Reasons for Journey Badge Quest Fanfics to be Abandoned

[Cavespider_17]

Too many subplots can also kill one's motivation.

Yes. I have advice for dealing with that as I have a large cast, so been there, done that gotten the t-shirt and the headache. Using a table really helps.

Example

Character	Alignment	Sub Alignment	What is their goal?	How do they enter the story?	Their Arc Initiation	Their Arc's Climax	Their Arc's Finale	Do they achieve what they want?	Status?
David	Protagonist	Main	Rescue his Shinx	Chapter 1: Playing with his Shinx	Chapter 3: His Shinx is stolen by Team Rocket	They follow Team Rocket to their base after many trials	They Battle Team Rocket and Win	Yes	Alive, Healthy
Shinx	Protagonist	Support	Escape Team Rocket	Chapter 1: Playing with David	Chapter 3: They are stolen by Team Rocket	They try to escape inside the base.	They are recaptured by Team Rocket	No	Alive, Captured
Team Rocket Member: Anna	Antagonist	Main	Become well known in Team Rocket	Chapter 3: Stealing David's Shinx	Chapter 7: They see others getting praise for bigger catches	They take on David's high level team to steal more	They battle David in the Base and lose	Yes	Alive, Defeated

The characters above all have very simple paths, and on their own they don't make a story, but you can interweave them. While David and Anna are destined to compete for David's arc's completion, it doesn't mean Anna's arc is dependent on David's, but David's arc is dependent on Shinx's arc failing.

Gridding it out can help make sense of things.

(If anyone wants to take the grid above and use it for their own story or even make a story out of the random plot I put on it, go for it, I don't care. That's what it is there for, to help people.)

 

[Greninjaman]

You know, I don't know why I never thought to structure the characters and plots like this.

 

[Cavespider_17]

You know, I don't know why I never thought to structure the characters and plots like this.

I'm just glad it might be able to help. Sometimes organising things is 100% the way forward. Even if it feels like 2 steps back.

 

[LightningTopaz]

@Greninjaman

A wise artist once said, it's easy to put things in, but harder to take stuff out. So the subplot problem ties back to throwing in everything but the kitchen sink--if you REALLY want a subplot, limit yourself to one, maybe two.

 

[Greninjaman]

Going back to the example that @Cavespider_17 gave above, would the Shinx trying to escape Team Rocket count as a subplot?

 

[Cavespider_17]

Going back to the example that @Cavespider_17 gave above, would the Shinx trying to escape Team Rocket count as a subplot?

You could certainly use it as one. If you needed a break from the main character, David having a major battle, or Anna having done something on her side of the story, for example. You could also use it as a way to do some world building, or foreshadowing, while acting as a subplot. For example, Shinx could be trying to escape, he could overhear how David has taken out some big Team Rocket trainers, or how more members of Team Rocket are coming to the region, given their current success. You could also have him escape and find Team Rocket are working on a "mysterious project" to make Pokémon stronger - and then tie that back in to Anna Vs David later on.

 

[Steel_Justice]

Honesty, I don’t think I ever considered that. I feel that a lot of writers would feel the same.

I can see why it’s hard: every pokemon media (the games, anime, manga, and so on) involve battles in someway, whether friendly, part of a competition, or fight to stop evil people.

I've been finding in my own work that it's preferable to take breaks between the action. While you can learn a lot about someone by watching the way they fight or by observing the decisions they make in a crisis the same can also be said of listening to them converse with other people and seeing them interact with the world you put them in. What's more is that the information you can get about someone during peace time is often something you can't get during battle. It's a delicate balancing act.

I've been writing mine with casual break time, set-ups for next cases and investigation chapters to allow opportunities for my characters to be characters instead of vehicles for Pokemon battles. A lot of those have actually been some of the most enjoyable for me to write and it's not just because I don't have to keep looking up tables on my enemy data and picture how the pieces are moving on the board .

