Why

What is your motivation for writing? This is possibly the most important important question you need to ask yourself before and while you write. The answer to this question will be your goal that you look to as you write and will help you stay on track. It's an even broader goal than getting to the conclusion of your plot.

Audience

You need to figure out whether you're writing:

• Pretty much for yourself. In that case, you have more freedom to do what you want, as long as you are satisified with the outcome.
• For a general audience. In that case, you're less limited than you are with a more specific audience, but at the same time it might be difficult to figure out what to write in order to appeal to the greatest number of people.
• For a specific person. If it was requested by that person, then you need to keep in mind their likes and interests. If you're simply dedicating the story to the person, think about what kind of message it sends. By saying that the story is for so-and-so, you're drawing an association between your writing and that person, so you want it to make sense. I would not want a cheesy romance novel dedicated to me, unless it were some hilarious work of satire.
• For a particular audience/group of people. Who are these people? Think about the effect this audience has on what you're writing, how it shapes the content of your fic. For example, if you're doing some sort of contest or challenge, think about what the judges are looking for.

Purpose

There are a ton of purposes for writing. Here are a few purposes and what they mean for your writing:

• Self-entertainment: Enjoying yourself while writing and producing something you like is the goal.
• Entertainment of others: Your job is to create a good story that people will enjoy.
• Attention, acclaim, i.e. to get views/subscribers/comments/featured: You will need to focus in more on the things that appeal to readers on AFF. By this, I don't mean "ask them exactly what they want and then do as they say." I mean that you should consider incorporating the things that have widespread appeal into your writing.
• Expression: You have thoughts and feelings and ideas that you sincerely want to put into words. Your focus is on accurately translating what's in your mind into eloquent writing.
• Education/awareness: You want to make your work informative and enlightening. It's better to clear and straightforward in what you're saying.
• Argumentation: You're trying to make a definite point about some issue, and you need to make sure the readers will draw the conclusions that you want them to. You need appeals to logic, emotion, and/or morality, explained and illustrated with examples, to support your argument.
• Exploration: You have a question or an issue, but you're not necessarily exactly focusing on getting a definite answer or trying to convince anyone of anything. Instead, you simply want to touch on the various sides and aspects of the topic and present it from more than one perspective.
• Parody: You're poking fun at something or someone, so you have to make it humorous and ridiculous.
• Satire: A darker sort of parody. Not only are you making fun of something/someone, you're trying expose the more serious problems (usually of a social nature) that you see in the things you make fun of.
• Criticism: You're exposing and explaining the flaws of something.
• Call to action: You want something to be done about a situation, so you have to make the importance and the urgency of the situation clear to the readers.
• Challenge: You want to push your limits and do something that will put your writing skills to the test.

Your fic can have any combination of the above purposes, but usually fanfics focus on those first four bullets.