Fanfiction Writer Confessions... 🤫
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- What secrets would you never tell your readers, dear fanfiction writers? Do you have other secret AO3 accounts? Do you hate the fandom you write for? Do you have no idea where the story's going next? Here are some answers from Reddit, and I'd love to hear your own!
Link to the original thread on r/FanFiction: / writers_what_are_your_...
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Twitter: / joey_tonka
I don't even know how to write, I just have a massive daydream that is consuming my entire brain
Same, this is my life story.
Real (also nice pfp)
Same
real
@@Smartfella297 thanks
I definitely agree about the "reader silence" one. There's little more disappointing for a fanfic writer than posting a chapter, waiting a little while, and then getting, at most, a half-hearted, one-sentence "nice chapter" comment.
Big Fandom privilege. Try a microfandom where you're lucky if you get views
Quick tip: For those who have stuff written, but think no one will read it, post it anyway! It may not get as much attention as other, more mainstream works, but there's someone out there who's going to love it.
The beauty of having a target audience of about ten people is that those ten people are going to be THRILLED to see your fic (source: I deal in rarepairs and have an unpopular blorbo)
I find it funny how many people think, "I have stuff I'll never post," is some kind of dirty secret or smth. Most writers (both fanfic and original) have stuff they'll never share. Writing something only for yourself is perfectly normal and fine. Not sharing something simply because its not good is also normal and fine, everyone writes stuff that isn't any good, especially when you're starting out. Hating your older work, even if other people love it, is also extremely common, it's typically a mark of improvment. Also, I'm pretty sure the stories in our heads are always better than what's on the page, visual artists have the same problem.
yeah it’s not rlly a deep dark secret, it’s the same as asking an unpopular opinion and then all the top comments are popular ones.
genuinely tho i’ll probably end up never posting what i write due to the way i write (i finish before posting chapters incrementally). thing is i’ve never finished one yet, but i will get there! i havent stewed over the same fic for 2+ years to not finish it!
I don’t actually simp for the characters I write x reader fics for, I just find it funny that other people do
LMAO that's too funny
My confession is… i prefer to post on Wattpad because you get more engagement on Wattpad then you do on Ao3. Like, I still like posting on both but I get more comments on wattpad and those comments feel more personal than the kudos I get on ao3.
Now don’t get me wrong I still am super grateful for my readers on Ao3 but sometimes I want to hear people’s thoughts more
You can also create your own book cover for your fic! It's one of my favorite features!
@@Observer_DecayAh yes! I love being able to practice art for my works! And a good 60% of Wattpad readers are so supportive of art or writing or just making fun little jokes!
i try to comment as much as i can on ao3. but i think its just harder for most people. on wattpad, where you can comment paragraph by paragraph, its easier to like poke fun, make jokes and then by the end offer more concrete thoughts, but by the time i get to the end of a chapter in ao3, i usually got nothing. i have no idea what to comment on so i often end up commenting on nothing.
i posted a fic of mine on both ao3 and wattpad! guess which copy of the fic i preferred checking?
@@narwhalwithaknife9465honestly the problems with wattpad isn’t so much what’s there (a lot of very novice/young writers so can be nice to encourage but hard to read), but that there is no way to filter it. I’ve tried a few times and I can’t using the tags and search find any well written stories or interesting plots that don’t end after about 6000 words. I’m sure there are good or interesting stories there and the engagement features seem nice with it allowing feedback per paragraph, but it’s such a nightmare to operate. Even fan fiction . Net with its outdated system seems easier to use as a reader, although hard to post and update.
I wish people would read my fics more closely. I’ve had a couple of people leave me comments that prove they skimmed the fic, and while I appreciate that they cared enough to leave me comments, I wish they’d care enough to pay attention to what I wrote.
There are a lot of reasons readers might not pick up on small details or nuances in your writing. For one, they might just be a lot less obvious than you think they are-- especially if it's some parallel or reference to another part of the fic. Not all readers are adept at text analysis, so there's a good chance they might just not pick up on it during a casual read.
And even if they do, who's to say they'll include it in comments? Most ppl don't leave long comments-- they might say one line they liked, but that's it. And longer comments will most often select a few standout things that they can give their input on. If the chapter is long, that will only include the things they remember, which is unlikely to include smaller details just by how memory _works_
So it's not fair to say your readers just "skim the fic", when these things can very easily brush past ppl unless they reread the text multiple times. (And if it's a longfic, ppl rlly don't have time for that)
I write one-shots, and I’m not asking for deep textual analysis. The comments I’m talking about are people asking questions about things I’ve already explained. For example, one of my fics features some characters with supernatural traits visiting the mundane world, and while they would usually try to hide their supernatural traits in the presence of ordinary humans, they didn’t here. They had a reason for this, which was clearly stated in the dialogue, but I still got someone in the comments who didn’t understand why the characters weren’t hiding their supernatural traits.
