Noumena

I use the generators as a starting point because my mind doesn’t work well with blank sheets of paper, and the amount of time I fuss over it depends on the size of the character’s role.  If I’m filling out a family tree, next to none.  But if the character appears in the story with any appreciable role, I do spend time on them.   The generators I deal with typically give lists, so it might be 50 names, and I’ll scan the list to see if any of them works, if not, I hit the “refresh” button.  For characters with significant story time, I do try to make sure that the names are phonetically different, where possible, because names can mash together to the reader if you’ve got lots of “Jaimie” and “Jaden” and “Joe” and “Joey” and “Josephine” and “Jarred” and “Jefferey” and “Julian”, etc….
I know some people might dis on random generators, but to me, those are just suggestions, not like I’m saying “the next roll of the dice is...”, because it is my character I’m creating.   And, as I work with characters, writing them, I’ll frequently change them anyway, adapting them to the circumstances, and how they write out on the story.  (As I’m building a world, my DB is a couple of thousand characters, some more thoughtfully considered than others.)

Some erotic fanfiction is used to create insane crack pairings, other erotic fanfiction is used to fulfill the sexual tension that obviously exists but the original show can never do anything about. Sometimes it’s about an actual canonical pairing and we just want to see them have sex rather than infer it from the fade-to-black. Lots of anime shows are practically sex farces but without any actual sex, and we are just dying for the hapless guy to go to bed with all the girls that are always fighting over him.
In short, it matters a whole lot what show you are doing, what character pairing(s), and what your motivation for that is.

Good luck with that. I don’t have access to Word. I will note that repagination when you have autosaves in LibreOffice tends to slow or gum things up when your file gets bigger than 50k words. Inserted art hurts too. I turn off autospellcheck while I’m working on my draft and slow saves to 10 minutes and it stopped crashing. Repagination and spelling take too many resources I think. I turn spelling back on for editing.

Yeah, so everyone pretty much covered everything about how much a review means to authors so I’ll just second that.
It takes courage to put your words out there, and even after all this time, I still apologize for every chapter I post. Like just the fact that it’s out there is a crime and I’m sorry someone wasted their time reading it which means it’s always surprising when someone takes the time to actually review.
But one thing on negative reviews, even the – this sucks variety. It’s taken me a long time to realize that no matter how hard you try, no story will be universally loved by all, so you have to have thick skin and be able to take the bad with the good if you are going to take that step and let other people read your story. I’m not saying that the people who leave those sorts of reviews aren’t Shitgibbons (that’s the term we’re using now, right?) just that they have an opinion and are free to express it. The nice thing about AFF is you can always rant in a reply thread in response to those sorts of things which I’ve heard is frowned upon when it’s done by published authors.
At the end of the day, you either decide that you are writing for reviews (in which case you are going to end up disappointed in most cases) or you’re writing because it’s something you enjoy doing even without people singing your praises. That being said, I love reviews just like anyone else because I’m a writer and nothing makes a writer’s day like hearing that someone likes their story.
CL

I do believe one of our moderators was having the same issue. I use Chrome, and haven’t had that issue, so far. But she solved it by typing the word twice in quick succession: watchwatch. One would disappear, leaving her with watch.

Yes! Yes! It happens to me!
*throws a comradely arm around Noumena*
Come with me, friend! We shall be the founding members of the “Watch Out” forum group.You’re quite safe with me, I promise… ignore what I said on the other topic. Really…
More seriously, I am guessing that some odd entry in a table somewhere that describes our profile is slightly corrupted. The solution works. I haven’t noticed any other words doing this, and I’ve had this trouble for months. It’s not worth the hassle of finding the bug out. We’re obviously special, lol.
ETA: You will also find it happens in PMs and status updates.

