WarlordEnfilade

I don't like it when unrealistic things happen (deux ex machinas) to give a happy ending, or when characters have radical personality changes to explain why they did things that caused the happy ending. It's dishonest for the characters when the writer starts to pull strings to force a happy ending when the story doesn't go that way naturally. And it's frustrating for the reader to read a story only to have everything terrible happen at the end. Bittersweet can be the best, but it's also tricky to pull off. You need to have enough good happen to satisfy the reader, and enough bad happen to make the plot's outcome seem realistic, and it all has to fit naturally with the character's behaviours as a result of their personalities.

I average a thousand words a day, every day.

Thank you from me (and my readership) for rescuing me from the abyss of forgetfulness.

I hate Mary Sue because I've seen her too many times before. Mary Sue fanfics are quite simply, boring because we already know what's going to happen. We know this story. We probably had a version of it ourselves when we were four or five and just learning to tell stories. A super strong character with all the qualities we want to be, comes along out of nowhere and saves the day, and everyone likes her. This is great when you're a little kid with a power fantasy, but by the time you're grown up, this story is old. Hopefully by the time you've grown up, you're looking for a bit more complexity. People with flaws, who struggle and overcome--or don't. People with real problems that can't be easily solved. People who learn to shine within their limitations instead of magically eliminating them. People who feel real.

Hello, I tried to log in to post chapter 4 of my most recent story (pen name Fil, story Mercenary Hearts in the Halo section) and it seems I've forgotten my username as well as my password. I tried various names to retrieve my password - none of them worked. I then tried all my email addresses, and was told that none of them were valid. In my profile my email address is hidden, so I can't find out what to enter there. Help...I have the next chapter all ready to go! Thanks, Fil warlordenfilade@yahoo.ca

Imagine the scene from the point of view of one (or both) characters and describe what they are feeling, doing, and thinking. I don't throw in sex scenes just for the sake of having them. If I'm actually describing what happens instead of just having them disappear into the bedroom (or closet or what have you), then obviously what happens there is important. I've written sex scenes where characters tried something for the first time, scenes where something happened that changed their outlook or way of thinking for good or bad...(whether that be realizing their affection for their partner or realizing they don't like a certain kind of sex....), where the encounter advanced or destroyed their relationship. The point is, when the sex scene is over, something should have changed or progressed. Otherwise you've just written a gratuitous sex scene that isn't important to your story. So I keep in mind what I want to have happened by the time the scene is done--or, sometimes I throw two characters together and see what develops out of it.

I try to make sure that a title is both relevant to the plot and the fandom of the story, so that it hints at the content of the story. For example, many of my Halo stories have titles that use fencing terminology because they are about Sangheili Swordsmen. "Twin Blades" is a story about kindred spirits; "Cross Blades" is a story about two characters struggling with one another. My Gargoyles story about Vinnie, "Wagner's Vendetta", is deliberately similar to the Vinnie-centric episode "Vendettas." The idea is, by reading the title you should get an idea of the tone and theme of the story to want to read more. "In the Cold of Space, You Find the Heat of Suns" is a long title. It also makes me think more of a space-travelling fandom like Firefly than it does of Naruto, unless there's something I'm missing. I would hope that suns (and cold) are metaphors that are explained in this story, so that the title means something. I rather regret my Transformers story entitled "All Friends and Kingdom Come." If you know the song of the same name, the title makes sense, but the song is obscure and to those who don't know it, this title isn't doing anything to let my readers know what the story might be like. I feel that more people are choosing to skip this story rather than take the time to read it and decipher the title, and if I were writing it today, I'd call it something else. The sequel, "Darkness Visible," manages to combine both a literary allusion to Milton and Paradise Lost, and convey that the story itself is about a stealth fighter, and I like that title much better.

I don't mind flash fiction/microfiction. (500-1000 words). I think you can get a racy little tidbit that's fun to read in that short space. I do, however, think that one overarching collection with lots of little chapters is more appropriate than posting each one as a separate story. I'm less certain about twitterfiction. 140 characters is not a lot of space to convey a plot. Twitter is really better used to make updates on a person, and while a series of twitter updates could constitute a story, that wouldn't really be twitterfiction, it would be a story written in a form that mimics twitter. On the other hand, if someone wanted to write twitterfics, as long as they made one entry for all their twitterfics and didn't spam the board with each one as its own entry, I wouldn't mind their existence.

