Why do you write?

[Desiderius Price]

37 minutes ago, CloverReef said:

It was a video game, Tekken, for me. I had started writing before that, just for myself, horror movie scripts. My very first script started with an old woman getting her head lopped off by a flying vinyl record that I wrote when I was 11 lol. But then I discovered Tekken and the fan fiction community and it was like “OMG there’s more story options than what the game gives me?!” And that was it. I was a fan fiction writer for almost a decade after that before I had my messy breakup with the fandom and went exclusively original. 

Fandoms are an excellent training ground for budding writers. I think you guys are right that neither of the two options listed in the article really apply there. To start in fan fiction it’s gotta be about the passion for something. Passion for the characters, passion for writing, passion for the story and wanting to see more of it than the original offers, or just wanting to see George and Bob make out. 

I hereby banish Bob to the other thread!    Fred/George, things can be better in pairs.

[InvidiaRed]

18 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

I hereby banish Bob to the other thread!    Fred/George, things can be better in pairs.

Hahaha. He shall be named Bob 676

Aka Infernal Bob

Edited October 15, 2017 by InvidiaRed

[Tcr]

Might be a little late...  Sounds like my usual, but…

Star Trek kind of started it for me.  I started originals and loved the process and creativity in school and used that to get out of the bad situation.  They were mostly vicious shorts, blood she'd and violence galore...  (Has anything really changed?... ...)  Then I started writing in the Star Trek universe for a little, expanded outward from shorts into novels...  Which in turn became originals again...  (A full circle, weird and crazy, but yeah...)  Sci Fi has always been a part of my writing, I've just expanded out…

And I ramble on...

[Desiderius Price]

3 hours ago, Tcr said:

Might be a little late...  Sounds like my usual, but…

Star Trek kind of started it for me.  I started originals and loved the process and creativity in school and used that to get out of the bad situation.  They were mostly vicious shorts, blood she'd and violence galore...  (Has anything really changed?... ...)  Then I started writing in the Star Trek universe for a little, expanded outward from shorts into novels...  Which in turn became originals again...  (A full circle, weird and crazy, but yeah...)  Sci Fi has always been a part of my writing, I've just expanded out…

And I ramble on...

Given the time/effort/reward involved, few are in writing for the money.  And those who do, they’re the lucky few that effectively won the lottery, are now screenwriters or best sellers.

[Anesor]

2 hours ago, Anon said:

I always have a good story to tell and in doing so I am gratified with my own creation of a narrative that maybe one or two others will also partake in.

I’m not quite that much doing it for the art. A lot of my stories go counter to the fandom tastes, including my first. But I really want some feedback from my audience, or why go to the effort to write, polish, and post? I need the feedback to know that others partake in.

So to circle back to the original question for my writing,

• 3 parts creativity (then what happened? what if? +common sense vs dramaz, etc) makings things, finding another way...
• 2 parts feedback (comments, thumbs up, money) Comments and discussion are the best. Money has the perk of buying me things I need. Thumbs ups are like the ugly sweater from your aunt at christmas, appreciated but don’t fit well). These feed my tiny writer’s ego, without which I’d wander off and do some other creative pursuit.
• 1 each for frustration at bad writing, challenge/competition, achievement. These usually act like spurs to get started or continue when I hit a bump.

So that makes about six parts of why, without the two parts, stories dwindle into stasis. I have plenty of ideas, and christmas cards that need making.

[Avaloyuru]

Hmmm, why do I write, very good question!   While I’ve written a few original creation stories, I have recently returned to fanfiction. I write for a number of reasons, foremost being the idea that I’m completely infatuated with at least one of not a few characters, the setting, the whole ball of wax so to speak.  I never fall for the actor, just the character because actors will come and go but a well-written character can live as long as fanfiction writers continue to breathe life into them. 

Although I was first introduced to him in 1973, I have returned to my first love, Tolkien, and have become almost obsessive about his writings. Unlike other authors and storylines that I have followed, Tolkien was a bit of a disorganized writer.  The world and the characters he created are extremely vivid to me, yet there are numerous gaps in time creating almost endless possibilities as far as what the characters can do and what can be done to them.

Although I take his characters to places he never would, I also view my writing as a way of paying a form of homage to someone I see as a great literary icon.

[GeorgeGlass]

Definitely, many of my stories originate with my feeling that I have a good story to tell.

