I just want to encourage all of you who are serious about improving your writing to step out of your comfort zone and explore the unfamiliar. You don’t have to do what your friends are doing, and you don’t have to do what your favorite writers are doing. It’s really ok to delve into stories and themes that you and your friends might consider “uncharted territory”! And it’s ok to play around with language and form, too, come up with exciting new ways to present a story or message etc. I think challenging oneself like this is an excellent way to grow as a writer
This is so important! Challenging yourself is the only way to get better. It can be super scary (what if I mess up?!) but if you never try, you’ll never figure out how to make it work. So many people tell us to look at what other people are doing and try to emulate it, but if you have an idea that takes you way off into the forest where you don’t see any examples of anyone ever having gone - that’s great! Go there, tell us what you found, and each time you return you’ll go a little farther until it all feels comfortable and safe. (And then it’ll be time to find new uncharted territory!)
tricky words I always see misspelled in fics: a guide
Viscous/vicious–Viscousis generally used to describe the consistency of blood or other thick liquids. Viciousis used to describe something or someone who is violent.
Piqued/Peaked/Peeked– To piquesomeone’s interest is to catch or tease their attention. When something peaks,it reaches its total height or intensity. To peek(at) something is to look briefly, or glance.
Discrete/Discreet– this is a tough one. Discretemeans to be separate, or distinct, i.e., two discretetheories. Conversely, when someone is discreet,they are being secretive or cautious to avoid attention.
Segue/Segway – one is a transition between things, the other is a thing you can ride at the park and definitely fall off of.
Conscious/Conscience/Conscientious – to be consciousis to be awake, i.e., not unconscious, or to be aware of something. Your conscienceis the little voice in your head telling you not to eat the entire pint of ice cream. Finally, to be conscientiousis to be good, to do things thoroughly, to be ruled by an inner moral code.
Hope this helped! Please add more if you think of them!
Counsel/Council-counsel is advice, the advice giver, or the verb form of giving said advice. Council is the group of people who come together to discuss and/or make decisions.
Desert/Desert/Dessert-desert is a barren landscape where little precipitation occurs. desert - abandon (a person, cause, or organization) in a way considered disloyal or treacherous. dessert - a usually sweet course or dish (as of pastry or ice cream) usually served at the end of a meal.
OH MY TIME IS HERE! I HAVE MADE A POST I KEEP FOR THIS EXACTLY
Taunt/Taut-Taunt is a jeer or provocation, taut means to be pulled tight, or not slack
Weary/Wary-wearymeans tired and warymeans cautious
Rogue/Rouge-rogue is a person who has unaffiliated themselves from what they were before (is the general understanding); a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way - rouge is red
Wonton/Wanton - a wontonis a dumpling, wantonis (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked and/or sexually unrestrained
Haphazard/Halfhazard-haphazardmeans to have a lack of plan, order, or direction - the other isn’t a word
Corporal/Corporeal-corporalis a lack of plan, order, or direction and corporealis to have a physical existence: to be tangible: of a person’s body
Peck/Pec - the first is a kiss (peck) and the second is the shortened version of pectoral (pec)
Virile/Viral - to be virileis to have strength, energy, and a strong sex drive (typically said about men) and then this last year (2020) has personally taught us, is how virala plague can really be, so of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses
Vulnerable/Venerable-vulnerablemeans being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm, and if a person is venerablethey’re accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character (or if you’re religious, holy)
Dyedis something that is colored, and diedis deceased
Chalk (it up to something) ; chock (-full of something); choked (to cutoff air).
toaffect is the action,theeffect is the end result
If something doesn’t bother you then you weren’t fazed by it. If you are between two states of being that is a phase.
Please. For the love of all things holy. I beg you.
Loose: the opposite of tight
Lose: to misplace something or the opposite of win.
I BEG YOU.
breath is the noun, breathe is the verb
Confident is feeling or showing confidence in oneself. Confidant(e) is a deeply trusted friend, usually the go-to for sharing secrets/advice, and DOES depend on gender - the e on the end is if the person is a lady or female-leaning. Lack of an e denotes male, nonbinary.
Advice is the thing. Advise is the verb
Same with prophecy (thing) and prophesy(verb).
