The songfic... Hmm. Some people love them, some people don't, to put it midly. And because I always let you know my personal opinions (this being my page and all), well, here you go. I'm not a fan of songfics, personally. I think that it can be an interesting format and there are a few good ones out there, but not many.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a songfic is a fanfic that's interspersed with song lyrics. This usually happens (I'd assume) when the author is listening to a song and thinks it fits a character/situation perfectly and expands on the lyrics.

There are a few reasons I don't like songfics. Because most songs are about love/heartbreak, most songfics are, too, and the tend to be more generic than non-song stories because of it. Futhermore, I think most of them rely too much on lyrics and don't put in enough story.

However, as I said, there are a few good songfics out there. Judging by those few good ones, here are some tips to write a songfic that doesn't suck, if you decide it's your thing:

Be careful when you pick your song. Generic pop songs make for generic stories, usually (but not always, of course.) Futhermore, most generic pop songs fall out of popularity, and some are downright embarrassing to look back on. Chances are, anything top 40 is something you'll want to avoid.

Make sure the story works without the lyrics. That way if someone skims through and doesn't read the song bit, there's an actual worthwhile story there.

Make sure there's more story than song. A lot of songfics (the worst ones, usually) are the ones which have a verse and chorus, two or three lines of text, another verse, another line of text, chorus, etc. That's not a story.

Aside from that, there's always an alternative to songficing. Write the story you're inspired to, and post the lyrics after instead of in between. This gives you more freedom, as you don't need to follow the song so closely, and helps you avoid a lot of the problems many songfics have. It's similar, but focuses more on the story than on the song—as a fanfic should.

(A note added later: FFnet has recently banned songfics in any form, because of copyright problems. As irritating as this can be to us, the FFnet users, keep in mind that it's a free service and a privately owned website, so they have the right to ban whatever kind of fic they want. That said, your account can be deleted if you break the rule, so you should err on the side of caution and, if you just can't resist writing a songfic, make sure you have somewhere else to post it.)