Write Way Round

We barely know anything about Madagascar pre-500CE. We don’t even know whether the island had a permanent population before then, despite finding a bunch of much older signs of temporary human presence.

Malagasy mythology makes mention of the vazimba, a “precursor” ethnic group that might or might not be distinct from Madagascar’s current population.

The point is, we do not know.

So you were in Madagascar when the pyramids were being built in Egypt, i.e. during one of the most obscure, most undocumented parts of Madagascar’s human history?

August 2026 is AU-gust here at the Prompt Foundry!

Alternate Universe takes on our favorite stories—be they shows or books we love, or tales of our creation—can be a delightfully fun way to explore what makes those stories tick, what makes those characters who they are, and what in them is important to why we enjoy them.

On the other side of the coin, some settings and scenerios are popular for AUs because there's something special about that environment or situation that really tickles our brains, and it can be fun to figure out how to fit different characters and their contexts into that world.

So let's run through the multiverse and play with some AUs!

Feel free to combine different days’ prompts with each other, or combine them with other events, like last year's March of the Blorbos! Draw, paint, sculpt, sing, write fiction, write poetry, write academic analysis—use your OCs, your favorite characters from media, your own experiences, whatever tickles your fancy.

If you use this list, please tag me here @thepromptfoundry, I’d love to see what you create!

Respond to as many prompts as you want or as interest you, don’t worry about missing or skipping any, or posting your work after the day the prompt is assigned to. Remember, this is supposed to be fun!

If you have any questions or musings, check our FAQ, and if you don’t find your answer, shoot me an ask.

Plain text list below the cut:

The first is this wonderful script that will automatically add key information (that you choose) like author, title, summary, etc to your bookmark notes so you at least know what got deleted.

The second is this incredible bulk downloader for AO3. Input any AO3 page (such as your bookmarks page) and tell it what format you want to download in and it will just.... DOWNLOAD IT ALL!! I run it every few months so that I have all my bookmarks downloaded in my preferred EPUB format. That way I know I always have my favorites downloaded in case they ever get deleted.

Before I started writing in earnest, I did not understand how much writing was going to eat into my fic reading time. We joke about having too many tabs open, but I have a different problem: the amount of tabs I have open on new fics is way smaller than it used to be. My ao3 wrapped would be a sad affair. Unless I’ve subscribed to an author or come across something on my dash, I basically don’t see it

Which has really driven home for me how much fandom cannot just be creators. You have to have people who want to read fic and meta discussions and joke posts. You have to have people who want to look at art and gifs. It has to be mutual.

Community thrives on flow. You have to have that movement of people sharing things with each other for a community to exist

Hanahaki, but it's someone whose friends have started ghosting them.

Hanahaki, someone's wife is cheating on them.

"*****smut marked with asterisks so you can skip!*****""

Don't. Don't do this.

You let readers know what your fic contains through proper tagging and rating. Content warning notes at the top of the chatter are also great. You can even summarize key "this is the plot relevant stuff you missed of you're skipping this chapter" notes at the bottom too! This is a much smoother reading experience.

This is HELL on screen readers which is a disability access issue. Screen readers will read out every single asterisk you put, which I have seen done as entire page breaks. It's an awful reading experience. Please just don't.

Readers do not need their hands held through the reading experience. If they're enjoying the fic but don't care for smut, they can just skim until it gets interesting again. If they REALLY don't like smut, you warned them. There's a back button. You don't have to do a special song and dance isolating out the specific parts you think might be "icky". (If you think those bits are icky and don't like writing them, consider just don't! Fanfic is a hobby we do for fun and you don't have to write anything you don't find enjoyable. There's plenty of readers for gen fic and smut free ship fic).

Please, please don't try to span the entire page with whatever symbol you're using for your scene breaks. It takes an eternity for screen years to get through, and typically has me noping out of even the most interesting stores.

Instead, use just three (or fewer) make. Three is standard, and does the job without making your story unreadable.

It is hell

It is absolute hell

From navigation to listening to the voices

It's just awful

Since then I've tried to write with screen readers in mind because the number of websites that think about accessibility is SO SO SMALL

If you don't believe me, use NVDA which is a free accessibility tool. Otherwise you have to spend thousands of dollars for a slightly better one. Then try to navigate a website.

summary search!!!

I'll give you my secrets as a fellow short fic writer who sometimes dips into medium-fic and the occasional long fic.

Be obsessed with your story. This can go a LONG way to helping you maintain your motivation. Daydream about it. Make playlists about it. Talk to friends about it.

Try to make each chapter feel like a oneshot. Give it an opening, a middle, and a closing. Have some character development or achieve a plot point or drop a clue that will be used later in the story. The more you can give yourself the satisfaction you get from a oneshot, the better.

Do jump to oneshots on the side to keep you going through the long fic. Sometimes you really do need to get the feeling of "done" to be able to continue something that's still in progress. Don't deny yourself that feeling just because you think you should. Life needs dessert and short fic writers need completed works.

Embrace a B plot (and a C plot and a D plot). These side plots can last for a single chapter or can be threaded through the whole story or they can bridge from chapter 12 to chapter 18. Whatever their final form, these smaller stories-within-the-story also help to satisfy the need for a short, punchy hit of dopamine when the story is starting to feel huge.

I treat each chapter like an "episode" of a TV series that has a reputation to get people to binge watch. So I studied what it was about a few of them that makes people want more in my genre I write in (examples are Squid Game, Hannibal, Dexter, You, Based on a True Story, etc.)

The build up and endings in each episode. They all had a cliffhanger in common.

So I don't really give my chapters a "satisfying end", and I make sure the last paragraph and story note ends on a high stake.

This does two things that is ultimately the same thing:

(1) Keeps me excited to start the next chapter.

(2) Keeps other people's interest to read the next chapter.

If you leave the ending of the chapter on a cliffhanger that is intense, it also has more of a chance for it to generate conversation about the fic/chapter due to positive-frustration of the reader wanting to know what will happen next.

This then creates engagement that helps keep you personally motivated too! A few people created a tumblr accounts just so they could DM me to chat personally about a chapter/cliffhanger with me before even.

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.