BronxWench

Trust me, we have a great many obscure fandoms floating around in the archive.  
But point taken. So let’s stick with Misc TV Shows and just note the fandom in the summary somewhere.

Trust me, we have a great many obscure fandoms floating around in the archive.  
But point taken. So let’s stick with Misc TV Shows and just note the fandom in the summary somewhere.

Hi, all.
I’m a bit late to this, but I decided to add my thoughts.
I would generally have to agree with you on bringing “real life people” into a fictional story.  B is right out.  For “C,” I might bring a “personality trait” into the mix.  But while I’ve seen the trait or behavior in real life, neither you nor even the person themselves will realize that I “copied” the trait, and only that trait, from them.  There lies the way to lawsuits.
My “A” is only slightly more expansive than yours.  Since I’m using a real-life set of locations, I also need to be very careful with people holding real-life positions.  In fact, my disclaimer explicitly disclaims non-historic actions by historic or public figures.  I have one celebrity help the main protagonists in one story.  That celebrity’s actions were entirely consistent with how he would have behaved in real life under the same circumstances, and were entirely favorable without any potential slight.  That celebrity might be joined by one or two more under the exact same circumstances.  None of the “celebrities” know anything about the more “interesting” details of the protagonists’ lives. 
I’ve also named two different famous local politicians as “background” characters.  Their indirectly mentioned conduct is entirely consistent with the “non-criticized” portions of their publicly reported actions and behavior during the time-frames mentioned.  In the case of one of the politicians, I invented entirely fictitious additional members of their family who did not exist in real life.
I’ve also replaced scores of real-life people with entirely fictitious counterparts even when the behavior of the “replaced” persons appearing in my story were entirely honest, honorable, skillful, consistent with real-life, and beyond any reproach.  It’s just easier to do things that way then it is to try (and almost certainly fail) to describe an “almost famous” person I never met from forty years ago without getting sued.  I do “reference” the occasional real life villain here and there.  In those cases, their real-life villainy was well-known, as in front-page headlines, and followed up by felony convictions.  Any non-historical villainy they get up to is entirely consistent with their real-life behavior at the times and places where it takes place.
That will also hold true for my Harry Potter fanfiction.  Since I’m using a real time-frame for the stories, and since I’m using real-life locations, using historical people (gently) is nearly unavoidable, as well as using real-life positions filled with fictional replacements.
The most annoying “reference” I see in HP fanfiction, and I see it all the time, is using the first names of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson as the first names for Hermione Granger’s parents.  JKR never even named those two characters, much less had them appear directly; so I get that you have to call them something.  But using the names of the actors who play Harry and Hermione in the movies to (not so subtly) claim that Harry and Hermione were only right to date or marry each other is just too heavy-handed for me.  Plenty of great fanfiction authors do this in great stories.  Plenty of not so great fanfiction authors do this, too.  In the case where I had to give the Grangers names, I used the first names of the actors who played them in the movies, and there were actors who played the Granger parents to a sufficient degree that they had to be named and credited.  Ian Kelly and Michelle Fairley played the Grangers in Deathly Hallows Part One.  Tom Knight and Heather Bleasdale from CoS would also work.
Cheers!

I write for a very few fandoms myself, based on what interests me, but I do read outside those fandoms. There are just those few that I will not ever seek out when I have time to read for pleasure.
Of course, I also avoid certain tags, but that’s not the question here.

Good question!
I’m not a fan of anime in general, but I have to say, I avoid Naruto like the plague itself. I’m also deeply and profoundly disturbed by real person fiction as a whole, and I will never read it for enjoyment, much less write it.

I have no idea, honestly, since I don’t know the fandom.

Either way works. It’s mostly to alert potential readers at this point, but should the fandom ever wind up with a category of its own, it’ll be easier to spot your story and move it if you put the fandom name first, as in your first example.

I’m a dedicated pantser.  I do have an idea of the basic story, but characters tend to get away from time to time. 

For me, absolutely. I have certain characters I truly enjoy writing for, and a large part of the editing process for me is making sure I’m not giving other characters short shrift. 

It was all @DemonGoddess!

Okay, we should be good now. 🤞

The formatting is an issue on older stories after an upgrade.  Slowly been fixing my own.  How Severus Spends His Summer Hols is a great story!
 

The Edit Story Info option is not working at the moment. @manta2g is aware of the issue, and is working to resolve it as she has time. In the meantime, if you want to provide the missing tag information and updated description to me, I can actually edit that for you.