1. I establish my characters as *people* first. A rebellious warrior is not going to cry in his cheerios because the guy he likes (his commanding officer) isn't paying attention to him--he's going to go out and be a pain in his commander's ass to get attention any way he can! So, unless the character is effeminate and girly to begin with, they aren't going to suddenly "turn" that way because they like someone of the same gender. 2. I hate that "rape can make a straight guy gay" idea. Rape tends to squick me--I'm a dominant personality, and the utter degradation and violation of real rape makes it a very unappealing thought for me. I think the "rape" in these situations is often supposed to be a metaphor for the fact that the guy *likes* guys and doesn't want to admit his curiosity until the "rape" proves it to him. Instead of using rape, I prefer to go a seduction route, so that by the time the two characters are about to have sex, the reluctant one wants it too much to care about his reservations until after it's done. And, usually, I don't have those reservations being that the character is "straight" or thinks he is. I've used being a recent widower, being an ascetic priest, and having relationship problems as reasons for reservations that are much more plausibly overcome than being straight.

I don't think you should have to apologize for your stories if they are posted in the proper place for the proper audience with the proper disclaimers. Adultfanfiction.net is the proper place for something that kinky. Now, if you're shoving it in the face of someone uninterested (or underage) or posting it in a public forum like fanfiction.net or not disclaiming it properly so those who are squicked can avoid it, THEN you should be apologizing. The only thing I ever worry about is if I have cleaned up my stories' content enough to make them appropriate for fanfiction.net's M rating, or whether I've censored them too much and lost important parts. I have one upcoming that I swear I will never be able to post on fanfiction.net, or if I do, I'll have to stop it halfway through over there.

Nobody seems to have been bothered that my Halo story "Cross Blades" was 9 chapters of unresolved sexual tension, two chapters of sex, three chapters of relationship problems AND military problems, another chapter with sex, and six chapters of trying to get out of a situation alive, preferably with the relationship intact. In fact, it's gotten the most, and the best, reviews of all my stories. So I say yeah, go for the epic. Mine's at home here, yours should be too

Are you getting paid to write fanfic? (Since if the answer is yes, it's probably illegal, I"m going to assume the answer is no....) If fanfic is not a paying job, then paying jobs (or school) come first. And family life and your own health does too. Fanfic is one more entertainment for fanfic writers, and if it stops being fun, there's no point in continuing. (I do find it unprofessional when people start a ton of stories they never finish, but there's a difference between that and simply losing interest in a storyline, or needing a break for RL reasons. We're not professional authors in our capacity as fanfic writers, so we ought not be held to professional standards here, and any readers who try to hold us to professional standards are being unfair.) I didn't start posting any fics here until I had the first draft done, though, so I don't have to worry about not finishing my stories.

My husband's favourite rant is: "How come none of your fantasy guys are even human?! What do you like about ME then?"

When you're writing, you have to look at things in the story the way your character would. Unless a character has the exact same personality as you, they're not going to react to things the way you would in real life...so you have to pretend to be them, given what you know or have invented about their past, personality, goals, hopes, fears, etc. in order to understand how they would react to a situation.

Why are you trying to write a story about these two? If you don't see how they could get together, why are you making yourself write this pair instead of something more plausible to you? I'm writing a story now where two characters think they hate each other, but in the case of one, he's very emotionally repressed so his emotions confuse him and make him cranky, which he takes out on the second character. The second character thinks the first guy is mean, but is starved for attention so he will go out of his way to annoy the first guy to get attention. As a result, even as they make each other crazy they are spending a lot of time together and lonely with out each other. Add some life or death drama to make them be honest with themselves as well as each other...and ten chapters later they're in bed. I didn't want the story to be that long, but it took that long to show how they went from hating each other to wanting each other without having them break character. And, ten chapters in, they're in bed, but they still haven't figured out they're in love yet. It's gonna take me another ten chapters to evolve "one night stand" into "relationship." ** I would suggest giving Owen and Gwen something in common, so they have a reason to keep talking to each other.

