I'm confused, how come you took your story down? I tried looking through previous posts but I didn't find anything.
I took it down because I’m writing a novel. I wrote a fanfic originally based on a story idea my husband came up with. And I had a blast writing a semi-short fanfic based on the idea. But when I finished writing the fic, I realized I had so much more I wanted to write. So many ideas, so many plot threads I wanted to explore. A huge entire plot I wanted to explore as a sequel. And I also realized that it would be a LOT OF WORK to waste on a fanfic that no one was going to read, because it featured background characters from a 20 year old game that no one cared about.
The thought of wasting all this original plot and ideas on a fanfic that almost no one read was disheartening and daunting.
And many of the people who actually read the fic told me that my ideas were too good to waste on such a fic. They told me to take them and rework them into an original novel.
So I’ve taken my ideas, and my plots, and built an original fantasy world, filled it with creatures and fantastical races and politics and religions. I’ve sketched out a world map, and designed original geography. I’ve replaced characters with original characters that I built from the ground up. And I’m in the process of reworking and rewriting and deconstructing and reconstructing my story into a wholly original work.
I’ll be adding 13 new additional chapters, and rewriting and changing the original 13 chapters. Scrapping some, salvaging certain elements of others.
While I’m in the process of writing a novel, I don’t want the original fanfic to continue floating about. I know my novel will be overwhelmingly different, a brand new beast. But I also want to stop comparing the two, and to stop living in the fanfic version. And it’s not going to happen if the fanfic stays up. So I gave people a month to finish reading the fic, as I knew a few people were in the process of reading it, and I didn’t want to rip it down while they were mid read. I think a month was plenty of time to finish reading.
Now I can put to rest that fic. Cherish that it inspired me to write an original novel, and focus entirely on my novel.
I have a fun story to tell about original characters I feel passionate about, whose personalities, inner demons, and issues I want to explore and delve into and really flesh out. And along the way I get to tell a story about messy romances, and friendships, smut and drama. All against the backdrop of a fantasy world I built myself.
I’m also sick and tired of seeing the god awful slop that is the current popular published fantasy romance books. I won’t name names, because people probs already know them. But I’ve tried reading enough of the popular published romantacy books and found them all terrible and poorly written, (I’ve read many fanfics better written than current published romantacy) I decided it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve been writing for 20 years, and I know I can write something better.
Whether of not my work breaks containment and reaches popularity matters little. But I’ll have written a novel I can feel proud of and put something out in the world that I can enjoy reading, and perhaps others too.