After putting down these (visual) novels, some fans begin writing their own using a specific set of plot ideas.
- Ace Attorney:
- Mia Lives. Mia somehow survives the bludgeoning from Redd White, manages to escape, someone comes to her rescue (sometimes doubling as Heroic Sacrifice) and the story progresses as it would other than key events being changed by her presence.
- Fics about the seven year gap between the two trilogies, with it being popular to write slice-of-life affairs about "hobo" Phoenix raising a young Trucy or shipping fics where Edgeworth returns to find out what's become of his old friend. It's especially common to see fics set during this period that combine both plots, with Edgeworth becoming a second father to Trucy as he and Phoenix work out their feelings.
- Thanks to Pearl being a canon Shipper on Deck for Phoenix and Maya, there have been fics where she locks them in a room together until they admit their feelings.
- Phoenix tries to romance a reluctant Edgeworth, who can't deal with his "unnecessary feelings". These are so common that there was actually a Kink Meme request wanting to see the roles swapped.
- The murderers of various cases meet up in jail. The ones most commonly involved in this kind of fic are Godot and Kristoph Gavin.
- Narumitsu (Wright/Edgeworth) romance plots ver often involve them having dinner at Wright's house. Same with Klapollo fics ans Klavier taking Apollo out to breakfast/lunch/dinner.
- Ghost Trick crossovers tend to involve Maya channeling Sissel and becoming a catgirl as a result. (Spoilered for Ghost Trick.)
- AI-generated trials tend to involve Phoenix as the defense attorney, Edgeworth as the prosecutor and Larry as the defendant; while Phoenix has defended Larry in "The First Turnabout" and "Turnabout with the Wind" in the manga, Winston Payne was the prosecutor both times. In said AI generated trials, Phoenix and Edgeworth will often team up to poke holes in Larry's testimony or accuse him of being the culprit, which almost seems in-character for them considering how obnoxious they find Larry.
- Danganronpa:
- Series-wide
- There are a lot of fics involving "talentswaps" where the Ultimate titles are swapped between the students. (For instance, Makoto Naegi as the Ultimate Detective, or Kaede Akamatsu as the Ultimate Princess.)
- A different character being the mastermind is a common plot. For the first game, Kiyotaka Ishimaru and Makoto Naegi are the usual suspects.
- A popular type of fic is the Fan Sequel; brand new mutual killing games featuring 16 original Ultimates trapped at a particular location and forced to kill each other by Monokuma (or sometimes a different robotic stuffed toy). This type of story is also extremely popular with crossovers.
- There are a small but growing number of fanfics where class 78 becomes the remnants of despair instead of class 77. Typically, if these fanfics include Danganronpa 3, then Makoto winds up being the one who dies in the torture maze instead of Chiaki.
- A similar variant is the class from V3 becoming the Remnants of Despair instead. Kaede is the one who gets tortured to death to push the rest of the cast over the edge in this scenario.
- There are plenty of stories that have all the characters enjoying a normal school life together.
- There are plenty of stories where the canon murders, killers and survivors are swapped around for one reason or another.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
- Following Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF, a lot of fics popped up about Mukuro's adventures in the alternate timeline.
- Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
- After it was revealed that Chiaki Namani was a real person who was killed by Junko, this led to a slew of stories where Chiaki is saved in some way, often by Izuru.
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
- The "fake spoilers" have been subjected into this, with people starting to write and develop the story based on them.
- It's common in non-V3 fics to see this game's cast written in as "Class 79", the class the year below Makoto's.
- In light of later reveals, it's common to see someone other than Kaede Akamatsu executed for the first murder. This goes double if the pairing is Kaede/Shuichi.
- It's not unheard of for post-game fics to reveal that Everybody Lives, possibly influenced by the Danganronpa 3 anime, which did the same for the cast of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
- If they are not being written as Class 79, it is just as common to see the students as the children of the casts from the first two games. While who's related to who are often varies from story to story, Shuichi is almost always Kyoko and Makoto's son.
- Series-wide
- Doki Doki Literature Club!:
- Re-writing the story from one of the girls' points of view; Doki Doki Rain Clouds
is the entire first Act from Sayori's point of view, including her descent into depression and eventual suicide. - A large number of stories veer away from the darker aspects of the game and aim for (comparatively) Lighter and Softer Slice of Life stories about the characters and their lives inside (and outside) of the Literature Club. The twist regarding Monika being aware that she's a fictional character remains, but is usually played purely for comedy, with her acting as a Fourth-Wall Observer who occasionally talks to the author or reader, as opposed to desperately working to become a Refugee from TV Land.
- A fair number of fan mods focus on resolving one or all of the girls' personal issues, whether as plot points or as the overall premise. It's particularly popular to stop Sayori from suicide in the nick of time, rescue Natsuki from her abusive home life, or help Monika overcome her jealousy and existential crisis.
