So on wattpad, if you "mute" and account they can no longer vote, comment or message you directly. They won't be able to view your profile at all. They also won't be directly notified when you do it.
I'm super petty so I'd delete all the damn chapters off of that story and repost them. It gets rid of all stats. Unfortunately that means ALL stats but her useless comments won't be there. And I'm literally that petty that I'd reset an entire story to spite her. But up to you.
You can also find info on reporting someone here: http://www.wattpad.com/help
You'll have to open up a ticket but if she starts using her minions to harass you I'd use that to get them all banned.
Also. Of you do go the repost route, let me know. I'll leave real postive/critique comments pertaining to your story.
FFN does not, in fact, have more readers overall anymore. It may have more historical users and the overall fic count may be higher (I'm not sure I agree with the second--AO3 is growing fast), but it gets way more traffic than FFN these days.
I'd give them more than that, ngl. The only times I've come across it is when the author's used the word 'eyes' so many times in a page bc something important is happening to a character's eyes that they were probably thinking, "I should stir the pot here with some synonyms," and I can roll with 'orbs' just as well as any other synonym.
Random but related: one of my favorite synonyms for 'look' is 'peer.'
Also everybody needs to know about powerthesaurus.org. It is amazing!
I read a crossover of the Little House on the Prairie books with the general zombie apocalypse genre, which was amazing and maintained the tone of the original books well.
Wouldn't go that far. Also don't support removing stuff for no reason.
Edit: Just to clarify: My first statement can be easily confirmed by the global stats and the second one refers to the supposed reason (ff.net dying) which is not true.
AO3 has vastly overtaken FFN in raw traffic, at the very least. I think one of the things that gives the illusion that FFN is more popular than AO3 is in the differnce in the way that the calculate their views vs. hits, where AO3 works to try and have a hit be an inidvidual visitor, but FFN counts raw clicks. If you have a 50-chapter fic that someone binges, then that's 50 more views on FFN, but only 1 hit on AO3. It looks like a lot more traffic than it actually is. I know for me, but if I find a fic recced or that I want to read on FFN for some reason, the first thing I'll do is check and see if it's on AO3. I have totally passed on fics because the only place I can read them is FFN. I'm quite a lot biased.
The problem is tumblr and twitter, not you.
I used to write Phantom of the Opera. In the original novel, Christine is ~20 and Erik is in his early 50s. Even in the movie, the Phantom is 33 while Christine is 17-ish.
It's set in an era where December-May marriages (and affairs) were not uncommon even if they were laughed at, as in Emile Zola's novel Nana.
You might consider POTO as an alternative fandom if the one you're in is making you miserable. The barrier to entry is minimal in both time & cost: a short book, or for a different version/interpretation, a 2-hour movie. Seeing the stage play is not necessary unless you want to, although there is a Royal Albert Hall filmed version on youtube which you can watch for a small charge.
[https://calibre-ebook.com](Calibre) and the Fanficfare plugin. It can make ebooks for damn near any archive you throw at it, not just ffn and AO3. Plus, it make far better ebooks than the AO3 download button - it gives you one with actual chapter breaks, includes any embedded images, and is better with non-Latin text.
It can also make anthology ebooks - give it an AO3 series page, and it'll make you an ebook including every fic on the page, in order. You can also give it multiple URLS manually for other archives.
You can also update the ebook you've already made with new chapters with one click.
If it's going on a Paperwhite, you also have to convert what it makes to mobi, as it audio makes epubs, but that's simple. My Paperwhite is probably 90% fic.
Seriously, Fanficfare.
Don't just write stories. Write everything! On Reddit is a good place to start: talk to people, argue with people, try out different tones of voice to use in your writing, try to swing a person's emotions. Make a journal about something. Be imaginative with your grocery list. Be the person who writes the funniest texts to your friends/family. Write an article on something even if it never sees the light of day. Write about your commute, the weather, the neat looking building in your town, that cute person you like, anything!
Also, read. A lot. And while you're doing that pick out your favorite bits. Is there a rhythm to it? What words do they use? The one perfect phrase that makes your literary glands burn with envy... rework it, reword it, make it your own. The scene that makes you grip the edge of your seat: re-do it with a different character, with a different voice, from a different POV.
PLAY with the words. No one else ever has to see it.
Also, if you need basic mechanical help I like Grammarly and reading The Elements of Style by Strunk and White helped quite a bit. :)
Second edit: Found it! If you search the IOS app store for "fictionpress inc" it will show up. But searching for "fanfiction" or "fanfiction.net" just shows the pentaloop one, and several other clones, for me. The official app is: https://itunes.apple.com/CA/app/id1192753879?mt=8
Edit: The google play app is at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fictionpress.fanfiction&hl=en
After ten minutes of searching, still no luck finding the IOS app.
I really wish they'd give a link to the IOS app. Even in the blog post they just say to search. Out of the dozens of results, what app is the official one?
This is also why it's a good idea to have a different password for every site you go on. If your password for AO3 is the same as your PayPal or online banking password, then a phisher will get access to your money. So if you did accidentally put your login information into that fake site, make sure the same password isn't used anywhere else.
When in doubt, use a password manager to generate and store unique passwords for each site. I personally like KeePass.
An example I like to trot out is Avengers fandom vs Agents of SHIELD.
Avengers fandom has significantly more male characters than female, and lo and behold, it's dominated by m/m slash ships. What het relationships do appear in fics are usually written as background pairings, and the femslash ships are basically all rarepairs.