Yep. Welcome to fanfiction *g*
It’s as natural as breathing. Really. Someone who has been through shit with you is an even more eligible candidate. Harsh situations create bonding.
The same way it happens in life. Have you ever had a workplace romance? If you haven’t, were you ever tempted? What about friends… have you ever just got it together with a friend to see what would happen? Did you carry it on into a FWB situation? Sorry – I know these are personal questions, I don’t expect you to answer them except to yourself.
The point is, do you ever look back on some affair or other and wonder what possessed you? Regardles of whether alcohol was involved, the answer is almost always proximity – that’s what possessed you. If you leave two people alone together for long enough… it’s inevitable. The same is true of characters. They’re people, just like us. And especially with friends, if you tend to be quite tactile with them, sometimes sex doesn’t have lots of rings around it and warning bells, it just happens.
 

That technique works for me too, and it is such a clever solution. It’s like using the problem against itself. It may take more of that clever thinking to imagine an explanation for this issue.
It’s good to know that this isn’t happening only to me, and at least now I can type watch, even if it is a bit awkward.

This is exactly why erotic fan fiction is so exciting and generic porn is so boring. Generic porn excludes everything that makes sex interesting by using flat and undeveloped characters, while erotic fan fiction exploits characters that you already know to create fascinating sexual situations. If we can just stay true to the characters in our fanfics then we’ve already won because any sex they have will automatically be interesting. It is sex between characters that we know, so it can’t fail to be interesting.
The hard part is finding a good excuse to make the sex happen. Sometimes you can spend hours studying canon looking for an opening. If two characters have never shown a hint of attraction for each other, then convincing yourself that your fanfic about them having sex is true to their characters can be challenging. It can be especially disheartening when you see a particularly somber episode and start to wonder if the characters having sex would be disrespectful to all that they have been through together. Is flirting even an option with someone who has fought hard-won battles at your side? How does someone transition from a long-time companion into a sexual partner?  

That technique works for me too, and it is such a clever solution. It’s like using the problem against itself. It may take more of that clever thinking to imagine an explanation for this issue.
It’s good to know that this isn’t happening only to me, and at least now I can type watch, even if it is a bit awkward.

This is exactly why erotic fan fiction is so exciting and generic porn is so boring. Generic porn excludes everything that makes sex interesting by using flat and undeveloped characters, while erotic fan fiction exploits characters that you already know to create fascinating sexual situations. If we can just stay true to the characters in our fanfics then we’ve already won because any sex they have will automatically be interesting. It is sex between characters that we know, so it can’t fail to be interesting.
The hard part is finding a good excuse to make the sex happen. Sometimes you can spend hours studying canon looking for an opening. If two characters have never shown a hint of attraction for each other, then convincing yourself that your fanfic about them having sex is true to their characters can be challenging. It can be especially disheartening when you see a particularly somber episode and start to wonder if the characters having sex would be disrespectful to all that they have been through together. Is flirting even an option with someone who has fought hard-won battles at your side? How does someone transition from a long-time companion into a sexual partner?  

My bad—I misunderstood.
The up side to writing erotica about characters who are never portrayed in sexual situations is that you have a lot of latitude. Bossy characters might also be bossy in bed—or the bedroom might be the one place where they’d rather relax and let their partner take control. The dark, gloomy character might secretly be a romantic. You just have to find a rationale for the character to behave the way you think they should.

I didn’t mean to say that at all. Quite the contrary, I think making the characters believable is the only serious challenge of writing a erotic fanfic. Writing an erotic fanfic is easier in other ways, but characterization is one area where being erotic does not help and so it is foremost in my mind. I am binge watching to try to find a good way to get the characters to do the things I want them to do, and it is all because it is so important to be faithful to the characters.
In an ordinary fanfic you’re putting the characters through an adventure, and that invites direct comparison with the source material. It raises the question: if my fanfic were an episode of the show, would it be one of the better episodes, or one of the worse episodes? For an ordinary fanfic that is a huge challenge to overcome on top of making the characters believable. For an erotic fanfic there is no comparison with the source material because your fanfic could never be an episode of the show. Instead of trying to do what the show does and replicate what makes the show great, we’re trying to do something the show could never do and so we don’t have to try to replicate any greatness. We still have the challenge of bringing the characters to life, but that seems tame by comparison.
There are other ways to make fanfic writing easier. Instead of writing an erotic adventure for characters of a show or movie that you like, you could write a fanfic for a video game. Even excellent video games are traditionally quite weak in their stories, so even if you don’t have any great ideas for your fanfic’s story you can still often improve upon the source material. A long time ago I once wrote a fanfic for a card game; the game had practically no story at all so it had to be mostly my own ideas, but I knew that no matter how mediocre my ideas might be they were still going to be worth writing because they were a better story than the game had to offer.