- Overlapping with some of the others above: Making it into a normal Romance Game (in mods), returning to fix things after the ending, or combining both.
- There are some takes on the story that remove the metafictional horror elements, instead focusing on exploring the characters' emotional and psychological issues. Think Katawa Shoujo, but with mental illnesses instead of physical handicaps.
- Re-writing the story from one of the girls' points of view; Doki Doki Rain Clouds
- Fate/stay night:
- Fanfics in which Shirou summons a different Servant are fairly common. Alternatively in stories where many, if not all of the servants are changed up, Saber is the only one to stay the same.
- Alternate Grail Wars, or future Grail Wars, especially with Fate/Zero’s anime adaptation. A distinctive trend is having Servants being sourced from other series. This will always involve the crossover character's powers being adapted into something compatible with the Fate franchise, with iconic powers from their home series reimagined as Noble Phantasms and them being designated under an appropriate servant class.
- A variant involves a character from a different franchise get involved in the Grail War, typically as either the master of a non-Saber servant (either one of the additional varieties added in expanded media or replacing an existing one) or a third party that is intervening with their own powers. This character will typically be more in line with Shirou's mentality, though this is dependent on the crossover in question and a character from a more cynical series will typically share the source material's view on Shirou's heroic ideals. If the character has superpowers, the fic will typically come up with its own calculations about how they compare in direct combat to the servants and mages.
- There's Empty Shell Shirou being raised by people other than Kiritsugu after the fire and Archer's Mysterious Past.
- Dimensional Traveler Zelretch being a Troll and making interdimensional shenanigans happening.
- There's the general "Shirou is/replaces <main character of another story>" plotline, again, due to his backstory basically being a blank cheque to be pretty much any male teenage protagonist. Notable examples include Fate/Reach Out, In Flight, and Promises of a Wandering Hero, where Shirou turns out to be Yu Narukami, Minato Sahashi, and Keitaro Urashima respectively, and thus gets dragged into their respective plotlines, with Shirou's general personality, skills and existing supporting cast causing major changes.
- Fate/Grand Order has a similar stock plot in writers casting either a Self-Insert, Original Character, or one from another franchise into the role of Ritsuka.
- Shirou time traveling back to Medieval Britain to prevent Saber's downfall, and Time-Travel Romance have become quite popular.
- After Fate/Apocrypha, it became popular to make alternate versions of the Great Holy Grail War with different Servants on each team, or even with Ruler summoning her own Servant as in Fate/Magnus Bellum. Even still, the general idea of a Servant Team battle is good enough fanfic fodder that Fuyuki centered fics also use it.
- It is popular to have the protagonists of Fate/Grand Order to be the children of Shirou and Rin, despite official word that the protagonists are based on gender-bent versions of the two characters (and the timeline not matching up: it's a plot point that Grand Order begins 10-12 years after Stay Night).
- While not an overwhelming number, it's not uncommon to see fics based on "What If? Rin had been adopted by the Matou family instead of Sakura?". (Also, the answer is commonly that she will become a vengeful borderline psychopath.)
- An emerging trend in the 2020s is to have an OC (often an explicit author self-insert who's already read the VN) incarnate in Shinji's body, usually for the purpose of replacing Shinji with someone who's not as loathsome and will make a go of rescuing Sakura.
- Higurashi: When They Cry:
- It's heavily implied that there was a world where Rena actually did blow up the school. Fans have written about it.
- Mion is the only one of the main characters who is never shown to have killed anyone. Naturally, quite a bit of fanwork revolves around her killing people. The most common plot is her getting jealous of Rena and killing her. According to one arc, there was at least one world where Mion was jealous of Keiichi's female friends and either killed them or attempted to. It's just never depicted on-screen.
- There's a Love Triangle between Keiichi, Rena, and Mion that never gets resolved. Fanworks either pair him with Mion, Rena, or both.
- A lot of fanfics, fanart, and at least one MAD revolves around a Perspective Flip of the first arc from Rena's POV, as she deals with Keiichi’s Sanity Slippage.
- Satoshi returning is extremely common in fanworks. One arc that was never adapted into the anime and manga, which was an alternative version of the final arc, actually had him coming back.
- Thinking up new arcs and reasons for the characters to kill each other is the most common plot in the fandom.
- Katawa Shoujo:
- A fair number of fics involve what happens after Hanako's bad ending, including the possibility of them getting back together and working out their issues.
- Maybe about 25% of all Katawa Shoujo fics depict what Hisao and Hanako/Emi/Lilly/Shizune/Misha/Kenji are doing after they graduate high school, get married, and maybe start a family.
- Fanfics detailing the lives of the other people in Hisao's homeroom class.
