Why your fanfic concept might fail

Hey everyone!

Today, I have decided to help some people consider whether a fanfic they intend to write will be receptive by its target audience.

In essence, its quite simple you have to extract the core values that made the Canon version as popular as it is.

Let's look at a few examples shall we?

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Highschool DxD

The only thing that sets highschool dxd apart from other Harem Anime is the concept of the Devil's Evil Pieces based peerage system.

It's essentially playing pokemon with women with a limit to how many you can officially catch to then battle alongside with in the rating games, the equivalent to a pokemon tournament.

This goes paired with ever increasingly dire threats to the world to combat, not unlike we all saw occur in Dragon Ball Z.

Thats it. The only thing that sets DxD apart from DBZ, Naruto and Bleach with is the Peerage System, Team Combat Tournament.

Likewise the only thing that sets it apart from Harem anime is the typical shounen slugfest and this team combat system.

With this Highschool DxD scored its own niche. Which is why I am not surprised when I look at the popularity statistics and notice people tend to be more enthusiastic about DxD fanfics where the Si, Oc or Reincarned has his own evil piece set.

This is because this is the main reason for the success of DxD. Meaning that unless you go this route. You're likely to alienate a lot of readers.

The same counts for the USP, Unique Selling Point of other IPs.

Let's look at some more.

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Naruto

The main appeal of the Naruto verse is Chakra based Super Powers, Bloodlines and Combat.

You will notice that the fillers and shippuuden took a huge hit to the view count untill combat one again resumed.

This is because the fillers werent true to the USPs that made Naruto popular, and Shippuuden drew everything out so much with its flash backs that it had a simular reception. In essence it changed from Naruto to a poor DBZ clone and Boruto then took on the format of the fillers.

That is not to say that there are no amazing characters or things to be found in these later stages. Just that opportunities and viewers were lost by people no longer feeling the same attraction to the anime they did in earlier stages.

It is the same reason why concepts like being in Naruto without chakra, being a non ninja in naruto, highschool AU varients with its characters and blind Uchiha / Hyuuga fics tend to have a significantly smaller audience.

Its because these fics remove part if not all of the USP of the Naruto verse or its USP's

Its also why fics like Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver queen on Fanfiction and a fanfiction there of named Sugar Plums by soundlesssleep got such a huge following when they stayed true to the USPs that made the Narutoverse popular, whilst becoming original enough that it encroaches upon an original story.

Something The next example will show, is a mighty difficult thing to do and a very intensive decision to make.

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Harry Potter

Many of you know that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them was significantly less popular than the Harry Potter series.

So what are the USPs of Harry Potter that make ot unique?

Truth be told, it doesn't have any that make it truly unique. Its the way in which they are combined.

Magic School, Adventure, Mysteries, Teen Angst, Absurd logic, Small technical varied magics based in skill rather than slug fests and an ever escalating yearly problem of a different variety resultant of the gradual return of the series main antogonist.

It is for this reason why everyone sticks to hogwarts and Harry Potter timeline centric fics are most popular.

That is not to say that a fic taking place in any of the other magic schools couldn't be as successful, its just much harder to write because for all intends and purposes it would be a completely new story that if you change some naming conventions could be published as your own kind of thing that Rowling owned copyright has no rights to.

And thats the problem. If you stay true to the Harry Potter USPs but want to switch it up, you will have to come up with your own storyline, yearly mysteries, adventures and issues. You own characters, teen angst. Its a completely diffrent level of writing and takes an effort significantly larger than a fanfic, a non paid story is worth.

Yet there are anime inspired by this, who slightly altered the USP, such as Irregular at Magic Highschool, Negima, and a whole slew of others rolling with the magic school shtick.

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So looking at al these examples combined. What have we learned?

- If we want the same target audience as the original works, we need to stay true to its USPs

- if we want to keep the audience, we need to be original.

- If we become too original, then it might be better to self publish rather than making it a freebie fanfic.

In my opinion, the latter point is worth it if you do not want to be an official author, but simply do this for fun and to relax.

I do not know silverqueen's circumstances or decision making behind why she did so much original content, but it worked and in doing so made her fanfic one of the most memorable Naruto fics of all time.

There are many fanfics out there who set a high bar among the fanfica of the IPs theyre written for but to me, the memorable ones always understood very well what the USPs were and created just enough original content to feel like a unique story without making it so original that its an actual waste not to self publish.

I often found such stories back on fanfiction's golden age by searching on review counts. Its how I found for example the iconic harry potter fanfiction Harry Crow.

On Webnovel, I find this much harder to do because there is no way to search on review counts or even word count to my knowledge and authors for some reason, even if successful tend to remove their fanfics after some time.

To me thats a bit frustrating, I love how accessible webnovel is as a fanfic READER, even tough I understand what a nightmare it is for an author due to the diffrence in formatting required.

In addition, here on webnovel, you can write the shittiest fic and have the most traction because of the increased marketing options as a skilled craftsman in my own field and an absolute disaster in marketing, i understand very well what pro's and cons either site and their user base's behavioural patterns have for various authors.

Still, the universal truth of what makes the best fanfics is not limited to the platform your on but in my opinion, its how well you balance your own original content with the preservation of the core Unique Selling Points (USPs) of the Intellectual Product (IPs).

What do you think? Let me know, down below! ;)