How to Write Fanfiction

Fanfiction Terminology

The Fanfiction Code
by PhoenixStorm

Creating stories about real characters or ink characters seems easy, but it actually is a complex job, because you need to know everything about your fandom and, above all, the terminology of the fanfiction's world.

This article is where you can find all those expressions that you don't know and that could be really useful to help you kickstart your career as a fanfiction writer. 

Do you know what a  Mary Sue is? What about an RPF? If not, you should brush up on your fandom terminology.

Fandom is all about participation, so knowing the common tongue will help you understand the type of fic you're most likely to enjoy writing. Each fandom has it's own OTP, ships, and cool buzz words. Learn to talk the talk before walking the walk.

Based on the 'Length of the story':

Dribble (or half-drabble): it's an extremely short story that has about 50 to 55 words.

Drabble (Pure Drabble or Perfect Drabble): is composed of exactly 100 words, not one less, not one more.

Ficlet: A Ficlet is similar to a Drabble in terms of length but is not as strict, it could have 90 to 110 words but this wording is usually used for stories under 1000 words.

Vignette: is a really short story from 500 to 1000 words that focuses on a specific scene or moment, on a character and his thoughts and emotions or so.

Double Drabble (drouble or droubble): this story has exactly 200 words.

Triple Drabble (trabble, tribble or trouble): a story that has precisely 300 words.

Drabble-shot: a hybrid between the drabble and the one-shot. This kind of story is a one-shot composed of drabbles (with 90 to 110 words) placed one below the other and separated by titles or empty spaces. Usually, the plots are all intertwined and connected together.

Flash-fiction (or flashfic): a story between 100 (someone says 500) and 1000 words.

Pure Flash!Fiction: a short and precise story consisting of exactly 500 words.

Super Flash!Fiction: a story too short to be a flash-fiction and too long to be a drabble. It has 300 to 500 words at most.

One-shot (OS) or Standalone: a story that begins and ends in one chapter. There are no limits for the length or quantity of characters but the fanfiction must have more than 1000 words to be considered part of this category.

Song-fiction: a sub-group of the one-shot, it's a story with a plot based on the lyrics of a song. One of the characters can even sing the specific song or write it or the lyrics can be inserted within the text of the story.

Drabble/Flash-fiction/One-shot collection: a work with multiple chapters that are actually composed of drabbles, flash-fictions and one-shots. This typology can have even more than 100 chapters but each of them must tell a story that begins and ends in that chapter.

Short Stories: An average short story usually has at least 3,500 words and no more than 7,500. Traditionally, short stories were meant to be read in a single sitting. They are usually published individually in magazines and then collected and published in anthologies.

Novellettes: A novelette is also a narrative fictional prose. Back in the day, the term "novelette" referred to a story that was romantic or sentimental in character.  A novelette is longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella. The word count is usually between 7,500 words to 17,500 words.