On Sat, 13 Jun 1998, Mark Eymer wrote:

Whilst looking over some older and newer works of mine, and doing a
little comparison, I've come to the disturbing conclusion that my
writing, while overall becoming a little better, hasn't changed much at
all. I'd like to ask all you other fanfiction writers out there one
thing: How do you do it?

1. Read a lot.  The more tools you have in your arsenal of words, the
better you'll be able to get your point across.

2. Live a lot (Chris was right on here).

3. Keep your mind open.  Be receptive to new ideas.  If you fail to
understand what someone else is going through, then you're shutting
yourself off from understanding the oh-so-critical human spirit.

4. Never, *EVER* be afraid to show your heart.  You will get hurt
sometimes (I just had a real doozy with my mom), but in the long run
people will understand - and, if you feel like crying, they'll cry along
with you.  (They'll laugh with you too, BTW.)

Do you know what the audience wants?  They want to read something and know
that what they're reading and feeling is *real*, not some cheesy
Victorian-novel bullshit.  I have felt much of what my characters have
gone through, and it bloody well shows.  The reason why it shows is
because I've had practice at emoting through art (thanks to years in
choir) and have enough skill of the English language to make a decent
story out of it.  I've also known what it is to have my life go down the
toilet, what it means to doubt and to truly know what *fear* is.  I also
know what it is to be on top of the world, how it feels to kiss a girl
(but no further; as such, I've never written a true lemon), what it is to
konw that I am truly fortunate.  These experiences have taught me... and
shown me sides of the human existence that are hidden to some others.
Almost every great fanfic writer whose past I have some idea about has
been through one sort of tragedy or another; I'm willing to bet that their
mastery of showing emotion comes partly from their experiences.  

Whether it's sci-fi or romance or whatever, a good story is distunguished
from drivel by how well it is able to tell the story of human beings.
This is what allows a work to be *felt* by your audience.  One of my
friends wrote a hard sci-fi work that had been graded as okay by two
professors - and I found it as bland as unbuttered toast because he
concentrated more on the ships, and far less on the interactions between
human beings.  Human beings are your players; everything else is just a
tool.  Handle both like you would the real thing.

For a better idea, I recommend picking up a copy of (no pun intended) "Zen
in the Art of Writing" by Ray Bradbury.  It's a great little manual about
what it means to write.

-- Nick