#qualitative research

It is challenging for writers to get feedback for in-progress works. Fanfiction authors, especially those who recently started writing fanfiction, report facing various barriers connecting with feedback providers. Some frequently-mentioned barriers in our interviews include the anxiety of reaching out to people and requesting feedback, the difficulty identifying people with the right knowledge, skills and interests that they are looking for, and the lack of a community where they can ask for feedback. Fortunately, we’ve found fanfiction authors use multiple strategies to overcome these barriers. One important strategy we are going to talk about in this blog post is participating in fanfiction-related events.

During our interviews, 16 out of 29 authors mentioned events as an important part of their experience in fanfiction communities. These events include a range of experiences, such as “bangs” where artists and fanfiction authors create based on one another’s works, exchanges where authors share story prompts and write stories based on those, and many informal activities such as writing sprints, roleplays and many others. Participating in these events can result in positive effects on fanfiction authors in many different ways.

Exposure to the community

Getting exposure to new stories and authors is a direct benefit of participating in events. Many of the authors told us that they get to know more people and works in the community. “Secret santa for example is something that makes you possibly read something from someone you otherwise may not read before…” one author said. “There might be good works but I just don’t know because I just don’t read them. So in the whole thing you definitely get more exposure to people you haven’t read their work before.” - p9

Especially for authors who newly entered the community, contributing to events is a good way to get their work read by more people and become recognized in the community: “People aren’t going to see your story if you’re starting out. But if it is for a fest people will check the fest stories on AO3. The fest will be promoting your work. It’s a good way to get involved, a good way to get your work seen by people”. -p13

Connecting with beta readers and feedback providers

Authors get to find beta readers and feedback providers through participating in events. In many formal events, organizers will pair participating authors with beta readers who have similar interests: “They do a good job of making sure if you can’t find a beta, they’ll have a list where people are ready.” - p13 “At some point they’re going to ask the writers to send a rough draft of what they have, and send that to the beta readers. -p24”

For authors who’ve had difficulty finding good beta readers, it’s a great opportunity to try out working with one during an event. We heard stories from authors that they first met their long-term beta readers when they were paired with them in an event. After they worked together, they discovered they had matching tastes and could work well with each other, so they continued beta reading and feedback exchange for later works. “That was another sort of Big Bang event where they had originally been assigned to me as a beta to sort of critique and give feedback on my story as I was working,” one author said to us as they were describing how they first met their beta reader, “so I’d found that connection with them as someone who was really good at giving feedback and someone whose feedback I trusted.” -p1

Writing together and building community

Writing has long been regarded as an individual activity, but events provide fanfiction authors opportunities to write with others, and to build bonds with people in the community. Many events provide their own group chat for discussion such as a discord channel, where people carry out informal writing activities and chat about their in-progress stories.

Activities such as writing sprints may help authors with writers’ block. Authors encourage each others while writing: 

“I was always on there (a discord channel for National Novel Writing Month) doing writing sprints with other writers, encouraging other writers being like hey even if you can’t write today, or like even if you didn’t hit your word count today, you still wrote something, which is better than zero…Because we’re also in the middle of a sprint together, we’d celebrate being like oh my god, it was ten minutes of hell but it was worth it.” -p20

Authors also discuss the writing process in event group chats. Compared to beta reading, this form of feedback exchange is less formal and structured, but equally beneficial: 

“We would just throw ideas at each other, oh this character did that? It would be really cool if this person reacted in that way. Or I think that’s kind of out of character, maybe this should happen instead, kind of thing. Because it was an online group, just a group chat, it was just like immediate responses.” -p20

Many authors told us that they appreciate this kind of dynamic feedback exchange during an event. By actively reading about others’ progress and giving each other timely suggestions, authors feel a sense of community and close bond with people in the chat: 

“It’s building something with my friends…I know these people better than some of the people who leave a wow I like that sort of comment on a story because there’s just more information shared, there’s more communication going on. It’s not just a simple exchange of a compliment and thank you. It’s not shallow.” -p12

Relationship beyond fanfiction

Many relationships between authors in the community stem from events. Giving feedback on fanfiction works is definitely an important part of these relationships, but they often develop into more personal connections and friendships. Working on fanfiction together during an event makes the bond between people stronger: 

