Kei Writes (Sometimes)

The writing and reccing side blog of Love_Letter on AO3. Icon art by @Maiji

[transxfiles]

me: *writes fic*

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

[rooksandravens]

[rjeddystone]

Ooh, this is actually kinda a neat thing, because you can think of it as a checklist:

Who: Main character(s)

Why: Character goal or desire (stated)

Why: Character need (implied)

When: Inciting Incident

What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)

Where: Place A >> Place B

How: The Plan

Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge

For example:

Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton

Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)

Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)

When: After supper

What: Quest

Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain

How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key

Main antagonist(s): a dragon

Thus, in less than 100 words:

Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.  

~~~~

The Anatomy of Story by John Truby is a really good book by the by, if anyone’s interested in this sort of thing.

[roguecompanion1812]

This is super helpful!’

[markerofthemidnight]

you 🫵. make a self-indulgent au now

[aristocrating]

its 2026 i cannot handle any more fucking "author A obviously ripped off author B" discourse by people Who Have Only Seen the work of author B and admit themselves that they have no further knowledge of the literary landscape they are moving in. like.

[insomaniackills]

Folks really need to reacquaint themselves with this concept

[astralikacastle]

I have needed this term in my life. Maybe what I love is analysing the scene a faire of my silly little genre trash.

Especially cuz for isekai it tends to be right at the start.

[the-haiku-bot]

Especially cuz

for isekai it tends to

be right at the start.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[kjscottwrites]

[consolecadet]

These remind me of this drawing by Franz Kafka from the 1900s. We've been feeling this way for a long time.

[smol-civet]

prev, i'm sure you mean my guy Leonid Pasternak

[acesanimestuff]

Another fic rec!

So i just finished reading "Meandering" by Love_Letter and i just. have to recommend it.

Summary from Ao3:

"When Gon has a hard time transitioning back into life on Whale Island, he starts therapy. He also sees a math tutor, re-trains his nen, launches a tourism business, and spends a completely normal amount of time thinking about Killua's eyes."

The writing style is literally so good, it was SUCH an enjoyable read. Probably one of my fav Gon POV's I've read! They got his character so well imo and i just rlly like this fic a lot honestly. I love Abe in this fic and i feel like they also got Killua's character so well, especially in the scene where they draw.

Also, funny coincidence: when i finished reading this i realized it was part of a series and went to read the next one, only to realize it's "Crossroads", which is a fic I've had marked for later probably since I joined the fandom I think? LMAO I've been putting off reading it bc I was afraid it would have too many spoilers and I haven't finished watching the anime yet (Ridiculous, I know. I'm procrastinating watching the CA arc), but honestly at this point I think I've read most spoilers already. So I might read it soon and let y'all know what I think lol

[ohnominamino]

Thank you for these lovely comments about my story! It brings my heart a lot of joy to know you loved reading it enough to recommend it. I hope you will enjoy the rest of the series too! 💓

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

fanfiction is a rare gem and a solid, living proof that, in a world of tiktok, influencers and content posting, not everything is about money and going viral. art can still be art just for the sake of the artists’ pure love, joy and passion for the art they create. fanfic writers write 100k words and more about the characters they love for free. just because they love these characters and the art of writing so much. art is not dead and the world is still beautiful.

shoutout to fanfiction and fanfic writers

[elwenyere]

-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

[oldshrewsburyian]

I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:

Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.

[mromitosen]

I am a PASSIONATE commenter on fanfiction, but sometimes it slows down my reading because I don't want to read if I don't have the mental energy to leave the long comments I want to

Still, as an author, I know even a short note can mean the world.

So, I put together a little guide with different “levels” of comments, so it’s easier to leave something without overthinking!

Hopefully this helps someone else too!

[curlicuecal]

for maximum impact with minimum effort can I strongly recommend the quick highlight?

copy pasting a particular line and your reaction to it is a phenomenal way to quickly provide specific, unique feedback!

it can even just be a keysmash or an emoji response to the quoted bit

authors have SO many micro decisions and careful word choices that go into the writing process and that they'll almost never get to see a specific reaction to

it's so fun to get even one of these things highlighted

[mialhell]

@justleaveacommentfest

[justleaveacommentfest]

THIS RULES!!!!! THIS SMASHES ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE EXCUSES "I DONT LEAVE COMMENTE BECAUSE I NEVER KNOW WHAT TO SAY" TO SMITHEREENS!!!!

[teddywesworl]

i do write for attention, actually, because that's a normal reason to create art

[teddywesworl]

did you hear about that actor performing a play in front of a crowd? clearly only doing it for attention

[teddywesworl]

im trying to say something and im not gonna say it in an empty room

[lena221bee]

tags by @yuanzhous

[muffinlance]

AO3 now includes chapter name and title in emailed comments THIS IS NOT A DRILL I REPEAT authors no longer have to guess what chapter readers are screaming about based on their pitch EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU AO3 CODERS

[postmodernau]

“characters in fic are too good at identifying scents” is officially an “his eyes did not literally darken” level of complaint to me now like it’s about the drama it’s about the romance it’s about atmosphere it’s about taking you to a heightened version of reality!!! please suspend your disbelief at least enough for vibes-based sensory descriptions it will be So Worth It i promise

[ohnominamino]

Unless the character is Gon Freecss, because his nose is that good.

[the-bar-sinister]

Fandom genuinely went wrong when people started imagining a divide between fandom creators and everyone else.

As a fandom creator I am not here to serve you or to "create content" for you, or to make the things that you want to see.

I create fandom works for myself, and they are graciously shared with you. If you don't want to enjoy them, that's fine, but you don't get to demand that I make something else.

You don't get to show up at my dinner table unexpected and start demanding I cook you the meal you personally want to eat.

