@nothinggathers Will be hosting a workshop this Saturday, March 8th, at 17:00 EST in our discord.
Come along and learn the art of estimating how many words your story will be from the person that got it the most hilariously wrong last year!
The workshop will cover some basics of story structure and planning, a rough guide to estimating how long scenes will be and how many you'll need, and a look at why we get the numbers so wrong.
While the workshop is aimed at writers, we hope it will also benefit artists who want to support their writers this year!
Here is our first 2022 Writer Workshop post, written by @drgrlfriend. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.
Character Development/Character Arcs
Guest Poster: Dr. Girlfriend
When I first started writing fanfiction, I stuck to a pretty standard three act structure. The characters meet, they form a relationship, and then together they confront and defeat a Big Bad.
Over time, the Big Bad got more perfunctory and started to feel almost tacked-on, and then I realized that ultimately a lot of times I wasn’t interested in including one at all. But what, then, creates a satisfying story and conclusion?
For me, I realized that the key to the story I wanted to write was character development, and the “Big Bad” is something within the character that they need to either come to terms with or overcome.
This is not to say that you can’t write a good fic with an external obstacle (pandemic keeps them apart, they have a mystery to solve, they don’t know they are soulmates, they are from rival crime families, a misunderstanding makes one of them think the other is in a relationship already, etc.), but most of the time, in my recent fics at least, it is something within the character that is preventing the relationship from progressing. Until the character overcomes that obstacle within themselves, the relationship cannot progress.
So, when you’re developing your characters, what can this be? Pretty much anything that prevents people from moving forward successfully in a relationship. Some examples might be:
Depression
Fear of intimacy
Trauma
Insecurity
Self-sabotaging behaviors
Negative patterns learned in childhood
The character can overcome their obstacle individually, or with the help of the other character, or they could each be overcoming their own issues in a parallel way.
Another thing I’ve found to be helpful is to think about how your character’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Do you love a character because of their loyalty? Maybe they give their loyalty to the wrong person, or are blind to someone else’s faults. Maybe they are so loyal that they become downright uncomfortably ruthless when their “person” is threatened. Do you love a character because of their strength? Maybe in order to be strong they have repressed parts of themselves. Maybe their definition of strength means not relying on other people or even trusting other people. Marvel actually does a pretty good job of this in canon — Steve Rogers’ stubbornness is his defining trait, for better or worse. Tony’s futurism saved his life but he doesn’t know when to put on the brakes. Thinking about what appeals to you about the character, but then how the extreme of that trait may play out negatively in the character’s environment or close relationships, can be a good start.
For recent fics, I’ve found it helpful to put the character arc right at the top, as a kind of “touchstone” for where I want the story to go.
For example, this was at the top of Freedom’s Reach:
Clint’s character arc — he learns to ask for what he wants not just what he thinks he can get, knows his worth
Bucky’s character arc — he opens himself up to someone, lets himself need someone, realizes he has a lot to offer
E.g.: Bucky: “People have intrinsic value!”
Clint: “Sounds fake but okay.”
Clint: “I would choose you even if I had infinite choices!”
Bucky: “Sounds fake but okay.”
If you have this character arc in mind you have already “built in” an emotionally satisfying ending! All you have to do is have the characters start in one place, defined by the obstacle, and end in a completely different place (hopefully together), defined by the success of overcoming the obstacle.
Freedom’s Reach starts with Clint desperate and alone — betrayed by his brother and the circus folk. It ends with Clint feeling secure and happy, confident in Bucky’s love. Similarly, the fic starts with Bucky alone in his empty house, isolated from his friends and leading a joyless existence. It ends with him happy and affectionate, socializing not just with Clint but with the wider world.
So, now you have your point A and your point Z, but what about all the points in between? First, ask yourself this question:
Maybe time alone is all the characters need to decide to be together now, but in a story like I’m describing usually there’s something else — they have to make their way further along the path of character progression to be at a point where they can have a successful relationship.
To be fanciful, I think of the path from A to Z as being paved with brick and mortar. First, let’s talk about the bricks.
Once you have the character arc, you have to translate it into actual events. You can’t just say in narration, “Clint used to be insecure, but now he realizes his worth — hooray!” To use the old cliche of “show, don’t tell” — you have to demonstrate through events what overcoming the obstacle will actually look like. Here are my character arcs again, this time with specific events I brainstormed that would represent points along the journey:
Clint’s character arc — he learns to ask for what he wants not just what he thinks he can get, knows his worth
forming friendships (Widow, etc.)
realizing he has value beyond his usefulness to others
standing up to Barney
culminating in asking Bucky to keep him
Bucky’s character arc — he opens himself up to someone, lets himself need someone, realizes he has a lot to offer
lets Clint see him in a vulnerable state (in pain after nightmare)
pushes himself out of his comfort zone in order to make Clint happy (using his words, going to the dance)
talks about Andersonville, which early in the fic it is made clear he never does
culminating in asking Clint to stay and saying he’ll follow him if he doesn’t
Next, to construct your Character Arc Pathway, you need to set these bricks in place with the “mortar,” which is the character’s state of mind. You first have to establish their beginning state of mind to make it clear what their obstacle is, and then over time you need to show that their state of mind is changing.
Let’s use some examples in Freedom’s Reach. First, there are Clint’s thoughts that show how desperate and alone he is:
He lies down on the rickety cot, suddenly exhausted. He’s used to scraping by, but it’s always been him and Barney, scraping by together. Even before the circus, when they were kids catching and eating rats to fill their bellies, they were in it together. Clint squeezes his eyes shut but the tears are already welling up.
