Writing for Organizers: Fanfiction Tropes That Make You Feel Good

I bet Stacey Abrams uses these.

This email is part of “writing for organizers, “a series for organizers focused on writing more. Let me know if you’re into it, if you have other strong opinions on what you’d like to see more of, or introduce yourself, by hitting reply.

Fanfiction is to fiction as bumper lanes are to bowling.

Fanfiction is any story based on another story.

In our very copyright oriented world, it tends to refer to a story using elements they could get sued for using, like characters, plot, names, etc.

I could get into a wormhole here about how Shakespeare’s histories are not that different from BTS slash...

But that’s not the point of this email.

Here’s why fanfiction is like a bumper lane:  many story elements are filled in from the start, which makes everything easier for you.

Fanfiction allows writers to explore story components that would otherwise require creating a ton of structure.

With fanfiction, you don’t have to figure out who the characters are, how they relate to each other, how they’ve grown in the past, or even the tone of your story.

You already know.  

As a result, fanfiction is more fun and easier to write.

You’re in the bumper lane.

There are many structural tropes that exist only in fanfiction because of this— tropes and structures that further guide your narrative bowling ball. 

These tropes mean you don’t have to think about how long your story is going to be, or how you’re going to structure any scene transitions. 

You’re already in the bumper lane — but sometimes you wanna throw the bowling ball at the pins from halfway down the lane.

That’s when these fanfiction tropes come in. 

When practicing a new skill, particularly one as nebulous as writing, there’s often a lot of shame, self-hate, doubt, and other bullshit that gets in the way.

When I ask people why they don’t write more, what gets in their way, usually they say they’re overwhelmed.

They get totally overwhelmed by all of the different things they could write.

Or, when they do write something, it’s not good, and they don’t know how to get better.

There’s no structure, so:

They stop writing.

We like doing things we’re good at.

The trick with a new skill is faking out your brain a little, making it think that you’re really really good at what you’re doing, so you don’t look at how far you have to go.

The best way to do that is through structure.

Structure makes you feel awesome, lets you relax enough to focus on what you’re doing instead of everything else you need to do.

And whether you need to practice a particular skill or you’re just trying to build confidence to write regularly— 

There’s no better structure than fanfiction tropes to make you feel awesome about writing. 

They’re so much fun, I think they need to proliferate beyond the world of fanfiction. 

These structures need to go forth and create bumper lane level of joy and creativity for writers of all kinds. 

And I think it’s the perfect place for you, organizer who wants to practice writing, to start.

So: use these bumper lane tropes to write something, anything.

Write something that scares you, bores you, or that you’re super passionate about but keep putting off.

Most of my examples will be for nonfiction writing, or writing you could do at work, because that’s the type of writing people are able to give themselves permission to try. But you can also use this to write your own fanfiction, or your own creative fiction.
Go wild!

Hit those pins, baby!

Here are the tropes.

5 Times —

The best way to determine if a fanfiction writer is a sexually frustrated teenager or a miserable graduate student is whether or not they have ever written any 5 times fanfiction. (The graduate students have — they have more to work through, without the time and self esteem to write 50,000 WIPs.)

5 times is what it sounds like: the writer describes 5 times X happened to Specific Character. 

It’s used to explore relationship dynamics or character growth — 5 times Bucky Barnes thought Steve Rogers was cute, 5 times Batman filled out his DBT Workbook. 

5 times is a way to explore what you find interesting about certain patterns without having to spend too much time on all of the immobilizing logistics of how they happened.

Since fanfiction is powered by obsession with subtle details, it also forces you to get into detail about the scenes you’re describing, without getting stuck. (5 times fic is pretty short — less than 1000 words).

How you can use it:

5 times is a great trope for your feelings, with an automatic buffer for caveats, social justice word salad, and avoidance.

Tell me about 5 times your candidate did something that made you believe in what you’re doing.

Or 5 times tenants moved the campaign for themselves in a way that had nothing to do with you.

If you’re absolutely stuck, hate your job or life — tell me about 5 things you’ve eaten over the last three weeks and whatever you were doing while you were eating it. 

If you feel like you’re desperate, you’ll probably remember your most desperate meals— desperation tends to be connected to something you really care about. (Your mileage may vary.)

Slow Burn -

Slow burn is a fascinating trope to me — there is a ton of wild shit about queerness, generational desires, + unmet needs tied up in it.

Especially because it’s stolen whole cloth from romance novels.

But again — not the point of this email! 

Slow burn is a romance trope — if someone is writing a 50,000 word work in progress fanfiction, it’s probably because they are entranced by slow burn.
They drag out the tension between two characters for as long as possible before they admit their love for each other, hook up, kiss, whatever.

That’s slow burn. 

How to use it:

Slow burn is a really good way to practice building narrative tension. 

Narrative tension is how you keep people reading.

Your reader is like, “fuck. What’s going to happen next? I better leave a comment to find out.” 

So next time you write an email, think about how whatever you’re sending fits into the larger arc of your campaign.

Has your candidate been exchanging highly charged glances with universal healthcare?

Who are the players in this committee?

Have you had negative interactions with them before?

What is going to happen next?

Text or email your draft to someone not affiliated with the campaign.

Ask them “Do you want to know what happens next?“

Fix It Fic —

Fix it fic is about addressing a perceived wrong done to a character or the audience.

Sometimes this happens when there’s been a misguided plot — I’m thinking about all the fic that came out when Joss Whedon was like — “Amber Benson come back and pretend to be a demon,” and she was like… “uhhhh no, I get so many emails from suicidal queer people?” And he was like “fuck you, we’re gonna do it anyway with someone else”.

On the left, we talk about “Imagining utopia,” and “hope as a discipline” and the importance of radical imagination.

Imagining those worlds can feel overwhelming.

But the whole time, you know who had it figured out?

Fan fiction writers with a grudge. 

How you can use it:

Most Fix It Fic writers are pretty narrow minded in terms of what they want to change.

They’re not second-guessing or overwhelmed by scale.

They take one single thing they want to be different, and they write towards the specific outcome they want.

They don’t let things like characterization or lack of narrative tension get in the way of that outcome.

So instead of quoting Mariame Kaba excessively without any analysis of your own, write a fix it fic.

What would be better in your life specifically, in the future you want, that you’re fighting for?

You don’t have to tell me about AI communist reparations, or how that impacted the electrical grid across the nation. (or if you really want to do that… could I interest you in writing for a project of mine?) 

Pick one thing you would like to be different, and describe how your day would go if it were.

Write your fix-it fic for the world. 

—

These bumper lanes should give you some space to write at work, or your novel, or your memoir — without shame.

Send me what you write!

Or send me your fanfiction. 

I don’t care which.

I hope some of these structures let you throw the ball at the pins without worrying if you’re doing it right. 

That they let you write with joy and zero compunction about anything, saying what you want to say just for the fun of it. 

let me know how it goes.

• H