Agents of SHIELD, on the other hand, has much closer to even numbers of male and female characters, and has mostly het ships in its top 10.
Basically AO3 is extended their shut-down of offering invitations indefinitely due to fighting an overwhelming number of spam accounts. I got curious about this because I didn't understand what it means (I thought it meant people are being trolls) and I looked into it a little, so in case anyone is curious, this is what I found out:
This is an example of one of the spam accounts AO3 is dealing with. The spam bot creates an email for itself and then adds itself to AO3s invitation queue. It's issued an invite a few weeks later and then makes an account for itself.
The "author" spam bot has created 3 stories (done automatically by the spam bot's program), which are all in different fandoms (SW, NKH, ER) and the "story" looks like this:
WATCHONLINE]#!Denver.,.Broncos.,.VS.,.Kansas.,.City.,.Chiefs.,.LIVE.,.STREAM.,.Monday.,.Night.,.Football.,.Live.,.Stream.,.Online.,.GAME.,.WATCH.,.2017.,.ONLINE.,.TV.,.COVERAGE.,.[WATCHONLiNE].,.Denver.,.Broncos.,.vs.,.Kansas.,.City.,.Chiefs.,.Live.,.-watch-online-Denver-Broncos-vs-Kansas.,.City-
Another example: I constantly get "new review" notifications from my account on Wraithbait (a SGA fanfic archive), which is also combating a spam problem. The "reviews" are left by accounts like alkjasdlfj2322 and they consist of hundreds of lines of fashion/clothing name brands (Michael Kors, Nike etc).
Why do the spam bots do this?
From what I understand, the more frequently a name appears on the internet, the higher that page moves on Google's search results (Google's algorithms looks for how popular a certain name is), so marketing companies are paid by the fashion/tech/whatever companies, who then pay people to create spam bots, which will infiltrate websites like AO3 and Tumblr and put the company name everywhere they can reach, thus, moving the company's website higher in Google's search results.
There's this great self-insert Hell fic called Dante's Inferno ;) It has some pretty good descriptions.
There's also some nice fan art to go with it!
And if you don't want to write and maintain an outline, consider writing using Scrivener (paid) or yWriter (free, and my personal choice due to its simplicity). They arrange your story into individual chapters and scenes, naturally forming an outline and allowing you to view your story as such at any progress level. This is incredibly helpful for keeping things organized with a large fic.
I've been struggling to find motivation to write recently. However, I technically worked on fanfiction this week. Well, sort of, in the vaguest sense possible.
See, I read fanfiction on my phone using an open-source FFN reader, and occasionally contribute to the codebase when I find the time.
Over the past few days I've been working on a performance overhaul for the app, and in my local build checking for updates is now several times faster (~9 minutes to perform a full refresh on a library with 2.4k fics, whereas it previously took 40-80 minutes).
This is completely pointless information to most of you since practically everyone has moved on to the official FanFiction.Net app, but where else am I supposed to ~~brag~~ mention this? :)
This. "Shitty First Drafts" an excerpt from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It's short but it has changed the entire way I view writing. I used to obsess over having a perfect first draft, the kind that I could just publish right away and show off to the world. Now I don't worry about that. Now I just write and later on refine it, keep the good, remove the bad, fix the spots that need fixing. I used to be mortified once I looked back over my first drafts, but now I remember that it's just the one step of many towards the final draft.
Go read things. Things you haven't written. Not just fanfic, but actual books, too. A lot of people pick up more extensive vocabularies through simple exposure.
Since a larger vocabulary is a goal, pick something that might either stretch your reading level or is outside of your normal interests genre-wise. If you don't have a library handy, check out Project Gutenberg for free ebooks.
I use the program Calibre with the plugin Fanficfare. It allows bulk downloading of all story links from a webpage. Once you have the stories downloaded, you could also upload the files to a cloud service such as dropbox or google drive. I keep my fanfic library on my computer's hard drive, dropbox and an external hard drive in case of computer trouble.
Calibre and Fanficfare will probably seem complicated until you get used to it, but it's definitely a great way to archive fanfic.
Typically in online writing, we talk in terms of wordcount rather than pagecount, but a published page is usually about 250-300 words, and a chapter tends to run about 2000-5000 words. Fanfiction is much more flexible, of course, but that's what a lot of readers are accustomed to. A paragraph is quite short for a chapter; you might want to think about including at least a full scene per chapter.
You're right that each new speaker requires a new paragraph, e.g.
"I'm so bored," Lily said.
"We could go for a walk, if you want," Brian suggested.
"No, I'm feeling too lazy!" She flopped back on the couch and threw her arms up in frustration.
"Well, okay then."
Note that you don't have to say he said/she said after every line. Sometimes you can use an action instead, to indicate who is talking, or just rely on context. To keep a long conversation from getting too dry, you can add in actions as they talk or add pieces of internal thoughts/feelings from your point-of-view character. You can also look at a published book to see how pro authors handle dialogue or check out resources like this one.
The most common fanfiction websites are fanfiction.net, archiveofourown.org, and wattpad.com.
I finally finished and posted my Draco Malfoy one shot I started 15 months ago. Almost 8k and with my newer writing style due to reading "On Writing" by Stephen King. I posted it late last night though so I am a bit concerned it will be passed over.
