Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be something about the Phantom of the Opera story that lends itself so well to reinterpretation. I think it has something to do with the ambiguity of the tale. Character motivations, the moral and psychological implications of their actions, and what comes before and after is left largely up to the imagination of the audience-and occasionally, an audience member feels inspired to write down their own take on things. Hence, phic. Phic tends to be a mixed blessing. For every well-written and entertaining story there are several that are, well, downright lousy. The question that comes up again and again in discussion forums: "What makes a good phic?" Usually, the responses carry a note of personal preference: no "other woman" stories, don't make Christine too tough, etc. etc. But the root of the issue is, I think, more a matter of structure and style rather than story-not what you say, but how you say it. So, armed with nothing than my own somewhat limited experience reading (and writing) phic, I offer five pieces of advice I'd give to anyone itching to sit down at the writing desk or computer and hammer out that idea knocking around their head.

1.) Yes, spelling counts. So does grammar.
Okay, truth in advertising time: I've made my fair share of slips of the keyboard, most of which I didn't notice until weeks after the piece was posted for general consumption. I remember one time when, instead of writing "proscenium" (that gold thing around the edge of the stage) I typed in "portcullis" (that gate thing the Phantom leans against during "Music of the Night"). Three guesses where my mind was that day. The occasional typo or misused syntax is forgivable; everyone makes mistakes. But nothing kills a phic more quickly and completely than shoddy spelling, poor sentence construction, and awkward phrasing. Writing is communication, and grammar is the framework which holds our ideas up in such a way that everyone else can see them. Without it, the audience becomes confused, frustrated, and irritated. So, prior to posting, check that all your proverbial t's and i's are crossed and dotted. If you're changing time, place, or viewpoint, make sure it's done in a clear manner so the audience doesn't get whiplash. Also watch out for anachronisms (unless you're being funny), especially in speech: when characters start saying "wow," and "hey," they begin to sound less like 19th-century artists and more like 21st-century teenagers.

2.) Drama is conflict.
This piece of advice, hammered into me during my days as a theater undergraduate, applies manifestly to writing-or any form of storytelling, for that matter. One of the nice things about phic is the wish-fulfillment factor: we get to indulge the side of us that wants things to turn out differently, or have a little good clean fun at the expense of our obsession. But the downside to that is the temptation to make things too easy. I hate getting on the Erik/Christine shippers about this, since it's one of my favorite phic sub-categories, but too many stories along this line end up coming down to "I love you, I love you too, okay let's kiss/have sex." Come on, these two have not only been through hell together, they're more or less the ones who put each other through hell in the first place. They're not getting over that without a lot of tears, struggle, and soul-searching. A good Erik/Christine story is not about them getting together, but about how they come to the point where they can reasonably be together. In the same vein, watch out when reinterpreting characters-it's one thing to make Erik more sympathetic, but if you take the edge off his dark side, you lose one of the driving parts of the story. The conflict has to come from somewhere. And never make any character too perfect-they're only human. Yes, even Raoul.

3.) For the love of God, don't over-quote.
There's a difference between quoting and over-quoting. Quoting is when you make a brief reference to a line or two from your source. "Over-quoting" is what happens when the author lifts large portions of dialogue from the source material and inserts it, word-for-word, into their own writing (songfics, in which the lyrics reflect what's going on, are an exception, because the lyrics are outside the story). This is most obvious-and most distracting-when the source is the ALW musical, because so much of the dialogue is sung. A character expressing themselves in verse works in the musical because, well, that's what people in musicals do. But when you take that off the stage and onto the page, it no longer makes sense-real people don't talk in couplets. Besides, if you're just going to reprint dialogue from other places, what's the point in writing? Instead, look at the subtext-what the character is really saying-and find another way to say it.

4.) Sometimes, less is more.
Descriptions are a tricky thing. They can really flesh out your story-or they can stop it cold. If you stop in the middle of an action sequence to spend half a page describing what something looks like, it breaks up the pacing of the narrative. There is no hard-and-fast rule about what the right amount of description is, but there are several ways to keep it from interrupting your story. Slipping it into the action works well: instead of saying "Christine had dark hair," find some way to work it into what's happening, i.e. "Christine brushed a lock of dark hair away from her eyes." Instead of explaining each piece of furniture in a room, describe instead the general impression of the space, how the characters react to it, what it says about the person who resides there. And remember, phic is written generally for phans, who are pretty conversant in the story's basics. When you say "the blue dress" or "the chandelier," it's a fair bet nearly all your readers will know what you're talking about. Sometimes, you can say a lot by not saying anything at all. Those of you who've seen the Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston Phantom know that in that version, we never see Erik's face. This was deliberate on the authors' part, because they wanted the audience to draw their own conclusions about the horror under that mask. It's okay to let your readers fill in the blanks-in fact, it's sometimes a nice way of keeping everyone happy.

5.) Write your story.
Everyone has preferences about their reading material. I've personally never been much for angst phics, because I like stories to have some element of hope, even in tragedy. But that's just me-there's some very well-written angst out there. In the same way, everyone has their own opinions about the characters-whether Christine loves Erik or she's just scared, whether Raoul is downright evil, downright stupid, or just plain misunderstood, etc. The point I'm getting at is, in the words of the old song, "you can't please everyone so you've got to please yourself." Write the story you want to hear, be it romantic, tragic, or funny. Don't be afraid to take chances, or to depart a little-or even a lot-from the POTO cannon. Some people will like it…and some probably won't. But it will be your interpretation-which, after all, is why we have phic in the first place.