I kind of like questions that show they misunderstood something as it can pinpoint areas that may be obvious to me who knows images I had in head and where plot is going, but not how it actually comes across other than to friend who beta reads (and has an inkling of plot/characterization)
@@tsifirakiehl4250 okay, yeah, that I understand your frustration for xd
@@tsifirakiehl4250 that's just human idiocy, don't worry about it
Here’s mine.
I have so many fics I will never put online because they involve a particular OC of mine. I created them when I was like 12, and at this point there’s so much backstory, intertwined with characters and powers from different fandoms, that they would simply never work for a broader audience than myself, because I’d need like 50k words to explain the character properly. But I love writing with this OC, cause I like their personality, and still do so for my own amusement.
Here’s the real secret. Sometimes when I’m feeling lazy, I’ll copy huge chunks from those secret stories into my AO3 uploads, edit them a bit so they fit and to remove my OC and change nothing else. I’ll do this especially if I need to copy large pieces of dialogue from canon. Perhaps not particularly shameful, but I’d never tell my readers.
I used to do that a lot too, except I just changed my OC to see fit. At first my style really had no excuse (my oc style or my writing style) but upon getting better at writing and stuff, I decided to make my character the ruler of my fics, but she's only 8 and really just lets them do their own thing, which is why my pfp is a little goofy (and before you ask, no, she has no idea her fic characters are real people as she just wrote a little story with them once, so that how she's ruling at age 8)
Oh this is a mood. I have a whole ever-expanding crossover universe with over a decade's worth of lore in it which INCLUDES CHARACTER ARCS AND THE EXISTENCE OF A MULTIVERSE.
While it has some neat ideas that I would like to share one day, it would also mean having to condense literally all the context that I don't want to write publicly so I don't.
@@kirby1781 YES, you understand me! Glad I’m not alone, haha
@@kirby1781I'm just writing for myself, at this point, public opinion be damned. Got 20+ years of maladaptive daydreaming that fuelled all this madness, but I've hit that point in life that I'm too tired to care about who else sees or judges. I'm just mostly writing this nonsense on ao3 to finally get it out of my head, if I can.
omg i relate!
My confession is that I tone down some of my more Gorey fanfics cuz my parents read/like them 🫣
Oh I just say that they have to be like the rest of my readers and find my stuff themselves. I give them a lot of hints and they still haven't found my secrets >:)
That's so cool of your parents! My mom is so judgey when it comes to anything I do and my sister things all fanfiction is perverted and about real people and creepy/stalkerish. I've tried explaining to her all the different types but she's set on it being all smut about kpop and UA-camrs.
Eh, if my kin found my fics, that's on them if they get uncomfy. They already know I'm unapologetically my own brand of weirdo. 😆
same here, but my parents dont know how to find my account, so they can only see what I show them. my sister is the other half of my account and is totally cool with gore/dark topics
@@cinders-xs2zn >:) heck yeah
This is a PSA to Ao3 writers to orphan your fics instead of deleting them. Orphaned fics cannot be added to and are no longer associated with your account so you don't have to worry that people will attack you for being associated with it, or feel bad for not writing more. But there's probably still people who would love to read it, so why take it away from them because you don't like it anymore.
I don't care. If I can see that people clicked on it and then didn't engage with it at all, maybe left a kudos but didn't bother to comment, then I don't give a crap if people like it. If you're not going to acknowledge that an actual human put their time and effort into your teeny tiny fandom, you don't get my work for free. I'm taking it down.
@@FunkyLittlePoptart why do you have such a bitter, shitty attitude? who hurt you?
@@FunkyLittlePoptartdo you know how many times I’ve discovered a fanfic written 4-5+ years ago that I’ve absolutely ADORED and commented on?? I’m so grateful to those authors for orphaning over deleting because it allowed me to experience their story and their writing. I’m saying this as a writer myself. Edit: meant to add that just because the people who are _currently_ actively flipping through a fandom or ship tag haven’t engaged with it doesn’t mean that no one ever will. I’d understand if it was, say, a tiny fandom, but even then, you never know when someone is gonna get brainrot for that media and go hunting for fanfic. I don’t fully understand writing off _future_ readers by deleting the fic when whoever currently active in the fandom isn’t engaging.
You can also add works to the Anonymous collection if you don’t want them associated with you but still want to keep some control! This even enables you to reply to any comments anonymously IIRC, though I’ve never actually done it myself so can’t confirm
@@EmeraldSands I can confirm, yes you can reply to comments anonymously on fics you’ve published anonymously! Edit: source-me, I’ve done before lol
The reason why I don't update my fanfics as often is because I get distracted by ANOTHER fanfic idea every week and I end up just forgetting about the other fics.
yeahhhh, just had someone beg me for another chapter of a fic- there IS a chapter in progress but I’m just not invested anymore- maybe if my hyper fixation swings back I’ll update but uuhhh yeah no nit right now dear reader
Real-
a spider preaching with poison on its lips
10:20 TF? Girl met her FIANCEE through writing fanfic?! I could never lmao 😭🤚
I met my boyfriend through fandom stuff too!! Our first interaction was when I ordered some pins he made on Etsy, and for a long time I was quietly supporting his art and he did the same for mine, then when we started talking we ended up really hitting it off. Long story short we’re moving in together soon with plans to get married :)
@@EmeraldSands That's actually really sweet, I hope everything works out well for you!
