hiiiii! first of all wanted to say that i think about your fic 'there is no heart' almost every day.
i also read 'keep rolling under the stars' in one breath yesterday and AAAAA.
i feel so SPOILED!
i was wondering 1) what are your favorite hollanov fanfics that maybe deserve more love and attention?
and 2) do you have any tips or advice on writing a longfic? i have my first one all mapped out, but i'm really struggling with making progress.
love you, UH!
what a fantastic set of questions, thank you for asking them! Fic recs from me come with a, let's call it a caveat, so i'll save that question for the end. To answer your question two let me tell you a story.
high likelihood this is apocryphal, but it's more about the metaphor than the truthiness so we'll roll with it. The story goes that abraham lincoln, who you may or may not know still is the tallest president in usamerican history, was six foot four. Which is tall today but was TALL tall in 1850ish when he was first campaigning for office. Possibly you may have heard the term "stump speech" which comes from the mid-19th century politicians campaigning through small rural communities who would stand on tree stumps to give their speeches so they could be heard and seen over the crowds. Lincoln famously didn't require a stump. The story goes that one day as he was campaigning a reporter asked him, kind of mockingly, how long did he think a man's legs needed to be. To which lincoln replied, "long enough to reach the ground."
which is, i hope we can agree, a banger line even if it's not true.
so why am i mentioning this? Because this is my answer to the question of how long a story needs to be. Answer: long enough to reach the end. Which means that if you are aiming to write a fic that is longer than 100k, you need to be sure you have enough story to reach that end.
there is no heart for me like yours, at 154k (will prob be 160 after the second epilogue) is by far the longest thing i have ever written. My previous longest fic was just under 120 and that was far longer than where i usually land, which is 30-80k. i'll tell you honestly that i don't usually vibe with longfics, as a reader or a writer, because i find that nearly every time they don't have enough story to justify their length. This is waving a red flag in front of a bull, i know, as i am very much in the minority with this opinion but i'm a hyper critical reader (and writer!) and that's just where i land.
however! i knew going in that no heart... would be lawnggg because there was so much story. i almost didn't write it for that reason. i remember telling @thisonesatellite in january that there was no way i was escaping this fic with less than 100k unless i really didn't do the story justice and i wasn't sure i was ready to take that on. Fortunately, because the story i had follows canon events so closely it was easy to plot and then easy (comparatively!) to write. Plus it actually gripped my soul, no exaggeration. i was wiped out near the end but couldn't stop writing it because it lived in my bones and allowed me no peace until it was on the page. ANYWAY.
all of this is a lot of words to say that the first thing you should do for your longfic is really think about how much story you have. Is the fic going to be long because it needs to be or because you want it to be? Are you trying to force a length that the story doesn't need? Let the story guide you to the length it needs to be; the result will be satisfying if it's 10k or 100k so long as you have done the story you have the justice it requires.
if there really is a lot of story and it needs to be long, then advice number two is plot it thoroughly. Chapter by chapter. The outline can (and probably should!) change as you go, but thorough planning helps you to pace yourself and know how much plot you can fit into each chapter and where you're going as you write. It also helps keep the story consistent and lets you foreshadow later events and other fun things. Nearly always the story will end up deviating from your outline so you don't need to be a slave to it or anything, but the guiding force of a good plan is incredibly helpful.
advice number three is try to diagnose what's preventing your progress. Is it because the length of the fic feels overwhelming? Is it lack of motivation? Time? Have you lost excitement for your story? Are you someone who struggles to get started? Figuring that out will help you know what strategies you need to employ to dig into the project.
final advice is to find a good alpha 😏. Which means someone you can bounce ideas off of. In some cases this person is also a beta who can check your writing for cohesion, spelling and grammar, etc. Sometimes they are different people. But an outside perspective from someone you trust can be invaluable. On which note, if you'd like some feedback on your outline or what you have written already, drop a link in my inbox and i will take a look at it. i do a lot of betaing and am (almost, there are some things that are hard nos from me) always glad to help.
if your eyes haven't crossed from reading all this yet, let us on to the fic recs.
so, caveat. i am, as i said, hyper critical as a reader. i have a long literary criticism background and i can't turn that off so it's rare that i am completely and uncritically in love with any fic. i should add though, that criticism is my love language and i only keep it to myself because most people don't want to hear it. There are many fics i really do enjoy and have only a few nitpicky points i make in my own head (and sometimes ngl to my groupchat). Also, people's tastes vary widely and what one loves another will hate so take these recs (and all recs!) with that grain of salt.
having said all that i have combed through my bookmarks and chosen a few fics that have fewer than 10k kudos (because in this insane fandom that's sort of the benchmark for popularity. What wild times we live in). They're mostly from january when i was reading more fic because i wasn't busy writing my own, so unfortunately if anything brilliant has been written since then i may have missed it (please drop links if anyone has any they think i might like based on these!).
also if any of these writers are on tumblr please lmk so i can link them.
Aftershock by Maarlix. Ilya breaks up with shane before shane can invite him to the cottage, shane is pissed. They play mean against each other and ilya ends up being the one to put shane in hospital instead of marleau. He feels terrible about it, goes to the hospital, DRAMA ENSUES. This is top-tier ilya pining and a fic i started reading when it was a WIP then put my whole life on pause when the final chapter dropped.
But I hate when I feel like this (and I never hated you) by SatsumaSegments. This author also wrote a stunning ilya-at-the-cottage POV but it has over 10k so alas. Still, read it, it's like a hug. This one is an open wound, which is not normally my jam in fics. However it's SO beautifully written and the emotions are just raw in the best way that i bookmarked it in case i ever had the urge to self-harm again (complimentary). It's ilya in the rose landry era spiralling tf out when shane shows up with a hickey. Parts of this fic still live in my brain.
the cadence of a secret by marigoldens. Very interesting magical take on a soulmate fic. Lyrical vibe to the writing, which i enjoy. They can only communicate by writing, not speaking, until they are prepared to say the words they need to lift their spell. i THINK WE KNOW WHAT WORDS THOSE ARE.
finally, one fic that is more recent. So recent that it's still a WIP, but i am betaing it and the author is hard at work to get it finished. This one i am excited to read every time there's a new chapter to beta (which is not always true!)
The Unbearable Ordeal of Being Scott Hunter by @sunless-garden. The events of HR/Game Changer through the eyes of a scott hunter who is lowkey obsessed with shane (everyone is in this verse, it's very very fun). Lots of great pining and BAMF shane and i think the ending is going to be a banger. It's an AU set in its own verse so keep that in mind, and also there are other parts of the everyone wants shane hollander verse that you can read while waiting for this one to be complete.
i hope this is helpful! Please always ask me many questions if you have them (and i'm serious about the offer to alpha/beta if you want. No pressure ofc but the offer is there).
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