He’s been trying not to think about it, trying to focus on just surviving, but at times like this, when he’s too tired to keep the thoughts at bay, they overwhelm him.
Bucky starts out as a less reliable narrator. He’s in a “I’m fine, everything’s fine, I am happy here behind the walls I’ve constructed from my own trauma” state of mind. For him, it requires an outside character to point out that his life is not as peachy as he is trying to pretend it is:
“It shouldn’t have happened this way,” Steve agrees. “But Bucky, I just wanted to show you that there’s more out there than you’re considering. I don’t like to see you like this.”
“Like what?”
Steve sighs. “Bitter. Withdrawn. Like you’ve given up on anything good ever happening to you.”
“I like my life, Stevie,” Bucky says wearily. He’s said it hundreds of times, but Steve can’t seem to get it through his thick skull.
Steve pushes up on one elbow. “What you’re doing here — it isn’t living. It’s just waitin’ to die.”
As the fic plays out, you want to see the characters slowly adopting a new mindset, through both thoughts and actions.
Clint starts the fic basically not familiar with the concept of intrinsic worth. Because it’s what he’s experienced so far, he feels that people only want him around because of what he can provide to them, and that the moment he stops being useful he’ll be abandoned. So, how do you make that kind of mindset clear?
First, Clint’s train of thought — in every situation he immediately tries to think how he can make himself useful:
And Clint is young, and healthy. He’s a hard worker. It must be difficult, having only one arm. Maybe the man just wants someone to do for him, help out with simple things he can no longer do on his own.
He covers up his hearing loss because he perceives it as a weakness that will lead to rejection:
“Do you think I should mention my poor hearing?”
“Perhaps — perhaps that’s something you could save for when you meet in person. Just in case,” she finally decides.
“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Just in case it makes him not want you, is what she means, and she’s probably right.
He panics once he realizes that he does not have skills that are useful in the situation he ends up in:
This all seemed so possible when Miss Lewis was helping him, but now she is all the way in Philadelphia, and he is here, and James is — James is not at all what he expected. James is not even James, he’s Bucky. In Clint’s imagination James was homely and poor and kind and desperate for companionship, but Bucky is handsome and rich and brusque and he doesn’t want Clint at all.
When Bucky points out the Clint has low expectations, Clint doesn’t even seem to understand what the alternative is:
“How come you don’t think about what you actually want, just what you think you can get?”
Clint doesn’t understand. What point is there in thinking about things you want? Nobody gets what they want.
And ultimately, when pushed to the breaking point, he comes right out and expresses this philosophy:
Clint’s expression flattens, a muscle clenching in his jaw. He looks away, flushing, his hands balling into fists before he shoves them into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “What do you think anyone is, except for whatever use other people make of them?” he finally says, his voice sharp.
Even when Bucky flat-out tells Clint that his worth doesn’t depend on his usefulness, Clint can’t come to terms with it. He interprets it through the lens of his mindset, which is that he has to be even MORE useful.
You shouldn’t put your value in what other people want from you, Bucky had said. The words just don’t make any sense to Clint. What value does he have, if it’s not his skill with a bow, or his strong back, or his ability to bring someone pleasure in bed? It’s like Bucky is speaking a foreign language, setting some standard that Clint can’t even comprehend, let alone reach.
He clenches his jaw, firming his resolve. He’s got no one to rely on but himself anymore, and it means he’s just got to be better, is all. He knows for sure now that Bucky is attracted to him — no one can fake that. He just needs to find something to offer Bucky beyond his body, something that makes him worth having around long-term.
He just needs to be good enough to keep.
So how does Clint’s mindset change? First, he realizes he has more to offer people. He develops friendships outside of the relationship (e.g. with Natasha and Wyatt Wingfoot) that aren’t given in exchange for any skills or usefulness.
Next, he realizes that Bucky wants him around even when it is inconvenient. Even when he fails at household chores, or brings on the extra burden of Lucky, or Barney shows up to bring chaos, Bucky stands by Clint.
With a little bit of security at his back, Clint starts to realize that he is worth more than he’s been told. He has made true friends in the town, and he realizes that Barney is no good for him. Ultimately, despite misunderstandings, he asks for what he truly wants, and he gets it. He’s not with Bucky because he has no other options. He recognizes many other options he has, but he chooses to ask Bucky for his love, and receives it in return.
In the meantime, Bucky is progressing along his own path. When the fic starts he is disconnected from his friends, taking solace only in his work. He’s cut himself off from a lot of the little things that used to bring him joy. He has trouble expressing himself, and that slows things down considerably because he is not good about conveying how he feels. He tries to communicate with Clint through actions — accommodating his hearing loss, reading to him, buying him a bow. Clint reintroduces him to some of the things in life he didn’t realize he was missing, but for the romance to be satisfying they both have to convey that they are choosing the other person specifically, and not just out of convenience. So, Bucky finally finds his words and can tell Clint what he loves about him — a level of explicit explanation Clint, in his insecurity, requires. All the things he starts the fic saying are good enough to make him happy in his life — his house, his job — are things he’s willing to leave behind for Clint.
A final note about “satisfying” endings. It may be tempting to think that solving all a character’s problems results in a happy ending. Someone wins the lottery, and all their financial concerns disappear! They have a wedding and a baby and live happily ever after! There’s a few reasons that these endings are not really as satisfying as they may seem on the surface.
First, to be truly satisfying, an ending needs to be earned. You need to see how the character’s actions directly resolved the problem and led to their changed circumstance.