Honestly, I have no clue what’s going on. Hopefully @manta2g or @DemonGoddess can figure it out.

If this is a show you’ll write more stories for, I can always create a category for it. Otherwise, you might want to name the fandom in the summary field, jut so people are aware of it in advance.
 

I’m a dedicated pantser.  I do have an idea of the basic story, but characters tend to get away from time to time. 

I’m a dedicated depantser 🤪

For me, absolutely. I have certain characters I truly enjoy writing for, and a large part of the editing process for me is making sure I’m not giving other characters short shrift. 

Hi, Deadman and all.
Generally, you should use the name of a character to clarify identities where they might otherwise be confused.  Remember, unlike a [visual production of any kind,] your reader only has your writing to help them picture the scene.
As for how you address the character’s identity “outside of quotation marks,” you should generally stick to a single unambiguous name for the character in third-person perfect or unidentified third-person imperfect.  In identified third person imperfect or first person, your labeling of a particular character is that supplied by your “viewpoint” character.  As a rule, you must be consistent in third-person perfect, and you should be consistent in other tenses.  However, deliberate changes can indicate changes in opinion by the viewpoint character or observer.
Inside of quotation marks, the character themselves will govern how the particular character is identified or addressed.
Cheers!

I was thinking about this partly because of a story I was reading here. The story is basically 3 chapters featuring 3 characters. But I noticed that one of the characters had two chapters devoted to them. Whereas another character basically got a single chapter devoted to them. Which has me wondering exactly how much the author likes the character which got more story better. Or found them more interesting.

Similarly, I noticed that a story I’m writing has a longer chapter than the others. To some extent it’s because I really like the character and partly because I’m enjoying the story I’m telling.

Do you think the amount of time you spend on a character is a reflection of your interest in the character?
 

I’ve moved this post to a more appropriate thread.
Now to the question.
The first thing is to identify the best websites for your content. For example, certain sites have content restrictions. Here on AFF, our Terms of Service and Content Guidelines are pretty clear, and spell out what we do and don’t allow. But if a site doesn’t allow, for example, fiction based on actual persons or celebrities, posting a story about a real person or celebrity isn’t going to go over well.
Once you’ve figured out what site or sites best suit your content, you need to make sure your story is going to attract readers and hold their attention. If you are able to post a summary, make it catchy. Spend a bit of time reading book summaries and blurbs to see what the professionals do. PROOFREAD AND FORMAT your story. Nothing is a bigger turn-off than typos, misused words, missing punctuation, poor grammar (unless it’s required for a piece of dialogue), and walls of text. I’ve put down published books that I paid for, and refused to finish reading them because of poor editing. You might be posting something online for free, but I truly think you still need to polish your story.
Some sites, like AFF, have forums or community boards where you can promote your story. If that’s available, use it. Include the catchy blurb, story tags, and all the other things that might catch a reader’s attention. AFF does not support cover images in the archive, and we don’t allow images in the forum that are NSFW, but some sites do allow cover images. We use our forums to allow readers to engage with authors, while other sites let you reply to reviews directly.
That’s what comes to mind for now.

I think it largely depends on whether or not referring back to the one-shot chapter would be sufficient to bring readers up to speed. There’s also the question of new readers, who might not have read your Scooby Gang Time story. 

I definitely will on some level. I already technically did. I had the idea for the spin-off before I posted Chapter 10. So I added an author’s note mentioning it in the chapter itself.

But it’s good to know it wouldn’t technically violate the rules.

As I understand it, the one-shot is a single chapter in the multi-chapter Scooby Gang Time story. If that’s the case, I’m going to say that the site rules wouldn’t prohibit taking that single chapter and using it to start the spinoff story. I would just ask that you stick a little note somewhere, even as a footnote author’s note to the chapter, that this was originally a one-shot in Scooby Gang Time, and it took on a life of its own. You can add a link to the original story as well.
 

As I understand it, the one-shot is a single chapter in the multi-chapter Scooby Gang Time story. If that’s the case, I’m going to say that the site rules wouldn’t prohibit taking that single chapter and using it to start the spinoff story. I would just ask that you stick a little note somewhere, even as a footnote author’s note to the chapter, that this was originally a one-shot in Scooby Gang Time, and it took on a life of its own. You can add a link to the original story as well.