When canon just isn't enough
If you’re knee-deep in chapter 83 and your characters haven’t even locked eyes yet (we respect the commitment)—or staring down a fix-it fic with dangerous levels of potential—templates can help you plan and transform the stories you love.
Your work deserves as much structure, pacing, emotional depth, and sweet, sweet catharsis as canon itself, so we’re excited to introduce three new templates to help bring your fics to life, with all the narrative payoff they deserve.
The templates (and all our others!) are available right now in Ellipsus—just choose from template when you start a new doc!
The Fandom Ship Template
Some pairings write themselves. Others spiral into 200k words of mutual pining, miscommunication and devastating hand brushes (shoutout to the Ellipsus writers with obscenely ginormous docs!). This template helps you map your ship’s emotional arc: from their first spark (or first sword fight with serious eye contact) to the moment they finally say what they mean (or don’t—but the reader knows). Chemistry, conflict, communication style, tropes and their subversions… and your ultimate reader devastation goals.
- Who’s best at reading between the lines?
- What’s the moment they almost say something—but don’t?
- What’s the line of dialogue that defines their relationship?
The Canon Divergence Template
Sometimes canon says “they die,” and you say “not on my watch.” This template is made for writers who love pulling one thread and watching the whole timeline shift—character redemptions, timeline forks, “What if they’d just talked?” Use it to track where and how your story splits from canon, and how change ripples outward to uncover new truths and relationships.
- Are the rules (e.g., rules of magic, politics, science, society) altered? How?
- How will you maintain believability with these changes?
- What emotional beats are you preserving—and which are you changing?
The AU Planning Template
Hear us out—what if they were all in a band? Or rival antique shop owners? Or soulmates who can’t touch? Or—or—or... This planning template helps you reimagine familiar characters and worlds through the fanfic kaleidoscope of alternate universes. Develop world details that serve your ship and your story, and keep continuity while translating roles and canon arcs into something entirely new (and probably gayer).
- What can you explore in this particular context/setting?
- What stays the same, even if the details change?
- How does the new context/setting reframe the characters’ emotional struggles?