#on fic

[sapphorror]

writing my little fics and every few minutes I stop to furiously whisper 'god this is so fucking gay'

[hideandsqueek]

When I can easily come up with titles, it’s over for you guys.

[seaweedbraens]

i feel like youve been asked that a thousand times but how did you even plan wcwsthwas? like it’s such a massive story, how did you plan that big a fic, how did you figure out what to include what to change, how did it all come toge? I’d just love to find out what the process was for it all

dw this is a good question!!! i think i was very lucky in the sense that the timing was just right! i had just graduated and covid had just hit so i was stuck in lockdown with not much to do. i really dont remember HOW it all happened but the idea of a pjo/hoo rewrite was always lowkey stewing in my head, y'know? i've been very vocal about my issues with how hoo wrapped and i knew i always wanted to try it myself. ofc i didnt know what a massive undertaking it would be but…oh well

putting the rest under the cut because i do tend to ramble

i really cant be sure of what triggered it, but suddenly i got the idea for the mistranslated prophecy and it felt like such a lightning in a bottle moment that i immediately grabbed a notebook and wrote it down. and truly... what followed after was like possession. i was like a maniac. the broad strokes of everything came together in my notes in a matter of days. i wrote the opening intro and the mirrored conclusion. i figured out who i wanted to kill. i picked and chose plotlines from the books i wanted to keep and i started to outline ways to make it happen.

so all of this was in early 2020 and i told myself i'd start publishing the fic only when i wrote ALL of it since my track record with chaptered fics was...horrendous lol. that didn't quite work out but in the year between coming up with the idea i'd finished writing chapters 1 and 2, most of 3 and 4, and bits of 5. of course, if you remember the years as i was publishing wcwsthwas, i figured out in real time that this fic was a monster i was wholly unprepared for, and i kept having to make room for new ideas. it was super fun tho! i'd never change it for the world.

as for planning out the fic itself, once i figured out my beginning and my ending i just started to draw the path between them. i'd ask myself questions and break them down into sub-questions,

"how are they going to find out about the real prophecy?" well, ella tells them.

which led to "how are they going to find ella?" they need a reason to go looking for her.

which led to "what reason do they have for finding ella?" it makes sense for someone like annabeth to want conclusive proof that the prophecy they'd all known for years was wrong.

which led to "how would annabeth find out the discrepancies in the prophecies in the first place?" obviously percy would blurt it out to someone, and then the ball would roll from there.

not sure if that works for everyone, but it sure did for me!

for my actual writing, i answered a previous ask about the nitty gritty of how i broke down my wcwsthwas chapters here!

i'm not quite sure if i answered your question haha BUUUUT tl;dr: it was an absolute fluke lmao and i can only hope i made the most of it. ty for the thought-provoking question, anon!

[shiftylinguini]

Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack:

@phoebe-delia asked in response to this fun lil ask game:

Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back? . (for the ask anything) Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back?

Now THIS. This is a good question, and something that is very much on my mind and has been for a while, as I am currently absolutely in the midst of this and trying to army crawl my way out. I don't have any magic bullets (is that the saying? idk) but I have been here before and i do have a small arsenal of tips or methods that I find can help me. 

Here is my Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack (In no particular order):

Write anything 

This is hardly groundbreaking advice, and it's also the hardest thing to actually do (imo) so do not beat yourself up if it takes a while to get to this. Basically, write ANYTHING―it can be aimless, it can be pointless, it can be crap (crap is subjective!! don't let the brain gremlins win!!). 

Don't think about posting it, don't worry about anyone else ever reading it, just fling a few words onto a page and feel the rusty faucet turn on, proving to yourself that it still works. 

Try and sus out what it is that's blocking you 

Again this one is hard and annoying but functional. Once you can put your finger on the particular reason you're staring at a flashing black line on a blank page it can help you kick that reason off your lawn and into the bin. 

