illusions to illusions

In the AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 - an unofficial demographics survey of 16,131 AO3 users - 81% of respondents identified as LGBTQ+, and 25% identified as transgender.

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🍉 Do you prefer to write short fics or long fics? Multichaptered works or single ones? Why?

🍓 What’s a fic you’ve written you feel is underrated?

🍎 Is there anything you straight-up won’t write?

🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

🍊 Who’s a character you don’t write for that often, but keep meaning to write for more? (They’re so interesting! But maybe you have trouble pinning them down, or keep getting distracted by another blorbo…)

🍑 If you could make a connection between your favorite character and another work you care about (whether a crossover/fusion or a wonderfully “pretentious” literary reference) what would it be? How would it work?

🥭 Rank from most enjoyable/fun to write to least: Fluff, Smut, Angst, Crack.

🍍 What kind of AUs do you like? Are there any AUs you hate or just generally have beef with?

🍋 What’s your favorite spicier trope to write?

🍌 In your opinion, what’s the funniest joke/reference/pun you’ve made in a fic?

🍏 Is there something you overuse, whether it’s a certain phrase, trope, or piece of punctuation?

🥝 What’s your favorite trope/AO3 tag to write?

🍐 Is there anything in canon that you absolutely hate and love to fix in fics? A wrong choice made, a fuck-up in characterization, a misunderstanding never cleared up, a conversation never shown onscreen, etc…

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

🫐 What’s your favorite underrated thing in your fandom? (A ship that only you seem to write for, a character there’s almost no fics about, a trope that criminally hasn’t been written yet, etc.)

🍉 Do you prefer to write short fics or long fics? Multichaptered works or single ones? Why? oh gosh. it used to be that i only ever wrote short fics, and to be honest, i kind of like being concise and getting my point across and then just having the idea exit my head forever. but sometimes you just want to wallow around in the mud for a while. this isn’t really an answer… i suppose the real answer is: yes

I'll encourage long fic writers to add on in the notes, but as someone who tends to prefer short and medium-length fic, I'll tell you how I go about it.

Get a premise that you just absolutely love. You're going to be writing this thing for months, if not longer, so you want it to be something you're willing to spend a lot of time thinking about.

Embrace subplots. You'll have your main plotline that you want to see through from beginning to end, but you can also weave in some subplots here or there. The way I do this so that I don't get lost down a rabbit hole is that I always make sure that every chapter has at least 1 thing that moves the main plot forward and then if I want to spend 1-2K with some side characters doing something fun I can do that as well. Subplots can extend for the length of the full narrative, but they can also just last a chapter or three. If you're used to writing short fic, these might give you that familiar feeling of "completion"

A chapter is only as long as it needs to be. Don't get hung up on having a consistent chapter length. Don't get hung up on hitting some arbitrary number every time. Instead, figure out what the next part of your story needs to include and write however many words it takes to get that chunk across. Varying your chapter lengths is a normal thing to do and not something to stress about.

The next thing that I find important personally may or may not be relevant to you, but I find that I can't plot anything in much detail. If I get too into the nitty gritty with my plotting, it just feels like I've already written it. I need to keep it at the level of "And then A and B meet C and hijinks ensue." I can figure out the particular hijinks later. It's the characters meeting up that's the next important thing for me to figure out. Getting too far ahead of myself is a death knell for me in writing long fics, but there are other writers who swear by it. Test out different ways of approaching it and see what works for you.

As someone who tends to write more briefly, another feature that's common to longer fics is more extensive descriptions. People spend time painting visual pictures of the setting or the characters or the actions that are happening. Write the more bare-bones style that focuses more on dialogue (if you're like me) and then go back and read through what you've just written and see if there are opportunities to add in more detail. This can lead to some really interesting characterization choices and also help you out with worldbuilding.

When it comes to worldbuilding, you don't have to get it all on the page. You just need to share what's relevant for the reader in that moment and what is useful to lay out now so that it's already there in a future chapter. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of how your world works in your head, but it's not actually necessary. No one is going to be quizzing you later - and if they do, you can always figure it out at that point.

1) I started writing this because I NEEDED to read it. Guessing that this is not why a lot of people write fic, but I discovered that it’s pretty much the only thing that motivates me! I stalled out on tapestry at chapter 4 in May-ish, but got back to it because I really wanted to be able to experience and know about the full story myself. That pushed me through ch5 in September and is the primary thing motivating me now. No one I know well has read this fic (this is freeing, in a way) and the only one who is die-hard invested is me, but it’s enough to give me point (7) here. I want so bad to be able to read the whole thing and feel that it’s a satisfying emotional narrative for myself. I want a clear, relivable, in-depth daydream of the exact things I want to happen with all these characters. So I gotta finish writing it!

2) The above thoughts from op are all great and super helpful for me to think about too!!

3) This one is kind of related to my first point as as well as op’s (1) and (4) (about loving the idea and not worrying about planning too much). I have reread what exists of tapestry as a reader a few times (because I’m so invested in the idea), but it also helps me see threads I’ve put in by accident, motifs and emotional moments and stuff. That inspires me to follow up on them and can even point the way to where I want the details of the story to go. When I was really stuck on how I wanted ch5/6/7 to go, I reread what I’d written and realized there could be a nice circular structure where the concluding chapters would sort of mirror and wrap up some character points from chapters 3/2/1 respectively, so at the end I have (hopefully) a bit of a full-circle moment. This is something specific to my example, but rereading and analyzing as inspiration helps me in general!

4) Speaking of inspiration - if I’m stuck on a longer fic I’ll sometimes return to some old favorites by other authors with the same ships/characters, or find some new fics to read of them. This helps me feel excited about my own story again by letting me compare/contrast what I’m doing with what others have done. I love these characters and other stories are so great but they’re not exactly what I imagine, so I want to write my thing too! “This emotional note in x fic is so great, I realize the character might feel a similar way in a situation I’ve put them in, and now I have more direction!” Or “I love how this character acts in y fic, but it’s not how things play out for them in my fic, and I want there to make a satisfying written reality out of what happens in my imagination, just like the author of y fic did!”

I don’t think this is “universally understandable” to other people as anything other than me “being autistic or something” but it is what I do for my own satisfaction and self-soothing when I have Had Enough lol. (Though I don’t rly do this in public because I am a “professional adult” and don’t want to be “looked at weird”)

here is an illustration of me doing this