How to Write a Crossover Fanfiction Story

Writing a crossover fanfiction story requires some different strategies and techniques from other fanfiction writing. If you follow these tips, you will be able to write a well-crafted story and find fans to read it.

Be Believable

Most crossovers (with the exception of some humor stories) require a believable way to explain why and how the characters and universes from different fandoms are interacting. This is easiest for fandoms existing in the real world. It is simple, for example, to create a plausible explanation for the police officers in Law and Order and CSI: New York to work together solving a case. (When dealing with different law enforcement agencies, however, you should be familiar with what kinds of cases they would actually handle and for what reasons they might work together.)

Fantasy and science fiction universes are a lot more difficult because they are each governed by their own rules. The rules of vampirism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, are incompatible with the public, organized groups of vampires in True Blood or Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The rules of magic and the culture of the wizard world in The Dresden Files is fundamentally different from that of Harry Potter.

When dealing with these kinds of contradictions, it is easiest to cross over two universes that overlap as little as possible. The rules of vampirism in Blood Ties, for example, may very well be compatible with the rules of vampirism in Stargate: SG-1, as the latter never mentions vampires at all. Alternatively, the characters from one universe could, through an accident of magic or science, end up in an alternate universe which follows different rules of magic or physics.

A third possibility is to write an Alternate Reality crossover, casting, for example, Harry Potter and Buffy Summers as coroners in DaVinci's Inquest. This type of story is more popular and accepted in some fandoms, such as Buffy and Stargate: Atlantis, than in others.

Keep Track of Characters

Especially if you are writing for a fandom with a large main cast, such as Lost, adding more characters may quickly prove overwhelming both to yourself and to the readers. Try to limit your cast by focusing on only a few characters from each fandom, or having one character from one fandom wind up in the universe of another.

Know Your Audience

It's certainly good to strive for an unusual and original work of fanfiction, but be aware of how crossovers can limit your audience. A crossover between Young Blades and Code Name: Eternity, for example, will have few readers because only a handful of people are familiar with both shows. A crossover between House, M.D. and Pirates of the Caribbean will have a larger audience because more people are at least vaguely familiar with the stories and concepts. This is not to suggest that you should limit yourself, but simply that you should be aware of what kind of readership and feedback to expect and think about what archives would be best to host your story. adparams.getadspec('c_billboard1');

Find a Good Beta Reader

A good beta reader, or editor, is essential for any work of fanfiction, but especially for crossovers, where there are more possible things to go wrong. Your beta reader should be very familiar with both fandoms in the crossover and be able to tell you whether your method of crossing them over makes sense, whether the characters are acting like themselves when interacting with characters from the other fandom, and whether you are keeping all of the backstories straight, as well as the usual editing for grammar, spelling, and style.

Just Start Writing

Don't spend all of your time worrying about what will work and what won't. Start writing and see what you come up with - how well the pieces fit together on their own might surprise you. Remember that you can always go back and edit when you're done.