Drachen @comandantenf - Tumblr Blog

lettuccine

they eepy

aka

adult arkco vs cuteness aggression

mevil

a-buge

my favorite part is that you can hear cars going by I very much enjoy the idea of people going past with no idea this is happening right next to them

bebabooba

I love that he keeps says “oh no! Toilet oh no!” As if he didn’t just set up this ludicrous situation

ao3commentoftheday

Do you have any advice and how to write a long fic?

I'll encourage long fic writers to add on in the notes, but as someone who tends to prefer short and medium-length fic, I'll tell you how I go about it.

Get a premise that you just absolutely love. You're going to be writing this thing for months, if not longer, so you want it to be something you're willing to spend a lot of time thinking about.

Embrace subplots. You'll have your main plotline that you want to see through from beginning to end, but you can also weave in some subplots here or there. The way I do this so that I don't get lost down a rabbit hole is that I always make sure that every chapter has at least 1 thing that moves the main plot forward and then if I want to spend 1-2K with some side characters doing something fun I can do that as well. Subplots can extend for the length of the full narrative, but they can also just last a chapter or three. If you're used to writing short fic, these might give you that familiar feeling of "completion"

A chapter is only as long as it needs to be. Don't get hung up on having a consistent chapter length. Don't get hung up on hitting some arbitrary number every time. Instead, figure out what the next part of your story needs to include and write however many words it takes to get that chunk across. Varying your chapter lengths is a normal thing to do and not something to stress about.

The next thing that I find important personally may or may not be relevant to you, but I find that I can't plot anything in much detail. If I get too into the nitty gritty with my plotting, it just feels like I've already written it. I need to keep it at the level of "And then A and B meet C and hijinks ensue." I can figure out the particular hijinks later. It's the characters meeting up that's the next important thing for me to figure out. Getting too far ahead of myself is a death knell for me in writing long fics, but there are other writers who swear by it. Test out different ways of approaching it and see what works for you.

As someone who tends to write more briefly, another feature that's common to longer fics is more extensive descriptions. People spend time painting visual pictures of the setting or the characters or the actions that are happening. Write the more bare-bones style that focuses more on dialogue (if you're like me) and then go back and read through what you've just written and see if there are opportunities to add in more detail. This can lead to some really interesting characterization choices and also help you out with worldbuilding.

When it comes to worldbuilding, you don't have to get it all on the page. You just need to share what's relevant for the reader in that moment and what is useful to lay out now so that it's already there in a future chapter. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of how your world works in your head, but it's not actually necessary. No one is going to be quizzing you later - and if they do, you can always figure it out at that point.

Most important for me when I'm trying to get myself to the end of a longer fic, have a friend or a group of friends who are also into what you're writing - or at least willing to hear you get excited about it. Being able to get excited about your work is so important. It's like a bottle of water being handed to you on mile 10 of a marathon.

itsalimere

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately bc I’m coming up on the end of my longfic that I started back in February (doing my very best to try to finish it for nano………) I think I’m sort of an unusual case because this longfic (“tapestry”, currently ~81k and 5/7 chapters, likely to be 110ish in the end?) was also my first ever fanfic after existing on the edges of fandom for my whole life, and I think the same things that let me write a fic *at all* are what have kept me going writing for a long time/lot of words.

1) I started writing this because I NEEDED to read it. Guessing that this is not why a lot of people write fic, but I discovered that it’s pretty much the only thing that motivates me! I stalled out on tapestry at chapter 4 in May-ish, but got back to it because I really wanted to be able to experience and know about the full story myself. That pushed me through ch5 in September and is the primary thing motivating me now. No one I know well has read this fic (this is freeing, in a way) and the only one who is die-hard invested is me, but it’s enough to give me point (7) here. I want so bad to be able to read the whole thing and feel that it’s a satisfying emotional narrative for myself. I want a clear, relivable, in-depth daydream of the exact things I want to happen with all these characters. So I gotta finish writing it!

2) The above thoughts from op are all great and super helpful for me to think about too!!

3) This one is kind of related to my first point as as well as op’s (1) and (4) (about loving the idea and not worrying about planning too much). I have reread what exists of tapestry as a reader a few times (because I’m so invested in the idea), but it also helps me see threads I’ve put in by accident, motifs and emotional moments and stuff. That inspires me to follow up on them and can even point the way to where I want the details of the story to go. When I was really stuck on how I wanted ch5/6/7 to go, I reread what I’d written and realized there could be a nice circular structure where the concluding chapters would sort of mirror and wrap up some character points from chapters 3/2/1 respectively, so at the end I have (hopefully) a bit of a full-circle moment. This is something specific to my example, but rereading and analyzing as inspiration helps me in general!

4) Speaking of inspiration - if I’m stuck on a longer fic I’ll sometimes return to some old favorites by other authors with the same ships/characters, or find some new fics to read of them. This helps me feel excited about my own story again by letting me compare/contrast what I’m doing with what others have done. I love these characters and other stories are so great but they’re not exactly what I imagine, so I want to write my thing too! “This emotional note in x fic is so great, I realize the character might feel a similar way in a situation I’ve put them in, and now I have more direction!” Or “I love how this character acts in y fic, but it’s not how things play out for them in my fic, and I want there to make a satisfying written reality out of what happens in my imagination, just like the author of y fic did!”

