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Like with search, anything that could be used as part of an injection attack was stripped. I know it’s a bit of an annoyance, but for now please bear with the quirks as I work through the code to re-enable stuff without further risks. The big priority was to just to be able to safely come out of read-only mode.

Simply put, my character X is fit-healthy—she kickboxes weekly, runs with her dogs daily, and has a regular routine—and she’s getting dragged to another world to be made into a badass for plot-identifying purposes. Part of that process will include possibly learning to harness some abilities imparted by a guardian spirit piggybacking on her like she’s the neighbor’s wi-fi. X will be trained by people of a much stronger species and there aren’t any shortcuts. How many days would be reasonable to allow for building X from fit to badass? I’m leaning toward between 400 and 600, but considering I’m comfortably chunky and too old and decrepit to care, it’s like a vegan offering opinions on steakhouses. We also have to keep in mind that the world keeps spinning while she’s gone; too long, and she’s likely to come back and find her bank account empty and all her shit on the auction block. …anyone got any advice?

Oh for sure, being inspired by a story to write your own isn’t necessarily plagiarism. For instance, the story I refer to that I wrote inspired by another involved a character having amnesia but the story was AU from main canon. So I wrote a story where that same character got amnesia but intergrated canon.

Hi, Ghost-of-a-Chance and all. My advice would be to make sure that whatever you do to train “X” makes sense in the world of your story, and that you explain it in a way that doesn’t bore the reader. “X” is being transported to another world, and being given “mystical powers” by a guardian spirit. So, you’ve already kissed reality goodbye. You’re also implying that “X” is going to have physical strength beyond what is realistically possible for most human women under any “reality-realistic” circumstances. Your “400 to 600” sounds like a number of days, so a period of between one and two years for “alien technology and training” or “exotic and forgotten non-Western cultural practices” to make “X” super-powerful can be explained. Use more than one sentence, less than one book, and make it interesting enough that the reader is willing to continue suspending their disbelief. Simple enough to say, but it’s a bitch to actually do; I know. But I’m sure you can do it. Good luck.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I have been inspired by a number of the stories on the site to add some stuff to stories I’ve written. Things I’ve seen on stories where characters are doing stuff to each other give me the idea to do something in my own. Not necessarily just for the site itself but also in the context of the site. There are a few where I actually kinda want to write a new chapter cause the story hasn’t updated in forever but I know, having gone through the site and forum about the whole “adopt a story” part that this isn’t something I can do. I’ve also discussed this with other fanfic writers elsewhere and many people seem to have been inspired by other stuff they read. My first story from many years ago that isn’t on this site was inspired by a fanfic that I read which made me a fan of the pairing.

My first fanfic, the one that got me hooked on writing, isn’t coming to AFF because it was inspired by another fanfiction. My head was full of ideas of where it ought to go—thankfully I didn’t message that author with where their story ought to go. I began to sketch things out, immediately wrestled the narrative into my own story, and I’ve not stopped. Like any other fanfiction, I credited the original (and that other fanfic) for inspiration, cobbled together some badly written prose, kept their names for Mr. & Mrs. Granger, kept the name for what might’ve been a Mary Sue muggle that Harry spent his entire fifth year Christmas Holiday...snogging. It’s sequel is the one I’m still working on, and that’s so different that it’s definitely mine. (Outside of the name for Harry’s GF.)

For me, inspiration comes from the strangest of places, and that can indeed include something I’ve read. The key, though, is the definition of plagiarism. The Grammarly blog has a good post about plagiarism: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/types-of-plagiarism/ The thing to keep in mind is that there are common tropes shared by many stories and novels, and certain genres of writing tend to follow a very similar pattern (such as mysteries, or horror fiction). So, just deciding that you really liked that pairing, and want to write something yourself in that fandom for that pairing doesn’t constitute plagiarism. If you put that pairing in the exact same scenario, with the same events, then you’re crossing the line.

My question would be what sort of weaponry X is being trained to use along with the special abilities. If the guardian spirit is piggybacking on X, then learning the cues from the spirit isn’t going to take as long as learning how to fight with a bladed weapon with reasonable proficiency. Learning to use a projectile weapon is faster since it doesn’t require building both skill and muscle memory. As far as physical conditioning, if the training is daily and intense, X might make it to badass in under 300 days given X is starting out as fit and healthy. Kickboxing and daily runs implies a seriously good foundation to build on.

Or make the training/fight itself a seven book series… (cough, cough… JKR) More seriously, some episodes to the training might be realistic, portray an evolution from that elliptical wanna-be of the local fitness gym to the badass you want them to be. Some mishaps along the way? Is their life at a complete standstill? Perhaps take something like… early on, being unable to open the pickle jar at the family reunion, to smashing the glass to shards toward the completion of their bad-ass training?

Tagging @manta2g on this, since it’s code-related.

No problem, George. When I haven’t been editing my own stuff today, I’ve been taking peeks at Depravity Falls; where “Pine” describes both the name and the shape of the family tree. 😄 Cheers!