crying and writing 2k5ever

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

Who: Main character(s)

Why: Character goal or desire (stated)

Why: Character need (implied)

When: Inciting Incident

What: Means (that achieves the goal/need)

Where: Place A >> Place B

How: The Plan

Obstacle(s): antagonist or challenge

For example:

Who: Bilbo Baggins, a respectable hobbit of Hobbiton

Why: Treasure, wealth (stated)

Why: Adventure, self-respect (implied)

When: After supper

What: Quest

Where: Hobbiton >> The Lonely Mountain

How: A company of dwarves, a wizard, and an ancient map and key

Main antagonist(s): a dragon

Thus, in less than 100 words:

Bilbo Baggins is a respectable hobbit in Hobbiton, never making any trouble or having any adventures. But when a wizard and a company of dwarves invite themselves to dinner, Bilbo finds himself joining their quest from the shires of Hobbiton to the legendary Lonely Mountain, the home of a long lost treasure, and quite, possibly, a dragon.  

~~~~

use & for friendships, colleagues, familial relationships and use / for romantic or sexual relationships (or encounters)

not everyone reads fic. Lots of people use screen readers, and screen readers can’t see what’s on images. use descriptive text to help them out.

lots of people download fic to read on other devices, not all downloads capture images too.

there’s a big difference between No Archive Warnings Apply (NAWA) and Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (CNTW). NAWA means that there’s nothing in the fic that needs to be warned for using the official Archive Warning system. CNTW means there might be something that requires a warning and the author is either avoiding giving out spoilers or they are unsure how to interpret their plot point with respect to the official Warnings. (in both cases, additional tags are where it’s at - you can explain yourself there) 

the reason why the number of bookmarks in the fic is different from the number of bookmarks on your stats page is because your stats page number includes bookmarks that are hidden

there’s a preference setting where you can receive emails with your own comments/replies.

there’s a site skin that hides stats so you don’t have to see them

writing in rich text format makes my life easier

knowing html allows me to do fun things in the comments section like comment/reply with reaction gifs

knowing html also allows me to do interesting formatting in my fics that I can’t do with rich text alone

those little blue bubbles with the question marks in them will answer my questions a lot of the time - and also teach me something new

the FAQ is linked under the word About in the header

if you write your fic in the draft window, you might end up losing it so make sure you copy the text before you hit Post, just in case

The Anonymous collection will allow you to post anything you want and retain ownership over it.

Your identifying information will not be anywhere within the fic to any other reader. Though you will see it from your end when looking at it as a logged in user.

When you reply to a comment, it will anonymize you, so feel free to respond to your commenters!

You can take your fic off Anonymous at any time

When you are signed into AO3, you can easily access your Anonymous fics by looking at the “Works In Collections” tab on your page. Nobody else will see these Anonymous works on this page.

Works can be added to the Anonymous collection at any time

Just because a fic is Anonymous does not mean it is Abandoned or Orphaned.

Speaking of Orphaned fics:

If you have posted a story and for whatever reason you no longer want it on your account or associated with you, you can Orphan the fic.

Orphaning fics will remove all of your control and ownership of the story.

Orphaning fics is not a reversible process. Once a fic has been Orphaned it cannot be taken back. You cannot delete it. You can’t check stats and it does not show up on your Works page anymore.

You can combine existing skins by creating you own skin scroll to the bottom under ADVANCED and then Parent Skins. Example, i use AO3s Reversi and then XParrots Shortening Long Tag Field

Also, you can exclude stories in this area too! I got this from another tumblr post so i can’t take credit for it, nor do i know how to expand it to other things like tags or pairing or author.

.blurb#work_430075 { display: none; }

-In addition to beginning and ending author’s notes for the overall story, there are also beginning and ending author’s notes for each chapter of a multipart story. When you first create the story, before you add additional chapters, it will treat your author’s notes as overall story notes – meaning your “so that’s chapter 1!” note will be kicked to the end of every subsequent chapter unless you move it to chapter 1 specifically.

Try oneshots!

Oneshots are great because they can be just a single scene or moment. They allow you to write that one conversation you want to write without needing to create a whole story around it.

You wish you could just write about that character getting a damn hug for once? Do it! Who needs a huge context? Just put it out there!

100 words. Just enough for that trivial exchange you can't get out of your head. Or a sucker punch of an emotional moment. All with a handy word limit to give it a 'writers challenge' credential.

I was thinking about writing and how one of the things that prevented me from doing it for a really long time was thinking, “But I’ll never have the talent/technique/self-discipline to write a novel, so what’s the point of writing anything else?” 

Which, first, who even cares about writing a novel? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,  but why should it be the be-all and end-all of writing? (Short answer: the western canon, (old) white dudes, blah blah blah.)

But more importantly – I had this idea of what writing a novel (and, by extension, any writing worth doing) would mean: 