“You know something about them, you’ve written something for them, you end up spending a little bit of time… I followed some people that I did exchanges with for the Sherlock fandom. I follow them on Twitter and Tumblr still. I mean I didn’t rock to them all the time, but I know who they are and they know who I am, it’s a mutual sort of thing.” -p3 

Working with others tends to increase mutual trust, and thus people become more open to discussing real life in addition to fandom topics. One author told us about people he had worked with during a roleplay event. “I spend a lot of time just talking about our days, venting our frustrations about whatever has happened in our lives or work.” - p12 

Another author shared their story of meeting a later good friend through participating in a bang event: “They paired me with an artist that then I had conversations with over email. I got to know her better because we had a back and forth about making the art… One of the things we talked about, if I was ever in her area I would let her know so we could meet in person.” They then added, “And I don’t know if we followed each other on tumblr before but we definitely followed each other after that. I read her posts sort of more than I read about other people’s on tumblr. We will sometimes comment on each other’s posts, we have more of a connection than usual on tumblr.” -p18

Our findings suggest that participating in events can be beneficial to fanfiction authors, both with their writing and in many ways beyond writing. Authors may wish to consider participating in events to practice writing and become more connected to others.

We are actively posting blog posts about other findings from our interview study. Check out our blog later for more findings!

Online connection changes lives. Authors we interviewed found support, feedback, friendship and even lifelong partnership from people they met online through fandom. People online can help authors develop their writing by providing feedback both in public spaces like AO3 and in private chat. But getting connected is not always easy. Several authors encountered difficulties with making new connections, turned away from their communities, or never connected much with others online at all. Feelings of social anxiety stopped people from reaching out, communities that didn’t feel like safe spaces turned people away, and a culture of fear towards internet strangers made others difficult to trust. In this post, we’ll describe the barriers that can make it difficult to connect in the fanfiction community. 

Social Anxiety

Talking to people is hard, and talking to people you can’t see on the other side of the computer screen can be even harder. An experience shared by many of our interviewees was a feeling of social anxiety. Social anxiety is a fear of judgment from others  that manifests in many ways, for instance, the perception (without any particular evidence) that the person you are considering reaching out to is not interested or welcoming towards being contacted.

“I’m a shy person, so usually I may not [reach out]. I just say I feel embarrassed in speaking to people that seem cooler than me, more experienced… maybe I’m bothering them. Maybe they don’t see me as a friend, they have just been polite, this kind of thing” (P11).

Contacting someone with a higher profile, such as a prolific author or fan celebrity, amplified social anxiety. Interviewees held the perception that these folks are likely overwhelmed with contact already and therefore would be unwelcoming.

“I wouldn’t want to reach out to them because they’re on a different level than me in terms of popularity and probably get hundreds of messages all the time” (P18).

Authors who were reluctant to reach out oftentimes waited for others to contact them first. Or, instead of reaching out online, they relied on irl friends outside of the fandom for writing feedback. As a result of social anxiety, people don’t take that first step of reaching out to an online stranger, and therefore they don’t receive the benefits of a potential connection.

Unsafe Spaces

Writing and posting fanfiction in a public space is, in a way, baring your soul to complete strangers, and one sure way to stifle the soul-baring process was the institution of discriminatory rules that disproportionately affected a subset of the fan community. Restrictions on free expression created the feeling of an unsafe space, and it is this feeling that drove authors away from the community. During our interviews, authors discussed situations where they left communities because they felt the space was unsafe. The ban of NSFW content from Tumblr after its acquisition by Verizon, widely viewed as an attack on sexual expression that disproportionately affected queer people, was a recent example.

“When Tumblr banned not safe for work, it was really distressing for a bunch of us who don’t really fit on the very heteronormative sexual scale. So there was a lot of trying to figure out where we were going to go now, where we were, how would we stay connected, how would we continue to figure out and find stuff that we enjoyed” (P25).

Long-time fandom authors told us of similar exoduses from LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net after similar content bans and mass content deletions. These actions by platform owners divided fan communities and forced authors to find connections elsewhere.

In addition to institutional actions, individuals who made personal attacks or used hate speech also made authors feel unsafe. These antisocial actions happened in prominent fandom spaces.

“P27: There are people who write things that a fandom may consider controversial. This could cause them to get unhelpful criticism, rude and discouraging comments, so they will be constantly discouraged from writing.

Interviewer: That would happen on AO3?

P27: Both AO3 and tumblr, that’s where I know it happens.

Interviewer: And you’ve seen other people treated like that?

P27: Yes.” (P27).

One author spoke of an experience where she was berated for years by a reader because she wrote about drug addiction.

“Because [my fic is] about drug addiction, that brought a reaction that I really didn’t expect… sometimes [readers] impose their views. I got bullied for a couple of years, and even when I went on hiatus that person came back… they were imposing what they thought on me” (P7).

A single bully discouraged and pushed away this writer, even as they received an outpouring of messages from readers who connected with the story.

Another author discussed how controversy over a gay character sent them elsewhere:

“At the time I was writing about neon genesis evangelion. And it turns out at the end of the show, the main character Shinji Ikari is gay. Well, it’s revealed he has a thing for this guy. And I was writing this kind of thing too, and people got super angry. So they’d leave because, oh my God, he’s gay and that was terrible at the time. So, uh, yeah, I quickly left” (P8).

Fanfiction authors tackle difficult, important and controversial topics, and they need a space where they can find others to relate to without fear of harassment. If personal attacks, hate speech, or discriminatory rules are present, they may feel they can’t stay connected and will be forced to go elsewhere.

Personal Disclosure

Navigating personal disclosure can be difficult for authors when they’re interacting with internet strangers. Although authors disclosed deeply personal facts about themselves through fanfiction writing itself, some preferred to avoid connecting their fanfiction identity to their offline identity. Others wanted to protect themselves and their families from potential exposure on the internet. Identity and safety concerns associated with online personal disclosure slowed relationship building between authors and online friends.

Is this faceless individual actually a murderer, merely feigning deep interest in Star Trek and waiting for an opportunity to strike at unsuspecting fans?

Being raised to fear internet strangers was a shared experience among several participants in our interviews. Authors chose different degrees of disclosure they were comfortable with, and made nuanced decisions about who to reveal information about themselves to, where and when.

“There’s not any set guidelines. I think it really depends on who you talk to… how long have you been with the person? What type of things do you talk about? Do you feel like it’s safe to give that information?” (P21).

Oftentimes, the decision of whether to reveal a piece of identifying information had to be on-the-spot. P21 had to decide whether this person who wanted to be co-author was someone who could be trusted.

“… You kind of have to sometimes make a snap judgment and ultimately it worked out fine in this one case… it really does have to come down to instinct, gut, sometimes, there’s no kind of set formula to be sure” (P21).

Personal disclosure and relationship-building go hand-in-hand. But In an environment where personal disclosure requires caution and nuance, building connection and relationships becomes much more difficult.

To Be Continued…

There are powerful isolating elements like social anxiety, unsafe spaces and stranger danger keeping fanfiction authors apart. How do authors overcome these barriers to make connections, build relationships, exchange feedback and change lives? Stay tuned for the next part of our series on connection and feedback in fanfiction communities.

About This Series

This series is a breakdown of findings from an interview study run by a fanfiction research group within the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at University of Washington. In January and February 2019, we interviewed 29 fanfiction authors to understand how they connect with each other, build relationships, and seek out writing feedback. We learned profound lessons about the importance of building connections, the reciprocality of relationships and feedback, and the intersection of fandom with real life identity.

In January and February 2019, our research group did an interview study on how fanfiction authors seek feedback for their fiction. We interviewed 29 fanfiction authors and learned about their insights on feedback and relationship with feedback providers. In this blog post, we are going to talk about our findings on the impact of public comments, and the particular positive outcomes of comments that contain specific thoughts and insights.

Comments Are Generally Valued

Fanfiction authors appreciated public comments on their works. “All I want for Christmas is comments, if you liked it please let me know,” (P2) one of the authors we interviewed once wrote in her author’s note. All kinds of comments are welcomed as long as they are conveyed in a friendly and respectful tone.

Concise positive comments, such as “wow”, “amazing”, “awwww this is so cute”, though simple and maybe not that informative, are still valuable to authors. Those comments “tell you that you’re hitting the right emotional chords, that you’ve been on the right track” (P21). “That’s really helpful.” One author said:

“If there’s a session where you’re getting absolutely none of that, that might prompt you. Like okay, I meant that to be really eliciting a certain emotional response and it wasn’t getting it, so that might also be a sign to go in and kind of work on that” (P21).

Comments Help New Authors Enter the Community

Comments were especially valuable to new writers in the fandom. They made authors feel welcomed in the community, and helped authors learn about community norms and writing styles. One author told us that when they posted their first work in a new fandom, comments helped them get connected in the new community:

“You enter into new fandoms, you’re writing for a new audience and you don’t really know anyone… I don’t really know the rules of this particular fandom and I don’t really know what people are going to think of my stories is going to fit. And that initial bit of support and positive feedback to get that on early works, and to feel, okay, I’ve just sort of arrived in this in this fandom, and in this community, but people are making me feel welcome, and making me feel like what I’m writing is valued and appreciated by people” (P1).

Specific Comments Are Particularly Appreciated

While in general all kinds of comments were welcomed, almost all of the authors we talked to expressed particular appreciation for comments in which the reader expressed opinions and thoughts about particular aspects of the story. One author talked about how she formed a personal practice to write substantive comments when reading others’ fictions:

“I try to copy certain lines while I’m reading and try to leave a substantial comment… and say I really liked your story because of ZYX…I do both because I’ve been writing fanfiction for a long time and I know it’s fun to have substantial comments. I do it because that’s what I like and I know it can make someone’s day” (P29).

Authors recognized the effort that readers put into substantial comments, so they regarded receiving those long specific comments as an honor:

“You don’t write a big long comment like that, if you’re not affected by something. Because it’s hard enough to get readers to click the Kudos button and just give me a little heart, let alone write a comment, let alone write a long detailed comment whenever that happens” (P14).

Specific Comments Recognize Authors’ Effort

Many authors mentioned that receiving long and specific comments made them feel that their effort had been recognized. When they were proud of a part of their story in particular, they liked to hear about whether the emotion and thoughts that they tried to convey impacted readers in the way they expected.

“It just feels great when I spent so much time working on something and working on a particular detail, I absolutely love hearing someone’s reaction to it, like, what specifically they liked about it… It’s great getting those compliments but I want to know about their experience living in the story that I’ve created” (P2).

“The most interesting and in depth sort of feedback, people really seem to connect with the characters and the characterization of the story and the writing of the story, which I really, really like. It’s very satisfying when you put a lot of effort into something and they actually noticed and they’re like, and they comment on it like, oh my God, the way you wrote this, the flow of it, the thing… that’s my own kink, hearing people say that they understood what I was writing and that they understood what I was going for” (P14).

Specific Comments Teach Authors about Writing

Being able to hear what the audience thought about their fiction was not only a joyful experience to fanfiction authors, but also a valuable learning opportunity. Authors learned from specific comments about whether their writing style and the direction of the story worked for their readers. Some regarded specific comments as feedback for parts of their writing that they were not sure about. One author told us they endured writer’s block when writing a certain character in their story. When they received positive comments on that character, 

“they were commenting on my characterization for the character. And I was like ‘oh, thank you god,’ because I struggle with this particular character a lot” (P20). 

The author was able to validate their writing from comments that specifically pointed to a characterization.

Specific Comments Connect Readers and Authors

Another important benefit of specific comments was that it fueled connection with readers. Specific comments elicited discussion between authors and readers. As one author said in the interview:

“I like having comments that are thoughtful and trying to analyze what I wrote, and are picking up what I put down basically… I usually respond to the comment and say thank you, and if they left analysis I talk back and forth” (P29).

These back-and-forth discussions lead to further connections outside the specific story.“I’ve made friends with a lot of people who started out just commenting on my fics a lot. You end up commenting back, and start talking” (P13). In some cases,  these connections developed into later beta reading relationships and friendships. “Most of the people that I sent work to… they’ve made comments that are the right sort of comments I suppose…” one author said while telling us the story of meeting her beta readers,

“and so I sent work to them after that sort of built up a bit of a relationship by then so that I know what sort of person they are and what sort of comments they might make… I know that if I sent it to them, they will be looking for the sorts of things that I’m looking for them to look for. The comment that they’ve made tells me that they’re reading it the way I want a beta reader to read it”  (P26).

Summary

Our findings about public comments suggest that it is more than valuable for fanfiction authors to receive comments, especially comments that provide thoughts and insights on specific aspects of the story and writing. We suggest that encouraging exchange of specific public comments will be beneficial to fanfiction communities.   

We are actively posting blog posts about other findings from our interview study. Check out our blog later for more findings!