceived of in my early days of writing fanfiction, were largely character stories that would have been good writing exercises but today have no real purpose other than to serve as character frameworks and plot bunnies. So into my inspiration reserves you go Alekto and Irshi — I hope I can find a way to tell your stories in some way shape or form in a different universe of my making.

Tropes and cliches

Looking back, I have some issues with what I wrote early on, namely that of love triangles, endangerment of female characters, toxic jealousy, and sexual assault.

The only real issue I personally have with the Hero series specifically is that I wrote the main female character experience instances of sexual assault twice. The second instance I would not edit out because of the very nature of why it happened and the fact that she could help other survivors later, but I would edit out the first instance that happens early on in the first novel. Perhaps, in time, when I put Hero by Mistake through another series of edits, I will completely edit this out. Not only does it (barely) depict a rape, it uses this to jump-start the main character’s discovery of magical powers. It’s a problematic trope, and I know this now.

Despite writing (for the most part) strong female characters, I do think I put them through more trauma than I should have. Perhaps this is reflective of emotions that I, also a woman, needed to get onto the page. I’ve heard the argument that sexual assault is bad enough, so why put fictional characters through it, too? I’ve also heard the argument that sexual assault (as well as murder and war and all the bad things) is an unfortunate part of reality. In the end, this is an enormous ethical question, one that carries onto television and film and commercial novels. Where is the beginning and the end of including terrible things in media? I’m not the one to answer that question, but I can learn from my early days as a writer and move on.

Postpartum

I was told that when I finished my dissertation, I would potentially fall into a depression not unlike after a mother gives birth to her child. I’m not sure I ever felt that with my dissertation. Maybe I will feel that with my main fanfiction work, the Hero series. I did, in fact, leave the ending open for even more sequels. But sequels will never come in the form of fanfiction. Not anymore.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been working on wholly original novels. Thus far I’ve completed one first draft and have bits and pieces of other ideas in the works.

Several times, people have said that I should somehow publish a story like Hero as a fiction novel. And maybe one day I’ll figure out how without completely ripping off Skyrim. Until then, my works stand as they are, enjoyable for free thanks to Archive Of Our Own. Everything I wrote over the last six years was a wonderful literary exercise. I know that I have changed as a person and as a writer since I first began writing again, and I know that anything I write in the future will have benefited from this journey.

So long, and thanks for all the kudos

I want to thank all my friends and readers, some of whom have been with me from the very beginning in my early days on Fanfiction.net. Today, Hero by Mistake is ranked in the top 40 Skyrim fanfictions on AO3 out of 8,200+ entries. Every comment and every kudos I receive feels like a warm hug; reactions are indeed the lifeblood of fanfiction writers.

I spent many, many hours with some of you fellow nerds, brainstorming back and forth and trading advice. Not all of you write fanfiction anymore. Many of you still do. And some of you, like me, are trying to break into original fiction.

Whatever your endeavors, I wish you the best.

Su’um ahrk morah, friends. Breath, and focus.

#sky talks #fanfiction #hero series

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