Oh, I agree, reviews are wonderful!
When I stop to think about it, I enjoy the process of writing so much and so often that reviews reassure me I’m not being merely self-indulgent. Even though, truth be told, I’d be quite happy to be self-indulgent. But when someone wants to know what happens next, or discusses the story with others, it’s a great feeling.
But, I think I’ve said before my favourite reviews are those where I get to see the reader’s reaction, and they tell me how reading made them feel. Maybe it’s silly, but especially the darker fiction I’ve written seems to have a life of its own away from my keyboard. I’ve had reviews (and private emails) for some of my work that make me realise I’ve left an impression on someone forever, and that feels better than good. It feels like the creative process really worked in that instance, for that one person, and it’s bigger than me. Those reviews aren’t left for me, they’re left for the story.
If I ever made you frightened, or made you cry. If I broke your heart, or healed it. If I made you laugh, or even take yourself off in private… these are things that have no price. They mean that my stories will probably outlive me, obscure as they are. What happened once will happen again and again. I couldn’t ask for more than that.
In these times, creative writing seems more important than ever, especially in a community like this one, where it isn’t done for monetary gain. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting on, but more and more people seem to delight in showing others how ugly their soul is these days. Everyone seems determined not to care about anything or anyone. I don’t need to point at those people. You all know who they are. Even the darkest things you write are never ugly. They might be frightening, monstrous, brutal, violent and painful, but they aren’t ugly like that. They are all part of the same thing, after all. If you can make someone feel something, anything, you’re a success. No matter how many (or how few) reviews you recieve.
Like others have said, I’m quite introverted too. I don’t know if that means anything. Certainly, it makes us more inclined to reflection, and I think that is quite important if you want to write well.

