Leaderboard

The reason fan-fiction makes such a great writing exercise for many is that the characters are already done up for you. You know the characters, you know the world, you know the possibilities of both so all you have to do is come up with an interesting arrangement of events.. It’s good practice for when you start doing original works with original characters because believe it or not, once you’ve defined a character you’ll have just as much of a constraint as if you were writing with someone else’s character. that is, there is a limited set of actions that will ‘feel’ right for any character. Embrace the box. It’s a common thing , even among pro authors to simply have a character be whatever they need the character to be to make a scene work and this can create some narrative dissonan ce. Have you ever seen a story where a character just does something that doesn’t fit well with how they’ve been characterized Or their actuions over the course of the book don’t seem to flow from one to the other in any logical pattern? Yeah That’s what hapopenbs when a character is bent to fit the story. The reall question is. How many OC’s do you need to add to tell an interesting story? Or to quote a piece of whriting advice. Try to tell the story with as few characters as possible,

A simple challenge to those of you have written a few stories here… Go back to the first fan-fic you submitted here. Read it. Now assuming you haven’t gouged out your own eyes, re-write/re-edit it. Then compare the two. I recently did this m’self and it was.. eye opening. to say the least. ‘IT BURNS USSS!!!’ is the only phrase that does the experience of rereading my old fan-fic any justice. It also showed me in a very palpable way how much I’ve progressed in writing. Try it and see what happens.

I challenged myself by centering my second one around Christmas…

And thank you for being this year’s host!

Awesome! I was waiting to see what you were working on!

Man oh man. My first fan fic was written… in like the year 1998-1999. I don’t remember what it was. I imagine it was on pen and paper and about the show Breaker High with a lot of pregnancies happening. Most likely in script format. I think the oldest one I submitted on this site in particular – is probably Crossfire. I’ve always kinda wanted to go back and touch it up, because it is the pride and joy of my fanfiction era fics, and it is completed. I probably won’t, but I like to think about it. Maybe I should take this challenge on one of the easy ones. Like a oneshot or something. Does going the easy route defeat the purpose of it being a challenge?

So, I only made it to RenFair once this year, on the last bloody day, but it was wonderful!

Due to a small mishap, all my stories here got deleted, and so I’m in the process of reposting them. The very first fan fiction I posted here is undergoing edits. Much-needed, sweeping edits, because I can’t possibly repost it without fixing the mistakes first.

You know I just thought of one rather stinging case of where characters get bent out to push the writer’s agenda. Remember when Iceman turned gay?

I’m glad you asked. It does not have to be directly related to Halloween. I suspect most entries won’t be, or at least they’ll be fairly mixed like they were last year. As long as it’s dark or scary, you’re good to go. My entry isn’t directly connected to Halloween either. It’s in the 17th century lol. Just pirates and ghosty things. Go wherever your twisted imagination takes you.

Yeah, I’ve seen too many pro writers who make a well-done character go so far off the rail for clearly meta reasons in books, TV, and games and they thought bending the char is less important than forcing the scene or plot. That happens in fanfic as well, but I see that as less embarrassing, though still bad. I can be open to redeemed villains if they have to work at it, and tarnished heroes if they break, but the changes from canon need to be rooted in some one or multiple hints in the canon. Most annoying to me are the ones who take things far darker without any convincing reasons for the character change beyond bending the character. Because the writer hates that box. I think if you hate the box, why use that character at all? OCs are better than bending the character and rejecting the box. Characters are made up of voluntary and involuntary boxes. We can tweak or grow out of our self-made boxes, but it just doesn’t happen by magic. (even in worlds with magic, there is the spell or curse that forces a change. The better writers figure a way to adjust the box without rejecting the entire box. [BTW i really like this box metaphor, because it handles OOCness well] -- about the number of OCs for the story, that is tricky. If there is no existing character to take the story role the writer needs, I don’t see any problem. But I think OCs should be a minority percent of the cast. People read fanfic for new adventures of characters they love. I know I tend to drop from stories where majority OCs carry the story. I started writing from canons of CRPG, so the lead was almost always an OC which colorizes the story told. I find the bigger reason for limiting the number of characters is that the story will grow almost virally. To make interesting characters or get canon ones to be more than tropes, you have to develop them and give them goals and some small arc. That takes a lot of time when you pass a dozen major characters, that’s how my simple Cthulu coming to attack a high fantasy city exploded to become 300k words and I nearly had an ilcer trying to wrangle it to a conclusion. My current crack derived idea is heading for 200k, (8 POV chars 2 of those OC… 21 major chars, and 5 of those are OC) All those subplots end up detracting from your main story thread. Slices of life are good, but a good story needs a good and meaningful conclusion. Your cast is a bigger box to treasure.

Hmm… question to the party here, as this is a Halloween themed anthology, are we expected to write something that correlates somewhat directly to the holiday itself? Or can we expand a bit from there, as long as it’s got darker/scary/horror like themes that one can come to expect at Halloween? Was thinking of writing a short second world fantasy story.

You have nooo idea how much I love this answer.