And then, take it out of the bin and be kind to yourself about whatever that reason is. Maybe you feel shit because you're comparing yourself to others, your last fic felt like a lead balloon, you can't muster enthusiasm for what you once loved doing and fear that it's gone forever, you're projecting in a Tumblr post―whatever it is, it's something all the writers you admire and aspire to be like have felt, and been annoyed with themselves for, and so you can wrap it up in a blanket and put it on a shelf and be kind to it so it, (respectfully) shuts the fuck up. 

(and remember, everyone feels insecure about their stuff. Like literally everyone, at some stage, feels like their stuff is rubbish)

Cheat on your OTP 

Okay this one might not work for everyone, but it really does for me lol. Ruts (not the sexy kind) can often come with not wanting to engage in my usual ships, being annoyed by my lack of ability to fucking write them/anything/all my ideas taste like cardboard/bleh, and stepping out on them and reading something new can snap me out of it. Just, an injection of new ideas or scenarios or words or even just a little reprieve from being fed up with myself, which ideally, is why we're all here anyway. 

(And then I come crawling back, and am welcomed with open arms haha)

In a similar vein:

Engage in media 

This subtitle is genuinely terrible, i am sorry, LMAO, but essentially: find a piece of media that makes you go "oh, helLO sailor", unhinge your jaw like a snake, and consume it whole. 

Let it nourish you, inspire you, excite you, making you feel SOMETHING, and then take that and think "fuck, what if i wrote bleepbloopblarp" and even if you write nary a single word, you've thought about it and that fucking counts. 

It might be an album, a book, a song, a show, gifs of a hot person, the wikipedia summary of a movie, literally anything counts here if it makes you feel a twinge of creativity. 

Ask yourself, what would Astolat do? 

No for real. @candybarrnerd and I genuinely use this haha.  

Worried your idea is stupid? Astolat would say write it. 

Worried it's too weird? Nah, just write it. 

It's dumb and no one will read it? Just write it for you *waggles eyebrows* (and then find out that yeah, nah, someone else will absolutely read this and be real fucking happy about it haha.)

Worried you're a one trick pony and have already written this fic before, like, and not even once before, and also you're projecting again in Tumblr post? WRITE IT AGAIN! As Astolat once said, "it's a fic so nice, I wrote it thrice". 

It's good advice. 

Make a friend or lean hard on the ones you have here

Misery loves company because it knows they'll come out of this together :). I know, I know, that's fucking NAFF, but fandom is all about finding like-minded freaks and blowing up their DMs because you saw a gif and now feel a kind of ways about it. 

And lastly: 

FUCK STATS! 

I mean I love stats (yay validation!), but god can they make you feel like a worthless shit (hey where did my validation go :((( ). It can be really insidious, so piss that right off when it starts to fuck with your confidence or outlook on your own writing.

Hopefully there is something useful here, even if it's just looking at this advice and thinking "no that's shit, it's writing POISON" cos then you can maybe do the version you think is NOT shit, and that might work. 

Good luck, fellow travelers!!

[battylite]

Hi, no pressure to answer this but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on writing long fic and also staying motivated or not getting discouraged. I’ve been writing and posting the longest fic I’ve ever written (like 75k words right now) and I don’t want to abandon it but it just feels like my readers aren’t interested. I don’t want to be that person who complains about readers either and I know my writing isn’t terrible but. Yeah anyways I love your work and thought I would ask for advice!!!

I'm not sure I can help with motivation much. I think for long projects, it's less about being motivated and more about making it a habit and figuring out what is satisfying to you about working on it. Generally, my process looks like making a mess of ~25k words with some idea of the "vibe"/theme I want for the work overall, and then the puzzle is building it out from there. The story almost never ends up what I thought it would be. The vibe/theme is usually the same. The cleaning up the mess is the interesting/satisfying part to me, so I'm rarely motivated by inspiration. My honest advice would be to force yourself to finish this work because it will give you a lot of confidence and finishing something that long is a skill in itself.