First, as a writer and prospective published author (hopefully), the first and foremost reason why reviews matter, why any feedback matters, is a simple one.  By receiving feedback from people, it allows a writer (hereafter, I will refer to myself) to improve my writing.  Hearing what has been done good, well, best, or excellently allows me to go back through former chapters, whether posted or unposted, and note the points that were liked.  Hearing what has been done badly, or that someone doesn’t like permits me to go through and note those parts and make changes through the prose and/or character development (if I feel the character development benefits from such changes).    By extent, in doing that, it also allows me to advance through the writing for later chapters.  For example, Pippychick, in a review, made a suggestion and point.  I have consequently gone back through many of the chapters I have already done and reworked them through her suggestion.  Some things work, some things not so much, but this is still advancement.   For me, in an original fandom, this is doubly important.  Creating a world, a new world, whether it be based in reality, or science fiction, or fantasy is hard and feedback allows the author know how well they have established that world.  The feedback can help the author create that world more realistically and tangible to them.  The author can, thus, work to create a better experience.   Second, also as a writer, a review lifts spirits and feeds the artistic muse.  I have known a few people, and myself, who have been down in the motivation and inspiration reserves.  The will and want to write are drained, the ideas stop coming, and you feel like your attempts to create a world that can be enjoyed are all for nought.  Then, from the blackness of endless self doubt, a review pops up.  Even something as simple as ‘This is great’ or ‘I like this’ can be enough to improve the mood of someone who is in such a slump.  I have seen it happen.  Those words, simple enough, mean a world to an author.    Even if someone does not like the tale, as long as there is a valid criticism, I do not mind hearing it.  I do not know about anyone else on here, but, if someone does not like it, then an explanation of what you did not like.  I cannot speak for anyone else, but constructive criticism helps.  If the characters seem bland or the setting is not working or the plot seems too convoluted, a comment that says: “While I enjoyed the setting, the characters interactions seemed a little too stiff and robotic.  If I may make a suggestion, I noticed that the conversation, for instance, seemed more so.  (Offer a suggestion; perhaps it’s wording, perhaps its the prose and the tags behind it...)”  Like I said, I cannot speak for everyone....  As always, an author has to take reviews and concrit with some grains of salt included...  Some, apparently, with some truckloads.   Thirdly, and this is a personal one for me.  I cannot begin to doubt that there are not more people out there who are the same, but...   It took a lot for me to come on here.  You can ask my beta that and I’m sure CloverReef will tell you it took a MASSIVE amount of convincing to get me here.  I don’t show my work off to people.  My writing was a closely guarded secret.  Despite what I’m sure some people have seen on here, I am extremely introverted in reality and the idea of doing anything, even making this post, is enough to set off all kinds of anxiety coursing through the veins.  Indeed, it took a while before I even allowed her to read one of mine because I was terrified of the idea that someone else would read that.  Receiving a review, while met with angst and apprehension, shows that there is an appreciation (not just for my own, but for others’ as well) for those who have written out and taken their time to entertain without pay.  A lighthouse amidst a torrent sea; a ray of light in the darkness of night.   This being said, receiving concrit is not the same as being a complete fucking asshole.  I’m sure everyone here can think of something to say that does not include the words ‘This sucks’ or ‘Get a life’ or anything else that is merely intended to be insulting.  I will never understand why people feel the need to troll and otherwise being a complete fucking asshole to people.  IF you absolutely hate something to the point you have nothing to say, then please, don’t, people.  Doing that only serves to discourage and otherwise hurt and, if my understanding is right, get you banned.   Now that I’ve carried on like a stranger, weird, creepy....weirdo...  Anyone else’s opinions, thoughts on the matter?  Thoughts on how reviews have help improve your abilities?  Why they’re important to you?

Ahhh… The art of fanfiction, the title says it all.
I read HP like everyone else while still in middle school and I remember waiting anxiously for the 5th book. You see… I am Romanian. I read in Romanian and when our small town library got the 5th book in English, there was no translation yet into Romanian. I had to read it. So I did. I was 14 and I so wanted to know what came next that I worked really hard on my English.
I remember beeing a teenager, back in high-school and discovering fanfiction through a good friend of mine. She was into LOTR (still is!). I was 16, devouring Dostoyevski and heavy novels of epic proportions, I fancied myself in love with German expressionism and I even attempted to understand Wittgenstein. I was an idealist. I started reading other things to get a grasp of how things work in the modern world and I found fanfiction but I had little idea about the original works. Then it all clicked. Must have been that age. Ha haa! There was an abundance of fanfiction with an erotic twist.
Even now, I think that so-called adult-themed fanfiction draws the most readers. I don’t think it’s that easy to write about such subjects, especially when you’re underage and have no experience except for the giggling fumbling awkward kissing in your highschool hallway.
I see that most male slash is written by women. I read a couple of slash novels but to be honest I preferred the fics for some reason. I am still trying to figure out that reason. 
These days I find myself cleaning my hard-drive. I find fics I started a year or probably two years ago. I mend them and I send them out. It’s quite cathartic. I’ve written before. Not fanfiction. I’ve written in my own language on different subjects. I tried serious stuff but when you’re in 7th grade, you know little about the world around you and you are anything but a serious writer. Then I started writing in my first year of Uni. Together with a friend of mine, I managed to create a 200 pages monstrosity that ended up in a dusty drawer because we had exams and serious life stuff to battle. I write sparingly in my own language. It takes a bloody long time. I am my worst critic, after all.
 