My Fic
Fandom - The 100
Rating - General
Title - Personnel
Genre - romance
Summary - Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane, Kane helps Abby remember something from her past
> there’s an extreme shortage of Will Turner/Jack Sparrow fics (Pirates of the Caribbean)
Have you tried digging around on Livejournal? [for example] Because Jack/Will used to be the most popular ship, and I can’t really imagine that everyone who wrote fic in 2003/2004 went on to archive it on AO3. (I just looked it up, Fanlore has links to rec lists and archives, some of which might still be up.)
This is why I always make an offline archive of anything I remotely like.
I recommend installing Calibre and adding the "FanFicFare" plugin, it's really great for this sort of thing. Just copy the URL to clipboard and click a button, and poof you've got a local epub for eternity.
Hahaha! Yes. Same for me. When I wrote it, I expected that my thesis was a read-only document.
I'm proud of my doctoral work and there were things about it that I really enjoyed while I did the research, but I've been writing fiction since I was 13 and it will always be my first love. Maybe my stories won't forward human knowledge or advance any lofty goals, but if they minister to someone's soul or bring a smile to someone's face, is that really worth any less? Stories are powerful, beautiful, terrifying things, requiring care and craft, and no less commitment than doing science.
Useful tools I got from grad school: the ability to think critically, to persevere, to research a new topic and extract the useful nuggets from the sea of data, and to properly cite my sources. Those have come in incredibly useful for writing top-quality fiction. :)
Ah, I get your point. See, if that guy had phrased the way you did, I would’ve understood his position. You have the right attitude, he did not, and that’s what irritated me the most about him. Plus, I saw a few of his replies to other users, and he just strikes me as the type who aggressively confronts people, even though they didn’t do anything wrong. Look at his reply to the comments.
Though for me, I just write so that I can giggle like a Japanese schoolgirl when I read my own past stories.
Read poetry. Write poetry. It's good for getting that exact, refreshing concrete image. Read anthologies. Note the differences in style and which styles appeal to you. Figure out how they work and emulate them.
Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark is helpful, because it lays out writing techniques as tools instead of rules. Pick and choose as you see fit. Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth is along the same lines. Also, The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell is a good guide for making sure you've got clarity.
I've found physical books to be far more helpful than internet how-tos, because they go into much greater depth.
Happy writing~
They don't have to be. Mine explicitly states that alphas and omegas can control themselves and make rational choices even when in rut or heat, and to pretend otherwise perpetuates anti-A/O feelings.
I'm trying to look at how society might treat people born so differently and how things shift with more modern 'pride' / acceptance movements. For example, younger people growing up where they're legally protected from the worst of it, contrasted with older people cautiously coming out of a lifetime of hiding.
There's also a ton of porn. Obviously. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585688 (Kingsman, M/M, explicit ABO, unfinished but actively in progress)
A few years back I remember reading an essay in this book that could potentially be a source for you. Not sure how academic is was, but the essay was called "In Defense of Fanfiction."
A better example of a current author who started in fanfiction might be Cassandra Clare. Though of course she was surrounded by controversy as well and not necessarily the best example.
I LOVE this topic and would be interested in reading your paper if you'd be willing to share.
Snowfall | Phineas and Ferb | Winter Traditions | G | AO3 (as part of a ship-themed oneshot collection)
The first snowfall was always the best, Perry knew. Not just because the boys took it as an opportunity to dig out the winter gloves and hats and blueprints, but also because this year his nemesis had promised to build a snowman with him.
He could only hope it wasn't the same meaning of "build" that the boys used. One giant walking snowman was enough for the day, thank you very much. Still, he was excited.
But when Heinz finally shuffled out, bundled in three different misshapen sweaters, Perry decided sitting in front of the fire was just as good.
All of my completed stories except one fit the criteria. ;-) So I'll just wander through them week by week.
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: An Alliance of Convenience
Summary: AU splitting off mid-Season 11. Crowley has escaped from Lucifer and seeks refuge with the boys. Together, they work on a plan to stop The Darkness, and trap Lucifer in The Cage again.
Rating: Teen and up
Words/Chapters: 30k/19
Completed: June 7, 2016
Well my dad name is Latino but he is black.
Black people have mainly English sounding last name. Some Asian people have Spanish last name.
My first name is Sommer which could be for like any race.
Tagging and showing pictures of OC are eaiser.
https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Original%20Female%20Character(s)%20of%20Color/works
Not music, but I listen to asmr while I write. I don't know why, but it's sooo good for focus. Or sometimes I do ambient noises (cafe chatter, rain sounds, etc.) MyNoise.net is really good for this!
There's still a real life shrine to a character in my fandom whose character died in 2009.
My stuffs also on AO3 but gets literally a 10th of the views there than it does in FF.net
Agree that women constitute the majority of commercially-published romance readers. However, men do write romance (Nicholas Sparks for instance), sometimes under female pen names.
As far as fanfiction goes, women do write gen, as well as dramas which include relationships but are not conventional romances. In my observation (anecdata, NOT statistics!) those stories also don't get the traction of romances.
So while I'm not blaming readers (they like what they like), to me this does boil down to reader preference, as well as willingness to express those preferences.
I stumbled across the AO3 feature requests Trello account the other day and figured I'd share.
It shows you suggested, approved, implemented, and rejected AO3 features and lets you vote on what you'd like to see implemented next.
A few features that have already been approved: PM system, improved tag filters, default search options (language, etc.), work type filters (fic, vid, art), and the ability to download entire series.
If nothing else it's fun to see what the userbase is hankering for.
Lucky me, I wrote the whole story before I posted any of the chapters. If I hadn't, I don't know if I would have had the courage to continue. There is a large, vocal contingent of reviewers who are not at all happy with the direction I have taken Ash, and his relationships with others.