With regard to porn stories, they always begin as fantasies, and I write them up because I feel that they become hotter if they have an existence outside of my own head.

[pippychick]

27 minutes ago, GeorgeGlass said:

With regard to porn stories, they always begin as fantasies, and I write them up because I feel that they become hotter if they have an existence outside of my own head.

That’s strange. For me, I’d say it’s the opposite. I’d say I write pornographic material, but it begins with character, and ends up as a fantasy of what they might get up to if they were going to go completely and utterly wild. Usually, the where, how and why that happens along with the necessary plot points for character motivation is what makes the story. And I make concessions to character that go through me sometimes. For instance, I personally detest the word “pussy” but because my pov character would absolutely think in those terms, I have to use it and let it infect my narrative voice. At least for a while. Well, for as long as I’m writing him… well, them. They’re both like it.

[Desiderius Price]

3 hours ago, pippychick said:

That’s strange. For me, I’d say it’s the opposite. I’d say I write pornographic material, but it begins with character, and ends up as a fantasy of what they might get up to if they were going to go completely and utterly wild. Usually, the where, how and why that happens along with the necessary plot points for character motivation is what makes the story. And I make concessions to character that go through me sometimes. For instance, I personally detest the word “pussy” but because my pov character would absolutely think in those terms, I have to use it and let it infect my narrative voice. At least for a while. Well, for as long as I’m writing him… well, them. They’re both like it.

My entire original universe started off as a PWP, and I started to wonder, “how did they get there?”  Wham, stories upon stories, and a plot bunny breeding ground.

[Tcr]

1 hour ago, Desiderius Price said:

My entire original universe started off as a PWP, and I started to wonder, “how did they get there?”  Wham, stories upon stories, and a plot bunny breeding ground.

And my experience with writing was entirely opposite...  To the point that, if I went back in time and showed myself, my younger self would laugh and be like "Can't be me".  My original writing had no sex whatsoever in them...  How far and strange I have come...  How very strange... 

[CloverReef]

This stuff is friggin fascinating. I think I'm in the middle of both. My stories begin both as fantasies sometimes and from characters or little random scenes other times. I've always had an element of a sexual theme right from the start even when I was a kid. My stories got dirty especially when my friends were involved. (Apparently groups of 11 year old prairie girls can be twisted.) But even though they were always sexual, the story itself was always super important, second only to character development. I didn't even know pwps were a thing until around the time i came here to aff around 13 years ago lol. 

[Panduki]

Writing for me has always boiled down to the simple reason of, “Because I want to write.”

Now my particular reasons beyond that tend to vary. Though with my current fic (and with most others over the years, though this one was the first one I ever felt comfortable enough actually posting online) the reason has been mostly therapeutic. I put a lot of my own experiences and past into the fic (modified of course to fit with the characters and the setting) but it has actually helped me a great deal in sorting out my own thoughts and feelings over the years. It was actually something suggested to me by a therapist, sort of a variation of keeping a journal. But instead of having a conversation with yourself, or your book, instead you are creating characters (or borrowing characters from an established story) and seeing how they would cope with similar things happening to them.

[Desiderius Price]

2 minutes ago, Panduki said:

Writing for me has always boiled down to the simple reason of, “Because I want to write.”

In the end, that’s a good reason, better than money (for those lucky few).

[InvidiaRed]

11 minutes ago, Desiderius Price said:

In the end, that’s a good reason, better than money (for those lucky few).

indeed it is. For muses are fickle things

 

[Desiderius Price]

7 minutes ago, InvidiaRed said:

indeed it is. For muses are fickle things

 

Mine requires tickling, though a good nude pic or two helps

[Panduki]

Every so often my muse and I get along and I can write for a while. Other times, the muse might as well be the sun shining through the blinds while I’m trying to sleep after a sleepless insomniac night. “Go away. We’ll play later!”

If only inspiration didn’t have a habit of hitting me right when I’m dead tired and finally resolving to sleep for a while..

[Desiderius Price]

3 minutes ago, Panduki said:

If only inspiration didn’t have a habit of hitting me right when I’m dead tired and finally resolving to sleep for a while..

That seems to be how it is for me at times, climb into bed, and suddenly, my mind’s racing.  I’ll get up, write it down (because it just came up with a good idea), climb back into bed, only to come up with another idea….  Or, wake up early, mind’s racing, so I can’t get myself to go back to bed.  I do try carrying a notebook around, just to jot down ideas when they do come.