 

Oh, surely not…*g*  Erotic fiction is a challenge in its own right, fanfiction or original. I’ve seen too many professional authors stumble over their erotic scenes to doubt it. You can almost see the cringe they had while they were writing.
Erotica demands a lot from a writer, and you can’t be afraid of exposure. I think you have to put a lot of yourself into it for the characters’ sake, and draw on all of your experience (sexual or otherwise), without being self-conscious in the slightest. As if you were taking your experience and lending it to them without conditions. If there is embarrassment, self-consciousness or giggling, then that had better be coming from the characters, not yourself. You don’t even need to be vastly experienced to do this, since any gaps can be bridged via deductive leaps, but you must do it.
Character and sexual writing are all tied up together. If you want to write good erotica, as opposed to generic porn, you need to make the characters drives and motivations as much a part of the sex as the physical act itself. Why do they want it? How long have they wanted it for? How much (or how little) does it mean to them? The easiest way to describe what I mean is to think in terms of RL. Say, if we have a sexual encounter, we don’t draw solid lines around it and section it off from the rest of our life forever. Nor can we, because depending on the circumstances, there may be consequences to face. The same is true of fictional characters. Sometimes, sex just happens. It’s natural. It happens to you, just the same as it will happen to them.
To be brutally honest here, I often find the lack of sex drive in characters off-putting in a show. The lines around what is acceptable sexual tension and what they refuse to write/produce/show often makes the characters and their world seem stilted and grey to me.The world is not sterile. If the whole human race danced around each other endlessly like that, we’d never reproduce. As much as I still resent RT Davies for killing my best man off (sniffles), at least he’s never shied away as a writer from creating fully formed characters, complete with normal sex lives/drives. Hell, that he does create such great characters is one of the reasons I’m so annoyed at their sudden death.
Once you’ve thought about all those things, then you can consider the technicalities of writing sexually (tension, pacing, rhythm, word choice and so forth). And, if you’re a woman writing m/m slash, that’s a whole other can of worms to pick through and research to be done. Although I do think that if you’ve done the earlier groundwork, as above, then you can still be very convincing, even if you don’t know exactly how the male orgasm feels.

I didn’t mean to say that at all. Quite the contrary, I think making the characters believable is the only serious challenge of writing a erotic fanfic. Writing an erotic fanfic is easier in other ways, but characterization is one area where being erotic does not help and so it is foremost in my mind. I am binge watching to try to find a good way to get the characters to do the things I want them to do, and it is all because it is so important to be faithful to the characters.
In an ordinary fanfic you’re putting the characters through an adventure, and that invites direct comparison with the source material. It raises the question: if my fanfic were an episode of the show, would it be one of the better episodes, or one of the worse episodes? For an ordinary fanfic that is a huge challenge to overcome on top of making the characters believable. For an erotic fanfic there is no comparison with the source material because your fanfic could never be an episode of the show. Instead of trying to do what the show does and replicate what makes the show great, we’re trying to do something the show could never do and so we don’t have to try to replicate any greatness. We still have the challenge of bringing the characters to life, but that seems tame by comparison.
There are other ways to make fanfic writing easier. Instead of writing an erotic adventure for characters of a show or movie that you like, you could write a fanfic for a video game. Even excellent video games are traditionally quite weak in their stories, so even if you don’t have any great ideas for your fanfic’s story you can still often improve upon the source material. A long time ago I once wrote a fanfic for a card game; the game had practically no story at all so it had to be mostly my own ideas, but I knew that no matter how mediocre my ideas might be they were still going to be worth writing because they were a better story than the game had to offer.