That's awesome, pretty jealous XD
@@Croclover431 thank you!!
That’s the dream
My confession is that, for years, I've been working on a slowburn longfic which is almost entirely oc-focused. I've done at least one full rewrite of the thing at this point and though it's unfinished, unlikely to see the light of day, and even if I did publish it I'm positive it'd get basically no attention because it's just my ocs (occasionally a canon character will show up but their appearances are sparing), it's my darling and I love it anyway
Just because it isn't mainstream, doesn't mean there aren't people out there who will enjoy it.
There's a market for that! I learned a while back that some use the term/tag "elsewhere fic" for fics like yours. I.e., fanfictions set in the same universe but with few appearance from canon characters. I try to share it around, make it that much easier for elsewhere fic appreciators to find their way in the world
fallout: equestria is one of the most famous, well liked fanfics on the internet, and the canon characters are dead and barely show up. no matter how niche, someone will enjoy your hard work
Besides that being good just to write for yourself sometime, I actually like OC fics if they are well developed characters on their own and not self insert in a weird way, and explore parts of an interesting world it would be cool to see. I’m not as big a fan personally of say coffee shop AU in a fantasy story that just randomly has the main characters from that story as an employer or on the news.
But something like people going to Hogwarts outside the main timeline and characters can be cool.
Or I read one good one exploring issues of synthetics/AI ethics and life on Earth during the Alien franchise (which all of those movies and games happen in space for the most part). Felt like it fit that universe pretty well based on lore dropped throughout movies, with elements of blade runner, but only one character partially like one of the android characters (different personality) due to how they are built in models early on. And the other OC’s having their own slow development and mysteries to uncover made it fun
I really enjoy "elsewhere fics" because it's rarer to find expansions of a story's world that aren't main-character centric. Whether it's a day in the life of a background character or a bunch of OCs, there's definitely an audience for what you've written :D
The one that has multiple fics all written but never posted because they hate them… I feel that.
But if it’s a case of self esteem, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, even if you don’t like it, there’s surely someone out there that will!
My confession is, even though I have multiple chapters already written, I’ll only post one chapter a week, because I know I’ll get lazy to write some more once I upload all the chapters
I do this too. I like to have at least three chapters prepared in advance in case I have a bad week.
.... I had like 20 chapters all ready to go before I started publishing my latest story.
Now I've published 23, and I'm writing 49.
I publish two-three chapters a month(same day) highest I've done is four, but I'll go higher when I'm done.
ONG 😭 i write on demand actually. i have one chapter ready to post for the week and im currently writing next week's chapter
That's fine. Honestly, TV was better when it was on a weekly upload schedule. Your fic will get more engagement and implant itself deeper into your reader's minds.
The "working on ten stories at once so i never update" thing is so real, except... multiply it by ten, and you'll have half of what I've got. Everything I'm working on has at least 5k (usually more) so I, uh... sorry that fic from april isn't updated, the chapter's 95% done but I was working on... something(s) else.
The sheer amount of PLANS I have. I actually post fic maybe once every few months, but I have ideas and outlines for 6 1/2 full series which would span several fics each and 16 individual fics (still usually several chapters!).
I’m very proud of my worldbuilding and ideas, but I don’t share any of them because I know myself and I know that there’s a good chance that I will lose interest in most of them before they’re even properly started. I don’t want to make promises to readers that I won’t keep.
I’m writing the most popular fic on Ao3 for my ship (if you could call it that)… And my confession is that I can finish a chapter in at least three days, but I’ve started posting one every 20 days.
Why?
Because I forget that I have to get on it and inevitably get distracted by something more interesting to do before I can actually get into the writing zone to finish the damn chapter.
… Speaking of which-
😔
rip
Here's my (rarely a) fanfic writer confession:
I SUCK at writing. Everyone told me how good it was, but I know I suck at it.
Get back to me in a few years when you sort yourself out and realise you're stupid af for thinking this okay?
But have you considered: maybe we all suck at it :3
(But rlly, if you have no evidence to prove otherwise...why doubt it? And if you _want_ more evidence (good or bad), well, writing more is the only way you'll get it ;)
real as hell
Everyone is always a worse writer in their head than they are irl. Even if you are bad at writing I think it's better to be bad than to not post at all.
Trust me, _everyone_ thinks they suck. It sometimes takes me months even years to go back to a fic I wrote and find I'm actually enjoying myself.
I think I suck at writing, sometimes, but it's usually something that can be fixed with some polishing, or something that just needed me to take a step back and see it as a reader.
I've deleted an account with fanfictions my readers loved on wattpad because some of the readers there were getting really argumentative of what I should include because it is canon in the books. Which probably made me the only person to be happy when the books got decanonized later on.
Star Wars?
@@internetlurker1850 nah it was an indie game
@@Leader7353 Aah, gotcha.
@@Leader7353fnaf? Hello neighbor?