Second, endings are often most satisfying when they allow the characters to live on in your head in the way you got to know and love them. If you end a fic with everything completely different, it can also feel unsatisfying. You want to leave the characters at the next logical step, better than they were, but not completely changed or untethered from their prior circumstances.
Recommendations for fics with central themes of character development:
Clint Barton’s Super Secret Sniper’s Club by @captn-sara-holmes
@nothinggathers Will be hosting a workshop tonight, March 8th, at 17:00 EST in our discord.
They will cover some basics of story structure and planning, a guide to estimating how long scenes will be and how many you'll need, and how to judge how long it will take you to write.
While this workshop is aimed at writers, we hope it will also benefit artists who want to support their writers this year!
We’re ready to announce our Writers Workshops for this year! We will also be having some artist ones but they’ll take place after Artist Claims, so we’ll provide information about those then.
We’ll be keeping our workshops to the same format as last year, with a guest post about the topic being posted on Tumblr, followed by a couple of hours of discussion in the Discord server.
Our first workshop this year will be hosted by @drgrlfriend and will be on Character Arcs. This will take place on Sunday May 22nd from 6pm GMT (what time is that for me?).
Our second workshop will be run by @flawedamythyst on Writing Dialogue, and will be some time towards the end of June, date to be confirmed closer to the time.
Our final writer workshop will be hosted by @captn-sara-holmes and will be on Action Sequences, and will take place in July, before the deadline for Artist Claims on July 25th.
If you’re interested in the workshops from last year, the Discord channels are still available for you to read through the discussions, and the posts themselves are available at:
hi! i was reading the dialogue workshop and i just had a couple of questions (sorry if this isn't the right place to ask). in the post, it talks about not using dialogue to infodump/give backstory, and i was wondering, what are some good ways to give backstory?
Hi! Thanks for getting in contact. I'm going to give you a bit of an answer to this, from my experience, but you should also come to the Discord and ask in the im-great-at-words channel, because other people might have other thoughts about it.
Backstory is a difficult one, because there's no really organic way to get it in, but there are definitely ways that don't work particularly well. Like putting it in dialogue - if it's not something that the character would naturally say, and you're included it for the sake of the reader, you don't want it to be dialogue, because it makes your characterisation seem off.
That said, if your character meets someone new/they haven't seen a while, you can get away with having them explain some stuff to them, as long as it doesn't get too clunky.
If you're not doing that though, you're going to want to find a way to include it in the prose parts.
I don't think it's great to infodump it at the very start of the fic, because you want to pull a reader in and engage them immediately, and a lot of exposition doesn't really do that.
I personally like to let the backstory unfurl for the reader, in little bits here and there over the first few scenes while you're also setting up the story/plot and establishing characters etc. You can usually find a way to work in a detail or two every so often, that gives the reader more and more of a picture, but also doesn't dump it all at once so they stay engaged. There's also an element of intrigue to that, where they've got some pieces of the puzzle and keep reading to get the rest.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on how they include backstory when they're writing, or what works best for them as a reader?
Last year we hosted five writing workshops featuring guest posts and accompanying Discord discussions in the WHOB server for any writers (whether they were Bang participants or not) who wanted to join us. Those workshops can be found below, and the Discord discussion boards are still available in the server for anyone who would like to look them over - there were lots of helpful tips and tricks in the discussions as well.
Planning Long Fic by @captn-sara-holmes
How to Write Sex by @kangofu-cb
Emotive Writing by @thepartyresponsible
How to End Your Story by @flawedamythyst
Editing by @chronicwhimsy
We would like to host more Workshops this year as well, including some for Artists! (We can’t forget our lovely and talented artist friends!)
We have a couple of Workshops in the pipeline, but we are looking for both writers and artists who would like to volunteer their time and talents to host a Workshop with us! You’d need to write up a post that we will format and put on the blog on the designated day, and then be available for a couple of hours for a discussion after the post goes up - we’ll work with you on the dates.
If you feel that you are sufficiently comfortable and knowledgeable about a specific topic and want to share your skills with fellow writer/artist types, please do get in contact with us either here via Ask (off anon, if you please) or via email at winterhawkolympicbang (at) gmail (dot) com.
We had several Workshop requests from our post-Bang survey last year, and we will prioritize topics that had the most requests if we have numerous volunteers who want to help - we would like to host a similar number of Workshops this year as we did last year.
We are interested particularly in the following topics:
For writers - ‘Show Don’t Tell’, staying motivated, descriptive writing, Beginnings, character development, story structure, and humor
For artists - shading, perspective, comic strips, composition
You do not have to be a Bang participant to volunteer your time and services for a Workshop.
Here is our final Writer Workshop post, written by Chronicwhimsy. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.
Editing: a drive-by guide
Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m an editor.
(Hi Claire)
I’ve been asked to give a quick guide on tips for editing your stories, as I’ve been a beta/editor for various fanfic writers over the years. I’m a professional editor, working for a publishing house in the UK, and I offer independent freelance editing too, via my website. I’ll be on the Discord server answering questions this evening, but I’m also happy to chat to people either through my website or even if you wanted to drop me a line on tumblr.
The key thing to remember about editing is that the end goal is to make your story the best it can be, and make sure your initial idea comes across as clearly and purely as you first imagined it. It’s about ensuring that the lines of communication between you and your reader are 100% open.
To do that, you need to have finished your story, because you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.
Then you edit.
What now?
So, you’ve finished your Winterhawk Olympic Bang Fic, and you’re wondering what to do next?