On the other hand, there is a smaller contingent of reviewers who love what I'm doing to deconstruct the typical Ash romance fic. Most of them seem to think my story is phenomenal, and I'm more inclined to listen to their feedback.
I've been updating weekly for a while now and I'm going to continue on my course, undeterred. This week is going to be sketchy, though, because it's finally time for what is sure to be the most controversial chapter of the story. I'm preparing for a shitstorm.
God forbid you make Ash's love interest focus on someone else because Ash is so emotionally stunted and closed off. Doubly so for me, because the love interest has eyes for a girl! Oh noes!
/rant?
There was a discussion about this a while ago, and some referenced a really good Captain America one. There was tons of good worldbuilding with it though. Steve's an Omega, but everyone has to think Captain America is Alpha. Bucky's the alpha. It was about the relationship and how a/b/o dynamics affect that world.
Edit: found it! https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073725
My Fanfic:
Fandom: Fate/Stay Night and Persona 5
Rating: M
Title: Fate: Wings of Rebellion:
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Romance
Summary: Summary: Shirou's attempt to help a woman leads to an assault charge. Shipped off to Tokyo for a year, he seeks to clear his name. A mysterious app on his phone leads him to another reality and others who share his sense of Justice.
First off: Strictly speaking, Ao3 and FFnet are archives, not communities (though FFnet does have forums as well).
Posting stories with images:
You'll need to host your images somewhere. I suggest creating a free account on imgur.com.
Ao3 has concise instructions on how to add a picture to your story.
No pictures in your stories on FFnet, because no HTML in stories on FFnet.
If your stories-with-pictures are fairly short, you could consider creating an account on tumblr and posting there.
dA (deviantart.com) is primarily an art site, but some people post fanfiction there as well. If your stories are more pictures than story, that might be a good place to post.
There are a bunch of really popular fics in the Captain America fandom that might qualify, but supposedly people have gone so far as to get tattoos with quotes from this series, so it might be the top: https://archiveofourown.org/series/115516
Fandom: Marvel Comics
Title: Who Do You Think You Are (chapter 10)
Rating: Mature
Link: AO3
Chapter summary: The Philly Avengers take a day off to play tourist. They run into an ex of Hawkeye’s who nobody remembers but is kind of cool. A supervillain is added to the team lineup.
According to the comments on the thread which discussed the original closing of the queue...the answer seems to be: not much? Active "spam hunters" have been reporting how many accounts they find and report each day, and the numbers seem to stay consistent. I didn't even realize they re-opened the queue until somebody mentioned it in a comment.
To add to the fun, apparently Russia just shut down two of their biggest fanfic sites, so there's going to a massive amount of people from Russia trying to get an account.
I'm still waiting for their official update, which will hopefully explain what steps they've taken (if any) to combat the spamming.
And you are too humble to recommend your own Overtagged Seagull Drabble, even though your fandom actually has seagulls! So I add the recommendation:
Overtagged Canon Compliant (if you squint) Drabble About Seagulls Fandom One Piece
Welll there's jbern's writings, who is actually a published writer. And this, a Sakura-Centric fanfiction that absolutely BLOWS my mind, called Time Braid
I extrapolated my definitions from here, which is a site I find quite useful for these things: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/preface-prologue-introduction-difference#what-is-an-introduction
And here:
https://thewritepractice.com/prologue-preface/
In fictional works I’ve noticed that a preface is often listed as an introduction instead, which is why I used that term. The two also get blurred a lot, especially with authors who like to play with translation conventions. Preface also tends to sound overly scholastic, likely because it’s most commonly used in non-fiction works.
Prologues should always be part of a story however, unlike the other two. That’s the biggest literary distinction.
You will probably have better luck using google, and searching on "livejournal" "[your fandom]" "fanfiction" for starters.
Here is a sample return for Harry Potter: https://www.livejournal.com/blogs/en/harry%20potter%20fanfiction
It takes you to communities and individual blogs which (hopefully) have what you are looking for.
Caveat: tagging in LJ is NOT like tagging on tumblr or AO3. Tags are local to an individual's or community's blog. "Interests" are how LJ sorts for fandoms and other search terms across the site.
Caveat 2: Since tags are local to the individual community, the community itself has to set up tags. Usually tags will look like: "char: harry potter" or "ship: harry/ginny." The slash is often used rather than a portmanteau, because LJ tags support it.
Communities of fanfics *usually* have some kind of standardized tagging system within the community. That said...
Many older LJ fanfic communities (early 2000s) did not tag their fics at all. That's right - NO tagging for pairing, type, anything. You literally have to browse through every fic to find what you're looking for. Even better,many of those fics from 1999 through early 2000s were not backed up anywhere else, and their writers' names are unique to LJ.
So it can be kind of like searching the Library of Alexandria. Have fun!
This reminds me of coming across a book on Amazon and I lost it at the title. (I didn't read it though) I didn't know getting screwed by a raptor was a common fantasy. Even worse it's apparently a trilogy
I use this. It has a good offline reader and I like it. It's what comes up first when you search Fanfiction Reader. Doesn't have forums or review options but lets you read really easily.
Widowtracer writers had a crisis when Emily came along. Some were angry and frustrated enough to leave, others tried to ignore her and carry on the otp. Not a lot of people went the polygamy route. It's hard to invent a justification and not everyone is a fan of three ways.
