User blog:Brendan's Tips for Writing Survivor Fanons

This is a page detailing admins' tips for writing Survivor fanfics.

Deciding on a Season Format
The first thing you need to do is decide on how your season will play out in regards to twists. Do not make the mistake of making your first season completely twist-less; it bores your readers and makes it harder to write twists into subsequent seasons.
 * Bwburke94 - 18 castaways is a good starting point. 16 virtually locks you into an every-three-days day layout, while 20 may be too much for a new writer to handle.

Day Layout
(Written by Bwburke94)

Survivor lasts 39 days, and it's important to write a day layout that takes all 39 days into account. The last day is of course the Final Tribal Council, which means the last member of the jury is always voted out on Day 38. This means the first 37 days are free to do whatever you want with. Still, there are a couple guidelines.

The combination of a reward challenge, immunity challenge, and Tribal Council, taking place over the course of one episode, is commonly known as a "cycle" -- I will use that term here.


 * In a season of 16 or 18 castaways, try to use a day layout that results in 4 castaways remaining for the season finale. In a season of 20 castaways, you can have either 4 or 5 remaining if you have a Final Three.
 * Avoid four-day cycles whenever possible. In other words, no episode should last more than three full days.
 * The season finale is an exception, it can run from days 36-39 if you want it to. In that case, the two Tribal Councils should take place on days 37 and 38.
 * If an evacuation/quit occurred in the previous episode, it's fine to run a four-day cycle to make up for being ahead of schedule. A good example of this is Survivor: Nicaragua, as the NaOnka/Purple Kelly double quit put the producers three days ahead of schedule, resulting in four-day cycles to make up for it.
 * If your season has 20 (or more) castaways, it is recommended to run a double Tribal Council during a one-day cycle, to emulate the format of real Survivor seasons.