The very first, and most important thing you should do? Celebrate. I mean congratulate the hell out of yourself, pat yourself on the back, and have some cake. Finishing stories is hard. Getting through a first draft is one of the trickiest parts of writing, so you should be proud of yourself, and proud of your story.
Because in a short while, editing is going to make you hate both.
I mean that in the nicest possible way of course, but you absolutely are going to be thoroughly sick of this whole thing by the time you’re done, and you’re going to question everything you’ve ever written. You’re going to get a close-up view of all your narrative bad habits which will make you think you’ve never had any skill at all, and you’re going to re-read your work so many times that it’ll feel trite, old, uninspired. This is normal and it is your brain lying to you. If you remember nothing else, remember that!
“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.” Jonathan Safran Foer
Don’t lose faith! Editors and editing exist for a reason, no first draft is perfect. You’ve done something amazing in finishing, and now you’re going to make it incredible.
Before You Start - Take a Break
You know the phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees”? It could just as easily be “can’t see the story for the words.” It’s never recommended to go straight into editing as soon as you finish writing, and part of the reason for that is because you’re too deep in the story to be able to assess it objectively, or to catch things that are missed out because you know they’re there, but the reader wouldn’t.
“Once it's done, put it away until you can read it with new eyes. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before.” Neil Gaiman
Most writers and editors advocate putting a story away for a month or so before returning to edit, so you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Obviously, with a Big Bang (or other fic event) this sort of time is usually at a premium! Try and make as much space as you can while still leaving yourself time to edit.
If you really don’t have any time, one trick that can help is changing your location. If you write in your room, can you relocate to your kitchen? Or a café (if you can safely)? Could you print it out? (Printing Top Tip: if you do print it, try and do it double-spaced - this makes it easier on the eyes, and gives you room to make notes. Also, serif fonts can often be easier to read than sans serif fonts, as it gives stronger distinctions between different letters.)
The Filter System
I like to think of the editing process as a series of different filters which, when used one after the other, produce a finely-sieved finished product. Each filter stage has slightly smaller holes than the one before it, as you look increasingly closely at your work.
Filter 1: Structural editing
Does the story make sense? Is the pace okay? Do all the scenes work where they are, or would they be better elsewhere? Do some scenes need to be there at all? Is the characterisation consistent? Does anyone change names halfway through? Did you forget what time of year it was set halfway through?
Filter 2: Line editing
Is this phrase as tight as it could be? Have you repeated yourself anywhere? Does this sentence add anything or does it throw the pace off? Have you gone overboard with adjectives and similes? Have you been too sparse with them?
Filter 3: Copy editing
Is your style consistent? Did you start writing in present tense and switch to past tense? Could this scene transition be snappier? Are there any bits that you want to tidy up? Have you left any half-finished sentences because you got distracted before you could end it?
Filter 4: Proofreading
Is everything spelled correctly? Have you caught all the strange grammar mistakes?
Some of these things might be picked up by your beta reader if you have one. Different beta readers have different styles, and also they will work based on their relationship with you and what you prefer. Some may stick to proofreading and consistency-checking, others may be more confident to dive right in and look at structure, pacing and characterisation. Some may work through the process with you as you write, others may only look at the story when it’s complete so they can get a full overview. There is no right or wrong answer, and having a conversation with your beta about your respective styles at the start can help you work better together!
Filter 1 - Structural Editing
For this stage, you want to read your whole story through from start to finish, and resist the urge to tweak anything to begin with! You will want a way of making notes as you go through because as you do, you’ll make yourself a cheat-sheet to help you with your line edit. Things to keep track of:
Character name spellings
Character ages
Character relationships (drawing a relationship web can be very helpful to visualise this!)
The time span of the story - the date it starts, the date it ends.
As a subset of this, I find it can be very helpful to set up a spreadsheet with a timeline of what happens in the story, and who is involved. Doing this both chronologically for the characters and in order of how it happens in the story can help you keep track of what characters know when, and also when the readers find out certain information. You might have one of these from when you were planning your story (as detailed in Sara Holmes’ workshop). If you’ve kept it up to date with changes to the plot and structure as you’ve written, this will be super helpful.
At this stage, you’re looking to see if everything works as a consistent story. You want to check to see if it feels like it’s the right pace, or if there are bits where it drags or rushes through the action. Why is this? Are there scenes which aren’t adding anything to the progress? Could they just be referred to in passing, or removed entirely without impacting the story? Are there other scenes which need to be added to provide more detail and growth? Is there anything that you as a writer know that is essential to the story, but you forgot to actually put in the text?
“Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.” Ursula K. Le Guin
You’re also looking to see if the characters feel true to themselves all the way through. Do the relationships spark? Do they sound like themselves? Can you hear them in your head?
Some people recommend doing several structural edits, with a different focus each time. One pass to look at the pacing, one pass to look at the characters, one to look at the story arc. You’ll work out what floats your boat, but you will be re-reading this story a lot of times before you’re done editing - which is why it’s very important to write what you love and want to read! You’ll go through many stages of hating this story before you let it go, and that will be even harder if it wasn’t something you enjoyed in the first place.
Filter 2 - Line Editing
So you remember I told you to make all those notes during your structural edit? Here’s where you’re going to use them. Now’s the time to go through your story line by line and check that the details in your cheat sheet are correct all the way through the story. I’ve written a novel that I initially set in November, but by the time I finished it, I’d decided it was taking place in early May. I had to go back and fix all the dates and weather descriptions to make sure the action hadn’t actually been yeeted forward six months spontaneously in the middle of a conversation.