Also, 75k is A LOT. Most people, especially in fan spaces, don't actually want to read that much, or if they do, they want it to be very easily digestible. I don't read a lot of fic anymore but honestly, if I see a story over ~75k, I'm probably not going to try it either because I don't trust the author to juggle multiple plot lines or stick to one style or mythology for that long, and that is stuff I really care about. Things get very amateur very quickly at that length.

The rest is unfortunately just about managing your expectations. Some thoughts/things that might help/have helped me in the past:

Most people have no idea how to engage with long-form fiction. I mean at all, in any way. This is probably part of the reason you don't get many comments.

I have no idea how many kudos/comments/other stats my work or anyone else's work has.

Writing stuff I thought would be more popular and/or collabing with more popular writers and realizing how much fun I wasn't having and how much it felt like a waste of my time (none of it ever got posted, this was a long time ago and I gave up VERY quickly).

Readers don't know what they want. Stop trying to give it to them. Fic is a pretty forgiving opportunity to try something new/shock people/etc. while working on your craft, so focus on that instead.

I don't know if any of that helps but I hope it does, and if you have more specific questions I can try to answer those. Good luck with your long fic!!

[jestbee]

Okay, I signed up for @fandomtrumpshate, my semi-retirement is ending for one night only

[areiton]

We need to talk about comments, y’all. 

Today I got this comment on a fic I wrote and posted last year. 

It was a fic that a lot of readers dislike. This is not nearly the worst thing said in the comment section of this fic. What really stands out about this one is it’s the fourth comment left over several months on the same fic by the same reader. It was left in response to my own comment when the reader asked me to clarify and edit/expound on a few (major) plot points within the story: 

I'm going to reply to this because it's gonna annoy me if I dont: I wrote a story I love and it's going to stand or not, without me explaining anything. What the reader takes from it, or emotions drawn by it are the reader's. Crit is never fun and franky wasn't asked for and no, I won't explain anymore. The readers can and should draw their own conclusions and emotions from the story as it was written.

I want to be SUPER FUCKING CLEAR here about the sequence of events: 

I wrote a fic that’s 35k+. I spent my free time writing a story I like and shared it with fandom because I’m nice like that. And a reader requested I change it. Then demanded I change it. Then insulted me when I said no. 

That’s like getting pissy when someone won’t take back and buy you a different gift. That’s what fic writers are. That’s what we do. Artists and authors are giving gifts to the fandom.  

Unless you’re writing for a commission--to date something I’ve never done--you aren’t hired for this. Unless it’s a fill for a charity auction--this was not--or a reverse bang--this was not--no one else gets a say in the story process. 

Lemme repeat that: 

No one else gets a say in the story process. 

You don’t like a fic, don’t fucking read it. I don’t care if you don’t read my stories. I write them for me and hope that other folk like them but at the end of the day, I’m gonna write them either way. 

So why is this kind of shitty comment so fucking annoying, arei? 

I am so fucking glad you asked!

Because if asshat reader is saying that to one fic writer--they’re saying it to others. And me? I’ve got a thick skin. I don’t care what people say about my stories or my characterization or if they want me to explain XYZ and change a huge plot point. 

But a baby fic writer who just published their first piece and gets this commentary? That person cares. 

The seasoned fic writer who is mentally exhausted and running on comments/kudos and coffee and hoping for a pick me up? That person cares. 

The fic author who is convinced no one reads (Because let’s be honest, comments are hard to garner these days), who is thrilled because hey COMMENT? That person cares. 

And maybe this kind of asshole comment is why they quit. 

This is the kind of shit that makes fandom creators stop creating. It’s entitled and it’s rude and it needs to fucking stop. 

We write for ourselves and we’re happy to share, but check your entitlement, dear readers, because that’s not cool at all. You are owed exactly nothing in fandom. Everything you find from artists and authors? Is a gift. Treat it like one.