Unorganized thoughts but I just wanted to write em down before I forgot/procrastinated too long!

quiddity25

Agreed on basically all of this. It MUST be a subject you're really enthusiastic about because it's not just months you're going to be working on it, but all those hours that go into a complete short fic is just a chapter, or a chunk of a chapter in a longer fic.

Some things I would add that work for me personally (Note: I have written multiple long/multichapter fics and I make really, really detailed outlines):

1 - you don't have to know every detail or even what happens in every chapter or even how many chapters there are going to be. But it's really important to know how the story ends. Bonus points if you can name your goals or themes exactly. Something like "I want to tell a story about..." "I want this to happen..." Going in with some kind of goal keeps you on task and consistent. It sucks to hit the 40k mark and realize you've lost your train of thought.

2 - Notes, notes, notes! Keep notes to yourself as much as you can. You WILL NOT remember every little detail, especially if you're working over a long period of time. I would argue that, while you don't really have to have a huge detailed outline before you go in, it's super important to at least keep relevant details in an easy to read format. Things like where people are, what happened where, and critically Who Knows What! If you leave a character or a subplot for several chapters, write yourself a reminder! It's surprisingly easy to have a character walk into a room at a critical moment, only to have a reader ask 'Wasn't this guy in a coma the last time we saw him six chapters ago?' It happens.

3 - Worldbuilding: A mix of the first two. If you're going to build an AU, especially one in a genre like fantasy or scifi, it's sort of important to know how your own AU works. It really is easier to just close the plot holes created by not knowing what rules you want to work with before you even start. Besides, rules are often the starting points for conflict/plot! Also, if you're not really sure how to find a starting point, or continue on, or really you just need direction. Ask yourself questions! Ones that work for me best are "What if...?" and "If... then..." Go as shallow or deep as you want. The same question can have multiple answers. Same question can spawn four more questions. Sometimes making yourself answer one question is enough to send you on a 50k adventure!

3b - Your answers to your questions don't have to be completely serious. I frequently toss in joke answers or challenge myself to make a scenario as ridiculous as possible. It doesn't have to be *funny*, but you know. It's all mental dollhouses here and I believe it's possible to make jumping the shark look really cool if you're creative enough.

IMO one of the most detrimental things you can do in this hobby is take yourself *too* seriously. Don't worry about schedule, or losing readers if you take too long to update. There's no shame in abandoning a work even if you're 80k and 25 chapters into it. These are stories written for fun, for free, for internet strangers. Just enjoy yourself.

laylajeffany

All of this. I have three fanfics in the last six years that are over one million words long. The key is the last two lines for from the last addition to this post - it has to be for yourself.

Two of my million word fics are unpublished - one written exclusively for myself (that I didn't even let my beta read for the first two years I worked on it), the other written for my usual beta/best friend and I. You have to be writing because you love to write - because it is your hobby, and how you want to spend your time. If you are writing for validation from others ,whether that is through views, kudos, or comments, you are going to be disappointed every single time. If you want to write a million word fic, it has to be because you REALLY FRICKIN LOVE A CHARACTER, but desperately need them to be more than they were given the opportunity to be in their original content. I have a few other fics in the last ten years that I wrote/some published, some not, that did NOT need to be million words long, because the characters were developed way more in their original content. You're only writing extra long fics with a focus on character development if your character needs to grow that much, along with an intricate narrative (or ten) woven around the character development. In general though for long fics, a HUGE focus on CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT is key, along with lack of "world" from the original content. My million word fics are from the perspectives of: Elsa (Frozen), Vanessa Ives (Penny Dreadful) and Wednesday (2022). These are all VERY BROKEN or emotionally stunted women who would NEVER be given the time to organically develop or grow in how they could potentially change into whole, (somewhat) healed or more rounded people given the limited time structure their original content format allows. Their worlds were also significantly underdeveloped in their original content formats, which gave me so much room to make "rules" that fit within the context of the original content, while building on it in ways that helped the character develop while telling an interesting story. IE, I think it would be hard to write a very lengthy story with a focus on the world building for a very established world like MCU, unless it's an AU, because there are so many rules/governances/etc. in place. But I could be wrong, haven't tried.

I also recommend having multiple plot lines going, with how your main character, from whom the story lens is told, fits into those plots. And how they fit in with already existing side characters or why an original character is necessary. I have found those OCs have to be there FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER's development, or for a reason that builds onto the world that you are helping expand, which ties back to that main character, otherwise, even when writing for myself - I have cut back OCs that were just not fitting into the world the way I wanted them to.

The other key to writing long fic, is having mental illness. I gotta say - getting through mania via cranking out 10k on a work night instead of dissolving into credit card debt or alcohol is a way better coping mechanism.