Matthew Lewis <maybeso@ican.net> wrote:

In summation: yes, one definitely needs more than a simple statement of
"What if...?" that one does need a story, a theme, a plot, a goal with
which to work with/towards, said elements can be developed from merely
working out some of the changes that would occur from altering the initial
variable. Take time to work out what changes would happen, and do not feel
constrained to follow too closely to the original storyline and events,
because as a matter of course certain things in the original would happen
differently or perhaps not at all, while new situations could/should/would
occur.

I think the fundamental mistake here is thinking that once you have a
one-sentence story concept, you've got a story. This is something that's
a problem in any genre of fic, not just AltUnivs. A lot of crossovers
are nothing more than "Let's bring X and Y together" with no thought put
into what should happen once X and Y *get* together.

Mind you, having a novel one-sentence fic idea isn't a bad thing. The
point is, it doesn't exempt you from the need for the other things that
make a story good: Plot, characterization, drama, humor, etc. Most of
the more popular fanfics go far beyond their initial concept. Try to sum
up Hearts of Ice, Shampoo 1/2, etc. in a sentence or two. It can be
done, but you don't convey anything close to the true flavor of the fic
that way. My own HaM series has been going on for about 450 kb (which,
for me, is quite a lot ^_^) and still hasn't fully gotten to the
one-sentence concept part yet.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics