.webp?x=8 "Top Hat (kek) - Technically a top hat, shut up")
Anyone else write fanfiction?
I recently decided to get back into writing, and wanted to do something low stakes. I really only wrote technical documents, design or worldbuilding docs, and like 500 words of an original story that never went anywhere. I finished a short fanfic story (not lewd) the other day, and was able to keep a 1k words a day pace. Been a good chance to learn about how I write, and I'm starting to see where I have a lot to work on. Maybe it is the fact I like the original work a lot that it motivated me to actually complete it, but I do feel like I'm improving at how much I can write in a day. Unrelated, but org roam in Emacs has been a pretty good ecosystem to write in. I am a vim-strag so I have to use evil mode, but I like the built-in tooling and the nodes system that roam has.
Not having to worry about describing certain relationships or settings is nice. Especially when you aren't writing a whole series out of it, just a short scenario. Also, I definitely pulled punches on how I wrote the scenario because I want the characters to end up in a good place. If I had written something original, I'd have probably let my cynicism take over. It's a good opportunity if you just want to practice getting words on a page, especially if you are like me and can't even start writing because your worldbuilding or something is not absolutely perfect.
Bad part is you can't really share that shit with anyone you know to get feedback. I'm going to post it on AO3 at some point, once I do some edits.
Also, I've been reading a shit ton of fanfic for this fandom as a consequence. That shit is a rabbit-hole. It's all just pure slop, but there have been some gems here and there. I really had the impression that most fanfics were just excuses for smut, obviously that's a lot of it, but I was actually surprised how much were just pure romance. Female-dominated fandoms probably have way more lewd writing than the male spaces.
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I think this is a good approach to get into the habit of writing tbh.
Right now I've been basically using a fetish character.ai nsfw created by a coomer account and it's surprisingly feels like I've been bitten by the writing bug again.
So fanfic your heart away to get that practice in! But then slowly develop your own thing on the side - like the prep work so you can hit the ground running with your own stuff.
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Show me a man's great work of art. I will show you his fetish.
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Link me your AO3 and I can give you feedback
There's nothing wrong with writing fanfic, it's how most people get into writing. Even if it's not outright fanfic work everyone learns to write by aping someone elses style and using their ideas.
It doesn't have to be. You only enough need motivations/reasoning to satisfy the reader in whichever scene you're writing.
Trying to iron out all the minutiae is a fool's errand.
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I think that's a better way, use some author or saga you like as a base but add your own touches. I think the problem with fan-fiction is that many fan-fic authors don't evolve beyond it, so it's important to add some original ideas since the beginning even if they look bad.
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Wasn't 50 shades of grey a fanfic? And there was a super successful Supernatural one where they were mermaids
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Yes, Twilight fan-fic.
E.L. James wrote it on a Blackberry btw, it was originally an erotic story about Bella and Edward but she changed the names to Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, and made him a tech (or something?) billionaire instead of a vampire.
In other words she added her own terrible touches, that book series was a black swan though. There are thousands of stories and books like those but she hit the right buttons at the right time.
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Fanfic is the best practice an amateur writer can get. It's the only way you'll ever get anyone to read what you write and review it. Unless you're serious enough about writing to build an irl circle of peers and buy ads / shill your stories on every site you can find, it's the best way to do it.
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Which way !writecel
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!writecel it's joever
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Friends don't make friends beta read
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Fanficstrags are worse than furries
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I am still waiting on my AO3 invite to get processed. I had already finished the initial story by the time I registered. In the meantime I've been writing an extra scenario, less of a sequel more of an epilogue.
And I realize the perfectionism comment is just me being a fricking procrastinator lol
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How many words are you into this?
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8k on the first story, 2k on the extra bit.
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Why don't you try some original short stories? You can mold your characters and setting based on sagas you like on that way without being fan-fiction or maybe limiting the world-building to something more familiar or some ambiguous setting if you're worried about that while adding your original ideas.
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I think that will be my next step, trying to take some of the ideas I've written about in this fic, and then trying to see how I'd write it in an original setting with my own characters. I'd like to get to a point where I can write something in a serialized kind of way. Like, posting weekly chapters to a substack or my own website. But I definitely need more experience.
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Just post weekly chapters to royal road like all the other spergs.
Short stories are really the only way to hone your storytelling skills. The setting is less important because you see less of it, you can't build a world in 1 to 4k words. Writing sub 1k word short stories with beginning, middle and end will do you way more good than novel length fanfics
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Yeah, you're right about reigning in length and trying to actually tell a story. I tend to make characters monologue and do cringey stream of consciousness stuff. I read a lot of modernist lit so it just kinda comes out naturally. I struggle with the more 'kinetic' parts of a story, how things move and people get from point A to B. I focus more on feelings and aesthetics, which just ends up a wordy mess of 'NOTHING HAPPENS BUT THEY FEEL DIFFERENT'
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Everyone starts off like this but it's incredibly important you stop this immediately
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I would really recommend your first real story to be based off of a story you like. Retell Hamlet, the Bible, or Faust through your world or style. This allows you to understand how you want your style to read and feel while not having to worry about the narrative being that good. Remember that the story does not matter, its all about how you tell it.
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post your mlp fanfic already, don't be ashamed
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