@@nunusthoughts bendy
The current fic I'm writing had no plot or solution for the first couple of chapters I wrote. I was just winging it and hoping inspiration would come to me one day and that I would miraculously whip out some of the best, most thought-provoking ideas and plot points ever. That never happened, but instead a reader commented on one of these early chapters saying, "it seems awfully suspicious that [this happened] when [convenient enemy with the ability to make that thing happen] hasn't be mentioned yet…I wonder if a certain evil guy had something to do with this?"
The comment sparked such an intense wave of inspiration that I just responded, "we'll see… 👀" and instantly from that day forward that specific evil guy was the cause. I've made the idea mostly my own, and I've just about finished writing the rough brainstorming for the final chapter. That being said, if it weren't for that one anonymous guest comment theorizing about who this villain was, I think I probably would have given up a long time ago. Thank you to all the guest users out there making theories…you may have saved the life of a fic or two without even knowing it.
A “you’re underrated” comment, usually just means they wish you’d get more attention because of your writing skills. Not backhanded at all
I tend to mix canon-backstories with fanon-backstories to the point I cannot separate the two and it causes them to become my new headcanons 😅
Lol, I'm sometimes guilty of that, too.
Honestly, as a fic writer, I enjoy comments a lot but kudos are great too. I'm still new to posting my writing and the fact strangers on the internet are percieving me is wild!
That random OC you love in my story? She's the most egregious example of a self insert I've written in the six years since I stopped writing on Wattpad.
My readers are mostly my irl friends, so i end up telling them about most of my plans for stuff (not just writing, sometimes its other stuff), but i really wish they werent as excited about it as they are. Having 3 people telling me that theyre eagerly awaiting chapters makes me unable to do it for some reason, idk why but when i go to sit down and writing knowing that people are watching makes me nervous. Same thing happens with school essays, but i dont care about teachers opinions as much.
I'm more interested in writing a fanfiction about a specific fangame and the books in a fandom I'm in than I am in actually writing one about the original games, even though the fandom mostly hates those books due to... having very weird shit in them that come off as fetish stuff. The original games have just gotten too stale because everyone's already written 20 fanfics about any given concept
Danganronpa?
@@Smartfella297 fnaf
@@Leader7353yayyy a another fnaf fan I haven’t seen one in these types of videos before
I put all my fics for each fandom I write for in their own series, specifically because i want people to click 'next' and read more of my stuff. And also, in case some likes one fandom i write for, they can subscribe to that particular series instead of just my account, because sometimes I don't touch fandoms for years
My confession, ASKING ME WHEN THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL COME OUT WILL NOT MAKE ME WORK FASTER!!!
I know that the people that ask this mean nothing bad by it and are just excited (which I really appreciate!), but please, STOP asking me when the next chapter comes out!! It honestly demotivates me and makes me want to write less. I’ve said in multiple authors notes that writing is just a fun hobby of mine, but it’s not my main passion and I don’t always have time to write. I’ll get to the next chapter at my own pace, which might take longer than others. Just be patient and stop asking this
Normally when people ask this they mean it literally, they genuinely want to know when and won't care how long it takes
At least that's what I think
Honestly I get it.
Bro, I worry so much about rushing authors, I avoid commenting that I "can't wait for the next chapter!" and when I do, I add a little disclaimer that I can wait, and they should avoid overworking themselves, stay hydrated, etc.
I tend to just say, "Looking forward to the next chapter" because I 1000% get that deadlines for passion projects SUCK. There are already plenty of time constraints on everything else, I'm not gonna put a time limit on myself when I know for damn sure I can't meet that deadline! It feels rude to do that to anyone else who's writing fanfic.
'More ideas than time, more inspiration than focus' is quickly becoming a personal motto
.
.
.
Every fic that ever went south or off the rails... 90% of the time, the characters get wiped, and it becomes an OG story. has this resulted in juggling +7million original stories as I work on them all simultaneously? yeahhhhh
I hate what I used to write as a tween, but not enough to erase it from existence. At 15 I wrote cringy x reader fics and crossovers on Wattpad. Nothing weird or nsfw just boring fluff and angst.
Today, they have more than 130k reads and I don’t know how to feel about that.
I quit writing 90% of my old stories because they were all written on impulse and when I looked back at them, I realized I had no interest in finishing the idea.
Ive thought about getting another ao3 account and writing for my favorite fandom on it. Unfortunately I'm one of the only people who write for the fandom and the ONLY one who writes for my ship. I think if i showed up on a secret "new account" with my distinct writing style and writing for my rare ship, people would very quickly figure out it was me. 😅
I’ve considered making another account for one of my oc’s who I made write fanfictions as a character quirk, the account notes and comments and stuff would be in character and the fics would he the stuff she writes. It’d be obviously connected to my main account and just a way to see into the life of one of the characters a bit more but I think it could be so fun as a writing exercise. Although I say this despite the fact that I haven’t finished writing or uploaded anything involving this oc or any fics at all.
@@aceofspades8474 that's actually a really cute idea.