I didn’t mean to say that at all. Quite the contrary, I think making the characters believable is the only serious challenge of writing a erotic fanfic. Writing an erotic fanfic is easier in other ways, but characterization is one area where being erotic does not help and so it is foremost in my mind. I am binge watching to try to find a good way to get the characters to do the things I want them to do, and it is all because it is so important to be faithful to the characters.
In an ordinary fanfic you’re putting the characters through an adventure, and that invites direct comparison with the source material. It raises the question: if my fanfic were an episode of the show, would it be one of the better episodes, or one of the worse episodes? For an ordinary fanfic that is a huge challenge to overcome on top of making the characters believable. For an erotic fanfic there is no comparison with the source material because your fanfic could never be an episode of the show. Instead of trying to do what the show does and replicate what makes the show great, we’re trying to do something the show could never do and so we don’t have to try to replicate any greatness. We still have the challenge of bringing the characters to life, but that seems tame by comparison.
There are other ways to make fanfic writing easier. Instead of writing an erotic adventure for characters of a show or movie that you like, you could write a fanfic for a video game. Even excellent video games are traditionally quite weak in their stories, so even if you don’t have any great ideas for your fanfic’s story you can still often improve upon the source material. A long time ago I once wrote a fanfic for a card game; the game had practically no story at all so it had to be mostly my own ideas, but I knew that no matter how mediocre my ideas might be they were still going to be worth writing because they were a better story than the game had to offer.

I didn’t mean to say that at all. Quite the contrary, I think making the characters believable is the only serious challenge of writing a erotic fanfic. Writing an erotic fanfic is easier in other ways, but characterization is one area where being erotic does not help and so it is foremost in my mind. I am binge watching to try to find a good way to get the characters to do the things I want them to do, and it is all because it is so important to be faithful to the characters.
In an ordinary fanfic you’re putting the characters through an adventure, and that invites direct comparison with the source material. It raises the question: if my fanfic were an episode of the show, would it be one of the better episodes, or one of the worse episodes? For an ordinary fanfic that is a huge challenge to overcome on top of making the characters believable. For an erotic fanfic there is no comparison with the source material because your fanfic could never be an episode of the show. Instead of trying to do what the show does and replicate what makes the show great, we’re trying to do something the show could never do and so we don’t have to try to replicate any greatness. We still have the challenge of bringing the characters to life, but that seems tame by comparison.
There are other ways to make fanfic writing easier. Instead of writing an erotic adventure for characters of a show or movie that you like, you could write a fanfic for a video game. Even excellent video games are traditionally quite weak in their stories, so even if you don’t have any great ideas for your fanfic’s story you can still often improve upon the source material. A long time ago I once wrote a fanfic for a card game; the game had practically no story at all so it had to be mostly my own ideas, but I knew that no matter how mediocre my ideas might be they were still going to be worth writing because they were a better story than the game had to offer.

Ages ago, after the first Harry Potter film, I saw the DVD on sale, decided to buy it (thinking I’d give it away as a gift), watched it, and became hooked.  Read the books (1-4 at the time), saw the second film, and didn’t really want to wait.  I started to stumble into fanfiction, started reading, (initially I thought it was stolen material, as in, hacking JKR’s computer, before I came to understand it).  I enjoyed it and kept reading.   There was one particular fanfic I wanted more of, but the author wasn’t updating and I grew impatient.  Until this point, I hadn’t written anything since my high-school/middle-school days, so I wasn’t very confident, but I wanted it to continue; I picked up the keyboard, started typing.  That first fanfic is still posted (not on AFF because I wasn’t aware of AFF at the time, and it also violates the rules here), the sequel is still a WIP (last updated ~5 years ago); and I had even written adult “versions” for chapters of both fics that I’ve never posted.  Nowadays, I write original science fiction in a distorted dystopia that might come to pass. 
I suppose the moral is whatever cracks the ice, gets you to write.  For me, it was a nearly abandoned fanfic that I felt the urge to continue, and in the process, I overcame my self doubts.  My original stories wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for breaking the ice a decade and a half ago, playing around in JKR’s sandbox for a while.