That a novelist is a master of self expression. That he (gendered language not incidental) has total control over his writing on every level – plot, character, scene, paragraph, sentence, word, sound; that he can produce a perfect chapter with a perfect beginning and a perfect ending, each scene within it serving a purpose, and then string those chapters together like perfectly round  pearls and lo and behold: a perfect novel, that conveys in full the story and underlying meaning intended by the author; his themes woven expertly throughout.

Ugh – seeing this written out is making me a bit sick. Anyway, the point is, of course I could never reach that level, so why write at all, right?

What I’ve come to realize since I gave myself permission to write what I want, as useless and imperfect as it is, is that you can create something really good (whatever that means for you) even if your process is just random. Something that achieves what you set out to do in meaning and/or style, something that speaks to people, that makes them say, “Oh, right. That feeling.”

It doesn’t have to be astoundingly brilliant; it doesn’t have to be something that no one has done before; it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just sit down and fucking write something.

(And then maybe do some editing. I’m not saying I don’t do a fuckton of editing.)

Now, just in case anyone stumbles upon this post and thinks I’m being pretentious, I will mention in closing that I exclusively write gay fanfiction about dudes in bands. But maybe that’s the point. What I write is so utterly  unpublishable – so far removed from any society-sanctioned concept of literature – that I don’t feel like I need to write for anyone except myself and a bunch of perverts that share my very limited sphere of interest.

every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

I love language.

People who ransacked the larders of other languages to create English are all dead and have not responded to my necromantic challenges to fight and/or update this verbal/written forest fire.

Eirwen does not have a baby. Until she does.

Pairings: none

Word count: 899

Warnings: Child abuse (mostly in the form of neglect), pregnancy, referring to a child as “it” and “thing,” kidnapping (changeling switch), harm to minors, brief thoughts of child murder

Notes: The fic absolutely no one asked for and no one wanted. LOAFT verse by @tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors. This is exploring Eirwen’s thought process behind having a child and switching him out for a different baby. There’s no father because Magic and Fae Are Different, and tbh I don’t see Eirwen particularly tolerating anyone else’s input in regards to a kid. We don’t know what Logan looked like as a newborn since he was glamoured to look like Thomas and then grew into those looks, so I took a slight liberty. I think the warnings make it sound worse than it is, personally, but I wanted to tag for anything that might adversely affect a reader. Please be safe!

2 things. one is that i went back over the four fics where Eirwen is featured, and i had completely forgotten that she calls Logan “Raindrop” so when i read that i made it ANGSTY (”It was this small, pathetic little thing–a raindrop where she deserved to raise a glacier.”) as well as a reference to the fact that Logan is a Spring as opposed to a Winter

Eirwen does not have a baby. Until she does.

Pairings: none

Word count: 899

Warnings: Child abuse (mostly in the form of neglect), pregnancy, referring to a child as “it” and “thing,” kidnapping (changeling switch), harm to minors, brief thoughts of child murder

Notes: The fic absolutely no one asked for and no one wanted. LOAFT verse by @tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors. This is exploring Eirwen’s thought process behind having a child and switching him out for a different baby. There’s no father because Magic and Fae Are Different, and tbh I don’t see Eirwen particularly tolerating anyone else’s input in regards to a kid. We don’t know what Logan looked like as a newborn since he was glamoured to look like Thomas and then grew into those looks, so I took a slight liberty. I think the warnings make it sound worse than it is, personally, but I wanted to tag for anything that might adversely affect a reader. Please be safe!

2 things. one is that i went back over the four fics where Eirwen is featured, and i had completely forgotten that she calls Logan “Raindrop” so when i read that i made it ANGSTY (”It was this small, pathetic little thing–a raindrop where she deserved to raise a glacier.”) as well as a reference to the fact that Logan is a Spring as opposed to a Winter

Eirwen does not have a baby. Until she does.

Pairings: none

Word count: 899

Warnings: Child abuse (mostly in the form of neglect), pregnancy, referring to a child as “it” and “thing,” kidnapping (changeling switch), harm to minors, brief thoughts of child murder

Notes: The fic absolutely no one asked for and no one wanted. LOAFT verse by @tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors. This is exploring Eirwen’s thought process behind having a child and switching him out for a different baby. There’s no father because Magic and Fae Are Different, and tbh I don’t see Eirwen particularly tolerating anyone else’s input in regards to a kid. We don’t know what Logan looked like as a newborn since he was glamoured to look like Thomas and then grew into those looks, so I took a slight liberty. I think the warnings make it sound worse than it is, personally, but I wanted to tag for anything that might adversely affect a reader. Please be safe!

2 things. one is that i went back over the four fics where Eirwen is featured, and i had completely forgotten that she calls Logan “Raindrop” so when i read that i made it ANGSTY (”It was this small, pathetic little thing–a raindrop where she deserved to raise a glacier.”) as well as a reference to the fact that Logan is a Spring as opposed to a Winter

May your fingers dance along the letters upon your device with ease, may the devil of distraction stay far from you, and may your work not need much editing.