I on the other hand don't mind three ways and like a challange, sooo... Tracer has both~
Can I rec my own fic? I wrote it because I wanted to turn most/all of the assumptions about inserts on their head. Its actually a twist of the Modern Girl in Middle Girl fic trope - she almost always ends up in Middle-Earth after dying, and she is informed by Gandalf or the Valar about why this is happening to her right away, and given a mission or goal. I had this idea that just wouldn't learn me alone. What if you couldn't turn it off, and it just kept happening, over and over, in all these different universes, and you had no idea why? What would that DO to a person? So it's technically sorta a multicrossover. She is a great fighter because she's gotten swept up in LOTS of wars and quests, and death is just a learning experience, as far as battle. By the time the story starts it's been roughly 150 years for her, but shes not even entirely sure, because different places measure time differently. She's gotten married and had kids several times to, and they are all lost to her. HEAVY angsty shit. So you can imagine that she is massively mentally fucked up by now. She basically has a death wish and wants oblivion, but death is impossible for her, it just sends her somewhere else. Eventually an evil wizard starts to dig around her brain, and you get to see some of her past lives (some of which she MASSIVELY fucked up the timelines of the worlds she was in by mistake). Some romance and the mystery of her past drives the first few chapters (I put clues of what universes she had been in as early as her nightmares in chapter 2, LOTS of foreshadowing because I had the worlds she had been to planned out for a long time), but it gets darker and crazier as it goes it goes on.
Some smut in a couple of chapters, but its not much out of 33 chapters and 250k words. There is a smut-free version on FFN though.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/11579067/chapters/26019924
My Fic
Fandom: Pokemon
Rating: T
Title: The Two Constants
Genre: Adventure/friendship
Summary: Avaline sees Professor Sycamore's request to investigate the legend of mega evolution as an opportunity to fall in love with her new home, Kalos. But she, Calem and Shauna soon find that mega evolution isn't a myth, but a power capable of subduing even the legendary pokemon, Yveltal and Xerneas. And power can always be misused... A Pokemon Y novelisation with some artistic licence.
Fandom: Original Fiction
Title: The Taitaja
Rating: T/M
Genre: Fantasy
Link: AO3
Description: A novice forest witch wracked with self-doubt is sent to an icy land where she is inadvertently soul-bonded to a fearless warrior.
A pinch hit written for the femslashx Exchange last October has grown into its own thing.
..............................................................
Fandom: ISOLA (comics)
Title: Willed by the World, and Yet Unseen
Rating: T
Genre: Fantasy
Link: FFnet
Description: There are times when Rook is aware she is living an adventure.
A triple drabble created for the Be The First! challenge.
I think knotting is kind of one of the defining characteristics of the trope, and don't know if I remember ever seeing an a/b/o fic that didn't at least mention it, but it is possible to find fics that don't go into graphic detail about it.
There is definitely plenty of a/b/o without mpreg. Filtering it out on AO3 should remove most of it, though you will run into the occasional person who doesn't tag it.
Depending on if there are other physical elements of a/b/o that interest you, you might be able to find some things more to your taste doing something like searching for "mating cycles/in heat", "mating bites", "scent marking", or tags like that and filtering out the stuff you don't want. You can also search for tags like "alpha/alpha", "omega/omega", "female alpha", etc. to find some of the more unusual pairing dynamics in the trope.
Finally, I'd encourage you to keep an open mind. For example, I am not an mpreg fan either, but this Captain America fic has some of the best worldbuilding I've seen in an a/b/o fic, so the good worldbuilding was enough to overcome my distaste for the mpreg. Sometimes the right author can sell you on something you'd ordinarily dislike. I've seen it described as the "your kink is not my kink until I read this one story and holy wow now it's my kink" effect. :)
It’s really annoying how AO3 organizes the tags for series, so that it’s an unholy conglomerate of all tags of all stories in the series. Example. I know that series usually don’t show up in search results, but it’s still infuriating.
By far my current fic is my favorite.
Sahrabarik's Gate (Mass Effect OT).
It started as a fixfic and developped into its own self-contained universe. At first glance it may look like a mere rehash of canon but in fact I'm drastically changing the timeline and a lot of the lore is altered.
I love it because it's the most complex work I've ever done so far. It gives me the freedom to expand canon in great detail and study how different civilizations work with or against each other. In that sense there's a lot of politics involved.
Of course there's also the fact that my MC is an anti-hero being the second choice because the original hero got killed. It's the first time I've ever done that. In the past I used to write about a good guy often tormented enough by the villain who hoped to make him cross the line and do something terrible.
Here it's the opposite. My MC is a controversial figure who has to shed her old habits and grow as a person/become likeable.
Fandom: Supernatural
Title/Link: Hunt
Summary: For more than 250 years, one person each year dies on the winter solstice in New Berkshire under mysterious circumstances. Sam and Dean show up to investigate.
Rating: Teen+
Word Count: 3,716
Completed: August 2015
And now I'm off to bed...
'Rule Number Four' is a Merlin fic that involves this theme. It's a Merlin/Arthur fic, and they work for an internet security company. Merlin is secretly a blackhat who joined the company to get into their systems. He's hired as Arthur's assistant, who is the VP of the company. Merlin ends up finding out that Arthur is a very popular blackhat who went dormant several years ago. Nobody in Arthur's life knows about that and Merlin finds out accidentally.
