Tips, Tricks, & Hacks: Writing Fanfiction

Rating fanfics can be complicated, but trust me, I have a cheat sheet for you. Categories can also be troublesome and there's also a special cheat sheet for that!

-When rating a fanfic, think about movies. What qualities does a R rated movie have? What makes it an R rated movie? What about NC-17? PG? PG-13? Well, that's how you develop a general idea for rating. Let me go over it further.

NC-17 - This covers extreme and detailed violence, intense and detailed explicit/sexual material, and very harsh language. Kinda like an X-rated movie, except not completely porn.

R - Similar to NC-17, more taken down a notch. Detailed violence, explicit/sexual content, and mild harsh language.

PG-13 - Violence, but not very detailed, more brief than anything. May hint sexual or explicit content. Little to no harsh language.

PG - May have a tad bit of violence, but not usually. No sexual or explicit content. No harsh language.

G - No violence, sexual/explicit content, no harsh language.

Above was the cheat sheet I use for my fanfics to help determine the rating.

Now, I'll be covering the categorization cheat sheet. Think of how a movie is categorized. What makes a horror movie a horror movie? Think like that and apply it to your fanfic.

Action - Lots of drama or occurrences calling for adventures or battles. Think of the definition of "action." Action is moving around, doing something, or participating in something intensely or passionately.

Biography - An individual's or group of individual's life story. All about them. It's written by someone other than the people involved in the biography.

Drabble - A short piece of writing. A short story, usually around 100 words in length.

Horror - Scary, packed full of fear. Often there's action, gore, intense scenes and moments, etc. A story to make you fearful and to keep you on your toes.

Romance - A love story.

Thriller - Like a horror story, it keeps you on your toes at all times. Includes hardships, obstacles/challenges, intense moments, and usually as an air of danger to it.

Adventure - A story about an expedition or travel.

Comedy - A funny story.

Drama - A story that often has a lot of happenings. Drama is the main thing it revolves around. I call those stories "soap opera" books, so think of soap opera when you think of drama as a story category.

Mystery - Uncovering secrets, making discoveries, and sudden realizations. Usually keeps the reader on the edge and makes them ponder. A book that's supposed to initiate a mental exercise or challenge.

Sci-fi - Dystopian worlds, apocalypse, extraterrestrial, futuristic type stories.

Tragedy - A story that usually involves a huge challenge or slow downfall of a character. A story with an event of great suffering and sadness.

Autobiography - A person writing about their own life story. Similar to a biography, but the person involved in the autobiography is also writing it.

Crime - A story involving criminals, authorities, awful deeds, murders, and other illegal components.

Fantasy - Fantasy is basically make believe. Fantasy stories are not true stories and everything about them is not real, only made up. Most young adult novels are fantasy novels.

Religious - Stories about religious faith, practices, principles, or short scripts from the Bible or other holy texts/scriptures.

Teen - Young adult novels are also worded to be teen novels. Anything a teen would be able to read, comprehend, and enjoy. Most teen novels have coming of age lessons, teen tragedies, hardships, etc. Most relatable to that age group.

War - Whether real war or fake, these stories are purely based on battle. These types of stories can be historical, true stories, fantasy battles, etc. Usually involves death, destruction, and suffering as well as some political issues.

Notes