 

[Space Umpire]

As someone who's read many an abandoned journeyfic and written a few myself... scope. Beginner writers tend to set out to write a story similar in scope to the OG anime (the Ash Ketchum one), travelling to every region, battling every evil team, catching every Pokémon... maybe not all of those at once, but a lot of people set out to write the same type of ambitious story, sometimes without even having any sort of outline outside of "do these Gyms in this order". It's also sort of hard to... end a journeyfic. Like you can end with becoming the Champion, but then there's travelling to the next region, battling the next rival... it can work as an episode-by-episode thing Guiding Light style, but a lot of writers don't approach journeyfics with that mindset.

I think another problem is that a lot of journeyfics can be... same-y? Like, a lot of them go with that "travelling to every region, battling every evil team, catching every Pokémon" structure, which can make it sort of hard to stand out in a sea of journeyfics. You can shake up the formula with different motivations, or a different protagonist, or even a different interpretation of the concept of a "journey". Alternatively, instead of following the usual structure of a journeyfic, you can go for a epistolary style, drabbles, non-chronological order...

 

[Greninjaman]

Now that we have talked about why journey fics are abandoned, I think we should talk about ways one can keep motivated to continue the story. What ideas do you guys have?

 

[lisianthus]

Now that we have talked about why journey fics are abandoned, I think we should talk about ways one can keep motivated to continue the story. What ideas do you guys have?

I'd say reasonable goalsetting is a really big help for any kind of big writing project. I'm not one for journeyfics myself, but I have some Pokemon AU fic projects of my own, and have also been intermittently working on a big fiction project myself. As for my bigger project I can tell you that if I had properly been consistent with my own writing over the past (almost) two years, I would have likely been close to finishing it by now. Goalsetting can take quite a few forms, whether it be 'write x amount of words tonight' or 'finish x amount of chapters this week', but setting reasonable goals and (whenever possible) following through with them is very helpful -- making a habit of it, basically?

It's also been talked about earlier in this thread, but given journeyfics tend to oftentimes entail large amounts of planning and worldbuilding at times, I'll also second keeping track of one's overarching plots and characters, etc. Using software like Scrivener (which has a free trial) really helps if you're not the best at remembering intricate details of your worlds, I've found.

Really, the biggest thing I can say is 'keep on plugging at it!', honestly? Don't be afraid to take breaks whenever you feel the need to, but once you feel ready to come back, making sure your heart is in your project is good -- if not, that's fine too, because you'd probably burn yourself out even more through working on something you don't want to do.

 

[Greninjaman]

I'd say reasonable goalsetting is a really big help for any kind of big writing project. I'm not one for journeyfics myself, but I have some Pokemon AU fic projects of my own, and have also been intermittently working on a big fiction project myself. As for my bigger project I can tell you that if I had properly been consistent with my own writing over the past (almost) two years, I would have likely been close to finishing it by now. Goalsetting can take quite a few forms, whether it be 'write x amount of words tonight' or 'finish x amount of chapters this week', but setting reasonable goals and (whenever possible) following through with them is very helpful -- making a habit of it, basically?

It's also been talked about earlier in this thread, but given journeyfics tend to oftentimes entail large amounts of planning and worldbuilding at times, I'll also second keeping track of one's overarching plots and characters, etc. Using software like Scrivener (which has a free trial) really helps if you're not the best at remembering intricate details of your worlds, I've found.

Really, the biggest thing I can say is 'keep on plugging at it!', honestly? Don't be afraid to take breaks whenever you feel the need to, but once you feel ready to come back, making sure your heart is in your project is good -- if not, that's fine too, because you'd probably burn yourself out even more through working on something you don't want to do.

Also, as mentioned earlier: a small team will allow for better flow in terms of character development and battles. If the writer is not careful with a team of six or more, they run the risk of at least one Pokémon getting neglected. If there is a small team (3 or even less) then you don't have that risk (at least, it's not AS much of a risk).

 

[ema skye]

Got busy, realized I didn’t like the concept anymore, not enough energy to rewrite it better, gave up

 

[Greninjaman]

Got busy, realized I didn’t like the concept anymore, not enough energy to rewrite it better, gave up

I agree that real life stuff can drain one's motivation to write such a long fanfic.

 

[Greninjaman]

Sorry for the Double Post.

I think another reason that these are abandoned (can apply to really any story that is based on a Video Game) is this: the need to include every side-quest and optional thing from the game into the story. You don't need to include everything from the game in the story. I guess this would go hand in hand with having too many subplots.