When you get further in, like through season 6...preferably later, but 6 would be okay, you'll be introduced to some of the characters and situations that provide background:
Bindings AU diverging around Episode 19/20 of Season 10. It's late October, 2015. The events of mid-May have left Dean alone and adrift. He and Charlie are on the run from Lucifer's minions. At the same time, Dean and Sam are together, working cases. Sam is being tormented by hallucinations of Lucifer, again; he insists, multiple times, that none of this is real. And, in another part of the country, a low-level demon partners up with a man in black to remove a spell.
The "low-level demon" is my OC and is one of the main character viewpoints, about a third of the book.
There's a completed follow-up, Bad Blood, and a third I'm working on, Playing With Fire.
But binge first! It's so much fun!
Oh man, I actually posted something on time for Wednesday, what?
Fandom: Skyrim
Title: The Book of Love - Ch. 17
Rating: Explicit (though currently sex-free)
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11172207/chapters/29037780
Nobody told Rhiannon that this Dragonborn business was actually going to involve hunting dragons. Hadvar and Rikke go after the Jagged Crown.
Fandom: Marvel Comics
Title: Who Do You Think You Are? (Chapter 9)
Rating: M
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12084837/chapters/28798611
Chapter summary: The team takes a visit to Professor Rodchenko about restoring Natasha's memories, while Bucky works on his compuper skills, and if you got that reference, then this is the chapter for you!
Fandom: Inuyasha
Title of fic: Chapter 39: Where the Secrets Lie
Rating: M
Small Description: Sango and Hojou have a heart-to-heart, where Sango finally releases all the sadness she's kept bottled up inside. However, it's not long until she realizes that the monk she'd hoped was only visiting her in her dreams is all too real.
AO3 has a great FAQ on how to post new work. Your bigger problem is how to get your story off FFN, since it doesn't allow copy/pasting.
Here is an extension for Chrome that will allow you to copy/paste from FFN when it's installed. Once you have it installed, copy/paste your work from FFN into the Rich Text editor on AO3.
However - you'll probably notice that the formatting on AO3 looks wonky. That's because FFN's formatting is terrible, so for best results, use this method:
As a bonus, you'll have created a back-up copy of your work as a doc file, which will ensure your story is saved if your online accounts are ever locked/purged (which does happen).
Author: Inell
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Percy Weasley/Hermione Granger
Rating: E
OK, so I don't remember anymore how I ran across this story, because I'm not a Percy/Hermione shipper. (Is anyone? Well, I guess this author must be!) But I started reading it and was absolutely hooked. The story involves Hermione traveling to Australia to try to find her parents post-War, and Percy going with her as a traveling companion. The relationship develops slowly, and I think it's just really well-written and satisfying.
Fandom: Inuyasha
Title of fic: Youkai in the Mirror - Chapter 37: Numb
Rating: M
Links: [FFN](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8605596/1/Youkai-In-The-Mirror [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334839/chapters/12318086
Small description: Kagome's situation turns desperate and deadly after a brutal youkai attack.
This admin announcement from 2012 says their kudos emails are outsourced to Amazon SES and are sent out once a day. It doesn't specify exactly when. With a user base as big as theirs, it stands to reason the daily emails take several hours to generate and send out.
Frankly, AO3's notifications baffle me. When I first got my account, the kudos I viewed wouldn't be mentioned in the kudos email, so I assumed "seen" kudos get skipped over. But it appears that's not the case.
The original Powerpuff Girls: sbj' s More Than Human. It's still unfinished but she is actively working on it. The chapters are huge and the characterization and pacing is amazing. I avoided it for years because it is set in high school but I have never been more grateful that I gave a story a chance.
Harry Potter, specifically for the "Drarry" ship, anything by Saras_girl. My personal favourite at the moment is Salt on the Western Wind. I love the enemies to friends to lovers trope and all of their fics scratch that itch for me.
I don't.
Write transitions, I mean. If nothing pertinent happens, I don't write about it. Hell, if something minor but pertinent happens, I'll fold it into the next pertinant thing as a memory or something.
My chapters tend to be really short. Vignettes, really. A single scene. See Blind Panic, Random Direction.
I'll string a single "event" out over multiple chapters, if I find end-scene sentences.
Something Stephan King said that has really stuck with me. He said he starts a chapter, then he writes until he finds a cliff hanger. And that's how he knows how long a chapter should be.
I've done that ever since. Chapters are exactly as long as they need to be to find the next cliff. See Bits of Her Soul, Chapters 44-45.
Third person past tense is more or less the default mode of story telling. It gives you a sort of birds eye view of the story. Like a fly on the wall.
If you write in first person you'll be writing the story from the perspective of one singular character. So you can play around with how they perceive the world and the characters around them. But since this is OPs first rodeo they should stick to the basics.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/first-person-vs-third-person-point-of-view
This article should give more light on the first person v third person thing.
> I think a formatting convention unique to fanfics is that most don't indent paragraphs,
I think this is just online writing in general, not just fanfics. Like if you look at a random online article it's the same thing.
I don't pretend to be an expert on beautiful prose, but I agree with the others that one of the most helpful things I've found both for catching errors and improving flow is to read it out loud. Preferably, get somebody else to read it out loud to you. Though not as good as a human, NaturalReader Free will do in a pinch.
I stumbled upon this gem of a tool on /r/writing.
I was searching to see if there was anything that could help me count adverbs, sentences in passive voice, sentence length, et cetera and did not know something like http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ existed. My god. I'm crying holy tears at this.
Edit: The thread I'm referring to is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/6frhe1/how_to_color_your_text_based_on_sentence_length/
It all depends on what your issue is. For me, my issue is that I'm a perfectionist. I want everything to be perfect and will agonize over lines sounding just right the first time I write them. So I adopted this mantra: The only thing a first draft needs to do is exist. Just get your scene to basically accomplish what it's there to, then make it all pretty and readable later.