I started writing when I was in high school, and it was, quite frankly, dreadful. I love language, I love reading, but one doesn’t just decide to be a writer and Bob’s your uncle, you’re a writer.
Cue being an adult for a good long while, and then, being something of a gamer, I played a game with the sort of plot holes that make one whimper. I was surfing online, looking for information, and came across fan fiction about my game, on the community forums. I devoured it. I did. It was a feast for my eyes, and I fell madly in love with the idea of fan fiction as a way to fix the things that niggled about the games I loved. So one day, at the pool, while my kids frolicked, I opened a spiralbound notebook and wrote.
And it was, quite frankly, dreadful. Seriously. But some kind souls encouraged me, and I wrote more, and more, and one day, it wasn’t quite so dreadful.
Then I took on another challenge. I didn’t think I was capable of sustaining a novel-length work, but fan fiction gave me the supports I needed to try it. I had a world, and characters, and I could add in my own characters, fill in the bits the games don’t tell you, and suddenly, I was writing chapter after chapter.
I loved it. But there was more. Someone referred me to AFF, to read a deeper version of a story I liked elsewhere, and oh, my sweet gods, I was home. Not just for the sex, but for the adult approach to everything. Writers here weren’t afraid to see the dark side of things. Not everything had a happy ending.
Writing fan fiction gave me the skills, and the courage to try my hand at original fiction, and I will never be ashamed of writing fan fiction. I still do. I won’t stop, (Sorry, pip, you’re stuck with me!  )

I am not a fanfic writer, but very recently I suddenly found myself in the grip of an urge to become a fanfic writer.
I’ve written other things, of course, but I’ve never seen the value in a fanfic. In an ordinary fanfic, I would just be pitting my ideas against the ideas of a show that I love, and there’s no way that I can expect to meet that standard, so the whole enterprise seems pointless. I would be better off writing something original so I can see something that I couldn’t get elsewhere in superior quality.
An adult fanfic is a different matter. I don’t need to match the skill of the original writers to create something interesting in an adult fanfic. The original writers would never show us these characters having sex, and that’s a very exciting idea that we just can’t get from the source material. This makes an adult fanfic far superior to an ordinary fanfic, because it’s justifying its existence by breaking new ground that the television show would not ever touch and showing us a new side of the characters that we love.
The most important skill will be to stay true to the characters. Random people having sex is boring. If I can’t show off the personalities of the characters in my fanfic then my fanfic fails before it begins. If I can make the personalities shine through, then nothing else I do really matters, but that one thing seems like a daunting task. How do you get into the head of your favorite characters to decide what they will do next? How do you get them to have sex without unbelievably altering their personalities?