Also, please be careful with blond/blondeandbrunet/brunette. Yes, there is a difference. I made a post all about these words if anyone wants to check it out.
the fact that fandom is a space where unfinished works proliferate is something to be celebrated. where else can you start a novel and never finish it and still people read and engage with what you’ve done and share your interest in it. where else can we get to read the work of people who do not have the time or capacity or resources for commitment to long projects over long time. i don’t know if there’s a way to measure the total volume and proportion of unfinished and abandoned works on ao3, but i’d bet good money it’s a large majority of multichapter works, and do you know what would happen if fandom required all works to be finished? none of that great volume of work would exist! what a tremendous loss would that be! fandom’s permissiveness of unfinished work is one of its greatest strengths as a creative environment, productive for readers and liberating for writers, and if we better recognized that, if we stopped allowing the dominant discourse of unfinished WIPs to be about failure or betrayal or whatever, we would get more stories, not fewer, more story, not less.
people reblogging this post to say that some of their all-time favorite fics are abandoned WIPs people reblogging this post to say that it made them feel better about their own abandoned WIPs
i’ve seen a lot of fanfiction authors, including myself, worry about the redundancy of our work, either because we feel it’s been done before or someone more popular beat us to a certain plot point we thought no one else had thought of or just because writing is hard and other writers are scary.
1. fanfiction is rooted in canon, and everyone is working from the same canon you are. even if one person is writing a bakery au and the other is writing a serial killer space opera, the point of origin means there might still be elements in common. it’s okay. (this goes double for canon aus, because the closer to the canon your au is, the fewer elements there are to vary.)
2. in larger fandoms, there are so many fics! so many. the sheer number of authors means that sometimes people are going to have the same idea. you don’t read one fic and then never read any fic like it, right? just do your thing.
3. fanfic isn’t being written in a vacuum. surrounding the original canon is the matrix of fandom memes and headcanons and metas. the ones that become popular take on a life of their own. all of the other authors are exposed to the same content you are, so don’t worry if you both borrow the same things.
4. if you took two authors and gave them the same outline, with the same plot points, and told them to write, they’d still probably produce distinct works. no one can write the story in your head but you. keep writing!
ALL OF THIS
also like let’s be real, a lot of us want to read 50 versions of very similar stories lol.
This! I guarantee that it doesn’t matter that you think “popular author” has already done X trope perfectly, if I am a sucker for that trope I still want to read your fic. I want a bilion different variations of that trope. I can’t get enough of it.
When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.
Furthermore,
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”.
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation - it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
This is something that I pretty consistently have to advise for those I beta edit for. (It doesn’t help that I relied on epithets a lot in the earlier sections of my main fic because I was getting into the swing of things.) I am reblogging this so fanfic writers can use this as a reference.
A good rule of thumb: a character’s familiarity with another character decreases the need for an epithet (and most times you really don’t need one at all).
Good writing advice.
I used to do this all the time. I know better now.
Okay, I know that a good majority of us read fanfic. And AO3 is quite popular, I love that site.
I recently just came across a site on my laptop while I was looking some klance fics to read. I found one and clicked on the link which said it was an AO3 fanfic. Norton Security prevented me from accessing the site because it ‘may be impersonating AO3 to steal your personal or financial information’
If you find a link to a fanfic and it has ‘www.archiveofourown.com’ run for the hills. The true AO3 is .org not .com. It may seem obvious but it’s pretty easy to miss. Just letting all my fellow fanfic addicts out there know that there is a scammer.
I’m trying to tag all the fandoms I’m in so that those people are aware.
What kind of person impersonates a well known fanfic site to steal information. Such a heinous crime. I will admit, this person was pretty smart. All kinds of people read fanfics, especially teenagers. Just think of that and how easy it would be.
Please reblog to every fandom and if you find any other fanfic sites being impersonated please add them to this post. Some of us fanfic readers are close to being adults or are already adults, but there are still twelve year olds and younger who don’t pay attention to things they find on the internet.
“Dad [Character]”or“Mom [Character]”–fic contains said character’s relationships with their official or unofficial children. Can be taken as read that they’re good parents.
“[Character] Is A Good Parent”or“Good Parent [Character]”–means exactly what it says, that this fic contains character being a good parent. However, is usually reserved for characters who are not always good parents, or not considered such by some of the fandom. It has a defensive edge.
“[Character] Is A Bad Parent”or“Bad Parent [Character]”–again, exactly what it says. And, again, generally reserved for characters whose parenting status is debated in fandom.