Arguably, the line edit will be the most painful part of editing. At this stage, you will be taking a fine-tooth comb to everything you have written, examining it to within an inch of its life, and casting judgement. You’re going to find every stylistic tic you have (for me, everyone is constantly quirking their eyebrows and smirking like they’ve got cramp in their facial muscles), and you’re going to get rid of them (a person only has so many eyebrows, and they can only quirk so far). Now is the time to kill your darlings - don’t hang on to anything unless you feel it’s really doing a job to further the story and the characters.
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King
If you have ever worried about the unbearable sensation of being Known, the line edit is where you will experience that with every word, and you’ll be doing it to yourself. This is when the doubts will really start to creep in and you will maybe feel like everything you write is unoriginal, derivative trash and unfit for human eyes.
Here I’ll reiterate what I said above:
This is a normal feeling, everyone experiences it when editing. E V E R Y O N E.
It’s a lie. No-one else will ever read your story in this state, no-one else will ever read your story this closely. Of course it feels obvious and uninspired to you - you wrote it. It’s your idea, and you’ve read it several times, it holds no surprises for you. (I may be projecting my feelings from every time I’ve edited something here, but…)
You’ll also be catching any ELEPHANTS or whatever your mammal of choice for placeholder text is that you’ve stationed throughout the story as a flag for you to come back and add in a name, or a food, or a song title later. You know, the things you decided were a problem for Future!You. I have bad news, the future is now.
Top Tip: if you have changed someone’s name halfway through, DON’T for the love of Mike, just do a straight find and replace to correct it. Because that’s when you suddenly find out how many other words actually contain names (Mark became Bill? That’s great, until your characters are going to the superBillet to buy groceries). Some word processing programmes have a “whole word” option which is your friend, otherwise ensure to put spaces either side of the word when you search. If you don’t, you’ve just made another horrible job for yourself...
Filter 3 - Copy Editing
Once you’ve made it out the other side of the Line Edit (and given yourself a nice treat to congratulate yourself because that stage is HARD), we get onto copy editing. This is basically the set-dressing stage. You’ve built the house, you’ve decorated the room, and now you’re just making sure every bit of furniture is in the right place for optimal feng shui.
Here’s where you go through and go, do I really need a dash here, or could I just use a comma? Could I use fewer commas? Could I go in and move all of @kangofu_cb’s commas around because I’m the sort of person who will come into your house and change how you hang your toilet paper or where you keep your ketchup.
Now is the time to be as picky as possible, like you’re an interior designer for the most demanding client in the world and the ornament must be exactly equidistant from both ends of the mantlepiece and facing precisely south-west. Things that may have just survived your line edit will be measured again, and if they’re found wanting, then they get binned.
“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain
Another thing you might like to do here is check that all your features and things are correct. Did you make a wild claim about the lifecycle of salamanders, or the average price of corn and then never go back to verify this? Take a second to just do that now. It may be that you decide it’s not a problem (I received one copy edit note saying that an idiom used in a book wasn’t recorded until 200 years later, and I made the editorial decision that no-one would care), but for bigger things you may want to make sure you’re accurate.
If you google it (as I just did, to make sure I was definitely giving you the right information), copy editing is often conflated with line editing, and that’s because in reality a lot of the elements of copy editing actually wouldn’t usually be done by the author, and are probably irrelevant to fanfic. The copy editor is responsible for ensuring the book has a consistent grammatical style in line with the preferences of the publisher (em-dash or en-dash, curly quote marks or straight ones, how you deal with acronyms, what needs to be italicised, etc. etc.), which isn’t necessarily required for fanfic. In reality, for fanfic I’d use this stage as a second, lighter line-edit to see where things can be tightened up in phrasing, as well as perhaps a preliminary proofread where you start to mark up any spelling errors.
Filter 4 - Proofreading
By this stage, you’ll be exhausted, and sick to death of the blasted thing. But the end is in sight! Now you’re onto the proofread. This is another close read, where you go through and check for spelling errors, typos, missing full stops, strange formatting stuff (which probably will be less of an issue as AO3 basically makes everything uniform anyway).
Before you even start this, change your font.
We’ve all been there, thought we’d caught every spelling error, every weird typo, only to spot six immediately after posting. That’s because after a certain point our brain becomes used to the font we’ve written in, and will automatically correct things that aren’t right. AO3 has its own unique formatting - colour, spacing, font - and the minute your fic appears on there in this new format you brain wakes up and is like “oh shit, yeah, that’s not how it should be.”
By changing the font before you proofread, you preempt this step.
Another thing to remember: it’s unlikely you will ever catch every mistake. Published books regularly go out with a smattering of typographical errors throughout the text - how many first editions of books are valuable because of misspellings that slipped through the net? You’re only human.
“Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later.” Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington
Often, spelling errors and things you would look for in a proofread are things that a beta reader will pick up as they go, as they’re the easiest things to spot, but it’s also worth looking over yourself for anything your beta might have missed.
Whether you decide to follow any or all of these steps, always do the proofread last.There is no point carefully spellchecking a chapter you are then going to delete, or proofreading the whole thing, but adding loads of new paragraphs later that either don’t get looked at or mean you end up having to proofread twice. That’s the only hard and fast rule when it comes to editing, and it will save you a lot of unnecessary work!
FREEDOM
And then, finally, unbelievably - you’re done. Your literary child is ready to leave the nest. Resist the urge to keep re-reading and tweaking. Instead, click “publish” and give yourself a nice little treat. You’ve earned it.