If you're having trouble focusing: u/jixie-unofficial gave great advice, especially not to go on researching tangents!! I've also used Zenwriter, which is a barebones writing app that has built-in music and typing noises; using it on fullscreen really helped me focus on the task at hand. And Forest, which is a phone app that lets you set a time frame where you want to focus on something, and if you leave the app during that time the little plant you're growing will die. It also plants real life trees while you use it I believe!
there's no right answer for this, as everyone has different things that matter to them. i spend 40+ hours a week and do everything on my computer, but 99% of my time is spent writing and doing the research for my stories, so here's what i looked for when buying my current laptop. some of it might give you an idea of what to research.
windows OS - i absolutely hate mac, and android/google are horrid for trying to write anything, much less a story. i use only windows
i7 processor - this defines speed. i3 and i5 are much too slow when i'm trying to track down a random fact before i forget the next part of my story. processor and memory go hand in hand. you are only as fast as your slowest link
32G memory - hard minimum was 16, but memory is how much you can have open at once. low or faulty memory is probably why your text is freezing on your current machine. i keep 32G to ensure i can have 20+ tabs and 5+ word documents open at once.
2tB harddrive - i put nothing on the cloud, so i need a lot of space on my harddrive. my hard minimum was 1tB, which is what i settled on, but i wanted 2tB. with you using google docs, this may not be as important to you
usb ports - i wanted three, but you probably only need 1, simply to transfer or back up your files
screen size - i hate working on tiny screens. i specifically looked for a 15" screen
vent placement and color - i like to write outside, and i put my computer on my lap. if you do either or both of these, think twice about getting a device with a vent on the bottom. also, black computers overheat after less than an hour in the sun. silver is much better
this computer is what i eventually bought (though I did not pay that price), but as i doubt everything on my list would matter to you, you will probably be able to find something cheaper
Here's an explanation of tag IDs and their use filtering. It's very useful when used in conjunction with this userscript, but also kind of tedious, so this will be a big time saver!
My fics
Fandom: My Little Pony
Rating: T for Teen and Up.
Title: The Rise of Darth Vulcan: Rising Star
Genre: Comedy/Adventure
Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/406124/the-rise-of-darth-vulcan-rising-star
Summary:
This story is a Comedy/Deconstruction about the "Saturday Morning Villan"/ "Evil Overlord" trope that's so popular in fiction. The Evil Overlord in question is the titular Darth Vulcan, a sarcastic smart ass from earth that ends up being a bit too dark for happy pony land.
Recs
I recommend reading "The Rise of Darth Vulcan", the wildly popular fic of the same genre that my work is a fanfiction of.
My Supernatural/Galavant crossover. It takes two hard-bitten Hunters and tosses them into the merrily upside-down musical fantasy world that is Galavant. I got a comment on this one similar to "I don't know what on God's green earth possessed you to write this, but I love it!", and it made my day.
And my second longfic, Bad Blood, which not only starts with dialog ::gasp!::, but has a whole bunch of "smirks" in it, because Crowley, a major character, really does smirk. A lot. Anyway, despite those two strikes from the "What signs..." thread against it, I had hit my stride in terms of plotting and pacing, it includes some major drama and angst, features my favorite rarepair Samwena, and has three OCs that I love (another strike, I'm sure). ;-)
> I remember reading this a few years back and was delighted when I got to read it again. It was short but also so fulfilling and had just the right touch of fantasy and reality... It was breathtaking and Fakir is so precious. I loved how their interactions and feelings were discussed so soulfully and yet precisely. That's the kind of blend most fanfic writers don't get hold of and stories end up being either too emotional or too callous. This was amazing. Again, love to Fakir. You just made me fall in love with him.
on Möglichkeiten, a Princess Tutu post-canon story.
It's 74 chapters and still updating. Tag is "extremely slow burn" and it really is suuuuuuper slow burn. I read 40+ chapters and the 2 characters are just starting to meet up for a first date
My Fics
Fandom - Digimon.
Rating - T.
Title - From the Outer Dark.
Links:
Summary - Kari has been summoned back to the Dark Ocean. On earth, the Digidestined begin planning her rescue, and get help from unexpected quarters. So begins their latest adventure, their battle with the World of Darkness... what could go wrong?
Sales pitch - There's the Lovecraftian aspects, and everybody getting to go Mega (even second-stringers like Keiko and Mina from 02), and other cool shit. How's that grab ya?
>you suck at posting.
&
>and you suck at descriptions of the story.
First, you aren't talking to the OP.
and Second, you're being an ass to someone who gave you a better description than you realize because you couldn't be arsed to do a google search
You can always increase font size (in most browsers)...and if you're on a tablet and can't (like Safari in iOS), I located a cute little trick to have a font-increase/decrease jscript short-cut to add to your favorites bar.
I'm not that great with AO3 tags, but would it help to tag it something like Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-Con?
Personally I think writers should go as dark as they want as long as they tag it so that people who would find it upsetting can avoid it.
Somebody wanted the seagulls shot from the sky, and well, Betty Draper (Mad Men) obliged. Also, click on the collection link and check out the great art work from /u/Ktrenal and /u/SaintEpithet. It's fab.
Fandom: One Piece, Mad Men [Crossover]
Tittle: Betty Draper takes on the Overtagged Seagull Drabbles
Rating: G
LInks: [AO3]
The title says it all. 100 words. Don't skip the tags.
