I like PWP stories. Maybe in self-defense, because that's all I seem to be able to write. Maybe because the short story format isn't as easy to write successfully as the creators of thousands of lousy PWPs seem to think.

Everything that's important in a novel is ten times as important in a short story. Characterization has to be developed in a few quick brushstrokes of description, you don't have chapters and chapters for your readers to get to know your characters. Physical setting has to be established and firmly incorporated into the story without taking over the action. Action. Action must begin quickly and build relentlessly to climax. No time to dawdle, no time to smell the roses, you've only got fifteen or twenty pages and you've got a lot of important stuff to cram into them.

And a PWP, after all, is just a short story. The phrase, "Plot? What plot?" was invented by fandom to cover quickies...stories that exist (usually) for sex and for no other purpose. Because of that, the PWP has traditionally been the worst-written kind of fandom story. And I'm talking gen stuff, as well as slash. Writers think that because the story is only a few pages long, those finicky details of "good" writing don't really matter.

What a crock.

Okay, your story is set between episodes x and y of your chosen fandom. It matters that the readers know (and NOT from the author's notes section) where in the canon timeline this story is set. Character relationships change and develop throughout the life of a series. If you're bothering to set your story after x, then there should be a reason for it. Whatever happened in x should be relevant to what happens in your story. If not, why bother to pretend the story is set between episodes x and y in the first place?

If what you're doing is explaining something in canon that is going to happen in y, then there has to be a clear line for the reader, a clear set-up for the events of y. The reader should be able to go from your story to watching y, and go...oh, yeah, so that's why he said that. If not, why bother to pretend the story is set between episodes x and y in the first place?

It doesn't fit into any particular place in canon, it sort of lives outside of the episodes. Nothing wrong with that kind of setup at all. However, when you write an AU PWP, characterization, always vital, becomes doubly important. If the characters aren't set solidly into a timeline that helps the reader fill in personality and relationship details, then you have to supply that stuff. It doesn't matter how familiar your readers are with the characters and with canon. You, as the author, are required to share your interpretation of these things.

(I was seduced into Sentinel fandom by authors with the gift of supplying enough of these details to allow someone who had never seen the show to relate to the characters. We should all try writing as though our readers don't know the characters.)

Don't. Okay? Just...don't.

Make up your own OCs and write it as original fiction.

Double ditto for your personal sexual fantasies. If you don't have the knack of separating yourself from what you're writing, if you don't realize that there's a huge gap between the scenes that play in your head and a good sex scene in a story, then please don't embarrass yourself and us by sharing these. I've learned far more than I ever wanted to know about some authors from reading their PWP's.