I am the only writer in my fandom. There is one fic in it and it is mine. I want to write more but I have no idea if the other people actually in the fandom on Ao3 will like it because the canon is in a constant state of flux. Im a disaster
@@cinders-xs2zn honey, don't worry about that, it's a waste of time, if you love a fandom and wanna write for it, you write for it. Look at me. My fandom has 84 fics. 80 of them are mine. Fandom doesn't need to be thriving to get love.
@@lovetolovefairytales this actually means a lot to me, thank you.
The readers of my 2010’s ABO fic all think covid got me 💀💀
I am so fucking desperate for engagement that it’s probably unhealthy. There’s one fic I wrote back in high school, about 251k words in total, written out across roughly six irl months when I was seventeen. I didn’t plan, spent way too long on a will-they-won’t-they with two characters who I don’t think work well together at all anymore, pretty much butchered Hawaiian mythology and the language and wrote a copout ending that solved almost nothing because I was losing steam and wanted to finish before Valentines Day. That fic is still my most popular work and gets the most engagement, and I despise it. I have a far better story, better writing, better dialogue and better relationships in my most recent work, and it has less than ten kudos and half the comments are just me responding to readers. I so badly want more people to read the new work and just drop the old one, but saying that aloud feels so childish and ungrateful. Seventeen year old me put their soul into that older work, and now present day me has theirs in the new one, but it doesn’t even have one twentieth of the engagement of the old work, and it’s honestly really fucking crushing for me. My girlfriend likes the new one, a friend from high school likes the new one, someone from a Discord server I’m on who’s reading fandomblind likes the new one, but that’s it, and it’s killing me
i feel that so much!! the fact of the matter is that most readers only read because they like the feeling they get from a certain fic, and youve gotta get used to it. people have their favorites, even if theyre blatantly wrong-plus, if you prefer the new version, that’s motivation to write it! use that distain as fuel!!
0:10 doesn’t ao3 have pseudonyms for this???
Well yes but they’re visible for everyone to see who the source of the pseudo is so if you want fully seperate accounts then it’s better to make a new one or put it on anon
I tell people that I ship my OTP because it makes the characters more interesting to interpret them that way, not because I think they’re cute together
It’s both.
Confession I’d never admit because they’re siblings 💀
@@treefish008 alright dude what the flip :/
@@dragonshinerthewyvern1597 boo hoo they’re not real
Im an X reader writer! A lot of time when im writing, i write the reader as my OC, then go back through the document and change it to be more ambiguous
My confession is that I have many stories I would like to post, but I suck at titles and synopses so they stay idle until I can figure out something cool to showcase them with.
I write whatever insecurity or frustration I’m dealing with, so fics coming out around the same time have the same general themes. The problem is if I RESOLVE that issue I have zero motivation to finish the fic. It’s like a wip trail of all my problems mapped out for other people hopefully never notice.
Mine is that I'm still writing my fanfiction, I just stopped posting it because nobody commented and not having comments was demotivating, but it's not demotivating if there's no new chapter to comment on!
I can't outline either. For some reason, if I make notes for the story, my brain thinks I wrote it and I can't go back, there's 6 folders of notes, but I'm fighting to rethink 2. And thanks to that, very few of my chapter fics are finished.
I need to go back to writing on paper...
I’ve found best for that is copy and paste part from notes, and start in on action, dialogue, and description and build from there. You may have to revise the outline or change what you wrote later but at least it’s something and often can make you want to write again
I have this weird tic,where I'm rewriting a fic as I read it.
Like,I find a nrw thing on SO3 or royal Road,& I can't stop myself from thinking "What if I was in this scenario?What if the MC had a different set of powers?If dimension-jumping was a thing,what if they travelled to this other reality made by a different author,with its own different system of magic?What if there were more POVs?What if the best friend said something different in this scene?"
It's a very weird tic,& I lost many nights because of it.
I'm obviously not a writer (yet) but I still think it appliest o the post in spirit.
I do this too as a writer and reader. Somebody once made a fanfiction dedicated to dropping almost every show or video game they liked into a deadly scenario together, and I couldn't help but make my own little OC for it- just a regular human obsessing over the fact that all her favorite characters are real. I even dropped a hint about it to the author once (they didn't get it but it was worth a shot)
@@AdrieneTheDarkestHorse I'm glad to know I'm not crazy for making 100s of alternate Tarlims of TheNatureOfPredators fame & making him talk with aliens from other fics,like birrin or shil'vati.
@@BrunoMaricFromZagreb I also made like five AUs of the one AU my friend made, all based off of the fact that her AU was very bittersweet and left everybody unhappy except for her character
(She didn't like a lot of the characters)
My confession is that I used to vote on my own Wattpad stories, and also read them over and over to make the reader count higher
I think it's hilarious for some reason to leave off on a cliff hanger and never finish the story. I must be seriously sadistic, but it just makes me laugh to see the frustration in commenters, or better - the confusion.
At the same time I low key appreciate an unfinished story even when I crave for more. I hate it, but I love the open ended stories I can create fanfic of.
