It helps to read the fic and have a working chargelist as you go, and know the general trajectory of the mission. I didn't really do this when I was younger and my older missions feel a bit like E and C are just reacting to the fic instead of actually being competent senior agents. I've been editing and rewriting unfinished older missions, and having my current ability with plotting and pacing has improved them.

Don't be afraid to make reference documents with your character backstories, ages, general plot arcs, etc. Also don't be afraid to have a discard document for lines and scenes that you like but need to cut out of the mission proper -- you can go back and steal wording from it for later missions.

Honestly, you're not going to improve your writing if you don't write at all, so doing little ficlets and blurbs to get a better handle of your agents' voices is helpful. Read things other than badfic, too! Goodfic, published fiction, nonfiction -- reading how other people use their words will help you figure out what you want your characters to sound like. Eledhwen sounded a lot more immature in 2008 than she does now, and that's because in between these years I read a lot of books with characters like hers and absorbed their speech patterns.

On this note, I second what hS and Ekwy have said, and I'll add that knowing where you intend to stop is a good idea. This emphatically does not have to be the end of the fanfic! It can be any point that looks convenient once you feel you will have covered everything you wanted to say about the fic and do to with your characters.

Also, I like to make a copy of the fic so I can make notes on it as I read, marking charges, minis, opportunities for jokes and shenanigans, etc. I don't usually end up using everything, but it helps to identify potential themes and recurring gags, and it helps to have already done any research you may need ahead of time, too. (For instance, I had to look up the time it would normally take to fly from Australia to New York and determine how many G forces the characters would face to make the trip in the time the fic suggests.) Then you won't get derailed by stuff like that when you actually start writing.

Having a copy makes it easier to copy and paste quotes into the mission, too.

~Neshomeh

...the way I approach missions has changed drastically from when I wrote my actual first mission (which was, like, uh... 18 years ago? 19?) and when I wrote my first mission on coming back to the PPC a year ago. My missions used to be episodic, and they definitely had the feeling that when my agents were not on assignment, nothing else was going on with them. It wasn't wrong or anything, I was just not as experienced a writer as I am now and I thought that missions were what I wanted to focus on anyway. They were the "fun part". My characters were static, as was their dynamic. They were there to snark at badfic; they didn't really have relationships nor terribly distinctive voices. (Why yes, it was much easier to get Permission back in the day! ...I might just be really critical of my past writing here, but I honestly don't know if the agents I had then would have done very well if I'd attempted getting Permission with them today.)

Where was I going with this? Right! You seem to have a handle on your agents' dynamic already, and I see a lot of potential for comedy and growth. (Honestly way better than my first agents.) There might even be a planned trajectory for them, and character arcs and developments and all that, but when I approach a mission now, I have one question in mind.

How will this particular story affect my characters?

Hey, the answer to the question might be "uh, well, not much, this is a day at the office" and then the mission could just be that. Not every mission has to turn your agent's world upside down. But if you have a planned character arc, a flaw you want to explore or an aspect of their backstory that can be developed further, then missions are a good way of doing that.

Even non-missions serve this purpose. Those more seasoned than I are welcome to correct me on this, but the concept of "Interludes", where agents are just hanging out or having conversations with other people at HQ without going into missions, that was definitely not a staple the first time I was around, at least as I recall. The PPC has developed so much, received so much additional lore, that it feels like a much richer environment to just... hang around in. An interlude can follow another character for a bit, or explain something or just stay in the universe for a bit, but it should add something, even if that something is "just" your agent showing off their personality for 5K words.

Finally, what I think is a good thing in general with PPC stories, is to occasionally explain acronyms and tech. Even if you are writing for other PPCers, PPC stories also let other people discover us, so they should be approachable even if you don't know what the PPC is. You don't have to do this in every story, especially not if you have a long-running series, but I do remember that trying to read some missions again after almost two decades really made my head spin with a lot of terminology. XD

I am really, really sorry for going on and on. I am a huge nerd when it comes to story structure and I can (and I WILL) talk about it for literally hours. Hope I was at least semi-coherent!

/Ekwy

Specifically with PPC: Driftwood, which was written to be easy to write and read.

• Keep it short. Missions don't need to be behemoths. I think I aimed for 6K words.
• Pick a topic. You don't need to highlight every mistake in the badfic - it's just a story, you're not actually saving the canon. One mission, I basically did nothing but collect stray animals. Another, I might focus on one character being OOC. One was just about the Suvian's absurd numbers of powers.
• Try and make it fun for people who don't know the canon. Introduce the key points about it, and then focus on those. (Also, when you post it, for the love of Nienna TELL US what canon it's in!) You can include trivia/in-jokes, but don't make them the focus of the mission.

hS