“[Character]’s A+ Parenting”–this is where it gets less straightforward. This one is always, entirely, sarcastic. Contains character being a terrible, terrible parent.
“[Character]’s B+ Parenting”–oddly, this one is sincere! Contains character being a flawed parent, messing some things up, but sincerely trying and loving their kids.
“World’s Okayest Parent”/”World’s Tryingest Parent”–this is the writer saying “I can’t in good conscience say they’re a good parent but I love them and I think they did their best… whether that was good enough or not.”
(Of course these tags are generally about dads, in practice, but they mean the same thing either way.)
I’ve seen a lot of fics disappear from my bookmarks, some 10+ years old, because they were added to an unrevealed collection. It makes me wonder if people realize what your fic being added to a collection actually means and if the authors approved it automatically without realizing what would happen.
If someone adds your fic to their collection, they can hide it! They can mark the collection as unrevealed and your fic will be unreadable to anyone other than them! If you’re writing works for a surprise event, like a Secret Santa, this is really nice.
But if you’re just writing and someone adds your fic to a collection for their own personal use and marks it as unrevealed, that… really sucks.
I bookmarked this fic in 2017, almost 5 years ago. Knowing me, the fic itself was probably at least a couple years old at the time I bookmarked it.
This is a 5+ year old fic that is completely inaccessible now because it was added to a collection that, as far as I can tell, is literally just for the collection owner’s own reference. There’s almost 30 fics in the collection, all of them unrevealed.
Please don’t blindly accept collection requests and if your works ARE in a collection, make sure that they aren’t being hidden without your knowledge or consent.
Are you able to remove a work from collection after you allow it or is it just a story that’s just fucked?
Yes, you can remove your works! From the faq:
If you’re the creator of the work:
1) Select the “Edit” button from the work’s page and scroll down to the “Associations” section.
2) Select the red (×) beside the collection name you want to remove next to “Post to Collections / Challenges”.
3) Select “Post” to apply the change. The work will be immediately removed from the collection.
I’m not sure if you get an alert if your fic is marked as unrevealed though, so keep an eye on the collections that your works are part of.
There’s also an option in your preferences to accept collection invitations automatically. I would highly recommend making sure that that option is not selected.
I realize this might be a dirty trick pro-censorship fandom harassers might try to pull on some people, so yeah.
Boosting for visibility.
There’s also another way of removing works from collections - if you go into Collections > Manage Collected Works > Approved, you can use the dropdown menu and change the “approved” option to “rejected”.
Generally, though, turn off the automatic option and opt in for the email updates - you’ll be notified whenever your works are requested to be added into a new collection, or when the collection status changes.
If you’re a reader and want to “add” a fic into a collection without its status being affected, you can simply bookmark it within that collection instead - according to the Ao3 Collections FAQ, even if the collection is changed to unrevealed, the bookmarked fic’s status shouldn’t change.
PSA: This post is, as of AO3′s current code (today’s date: Jan 26 2022), misinformation!
I have just tested this with @mimsiical, who was skeptical about the whole thing. While I think this was perhaps true in the past, it is certainly not true anymore! We experimented by having mimsiical make a collection and add two of my works. The process went as follows:
Mimsiical created a visible collection and added one of my works
I approved the work
Mimsiical changed the collection to unrevealed
Mimsiical tried (and failed!) to add another of my works to the unrevealed collection
I voluntarily added that work to the unrevealed collection using the “edit work” page
Here is what we determined, though if you’re at all skeptical I encourage doing some experimentation of your own. (I’m also going to include some stuff that’s already been established in the thread above, just for the sake of thoroughness.)
Fic owners must approve a collection owner’s request to add their work. (This can optionally be set to “automatically agree” in your preferences, but the default is no unless the fic owner approves it.) The fic owner is sent an email with the name of the collection and the name of the work(s) to be added.
If a collection is already set to unrevealed before the collection owner tries to add a work, AO3 will not allow the collection owner to add the work. Only the work owner can add the work to the collection using the “edit work” page (as one does for moderated exchanges). That’s great news for anyone who was worried about having the “automatically agree” option turned on!
If you (the work owner) add a work to an unrevealed collection using the “edit work” page, then and only then does the work disappear. So do check that you’re adding works to the right collection when you do it yourself, but collection owners don’t have the power to just yoink a fic into oblivion like that.