I accidentally did that on a very long fic I had been writing. Stopped right as one of the characters got ran through with a sword. Worst part is that most of the next chapter that resolves that tension is almost completed I just never posted it ...
@@luellavanallen9481 my kind of story
I refuse to admit to my readers that my crippling video game addiction distracts me from writing
I uploaded my first fic ever a couple weeks ago and got like 17 kudos right away and none since and I know it’s not about the numbers but……… yeah it’s not even the “I NEEDD MORE LIKES” I just want people to engage so they know about my special interest 😭
I have two more ideas but now I’m back to college work as of this week so I can’t work on them cuz if I’m too tired I know my writing will be worse 😭
IM GONNA FINISH THEM THO. FOR SLIMARIANA‼️‼️
I write fanfic but don’t post it anywhere - the most I’ll do is share it with friends. I’m just too insecure about the pressure of an audience, even though I also want more people to read my stuff, and don’t want to lose the “it’s for me” heart of my self-indulgent tomfoolery. For example, I have this creative idea for a fic that I honestly really want to write and post, but 1) it’s for a problematic past fandom that I’m ashamed to have been in but still secretly enjoy, and 2) it’s in kind of a niche format, has a big shift in tone from the source material, and exploits the hell out of concepts that got relatively little mention in canon. Basically I feel like it would much sooner get hated on than find other people it appeals to besides me 💀
I'd like to remind everyone, don't make a decision you cannot undo later like the last guy! It's better to orphan the work than to have it become lost media!
Even if there are no comments I PROMISE you someone who's too anxious to leave one loved your fic.
How many times have you gone back to find a work (fic, art, video, song) that you loved only to find it completely deleted? It happens to me a lot and it breaks my heart every time. I always regret not leaving a comment. I try to never delete anything I have ever made even if I hate it now because someone else might be just like me and have loved it but never said something.
If no one bothered to leave a comment, no one loved it. Period. You want someone to continue putting their time and energy into your amusement? TELL THEM THAT. And not a ---- kudos. Use your words.
@@FunkyLittlePoptart this comment reads as a bit entitled, no one has to comment on your work even if they did love it, that's up to them to decide
a lot of the time "no one loved it" just because they never ended up finding it in the first place, there's super niche fics I'm glad exist but cant naturally find an audience unless they were promoted or there are very few fans of that niche fic in comparison to fics of huge fandoms/ships/scenarios/etc.
and if the complaint is that people *did* read it but didnt leave a comment, then... wanting people to behave in a certain way will not make them want to comment more
"putting their time and energy into your amusement" makes it seem like the individual people were the reason you made the fics in the first place, and it's fine if your motivation doesnt come from a love of the craft, but if you wish for an audience, you cannot expect them to do what you want
it's not a system of creators actively feeding their consumers, it's a site for consumers to go read random things that creators are passionate about and the two do not necessarily have to meet, which is why people go read things they are interested in rather than things that are niche for a reason
I have a creepypasta fan fic I wrote while out drinking with friends around last year. It was done as part of a drinking game, but we haven't been able to get drinks in a while
my confession is that i only write oneshots, i dont have the commitment (or ideas even) for multi-chaptered fics 😭
3:57 Idk if I got it right, but this one is SCREAMING "former Miraculous Ladybug fan"
That fic I started in 2018 and only updated twice... I never forgot. I have the last three chapters written. I just never finished the middle. I will always remember.
I have dozens of nearly-complete, long, complex fics in my brain. But my writer's block and procrastination bug are so bad that I've never written a word of them. The only things I've written are a couple weird drabbles and the aforementioned. I wish I could write these. But as soon as I open a doc, my mind goes blank.
I confess that the first few chapters were just purely written by vibes and vibes alone. And I sadly lost that vibe. I miss it, I’m constantly looking for it but until I find it again or I find a new better vibe my fic is gonna stay in my google docs.
Also, my own confession
I am in the "Knows too much about the setting to truly enjoy writing/reading about it." group, specifically for pokemon.
I've seen a crossover fic with another fandom I'm in, and the cover art immediately had me questioning the authors competence for the pokemon each of the characters had as their ace.
One character had Mew, another had Pheromosa, the rest of the characters had Espeon, Audino, Braviary, Goodra, and Sceptile as their aces. It created such a severe power disparity and the addition of Mew alone would have dramatically lowered the stakes in any confrontation.
The one at 4:26 is so wild to me. As another fic writer, knowing my writing got someone into one of my own interests would have me so excited!
I HATE the 'major character death' tag. I want to be surprised if someone were to die, knowing kinda takes the mystery out of it
Well, that’s why the “Creator chose not to use archive warnings” tag exists. If you don’t want to warn for something, you can simply state that you aren’t using warnings, so audiences can read at their own risk.
I definitely know some stories that really aren't that deep but because they do have a message and meaning behind some things people think there is a deeper meaning behind every single thing that happens and try to justify things.