Things I never asked him is a Hikaru no Go oneshot that occupies a special place in my heart. Other fanfic are stories I love, but this one gives me a feeling of loss and connection that's unique, so it's irreplacable to me.
Fandom: Pokemon
Title: Revived
Rating: T
Chapter summary: Rising action is in full effect. This is where things start to get interesting.
Overall summary: Mauville City is a place where hopes and dreams can be fulfilled or dashed in a heartbeat. Before becoming a trainer, Ryan discovers that a new company in town is hiding sinister secrets. After finding himself in hot water, a Latias saves him before she gets captured. With a new lease on life, Ryan will do everything he can to save Latias and take down a worldwide threat.
Fandom: One Piece
Title: A Rascal, A Rogue, A Scamp, [3 chapters, complete, Approx 7000 words]
Rating: T
Links: [[AO3]]{https://archiveofourown.org/works/12590524/chapters/28676648), [[FFN]]{https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12709853/1/A-Rascal-A-Rogue-A-Scamp-Law-s-Collections-5)
Small description: Probably the last installment in this AU.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, a time to die, a time to attend the Great Commemorative Tea-Towel convention, and a time to let Nico Robin paint your nails.
As if Law had any choice in the matter. With that many hands, subjugation wasn’t a matter of what but of when.
Law and Marco lay a dear friend to rest. Robin helps.
12th Companion, I’m glad your kitty is doing fine x
Drawfee
The Legends of Kris: Legend of Krys - prologue only
G
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627117
An experimental fic prepping for a much bigger story based on a non-existant JRPG. Fandom-blind friendly. Constructive criticism encouraged!
My first new fic in almost two years, a longstanding bunny finally three-quarter arsed into completion while I'm trying to finish a longer Buffy one.
Fandom: Dirty Pair (Adam Warren)
Title: Safety Off
Rating: E (explicit sex and violence)
Link: AO3
Summary:
Something's wrong with Kei.
Ever since the convention, she's been avoiding me.
Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Title: An Impossible Challenge
Rating: E (for Explicit, not for Everyone)
Link: AO3
Summary: A smutty offshoot of my (mostly) lighthearted romantic adventure Not Following the Rules about a canon FtM warrior (Krem) and a canon gay mage (Dorian) finding love in unexpected places. This was a request from a reader of the original story.
It's still Tuesday for me, but I posted chapter three to My Halloween Sonic Boom fanfiction just a few hours ago. I originally planned to do this story in 4 chapters, but based my pace on word count, I've moved it to a planned 6 chapters. I currently have most of the scenes planned, it's just a matter of writing and mastering the presentation as best I can.
I think tomorrow I'll actually focus on editing to all of the current chapters, making sure they are presented to as high a quality I can manage now, as I have a decent amount of practice in the last weeks.
-Sonic
-A Sonic Boom Werewolf Story 3/6 chapters done.
-General Audiences
-Story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311280/chapters/27987834
-Specific chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311280/chapters/28667812
-When a terrible monster is released from a decrepit dungeon, it's up to Sonic, Tails and their friends to figure out it's origin and stop any potential spookenings. Disturbingly, Tails is unwittingly cursed with lycanthropy, the werewolf curse. With Tails' grappling around his new condition, a new foe trying to garner horrifying power, Dr Eggman vying for relevance, and the gang figuring out the proper pronoun for Tails's were-form, the gang has a busy three days till Halloween. Will Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Sticks be able to establish a slightly less horror inducing Halloween? Only if they prepare accordingly.
I like alternate timeline fics a lot too. Or alternate canonverse, maybe? And canon divergence, especially, for the "one event changes and they end up in a different place".
AUs can work for me, but I like the more esoteric ones (eg tentacle monster AU, where one character is a tentacle monster instead of their canon appearance; warning for smut obvs), rather than the ones that take something closer to "real life" (eg human AU where, say, a character who was a housepet in canon becomes the uncle instead but nothing else changes). I've read both, and I vastly prefer the former :P ~~Also uh I'm a little salty about the prevalence of human AUs in my ship /understatement~~
Honestly, I think "everyone's normal human" is "too far" for me, but "the characters are literal girl scout cookies" is fine. But I'm picky, and I've always found nonhumans more interesting in fiction anyway ~~and also crackfic is my jam~~.
This came out to about $27 CAD after shipping and all that. It was about $8 a book, I think, plus I had a coupon. Their prices are pretty fair! I did get to pick the covers, you have to fully design everything yourself, so I used unsplash.com to find free stock images that fit the aesthetic I was going for and slapped text on there, lol. Highly recommend using Blurb.ca to print your books if you're thinking of it, they always have really good deals and they have a software you can download that makes it really simple.
So I think there’s a disconnect here between people tagging realism (and what’s being discussed here) and what realism actually is. Realism is just a literary/art movement to show things more realistically (there’s a range within that that falls under this umbrella). And then you have magical realism which is still rooted in realism but also has magic. Neither of those things make things automatically negative/dark or chaotic and random.
Personally I love magical realism in fanfiction (since my fandoms all have magical elements). Like I love ordinary life and the mundane within this world of magic.
Edited for clarity
Concrit Level: To Shreds
Fandom: Mass Effect
Rating: Mature.
Context: A make-out session.
Link: http://txti.es/x1tsb
Specific Criticism: I have literally no idea if this is even remotely realistic. Please - correct my errors.
Also, I feel dirty for writing this when staying at a pastor's house.