Miscellany and Disclaimers
These editing stages are ones that would be applied to a published novel. An author would probably do this several times - once on their own to get it ready for submission, then perhaps again with their agent, but the really heavy work would be done with their editor. The structural edit would be done under the advice of an agent or editor where the author looks at their comments, rejigs things accordingly, and lather, rinse, repeat until everyone’s happy. The editor would undertake the line edit, and the author would decide what they wanted to keep or change. The copy edit and proofread would be done in-house or sent to freelancers, with queries and changes wafted past the author for clarification or approval.
Self-published authors will often hire freelancers to help at various stages to get feedback and advice.
Very rarely would an author go from draft to final published piece by doing all their editing alone. Because it’s hard fucking work, and because your brain will get exhausted.
In light of that, you need to remember:
You’ve written a fanfic
The editorial standards of fanfic are significantly less stringent than published books
Editing by yourself is really hard work that many people are often paid to do for published books
No-one is paying you for your fanfic
Fanfic is supposed to be fun
Some published authors will edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite again and again. At a panel I attended, Joanne Harris said that if she didn’t rewrite her work at least five times she was being too easy on herself, while Joe Hill said he usually aimed for three rewrites - Joe edited as he went along, going over the previous day’s pages before continuing, where Joanne completed her manuscripts before editing. Elizabeth May has talked about her stages of drafting, starting with her Trash Draft, then her Clean Draft, and then rewriting and editing after that.
These are people who are writing professionally, getting paid for their work, and so the time they put in has monetary results. If you want to write original fiction, their advice is extremely valuable.
For fanfiction, it’s a large time investment for something you’re doing as a hobby for free. If I’m strictly honest, I’m fairly lax with my fanfiction editing. I do structural discussions and tweaks with my beta reader as I write, and then a spell check. I’m also aware that my fanfics aren’t narratively complex, nor do they seem as polished, rich and deep as some of the other works out there. That’s fine by me. You simply need to find the level you’re happy at, where you can still feel proud of your work but you’re enjoying the experience.
In the end - it’s all for fun!
Resources:
Online
Curtis Brown Creative: An Editor’s Guide to Editing Your Novel
Joanne Harris: Ten Tweets About Editing
Joanne Harris: Writing Resources
NerdsLikeMe: Beta Reading vs Proofreading vs Editing
Books
Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Ursula K. Le Guin - Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew
We’re in the final furlong before the deadline for the first draft now, so it feels like a good time to talk about endings, and how to bring your story together to create a satisfactory one.
Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.
How To End Your Story
There are traditionally six types of endings for a story:
Resolved ending - one with no lingering questions or loose ends. (Most murder mysteries and romances fall into this category.)
Unresolved ending - the kind of ending that leaves the reader with more questions than answers. (Usually for books that are part of a series. A lot of the HP books have endings like this.)
Expanded ending - expands the world of the story beyond the events of the narrative itself, with a time jump forward or a change in PoV.
Unexpected ending - a twist ending that the reader doesn’t see coming, but that should seem inevitable in hindsight.
Ambiguous ending - one that’s open to interpretation. Unlike an unresolved one, it leaves things to be interpreted by the reader so they have to decide themselves how it goes.
Tied ending - that brings the story full circle, and ends exactly where it began. Often the case for ‘Hero’s Journey’ type stories, where the hero ends up back home at the end.
You can read more about them here: https://boords.com/storytelling/how-to-end-a-story or here: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/ways-to-end-your-story but also in multiple other articles online just by Googling ‘Six Ways To End A Story’.
But, of course, they don’t really tell you how to work out which one your story needs, or how to write one of them without falling into any of the traps that ends with an unsatisfying ending.
Motivation
Of course, often the hardest bit with an ending is actually getting there. Losing motivation is so easy, especially when you’re writing something super-long. I know lots of people get motivation by posting as they go and using comments/kudos as a spur, or even just by talking about it on Tumblr or other places and letting other people’s excitement buoy them up, but a Bang event like WHOB doesn’t allow for that.
I’m going to talk a bit about ways to motivate yourself when you’re having to keep things secret from all but a handful of people, but bear in mind that this is something that really is very individual. Everyone writes for different reasons, and so everyone’s path to staying motivated is different.
For me, I think it comes down to focusing on why am I writing this story to start with? Any time I feel myself flagging, I think back to that reason and re-capture the original feeling I had about it. Often there’s a couple of different reasons.
For example, when I was writing Look What The Cat Dragged In, my motivations when I wrote the first line were:
I want all of fandom to share with me the image of the Winter Soldier waking Clint up to threaten him while gently cradling a kitten in his hands, and
I was writing it as a present for @kangofu-cb.
So, if I flagged at all, I was able to either reread that moment with Bucky holding the kitten and think ‘wow, I really do thing people will enjoy this mental image’, or I was able to think ‘I want my friend to have a nice thing’, and that helped me drive on and push through.
A lot of my personal motivations come down to ‘I want to share this scene/witty one-liner/visual of Clint pole dancing while dressed as Captain America with people’, so often just rereading what I’ve already done is really motivating for me, plus it also gives me the chance to see just how much I’ve already done, and what I would be dooming to be unfinished if I just walked away without pushing through.
You might well have different motivations though, which are equally valid. Maybe you started a fic for this event because you wanted to get a shiny badge, or to do something that your friends were doing, or you wanted to prove to yourself that you could write something longer than usual or outside of your usual wheelhouse. It may feel harder now than it did when you had that first idea, but that doesn’t change why you wanted to do it, and it’s actually easier now than it was when you started, because you’ve already done some of it.
