How to Write The Maze Runner Fanfiction ✓

p.s: a note on dave

Hi, guys! It's been well over a year since I completed this book, but since people are still reading it and I know a large portion of my followers are TMR fans, I wanted to enlist your help with something that has been brought to my attention recently.

In the first book of my Newt trilogy, Different, there is a joke in the first chapter that was written on a whim but has since gained a lot of popularity that I didn't expect. Here's a screenshot from my laptop:

It's the line about Dave, which has 463 comments on it as of right now.

As I have said many times in this book, Different was published on October 20, 2014 (I scrolled through 2.8k comments on the first chapter to find that date). When I published it, there were maybe like four other Newt fics on the app, but I only remember Wonderwall and Fighter. It was brought to my attention by one of my readers that the minor character Dave has become some sort of inside joke in the Wattpad TMR fandom and that they see him in a lot of fanfictions, mostly in a similar place (when the Box is opened for the first time).

I was curious as to when Fighter came out because I remembered reading it as I was writing my book, and while looking through the comments, I did Command + F to see how many Dave comments there were. There were 24. 24! On a book that doesn't even mention Dave by name because he wasn't created yet.

Here are some of the comments I came across (names and icons covered to protect identities):

This upset me greatly because that means people have been taking my idea for years and I didn't know. I haven't read TMR fanfiction in a really long time, so I wasn't aware of this apparent fact, but if anyone can share if they have seen similar things in other books, please confirm/deny on this paragraph.

Some of you may be thinking, "But Kristyn, isn't it cool to think your line has become a fandom-wide joke?" and while, yeah, sure, it is pretty cool, it's also negated by the fact that it's a joke because it has been taken from me so many times and put into so many other fanfictions. That one person said that "Dave" (even when not explicitly named) acts like that in a lot of other fanfics.

Like I said, my book was published when TMR wasn't very popular. The fandom was very small. The "Dave" character – who consistently messes things up in my book and also acts strangely – was created by me and it's extremely disheartening to have someone think, "This is funny, I'll use this," and have it spread so far and wide that people come to my book and say "Ugh, another Dave," when it was literally my idea. And yes, that has happened before.

To some, it may seem trivial, but the Different trilogy was four years in the making and I worked very hard on it. To have any aspect of one's work stolen and made into a big joke that you aren't even aware of is ??? Really disappointing ??? Especially when people don't realize that you had the original idea.

Since I don't read TMR fanfiction anymore (and I hardly have the time to read, anyways) I want to ask you guys a favor. If you see another Dave character in someone's book (and I don't just mean literally any character named Dave because it's a common name, but someone who is the now-stereotypical Dave who is the brunt of every joke, or if the line in the screenshot is copied or someone writes something similar using the name) please leave a comment and ask them to change it or bring it to their attention that it was from me. You don't have to tag me. You could just say something like, "Hey, this sounds like a line from Different. Was that intentional?" or something and see if they respond. If you don't want to comment, you can PM me a link to the chapter and I can check it out.

I really hope I don't sound whiney or moody. As I said before, this may seem like just a line to some people, but having any part of one's work stolen is very disheartening in ways I can't describe, especially because I know how young I was when I wrote the book and how good-natured the line was. Thank you guys!

Be well, be kind,
Kristyn :)