[three--rings]

This is the one. There didn't use to be Creators and Consumers. If you didn't write or draw or meta or vid or whatever, you were sorta expected to admin or contribute SOMEHOW.

[iwroteyoualoveletter]

We definitely used to have more spaces for fans who had ideas even if they didn’t/couldn’t contribute to fandom in other ways.

People used to publish headcanon lists on their personal blogs.

We had [fandom]kinkmemes on LiveJournal where people could submit prompts and it was up to other fans to decide if they wanted to “fill” them. The granted fics went right in the comments section and sparked more conversation & thanks.

Heck, even Tumblr was once upon a time popular for request-based drabbles. (My @ohnominamino account was one of those places when I had the time & spoons for it! Who remembers “Fluffy Fridays”?)

It breaks my heart as a fan and as a craft-loving human to see people shoving prompts into genAI to make soulless fic instead of developing their own skills or collaborating with other fans.

Social media destroyed community on many levels, including in fandom spaces. Let’s bring it back!

[elumish]

One of my biggest pieces of advice for writing--or, really, for anything--is to learn to love the mechanics of it.

This is not to say that you need to love every second of every part of writing to be a good writer, but I find people who dislike the actual act of writing don't usually make good writers.

I think that this is, in part, where the AI stuff comes from--people who like the idea of writing but don't like (or know how to do) the mechanics of writing choose to rely on AI because they see it as handling the mechanics, which they see as the less important part.

But the mechanics are a huge part of it. The plot, the characters, the world, the idea--all of that is important. But writing is also about the paragraphs and the sentences and the words. It's about playing around with wording or sentence structure or phrasing to see what works best. It's about literally writing the sentences--all of the sentences. It's about choosing where the paragraph breaks are, where scenes end, where chapters end.

And if you hate doing the mechanics of it--if you hate putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or however it is you draft--you will hate writing, and you will come to hate your writing. Because you will resent the actions required to do it. You will hate having to sit down and do the writing, because you hate actually writing.

There's nothing wrong with not enjoying actually writing. You can tell stories in other ways. Record a podcast. Sing. Tell stories to your friends.

Or teach yourself how to enjoy writing. Figure out what parts of it you do like and make those a bigger part of your process. Is text to speech easier? Do that to start. Do you not want chapter breaks for your first draft? That's fine.

Anyway, tl;dr: you will be a better writer and have a better time at it if you enjoy the mechanics of writing.

[lorelune]

i'll defend fanfic for my whole life. like the joy it brings is genuinely transformative and indulgent in a way unique to the genre. it isn't meant for a market, it isn't meant to be sold or marketed. it is born out of such care and passion for a media that one must write and must share it, so other folks can enjoy it to. for no other reason than love and joy. do you know how special that is? especially in our current social and political climate.

[wowevenmoreloveonearth]

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” is such a beautiful, profound, and real quote that you’d think it came from 1970s spirk fanfiction but it was actually written by Jane Austen

[chubsthehamster]

food for thought this sunday: another awesome thing about commenting nice things on ao3 fics (besides absolutely making the author's day, ofc) that I haven't often seen brought up outside acafan circles is: comments are an essential part of community context for a fic! from a media preservation/archive perspective, you can learn a lot about the community/fandom from a comments section, because those responses (and the responses to those responses) are linked directly to a work.

some comments are emoji blasts/keyboard smashing. some are 2000-word, line-by-line literary analyses. some are more akin to what you'd see in a traditional writing workshop--"I love how you wrote XYZs character, your prose in this section was really strong," etc. some are the beginnings of relationships--I've seen threads where author and reader go back and forth dozens of times before one of them eventually goes "hey, wanna take this to [other messaging platform]?", and I can't help but smile and wonder where they are now. and some comments are fulfilling not just for the author, but for other readers, too! if I see a recurring commenter on a bunch of fics I enjoyed reading, I'll go to their profile to see what else they've bookmarked, because there's a good chance I'll be able to find even more stuff I love. I've gone looking in comments sections on works that are 5, 10, 15 years old and found other readers discussing the same things I noticed, and I get the same little rush of connection/wistfulness I get when I connect with a story written a hundred years ago. (obviously it's not quite the same--you can't exactly message Virginia Woolf or the author who wrote the forward for your copy of To the Lighthouse to tell them their story changed your life, but if you find a fic that's old enough, the feeling is remarkably similar). (actually rereading that just now--it fucking rules that you can just message the author of your favorite 15-year old fic. they may never see it or respond, but hey, you still contributed to fandom history!). all are ultimately worthy of preservation, because they provide important metatext for a work, the context it was written in, and information the community it was written for.

the ao3 is first and foremost an archive. the scope of its preservation, by design, includes the comments section. and idk, especially these days, when it can be so easy to get wrapped up in stats and figures (lord knows I sometimes get a little swept up in the go-go-go of fandom via social media), I really love the slower pace of the comments section, the longevity of it. it feels very real and tangible, in a way not a lot of things do these days.

[saveyourhelplessspite]

i hope that podficcers know they provide an invaluable service to society, which is "can enjoy a damn good fic while doing laundry/dishes" and "bedtime story except i dont have to sear my eyes out" and "the act of transforming this into spokenform has added another layer to the narrative" and so on and so forth

[ao3commentoftheday]

thank you podficcers 🫡❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🩷

also just going to add 2 things real quick:

you can have ao3 in dark mode if you log into your account, scroll down to the site footer, and tap on Reversi

in order for podficcers to be able to transform your text into their spoken art, they need the author's permission. you can give them that permission easily by putting a permission statement on your profile (or by using the tag podfic welcome on your fic)