And, if none of those motivations work for you, there’s always spite. ‘Oh, my brain gremlins think I can’t finish this? Fuck those guys, I’m going to prove those assholes so very, very wrong’ is completely how I powered through to finish my first ever novel-length fic, a million years and several fandoms ago.
Resolution vs Ending
So, let’s move on to the ending itself.
There are two parts to writing an ending: there’s the plot resolution and how that all gets tied up, and there’s the actual ending of the fic - the last scene, and the last place the reader sees the characters.
Sometimes the resolution happens only at the very end of a story and so those are the same thing, but I tend to think that makes things feel a bit abrupt. Especially for fics, which tend to be more character-driven than mainstream media and so need a wind down on how the characters react to the end of the plot for the reader. (This isn’t always true, of course, some plots do tie up neatly in the final scene. Every story is different and you’re the person best placed to judge what’s needed in your fic.)
So when you’re thinking about the ending, think about both parts. ‘How does this plot resolve itself?’ and ‘where do I want to leave these characters in the readers’ mind’s eye?’
Plotting a Story Resolution
You may well have already got a resolution worked out as part of your planning, but what if that ending doesn’t seem to fit any more, or you realise just as you get to it that you forgot to think about an ending at all and have no idea where to go?
First of all, don’t panic! If the rest of the story is there, you’ll be able to pull together the strands to create the best ending. Trust the bones of your story.
When I’m facing a blank page and no real idea of how I’m getting from the Depths of Despair moment to the happy ending, the first thing I do is reread the whole story in case that sparks a fantastic, fully-formed idea to appear on how to tie it all up. Mostly that doesn’t work, which is always disappointing, but it’s still a good place to start, because you have the whole run of the fic fresh in your head to plan from.
The next thing I do is make a list of all the things that I know definitely need to happen for the plot to be done. These don’t need to be in any particular order at this point and they don’t need to link up, you just need a list of what needs to go into the framework, however minor. ‘Clint wears Bucky’s hoodie and Bucky is smitten’ is a totally valid plot point to include, or even ‘include mention of recurring joke about muffins’. If you know something needs to be resolved but you don’t know how yet, just putting ‘resolve plot point with badgers’ is fine. Hopefully once you’ve started thinking through all the different bits, you’ll work out what’s going to happen to the badgers, and it’ll make sure you know it needs to be included somewhere.
If you have a beta/cheer reader who can help, it’s also super helpful to ask them what they would expect from the ending based on what they’ve read so far, or what elements from earlier in the story they think will be coming back/will turn out to be foreshadowing. Sometimes you’ll find you’ve written the clues to your ending into the earlier bits without really noticing, and you can throw them down on the list to be included as well.
Once you have everything you know needs to be included, you can shift them around into a rough order you think they need to go in, and start filling in the gaps. For example, if ‘Clint gets injured’ is there, you can add in ‘Bucky tends to his wounds’ as the obvious next step and maybe that would be a good time to throw in a muffin joke, and then Clint might need to borrow a hoodie if his shirt has blood on it, so you can tick those bits off as well.
It gets easier to see where the gaps are once you have it written out, even if it’s only things that you already knew would need to happen. Having it down in black and white helps your brain to move pieces around like a jigsaw puzzle, and start extrapolating on what comes in the gaps between.
Make The Ending Fit The Story
Think about what kind of story it’s been so far, and make sure that the ending you come up with fits in with it.
You’ll know the general feeling that you wanted for the fic when you started writing, so that will give you a solid idea on how the ending needs to go. (Often for me this feeling is ‘schmoopy and loved up’, because I’m a softie. A lot of what I’m doing when I’m writing a fic is just clearing out of the way any obstacles that are going to get in the way of my characters being schmoopy and loved up. When there’s nothing left in the way, that’s when I know it’s the end of the story.)
You also need to keep the tone and pacing of your fic the same, and make sure that your ending matches up so it all feels like it fits together. This includes keeping the pace the same as it had been, no matter how tempting it is to rush through so you can get the thing finished already, or slow right down so you can add in a few thousand more words.
Along with sticking to the tone you’ve set for the fic, try not to genre-shift - if you’ve written an action-packed zombie apocalypse fic, resolving the plot with domestic schmoop isn’t a great idea. The reader is invested in the style of story that you’ve written so far, so pulling the rug out on them will only give them whiplash, a vague sense of dissatisfaction or a persistent nagging feeling that zombies are about to attack.
Unless you’ve written a domestic schmoop zombie AU of course, in which case I would read the hell out of it. ‘Curtain!fic but sometimes the undead interrupt’ sounds like a lot of fun.
And finally, make sure you maintain your characterisation. If the ending you want involves your character doing something wildly out-of-character, then that’s not the right ending. (I like to call this an Endgame!Steve ending. No, I’m not over that.) Even if your audience is invested in your story enough to overlook the incongruence, they will be having to overlook it rather than feeling fully invested in the journey you’ve created.
Chekov’s Gun
The most satisfying endings are the ones that tie up most, if not all, of the loose ends, and provide an emotional pay-off equivalent to the build-up. If you’ve been talking about something big that might or might not happen, and then it doesn’t, it’s narratively frustrating. In the same way, if you drop something big in that doesn’t really fit with what went before, it’s going to make the story feel unbalanced.
Obviously that doesn’t mean you can’t have a surprise or twist ending but even if the reader is surprised by something happening, they still want to feel like they’re reading the same story. They need to look back with hindsight of knowing the twist and see how it fits in, and not how it stands out.
