71. Do not be afraid to sacrfice plausibility in the name of writing a good story.
Look at James Bond, or xXx. Are they remotely close to reality? Do you give a damn? 9 times out of 10 the average reader won't. As one of my reviews said, 'Take your disbelief and fire a shotgun at it.' I now quote this with considerable pride.
2. Narrative convention is of no importance.
Most of my fanfics switchback between first and third person whenever it is convenient for my purposes, which many professional authors and one or two publishers would denounce as heresy. If you write it carefully enough (something I don't always get right) people won't notice. If you want, use some collection of characters to distinguish between sections; three asterisks will do, but nothing's stopping you from making up a weird and wonderful arrangement of characters all of your own.
3. Use humour, especially in character interactions.
When everything goes severely tits-up, having the lead character say -or think if writing in first person- something like 'Sometimes I wish I work in a bank,' can be quite effective, unless there's an artillery barrage going on or something.
Have the characters take the piss out of each other a bit, like you would with your mates (which most contributors to FictionPress and FanFiction generally have, contrary to popular belief, dearest brother who is reading this over my shoulder). Sexual tension can be exploited in the name of comedy, if you're careful not to end up sounding like Timothy Lea.
4. Real people are far more interesting than OOCs.
I have inserted my friends, with aliases except in one case where she insisted upon appearing as herself, in the Young Guns stories with reasonable success. It helps if you ask them first, and be careful; staging a catfight between your girlfriend and somebody else can be a bit risky. Luckily for me they both saw the joke when I really did this, otherwise I'd be in hospital AND single.
I'd post a typed version of my school trip experiences, based upon semicoherent handwritten notes, if anybody would believe it. If I could create fictional characters as eclectic and weird as my real mates I wouldn't be on FictionPress, I'd be at the top of the Times bestseller list. After I penned the first Young Guns story, 'Isobel' posted a story containing me in what I consider to be a moderately good role. Are we starting a trend here?
5. OOCs don't HAVE to be godlike and beat everyone at everything.
One person who wrote something similar suggested making OOCs uber-cool warrior types who defeat the series baddy with ease. You can do this if you want -my HDM fanfic smacks of this approach- but sometimes making them just another guy/girl works better. My sociopathic, trigger happy anti-hero Jonathan West is a self-confessed nerd, though he is closely based upon another self-confessed nerd; me. Hell, I even made one of my OOCs an Airwolf fan. This can lead to some intriguing characters; a killer-for-hire who watches the Discovery Channel and likes trains, anybody?
6. Stick characters anywhere you can get away with it.
The Young Guns turned up in my HDM fanfic, I'm inserting a couple of Pullman-created HDM characters in my own totally unrelated fic later on, and I even pinched one bloke out of an Andy McNab thriller at one point. Who will care, even if they notice? If it isn't too jarring it'll be a nifty in-joke for those in the know, and everybody else will simply read past it oblivious. An especially effective trick with series made by the same people; Thunderbirds/Stingray/Captain Scarlet crossovers abound.
Just DON'T offer a cash prize to whoever spots the most; they'll compare characters you thought up yourself with the protagonist of books or movies you've never even heard of if you aren't careful, and you'll have to pay up.
7. Don't take yourself too seriously.
The ONLY way I could possibly have got away with certain passages of The Silver Bird (see FanFiction's His Dark Materials category) is by writing them from the viewpoint of an OOC with a pithy sense of humour; point 2 was essential to pull this off. Doing it any other way would have invited richly-deserved flames in such profusity that my PC would spontaneously combust. Unless you run across an obsessive diehard that will, say, upbraid you for misspelling a word in Klingon you'll do fine.
8. Caffeine and sugar make for good action sequences, as does watching action movies and/or listening to loud rock music immediately prior to sitting down at the old WP.
Both of these do weird things to my imagination, culminating in the strange scribblings upon these two sites, as well as frequent lectures about my caffeine intake! Alcohol is less effective, though swigging from a can of Stella Artois whilst writing an essay on Marxism comes highly recommended, but hive it a go if you must. However, saying 'written whilst high' in the summary is implicitly stating that the result will only be remotely entertaining if the reader is high as well, often with uncanny accuracy.
Note: certain restricted substances are reputed to be even more effective, but I've never had the bottle to put this to the test; bet they'd be handy for a fanfic of Trainsotting by Irvine Welsh, though.
9. If you come up with a new technology, explain how it works.
In my Blake's 7 fanfic there is a weapon called the electron ram. Not only did I spend quite some time figuring out how to build one, I got my science teacher to help me; I might actually patent the design one day. Somebody was presumably impressed.
10. (possibly the most important one of all) Remember this:
YOU ARE DOING THIS FOR YOUR OWN AMUSEMENT AND NOBODY ELSE'S. Aside from reducing the impact upon your self-esteem that an unconstructively critical review gives, it actually makes me write better.
I don't promise that this will make you the next JK Rowling, but I have used these methods in all my writings. I reckon that your best bet is to read some of my fiction, and if you like it, then all this crap might be worth a try. If you don't, please don't email me to say so; my ego needs no further damage after I spent a fiver trying to outshoot a guy who can identify every firearm ever made on Time Crisis II the other week.
Now, here are a few ideas to get you started; if you actually use any of these, some sort of acknowlegement in the text would be nice but isn't essential.
Spooks/Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Well, why not? Ideally Tom (who I feel rather sorry for) would get off with whichever of John Clark's kids isn't maried to Ding.
Hamish Macbeth/Trainspotting: Owing to an unfortunate railway platform mixup Renton, with nineteen grand in drugs money in a holdall and a deeply pissed off Begbie in hot pursuit, winds up in Lochdubh. There just HAS to be some comic mileage in that! I'd write this one myself if I could get the dialogue right.
Ghostbusters/Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Somebody's probably already done this one, now I come to think of it.
Animal Farm/Watership Down: Napoleon and General Woundwort would be an intriguing double act. Note: Loganberry has compiled an Engligh-Lapine dictionary which you may find useful, and it can be accessed from his homepage. Just don't make a fool of yourself by trying it out on your pet rabbit!
Andromeda/Firefly: Not sure how this one would work, but it'd certainly be novel. Buffy/Firefly has been done already.
If anybody thinks of some better ones, please send them to me. If you don't see them on here then I've probably decided to write them myself, and you WILL get credit for the idea.