I aspire to have that happen to any story I write. Yes some things are deep but sometimes I also like to write fanservice for myself
The longest and most developed fic I've ever written was for an incredibly toxic ship that I'm absolutely ashamed of ever shipping. It's the best fic I've ever written so far but I hate it.
My confession is that I've given up on writing entirely, but my brain still creates stories and characters
I have like 20 WIP's for a fandom I've never even seen an episode of, nor do I stay updated in whats happening in normal fandom for that fandom :)
I'm not writing the fanfic for them, I'm writing it for me to read in a couple years when I've forgotten everything I wrote.
Printing out nice comments and sticking them somewhere I can see them is a great idea. :D
All writers are fueled by their readers tears. Met my favorite author I cried when I read her book and she said, "Good!" 🤣
My lack of writing is mostly due to how High School burnt me out SEVERELY. Its been years since I started and you think I wouldve slightly recovered, but I have maybe half a page of various projects.
Mine: I choose what time of day I write my fics based on how angsty I need the next chapter to be. Like, I have a whole schedule and system
6:00-7:30 am: Don’t write at all, too tired for it to be good
7:30-9:00 am: Write the fluff
9:00-12:00 am: Write the stuff that pushes the plot forward. Not the angst or fluff, the events only
12:00 am-3:00 pm: Write things that require a heavy emphasis on visual description. This is also the time to write things like apologies for slow updates, author’s notes, and replies to comments
3:00-6:00 pm: Worldbuilding, outlining, new ideas, and editing
6:00-9:00 pm: Basic emotional descriptions. Angst, but not the most intense or emotional moments
9:00-11:00 pm: Angst, emotion, anything super dark
11:00 pm-6:00 am: Don’t write. Go to sleep.
i have multiple multichapter works thats im rly proud of posted anonymously bc i dont want my friend (who reads and beta-reads my other fics) to see them💀
6:01 THIS!! Interaction is super important to me and influence how I write so much😭😭
5:43 this.... Theres just one fic that I finished because there was one person that was commenting on every chapter I published, and it wasn't short comments, it was long detailed ones analasing the characters and their actions (And it was a dumb fanfic written when I was 16 or 17) and goddam it helped me a lot to keep writing, and I managed to write 50 chapters and finish it and the person loved, and because the person enjoyed that fic is still my little special baby. But the person disappeared and on my 10 other fics no one has commented even though they have a lot of hits, and I never feel like finishing it because of it.
Damn, even hate comments would make me motivated to write just to spite the person, and I would make things even more weird and creppy.
I’m really impatient when I write. I just want to get to the juicy good parts. My brain will not let me build the story properly.
I've written hundreds of oneshots, some series, original works, etc. over the years but have never posted even one thing..
i don't write but i see this a lot: i hate it when readers say that reading something will send them to hell. i'm not religious and i know they're trying to be humorous but there is quite literally nothing that is *that* bad to send you underground. aside from a few spicy things and your average murders, what horrible stuff are you reading for a man who himself is unphased by undity and is characterized to very forgiving to go mad? also, i hate it when people complain about what they expected.... dead dove: do not eat; you deserve all of those terriblw feelings for subjecting yourself to content you know you can't handle
2:19 literally me. Also, about self-kudos... maybe i should try that and show myself some self-love, i hate everything i write because i'm too insecure, sometimes my brain tells me that no one likes my fics even though some people have told me they were good and i have a good amount of kudos. Idk what to do to love my writing. 6:03 yes
Im delusional and write angst with my delusions, but im pretty sure thats everyone
I barely post my fics that I written, because most of them are a bit too dark for me to post them because I am afraid of backlash. I also have tons of "canon" to my fics that I DO post that I never show in my fics.
I had a 3rd and 4th chapters of an x reader fic, but lost my progress one night after writing a blurb, and have lost motivation for the fic :( pretty sad, since I really like/liked the idea I came up with for the universe it takes place in
My "writer confession": I hate to receive comments.
Probably because I grew writing for a site that allowed you to leave comments alongside (and forcefully) with three coloured flags that allowed you to understand and brace yourself if what the reader had written was a compliment or was about to destroy you. Because of that I started to hate receiving comments and even writing them.
I set up a new account named after one of my fanfic ocs just to leave comments on said fanfic. I think my goal was to set up this idea that "Oooooh, maybe this was real all along" 😂
There was definitely some self gratification there as well. I was addicted to positive comments
I used to jump between fics when I got bored and left a bunch of unfinished ones for years. I shifted away from that during the pandemic and it’s so much easier. There are times where I just want to be done with them but I try to push through.
I also write my fics out of order (I focus on series instead of standalone ones) so publishing them is so much harder. It’s probably not noticeable but I do think about it when publishing them. I write whatever fic interests me at the time so I could wrote stories at the very end of the series or ones near the beginning. I want to try to break out of the habit but it’s going to be extremely difficult.
my confession is that i haven’t touched any fanfic-writing website in years. i still have plenty of ideas, but they either sit in my notes app until i eventually delete them, or i use them on those AI chatbot things.