A good rule to follow is the Chekov’s Gun rule: If there’s a gun on the table in the first act, someone needs to shoot it in the second act. If you’ve been teasing something, make sure the pay-off is there.
And, of course, if someone’s going to be firing a gun at the end, go back and make sure it gets mentioned earlier in the story. It doesn’t need to be a heavy-handed anvil, but if you can drop in casual hints about guns earlier in the story, the whole thing feels more cohesive and thought out. No one needs to know that you only put those hints in after you’d finished the whole thing.
Loose Ends
Something I always like to do when I’m plotting exactly how the ending is going to go, is to go back through the whole fic and make a list of anything that feels like it could be a loose end if it didn’t get resolved. (If I’m having a problem working out my ending, often this happens at the same time as writing down all my ending plot points, as I described above.)
Some of those are obvious, like ‘Bucky and Clint need to kiss’, but some are less so. Did Clint think about how much he just wants to be done with all the drama so he can snuggle with his dog? Maybe throw in some Lucky cuddles somewhere in the finale so he gets the emotional pay-off. Has Bucky mentioned really want to punch a bad guy in particular in the face? Give him a chance to smack that asshole around a bit. Has there been a minor relationship drama along the way, like someone leaving their socks lying around? Have them either make a point of putting them away, or the other person just rolling their eyes and accepting it as a part of being with them.
It’s also important to think about where your secondary characters are going to end up, and if it feels like they’ve had an arc that needs resolving. Has there been another pairing with a bit of screen time or some background drama? Give them a chance to make out/make up. Has the bad guy done something that affected one of the other Avengers? Let them have a slice of revenge along the way.
For example, in my plan for Be All You Can Be, one of the original characters I introduced as other soldiers doing Basic Training, Havelka, didn’t turn up again after he’d been kicked back a level to another training unit. When I reread that, it became clear that he needed to prove himself somehow or his arc would be a depressing downward slope partially instigated by Clint and Bucky, so I brought him back at the end to do some First Aid and gave him a line or two to point to how his future was going to go, so the reader knew he was going to be okay.
You don’t have to completely resolve everything of course, and sometimes it is nice to leave a couple of things up to the reader’s imagination, but it’s nice for the reader if there’s a sense of things being tied up in a little bow.
Ending
So, you’ve resolved your plot, how are you going to handle the actual final ending?
Depending on how your story has gone, you might not need much after the resolution, or you may need several epilogue-y type scenes just to make sure everything is wrapped up.
Take a moment to think about what feeling you want the reader to take away from the fic. If it’s a romance, do you want to end with a warm fuzz of ‘aw cute’? If it’s been an angsty dig down into Clint or Bucky’s mental health issues, do you want a sense of optimism or catharsis? If there’s been a lot of action and drama, do you want a bit of peace and quiet for your characters to signal it’s all over with?
The best way to end any story is with a sense of hope, even if you’ve not gone for a completely happy ending, or have left yourself open for a sequel with some unresolved plot points. You want the reader to feel at least in some way uplifted. After all, regardless of whatever else has gone before, that’s the emotion they’ll have when they get faced with the Kudos button and the Comment box, so you need them in a good mood, right?
When you know what kind of feeling you want your ending to have, that will give you a major clue as to what the characters should be doing in the final scene.
One thing that can work well is bringing back something from the first scene or two and twisting it to be part of the ending. For example, at the beginning of Be All You Can Be Clint uses the song Make A Man Out Of You from Mulan as a way to torture Bucky, and then at the end, they watch the movie together while snuggling.
You do have to be careful not to be too heavy handed with that, and it doesn’t work in every fic, but I do like the feeling of ‘things coming full circle’ that you can get from doing it.
Afterglow vs. Too Much Ending
I always think that good stories come with a certain amount of ‘afterglow’: Just a scene or two to round things out and give a pointer towards the future.
For example, in general, I don’t like stories that end with a first kiss, which is one of several reasons I usually find Hollywood romcoms unsatisfying. It feels like too much of a beginning, and leaves too many questions open about how things are actually going to go for the couple in question. As part of a complete ending, it feels more satisfying to have an ‘epilogue’-y type scene afterwards that will give you a sense of how things went from there, even if it’s just a couple of paragraphs about them planning their first date.
I’m sure we can all think of other times we’ve read or watched something and had a moment of ‘oh, was that it?’ after the last sentence/when the credits rolled. Abrupt endings without a bit of afterglow can leave the reader blinking a little and wondering where their damn cuddles are.
That said, you also don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction. If the plot is over, there’s no need to keep going with multiple scenes of fluff or porn that doesn’t really add anything. We don’t need to see their whole lives mapped out, and it can get fairly dull once the tension of the plot is over. Ask yourself if the three chapters of them having sex on every flat surface in their apartment is actually necessary, or if some of them can be cut and used as one-shot sequel/missing scene fics.
In general if it’s not adding to either the narrative or emotional arcs, try to cap it at a scene or two. Just enough to feel like you’ve had a bit of post-climactic afterglow, but not so much that it’s starting to drag.
In Conclusion…
Ending a fic is, in so many ways, the most satisfying part of writing. You got right the way through your plot to the end! You did all the writing! Your characters made it through to their happy/sad/ambiguous endings! You deserve all the gold stars!
You just want your reader to feel the same way, by making sure the ending fits with what came before, ties up all the ends that need tying up, and leaves them with a deep glow of whatever feeling you want the overall story to convey.
And then you just need to do the editing, but that’s a workshop for another day...