That depends. Are you writing a collection of vignettes about sex (PWP, or short plots focusing around sex) or are you writing a longer story/plot that happens to include sex? I don't think there's much point in throwing in sex scenes for the sake of having sex scenes. By all means have sex scenes if they are essential to the plot, or to explore the relationship between the characters. It is going to depend on the story how much sex is required....I wrote one 9-chapter fic that culminated in sex in chapter 8, another longer fic that's having several chapters about sex because the characters have certain issues that they're working through and not much experience, and i needed to give them space to do it in without making it seemed rushed or unrealistic. Conversely, if you want to just have sex for sex's sake, a oneshot is a better way of doing it.

Put it this way...if you try several different Betas and they keep sending your story back saying "I can't think of anything that needs fixing," then you probably can post a decent fic without a Beta, as long as you proofread it yourself.

To me it's usually not the word itself, but the context in which it is used. If the scene is from the point of view of someone who is a rough, crude person, the sex should be described using rough, crude terms. If the scene is from the point of view of someone who is, for example, a doctor or anatomy nerd, then clinical language would make sense because the character would think that way naturally. If the character is an overwrought, massive consumer of torrid romance, then this person would interpret the sex using over the top terms like love rod. This works for third person as well as first person. I think the impaling metaphor makes sense for someone who is a swordsman (I've got one of these in a fic) but anyone who doesn't stick weapons into people for a living might want to have a more suitable metaphor. Overall, though, I think over the top descriptions make me laugh. And I do hate "cum" as opposed to "come."

A sex scene should be as long as it needs to be. I wrote one story where the, er, climax was about two characters finally giving in and having sex. It only took them about a page to actually have sex, but it took several chapters for them to get around to deciding they were ready to do so, and several more to find the appropriate opportunity. I'm in the middle of another story now that's seriously got 3 chapters solid of sex and petting. These two are pretty much going wild experimenting with a bunch of things they've never done before. Since the whole story is about the both of them having new experiences, it makes sense that with a few days alone, they're going to learn some new tricks, and since what they do advances the emotional/relationship side of the plot, it's not like I'm just adding different kinds of sex just for the sake of sex...I actually found I /needed/ to in order to cover the emotional ground. Trim out fat--trim out anything that's not advancing the story--but sometimes you just realize that you need a lot of space to tell the story you want to tell. And sometimes you don't.

When I'm reading a story and the author has thrown in strong language out of nowhere when it doesn't suit the characters. I mean, if you've got a story about a mercenary and a hooker, and they're using lots of words like pussy and jizz, that's fine. They would think in those kind of terms naturally so it makes sense. But if your character has up until now been described as a good girl, who wouldn't think or use that kind of language, it doesn't make sense to put it in the sex scene because it breaks character. A virgin princess, who's been innocent and sweet the whole story, is not going to suddenly turn into a whore in bed. I see a lot of stories where previously "good-girl" and "good-boy" characters suddenly start being described in strong language, and the fic ISN'T about them exploring the "bad" sides of themselves (where talking dirty would make sense). The language has to fit the characters. *** I also don't like fics involving sex with children (I can deal with teenagers, but not little kids) and it's very rare that I enjoy rape fics. I think there's a difference between non-con where the character finds him/herself reluctantly enjoying it and giving in, and brutal rape where they're fighting and screaming all the way--and even then, it takes a deft touch for me to actually enjoy non-con.

I think you have to look at the sex scene from the character's point of view. You could take, for example, plain ol' missionary sex. Now imagine the character on the bottom is: - a virgin - cheating on her partner (why? Does she feel guilty? Happy? Both?) - someone very experienced doing it with someone who is a virgin, ie, teaching him how - someone very experienced who is bored by it - finally getting with someone she's wanted a long time - feeling coerced into doing it - tied up All of these different people are going to have very different experiences from the same sexual act. If you can actually get into your character's point of view and describe it as it feels to THEM...you can write the same actual act over and over and have it come out different every time.

Research: What to do when your first hand experience isn't enough. You can't know what it's like to be another gender, another race, another religion....but you CAN talk to and read about people who ARE, and learn that way. So if you want to write a BDSM story, and aren't involved that sort of thing yourself in real life, I suggest you read about it...particularly from people who you know are involved in that sort of thing. That way you'll avoid unrealistic silliness and be able to write a story that feels genuine, even if you don't have first hand experience.