I never intended to enter the 2025 Open Novella Contest, but back in February, I found myself in a nostalgic phase, reflecting on my childhood in the early 2000s. I had just gotten a Tubi account and started watching the original Scooby-Doo, just for the heck of it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it, so I switched to What’s New Scooby-Doo?, the version of Scooby-Doo I grew up with. One day, while I was casually watching it, I flipped through the ONC 2025 prompts, and that was when I stumbled upon it: Prompt #91: “No one believes you, but you’re the only one who can solve this mystery—for all of them.”
At that point, I had to do it. I had to write a fanfiction about Scooby-Doo. Destiny sometimes finds us in the most unexpected ways. I was working on Bill and the Whistling Death at the time, so I was looking around for a smaller, more light-hearted project to deviate from the seriousness of Bill. Well, why not Scooby-Doo?
Twelve years ago, I watched one of my favorite movies, The Croods, and became interested in a nomad named Guy. I joined Wattpad soon after I watched it to write a Croods fanfic about him—never returned to that account until 2019. Well, Guy became an original character in 2014 when my family and I went on a weeklong canoe trip in the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park. He got a new name, Ian (named after my Cousin Ian), and was a wandering teenager in the depths of Ontario. That pitch became The Ghost of Ontario, a story I never finished but worked on for the following ten years.
As time passed and I entered my Through the Wormhole/ancient history phase in 2015, I learned about the Bering Land Bridge and how we wouldn’t be here if not for the Indigenous people who crossed it. To honor that legacy and the true essence of Lady Evelyn, Ian became Ihaan, an isolated Native American boy of Mohawk descent. He transformed into more than just a fanfiction of Guy, but I have always struggled with his story. Is he a ghost, or is he not a ghost? That’s a question I’ve held onto since I first created him.
Likewise, in the earliest draft of The Ghost of Ontario, I referenced Scooby-Doo one too many times. That’s why I felt it would be a stupid but interesting idea to combine Ihaan with the iconic Mystery Gang while I continued planning his whole story—and a new twist on his Native American heritage… colonization. What’s New Scooby-Doo: The Ghost of Ontario became more than just a silly, little Scooby-Doo fanfic—it became a story of grief, coming-of-age, and an essential life lesson for any teenager: Stand up for yourself.
The key to good fanfiction is that it balances familiarity with originality. I learned this lesson in fifth grade. It’s not copying and pasting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with a random OC in that script—and saying it’s yours; it’s original storytelling, just a different version of it. I went into the ONC with this mindset, but my devil and angel constantly clashed over the fact that I had written a crossover of Scooby-Doo and one of my original stories. I never expected this stupid idea to make it past Round 1, let alone find a home on the ONC 2025 Shortlist. I may never understand how this happened; all I know is that I now have a brilliant new idea for The Ghost of Ontario’s original novel rewrite.
And it’s all thanks to one person. Not Ihaan, and not my Cousin Ian, but a wandering nomad in The Croods.
Guy.
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