I write for a very small fandom on Ao3. Like _everyone in this fandom has been in the same room together before_ small. So I’m not as motivated by reader feedback as other authors, but I still have that part of my brain that _wants_ to be. Like I would literally cry tears of joy if someone who I don’t know left a comment on one of my fics lmao
I have one fic that I ONLY update when I'm procrastinating on my other one, or if I've updated that other one
i don't write rn but if I did i would make fanfiction for my own original stories and if anyone was like "wow, this author has a REALLY GOOD grasp on the characters!" i would just be there mischievously rubbing my hands together
My fic confession is that... I'm writing OC's. I started a timeskip fic for a small fandom that I kinda interacted with on a whim and just. Kept writing. It's the longest writing project I've done and it's really divorced from the source material. The only reason I haven't republished everything as OC is because the characters names are the same and idk what to rename them ////
3:25 this. THIS. I think my MLP fanfic could rival rainbow factory in darkness... Maybe... They're both really dark but different. (I have written some of it, but will NEVER post it.)
I honestly dont update fics just because i dont have the mood for it, i like writing them, its just im not in the mood to write them. Also reader engagement is a big part of what keeps me going, i appreciate kudos but i love reading coments on my fics, i rarely get them so its always really nice!
My confession is that every once a year, I'll go back to every single one of my fanfics, whatever old they are, and re-read all the comments, whatever their numbers, because I am craving validation to escape my impostor syndrom.
I have a university diploma in French Literature.
this video motivated me to go back and work on one of my fics again. they will remain private for forever, but they are my babies
My writer confession is that I dearly want to write a smut fic but because I was so outspoken against smut fic when I was younger and stupider, I worry that I'll get called a hypocrite if I write one.
do it anyway. if someone calls it out just respond "times and people change. its character development"
Everyone, at some point, says something stupid that they regret when they’re older. Just write your fic. If someone gets weird at you because you used to dislike smut, ask them if they still have all the same opinions now that they did when they were younger. You are allowed to mature and grow as a person; you do not have to stand by every stupid thing you said when you were younger.
I don't have an account yet, but read a fanfiction, and didn't know wat Kudos were yet, so I clicked it. Little did I know, you can't unlike a post on AO3
My confession is i want to write scary stuff, but no matter how scary i try to make them, it always reads like a creepypasta ripoff, ive watched multiple videos explaining how to do it right, but it never works :(
I just wanna put my favorite characters in situations :'[
The longfic I haven't updated in 1.5 years? The outline for the remaining chapters is sitting beside my laptop dock, all written out and folded up neatly. I fully intend to actually finish it one day. But, well, I got burned out, both from the fandom and IRL. But I would love to actually finish it at some point! That point just isn't going to be soon...
i know i *said* id update that fic, but i cannot stand touching that fandom again.
I'm more than likely a *huge* perfectionist when it comes to writing. Even if it's a fantasy (or maybe soft sci-fi?), I feel like elements that aren't explicitly fantastic must *absolutely* be plausibly realistic. And even the not-so-realistic elements must be constructed in a way that I believe "makes sense".
Also, in my WIP material, I self-censor certain explicit or semi-explicit elements, often with different words/phrases in bracketed caps--such as [ACCESS DENIED], [DATA EXPUNGED], [REDACTED], etc. That part may have been taken from reading up various SCP files out of curiosity, except I tend to pick a different censor for each word I block out.
1. Comments/engagement don't fuel me at all. I write for me, I share because y'all might like it but if you don't, I'm still writing for me. Which is also why my stuff is gonna be weird even if it requires explanation or isn't the fanon.
2. The POV character of the majority of my uploads is actually one of my least favorite in the canon (and his usual fanon interpretation is _awful)._ I use him because he's situated in the middle of the canon relationships/events I like to explore.
Some of my best fanfics are just writing projects that I’ve written for school assignments, which may as well be forever lost.
I can’t actually sit down and write, partially because of a lack of motivation and partially because I’m still drafting ideas to this day.
Edit: Also, I have cool scene ideas…I just haven’t ever written it down.
I don’t write fanfic, but I do have a confession or two;
I have literally never outlined, and I’m not even entirely sure how to do it.
I almost lost motivation for writing after some, Fandom mates I should say, not really friends or strangers either, tried to do a fan team for a specific Sci Fi TV show spin off and they were so stingy and mean about us not treading ideas the show did or common troupes in shows like a ball. It wasn't bad starting out but once they started focusing more on their inserts and not a friends, my own and my partners ocs and heavily wanting us to write in script format which is hell, I started losing full interest in writing period due to the pressure and giving excuses that I was working on a chaptered fic that was eating up my time (I mean I was writing a chaptered fic but not for the fandom). I sat on Chapter 4 of that fic until a month ago where I finally finished it and posted it. I was so stressed that I was thankful that a whole ass downfall of that friend group happened, leading to them abandoning the project.
the one about reader engagement hit me in my soul lol. my GOD i get so much motivation from comments!! it's not like i can't write without engagement but it makes it so much easier when people have commented 😢 its kind of pathetic on my end ngl
10:38 Oh my gosh! I keep switching between which date to start with, past or present