I’m in! Title: Apprentice Summary: Three sisters on their way to a ball must travel through the pine woods. What could go wrong? Warnings: Hum, MCD, MF, Oral

For crimaneau’s comments on An Incredible Valentine: Aw, thanks! I’ve mentioned before that I try very hard to reproduce the voices of the characters in my stories...I want to be able to hear the lines in their voices. And it sounds like I succeeded in this instance. As for commissions, AFF has a very strict policy about not hosting any commissioned work or really even talking about doing commissioned work on their site. (And with good reason! Can’t be too careful. ) So I can’t really address that here. On an unrelated topic, as a general FYI, I’ve updated my profile page with my tumblr info and a few other things.

Okay. I did it: If someone else was hoping to do it, or if I did it wrong, let me know and we can work it out.

Finally made some decent headway on chapter 3 of “The More, the Merrier” tonight. I realized what I need to do in order to make this thing writable: paste the chapter outline into the chapter itself and use each line of the outline like a header so that I know what’s supposed to happen in that part of the chapter and whose perspective to use. This has made the writing WAY easier. Also making solid progress on the next chapters of “Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl” and “Country Summer.” SWP1, I appreciate your suggestion about “Dil-Drones,” but I’ve got an awful lot of other things I want to get done.

Herb Spice’s scores for Suzi don’t count. Conflict of interest.

“Multiversity” is now complete! I have just posted chapter 11. I have also posted some author notes in the review response thread for the story. Exhausted now. More news later.

Had a bit of an off week last week in terms of writing, but tonight I was feeling seriously inspired. I wrote a decent chunk of the final chapter of “Multiversity” – in fact, it’s pretty close to being ready for beta – then got a big shot of inspiration regarding “Auntie’s Home” and wrote a whole lot. That chapter was about 10% finished before; it’s about 60% finished now. GSWP1, to answer your questions: Regarding “Little Rose”: Because of my haphazard way of writing, I have quite a lot of bits of text written for future chapters, but this next chapter still needs a fair amount of work. The next chapter of TMTM is only about 20% done. But I’m hoping that inspiration will strike soon. Ginger will appear early in the next chapter. At the very least, we’ll see what Dr. Hirano has bought for Ginger to wear to “yoga class.”

Dropping in after a bit of an absence. Nothing wrong, just been busy. Lately, I’ve mostly been working on the final chapters of “Multiversity” and “The Miss Cutie Patootie Pageant.” No particular reason except that that’s what I’ve been inspired to do. And just in case anyone is wondering how much of a compulsive weirdo I am, I’m actually making a chart with all of the pageant contestants’ scores from each event so I can figure out who came in first, second, and third. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing with my life.

Glad you liked it. Most of that stuff I planned in advance, but the idea for Balthazar’s monologue just came to me as I was starting to write the scene. I liked the idea of including some stream-of-consciousness erotic narrative, especially within the limitations of a boy who’s only eleven and who is trying to talk while getting blown in front of a stranger (the mayor, no less). That was a lot of fun to write, and it’s part of why the chapter ended up being as long as it is.

Chapter 2 of “Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl” is posted! In this flashback chapter, we find out how Mia’s unusual sex life got started. Thanks! There are times when I want the guy to have self-control, but I feel like it would be boring (and not terribly realistic) if that were the case ALL the time. So sometimes I just want him to go crazy and give the girl everything he’s got.

Aaaaand chapter 3 of “Little Rose” is posted. SWP1, no worries.

I don’t have any control over when my betas will get back to me with their critiques. They are doing this out of the kindness of their heart (ie, they rarely ask for me to do something for them in return), so I wouldn’t feel right about pressuring them. But I do plan to post chapter 3 of “Little Rose” some time tonight.

Well, neither chapter has returned from beta yet, but in the meantime, I’ve made a bit of progress on the next chapters of “Auntie’s Home” and “The Little Miss Cutie Patootie Pageant” and major progress on chapter 2 of “Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl.” This chapter is a flashback to Mia’s teenage years, when she experienced her “second puberty” and the sharp spike in libido that came with it. It’s been hard limiting myself to one chapter’s worth of material, but I really want to get back to present time in the third chapter, so I’m sticking to the porny essentials.

My parents’ memorial service went splendidly. Lots of us got to tell stories about them, and everyone in attendance seemed glad to hear it. Now, 2 quick updates: --Chapter 2 of “The More, the Merrier” should be back from beta any time now. --Chapter 10 of “Multiversity” went off to beta this morning. Thus, one way or the other, I’ll have something posted soon.

Hey there. Personally, I’m glad that summer is getting closer to its end, mainly because it’s hot as blazes where I live. Some days, going outside is like going to a crawfish boil – where you’re the crawfish. I hope it’s more comfortable where you are. As for the stories you asked about, progress may slow down for a bit because I’m now in charge of putting together the program for my parents’ memorial service. But that shouldn’t take too long. Anyway, here’s a quick update: Chapter 2 of “The More, the Merrier” is still in beta. I hope to have it back and posted some time in the next week. Chapter 3 of “Little Rose” is off to a good start, but there’s work to be done. Chapter 10 of “Multiversity” is coming along nicely; I'd say it's about three-quarters complete. It's going to be a bit longer than chapter 9. The 6th and final chapter of “The Miss Cutie Patootie Pageant” still has a ways to go. But I’ve got a solid outline of it in my head, and I’m writing bits of the text as they come to me. (This is the way a lot of my writing goes – scenes are written not in the order they happen, but in the order in which each one becomes clear enough in my head to be put into words.)