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Writin Gud


by LZClotho

Have you ever been 'thrown out' of a story? Lost because of misspelled names, poorly constructed sentences, or way out of character dialogue? From satire to serious, whether you're lampooning or lovingly treating the characters, you are working with someone else's characters. Fans have a set of expectations that you can work with, or against.

It's difficult to fall in love with a story if you struggled to get through it. So The Alternative Quadrant has decided to help writers get and keep readers with this monthly column of advice. If there is a certain topic or problem in fan fiction that you would like to see addressed here, please send e-mail to alternative_quadrant@mailcity.com

 

This Month: Character/Place Names & Spelling

Characters of the USS Voyager, NCC-74656:

Name

Rank

 Kathryn Janeway

Captain

 Chakotay

Commander

 Tuvok

Lt. Commander prior to season 6

 B'Elanna Torres

Lt.

 Harry Kim

Ensign

 Tom Paris

Rank depends on season

 Seven of Nine
(human name) Annika Hansen

(none) works in Astrometrics

Other names: Neelix, Kes, Samantha Wildman, Naomi, Seska
The Borg children: Mezoti, Ian, Azan (the twins), Icheb.

Race/Place names:

B'Elanna and Chakotay (and about half Voyager's crew) were members of the Maquis
Tuvok and Vorik are Vulcan
Seska is Cardassian masquerading as a Bajoran
Kes was Ocampa
The hunter-race is the Hirogen
The Viidians harvest organs to treat their disease the Phage
Icheb is/was Brunali before assimilation

Typical Objects:

holodecks
comm badges
comm links
medical tricorder

Check the closed captioning whenever you're in doubt, or check the Star Trek Voyager official website.

Beta readers who will read your story before you put it out there, and help correct these for you, can be requested on mailing lists, or in the future here, where we'll list emails of those people willing to do beta reading.

Taking the extra effort will keep readers enjoying your story, rather than stumbling over Chaktay, Mackey, Katherine, or Aneka into the hollowdecks. And THAT is worth it.

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