If a work is approved and added to a visible collection, and the collection is later changed to unrevealed, the work is not hidden. The first of my fics that Mimsiical added to the collection never disappeared–we were able to continue accessing it both through the collection and through my profile. (In fact, AO3 never even sent me a notification about the collection settings changing. It’s possible we just didn’t wait long enough for AO3 to send out an email, but even so the default seems to be “keep the work visible.”)
This is excellent news for OP and everyone who has been reblogging the thread above. If a collection is visible when your work is added, the collection owners cannot hide it later. I can only assume that the AO3 volunteers also learned about this problem and fixed it going forward. No idea if there’s been anything done to unhide fics that were already hit by this though :(
TL;DR: AO3 collections no longer have anywhere near as much power as the post above suggests! Your works are safe! By all means, reject collection requests if you like, but just know that you don’t need to worry about your works disappearing someday just because you hit the “approved” button.
Edited to add a small update: Apparently when mimsiical deleted the collection while it was still unrevealed, the one fic that I added and had hidden got reclassified as “commaeleons just posted this!” and sent out a new fic notification email. Which is not really a problem, just funny.
I went looking for some more information about AO3′s Collections and found this nugget. Thank you, @commaeleons!
you know what doesn’t get talked about enough in writing circles
completed story grief
That feeling you are left with when you have finished a long project - whether it is long because it contains a lot of words, or long because it took you a long time to write, or long because it took you a long time to start writing it - when you’re happy because you finished it but empty because it is finished. You took out all of the words that were inside of you, at least all of the ones that pertain to that story, and the relief that follows such an action can be devastatingly exhausting.
On top of just the empty feeling, there follows that bittersweet sense of understanding that this thing which has for so long been your companion is no longer just your companion, and that you have in some ways severed the ties with it, because you will not be writing it anymore. You might write other stories related to it. You might write stories in the same world. Or stories with the same characters. But THAT story is finished. That story has been taken out of you and put where it can be a part of everyone that reads it. That is unimaginably happy and sad at the same time.
So I just want to say, I guess, be nice to yourself after you finish a story. Yes it’s happy, yes it feels good. But if you also feel a little like you’ve just lost something, give yourself some time to process that, because in a way you did. It’s a happy loss, the sort of loss wildlife rescuers feel when an animal they saved is able to go back and be wild again. It’s a good, happy thing, but it’s also okay to take a little time to be sad and take care of yourself.
I’ll add that us readers have this grief too. Reading a long multi-chapter fic, or the last in a series, is equally as exhilarating and devastating. Sometimes readers also need that advice: process the grief, a bittersweet knowledge that there is no more coming from this story but the story was that good. Cherish the memory, take time to reflect, move on when ready.
I’m always sad at the end. And sometimes, if the fic has been that good, I’ll need a little delay before I read it again (I’m looking at you, @loopstagirl) but I will read it again. And again. And again. And the sadness eases just a little every time.
I know that you mean well, and I appreciate that you are attempting to bridge a gap to relate to this post, and that you (and others) absolutely do experience something like this as a reader, and I want to be clear I am saying this as gently as possible, but this post isn’t about reading or readers. I’ve seen a lot of posts talking about what you are talking about, often with regards to watching stories in visual media (I’ve even seen it addressed publicly by major corporations like Netflix in commercials about story void) and it’s definitely applicable to reading stories as well, but I wrote this post to make a space to speak specifically to and about writers.
Because it IS different. Writers are not (just) consumers of the end product (even though many of us are that as well). Writers are not meeting someone else’s characters or experiencing a story that has been given to them by another. They’re parting with something that came from themselves. They’re parting with a piece of themselves, something they created, something which is bigger on the inside of their head than anything they’ve put on the paper. They’re parting with something they’ve connected to in a way different than anyone else will be able to do. I made this post to address that, specifically, because I haven’t seen much, if anything, which does address it for writers at all, and I think it’s important to do so.
It’s important for the writer to know and understand this is a thing for them and how to deal with it (and that it’s okay to take time to deal with it, because there is OFTEN pressure from readers and even from themselves to get right back to producing The Next Thing). A lot of people don’t even recognize that this is what they are going through BECAUSE they have only ever seen it discussed from the reader/consumer side (if they have seen it at all). I’ve watched writers struggle after completing something, trying to write their next story because they think they can just keep going without taking time to process BECAUSE this effect isn’t discussed for writers, and then experience frustration and a sense of failure for not being able to BECAUSE they don’t know this is a thing for writers, or how to deal with it.