Ok, well I’m not sure I completely agree with all your assumptions there about fanfiction in general (forgive me), but I only really read and write adult fanfiction, so maybe.... I do think we should all strive for quality, especially where we are paying homage to something we love, example: Perhaps We May Hear Golden Trumpets by Aspen. And my favourite fanfictions of all time are where the writer (at least for me) does exceed the skill/standard of the original creator, example: Obsession by Ningengirai (read/heed the warnings please!).
The fanfictions I’ve quoted there are both beautiful examples of great in-character writing. Every sentence serves the characters and their development as well as the action, and are mindblowingly gorgeous into the bargain. Yes, they are adult, but that is not all they are. I believe those writers have created something that transcends simple glorification of the original authors, great though those people might be.
The kind of fanfiction writers I love don’t set out to “outdo” or please the copyright holder, they set out to please the characters. We write fanfiction because the characters tell us to, not because the original author said it is okay (though I am really glad that most of them do allow fanfiction of their worlds and universes).
Ok… have I finished growling? Yes, I think I have! Onward!
(sorry about that)
Well, I am not sure after all of that how to answer your question. For me, I would say that I don’t get into Character A’s head… I let them into mine, and usually they’ll tell me everything without me needing to think about it at all. Where the original media is visual, there is actually a lot more to play with. I often find that most actors have certain tics and idiosyncracies that they can’t help, that become part of each character they play, and I’ll sometimes consciously echo those in fanfiction. Really good actors invent those same tics and idiosyncracies for each character they play. Use them. Where the media is a book, you can always try and flavour your language to create a reminder of the source material, although I think you can go too far with this, so be sparing and don’t lose your own narrative voice. If you spend a lot of time with the souce material (i.e. hours and hours) those things will happen without needing to really think about it too much. A lot of fanfiction is about creating a very subtle kind of echo that the reader doesn’t notice, while still managing to inject something new that you want to put there.
Dialogue is a place where a lot of writers fall down for me, and bad dialogue will almost always make me stop reading a story immediately. For instance (to use two of my favourite fandoms), Elrond would never say: “Hi!” Partly because ‘Hi’ is not an acceptable greeting, partly because he’s always more wordy than that, and partly because everything Elrond says must enable him to use up a series of differing facial expressions ranging from mild surprise to intense frowing (I do blame Hugo Weaving for that). Whereas Jack Harkness would never only say: “Hello.” You know, because he’d have to flirt. Even if Character B was a blob of brown goo with a couple of antenna sticking out. In fact, he’d consider that some kind of new and exciting physical challenge.
Listen to the characters. They’ve usually got loads of words of their own, all saved up, just waiting for someone to write them down. Sometimes I hear them so clearly I end up with lots of dialogue that I then have to fill in. Not a pleasant writing experience, but at least it means the characters are coming through loud and clear, and it usually means they’re interacting well with each other.
Ok… now I sound completely insane.
At the same time, never write dialogue exclusively. Always give your characters something to do, or think or feel. Usually when I do this, I find the characters start thinking in adult ways, and before you know it… they’re at it. Admittedily, it’s a lot easier to make Harkness do this than some others. If your character is kind of hard to impress or doesn’t want to misbehave for some other reason, then seduce them into it. Make the story work for you so that the character can’t help but respond. You don’t have to change the character’s personality. You change their environment and their interactions until they have no choice. In one of my stories the Marquis de Sade spends the entire twenty-five or so chapters completely seducing and ruining a priest. All characters have weaknesses you can exploit, no matter who they are. Sometimes you might hit a dead end, so just go back and try something else.
I should note that by “seduce” I don’t necessarily mean sex. I mean to seduce as in to develop the character in such a way that adult fiction will be the end result. Characters are not fixed points (well, except for Harkness, but since he’d do anyone at the drop of a hat, he doesn’t strictly count… neither does he count). If you develop the character slowly enough, and believably enough, you can’t fail.
And lastly, if you’re still wanting advice and not thinking: why the hell doesn’t this pippychick bird ever shut up?! then I’d say a good way to check if you’re going in the right direction is to imagine the scene(s) you’re writing from the pov of each of the characters. It should work just as seamlessly for them all. Even if Character B will never be the pov character, make sure you know why they do and say the things they do. The reader might not consciously notice, but it will give your story plausibility if the motivations are there for all of the characters. And the reader is who we’re trying to catch at the end of the day. We make the characters think and feel because we want the reader to think and to feel along those same lines. The reader is the one we want to seduce, via the characters.
Right. I am finally shutting up.

I am not a fanfic writer, but very recently I suddenly found myself in the grip of an urge to become a fanfic writer.
I’ve written other things, of course, but I’ve never seen the value in a fanfic. In an ordinary fanfic, I would just be pitting my ideas against the ideas of a show that I love, and there’s no way that I can expect to meet that standard, so the whole enterprise seems pointless. I would be better off writing something original so I can see something that I couldn’t get elsewhere in superior quality.
An adult fanfic is a different matter. I don’t need to match the skill of the original writers to create something interesting in an adult fanfic. The original writers would never show us these characters having sex, and that’s a very exciting idea that we just can’t get from the source material. This makes an adult fanfic far superior to an ordinary fanfic, because it’s justifying its existence by breaking new ground that the television show would not ever touch and showing us a new side of the characters that we love.
The most important skill will be to stay true to the characters. Random people having sex is boring. If I can’t show off the personalities of the characters in my fanfic then my fanfic fails before it begins. If I can make the personalities shine through, then nothing else I do really matters, but that one thing seems like a daunting task. How do you get into the head of your favorite characters to decide what they will do next? How do you get them to have sex without unbelievably altering their personalities?