It’s also important for readers to recognize and understand that this happens to writers, and that this may account for long silences from writers after they complete fics- silences both in production of more stories AND for responding to comments etc. It’s important for the community at large to understand that this happens to writers, and that supporting writers AFTER the story is finished can be useful and helpful to them.
Because all of this is something which just doesn’t get discussed with regards to writers, at least not from what I’ve seen.
This is intriguing because I never thought about this in terms of writing, but this is actually a well known phenomenon in theatre? I was active in community theatre for years, and the post show depression was a known and discussed thing. Maybe it’s easier to recognize in the performing arts because other people are involved, or because it’s more likely to be an obvious organized and scheduled part of the participants’ lives, or because it’s usually not actually possible to jump straight into another play immediately (plays have seasons, schedules, other people). Regardless, we all knew and talked about that hollow empty feeling that came after closing night, when there were no more rehearsals, no more shows, when this thing you had scheduled your life around for months was just gone.
And though we never called it grief, we had rituals for grieving. What IS a cast party, after all, but a funeral or a wake? A chance to celebrate and say goodbye?
It makes sense that authors would experience the same feelings of loss. Of hollowness and confusion. But it also makes sense, sadly, that they’d have a harder time coping. A writer IS the cast. And the director, and the stage crew. Writing is often a solitary craft. An author who’s just finished a novel has no one else to throw a cast party with. And no external logistical barriers to stop them from trying to leap immediately into the next project without taking time out to breathe.
I’m not sure what the author equivalent of a cast party and a lull in the theatre season would be. But one person doing an entire show by themselves with their brain probably needs it more than a whole theatre group does, not less.
So yet again, someone decided a fun thing to do on Twitter would be to invite people to give their “cancelable” opinions about fanfic and how so many things are terrible or overrated or not well-written or whatever (not gonna lie, a loooot of the criticisms have real big not-like-other-girls energy).
An author saw it, leading to them removing all of their fics from AO3.
The pushback to this author being upset has been along the lines of, don’t put your work out on the internet if you don’t want feedback.
I’ve been trying to understand why that response just falls flat for me, and here’s what I’m thinking. That feels very much like a capitalist consumer viewpoint. “Fic is a thing I consume and as a consumer, my opinion is IMPORTANT because you are marketing a PRODUCT to me. This is a transaction.”
And I realized, that’s not how I experience fic or fandom. For me, fic isn’t a thing that I buy and consume, it’s a gift given to me.
This is the example I keep thinking of. When I got married, we were given a wedding gift by one of my IL’s friends, a hand-painted bone china pitcher (think Spode or Wedgewood). Beautiful. Classic. Elegant. Like, entirely not us at all. You know what we did? We wrote a heartfelt thank you letter, expressing our appreciation of the gift, the thoughtfulness, etc. What we didn’t do, have never done, is tell them that it didn’t work for us. Because that’s just rude.
Engaging with fic, for me anyway, comes from this emotional space in my heart. So the connection between writer and reader for me, is much more a relationship, even if the relationship is simply that we’re both engaging in a fandom around something we love. It’s not a transaction.
Of course not all fic is for me; I doubt there’s any fic that every single person without exception has adored! And obviously I know my fics aren’t for everyone either! And that’s okay! Fic is such a gorgeous, lush, rich and realized landscape where so many different things flourish together, and I think that’s really beautiful. There’s something for everyone and there’s room for everyone at the table.
So absolutely, you can put your critical and negative opinions of the gifts others have given you out into public spaces, knowing that the people who have given you those gifts occupy those spaces with you. No one can stop you!
Personally, I’d much rather focus on the joy that fic has given me, and the gratitude I feel for people’s willingness to share their gifts with me and the world.
when you are on the internet, and you happen upon a ship you did not previously know existed, and you think to yourself “lol why the hell would anyone ship that”, and you go into the ao3 tag for a laugh just to see what the fanfiction ecosystem is like for this absurd new rarepair you have discovered, and you see a fic and think without a trace of irony “hm i kind of wanna read that”. that is your last chance to get out. your make or break moment. you are icarus and your wings are starting to smoulder. you need to make a decision there and then about who you are, what kind of person you’re going to be. because once you click that link there’s no going back for you. and that is a promise.
