also seriously if a character isn’t white, i promise your only descriptive options aren’t food words and varying degrees of tan. it’s okay to say brown. pale brown! light brown! golden brown! medium brown! dark brown! deep brown! so many kinds of brown!

BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN

#brown is not a bad word #you do not need euphemisms #B R O W N

This post by writingwithcolor might help in picking good words to use plus reading about why not to use food words! In general if you’re writing a character of color I highly recommend @writingwithcolor

Fanfic Readers: Wow! Look at this well written plot and detailing the author put in! All these little subliminal messages they put in to hint at [insert theory here]! They’re a genius!

Fanfic author: I’m sorry, I did what?

Alternatively

Fanfic writer: *plans out intricate plot and incorporates different theories and characterizations to drop those subliminal messages*

Fanfic reader: aw cute!

Fanfic writer: …

Fanfic writer: BUT DID YOU NOTICE–

I am both of these

listen. l i s t e n. listen. kudos does not equal quality. popularity does not equal quality. i have read some “fandom classics” that i could barely fathom how boring or terrible i - personally - found them, and i have stumbled across some absolute gems that didn’t even break 100 kudos. 

what is good doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. it’s sad, but true. just because you haven’t - or possibly never take - off in fandom doesn’t mean your work isn’t astounding and beautiful, it doesn’t mean you should stop writing; it just means that a very select corner of the internet missed the diamond in the rough. 

fanfiction is flooded with content, there are so many of us out there producing it these days, and having a fic that takes off is almost as much about luck as it is about talent. never let a few artificial numbers on the internet dictate to you what is and isn’t worthy writing. 

additionally, you don’t have to read or enjoy fics just bcs they’re big. i cannot count the amount of times i’ve read the first paragraph of something fandom adores and immediatly exited out of it.

just… do what makes you happy. write what you wanna write, read what you wanna read. understand that while we all want recognition - and some deserve it more than others - we did not get into fanfiction for that recognition.

recognition is good, but sometimes we get all tangled up chasing it and stop enjoying writing and reading and fandom as a whole along the way. be careful of that, please, or you’ll burn yourself out.

Twenty-five years in fandom and it doesn’t get truer than this. You absolutely CANNOT predict what will be popular and what won’t. It’s due to coincidence and timing and who happens to hit reblog and yanno…it’s a mystery. Write for yourself, read for yourself, this isn’t a job.

Ya know what I love about fan fiction?

You wanna write a cliche? Go for it!

You want your story to be super angsty and way overdramatic? The more the better.

You want so much fluff it hurts? Write it!!

You wanna mix werewolves with a sitcom? Why not??

You wanna write a 300 word one shot? Cool.

You wanna write 200k+? Also cool.

You wanna write a story that’s been written a thousand times over? Do it anyway!

You wanna write something so outlandish and specific that it only has a target audience of like two people? Well, then those two people will love it.

It’s such a beautiful and nonjudgmental art. And yes, it is an art. It’s an art that is actually solely about bringing joy to you and your audience.

And I love that.

Commenting fanfiction is the easiest thing in the world once you start doing it. 

I leave a comment on every single fic I read. Sometimes when I read published books I go and leave a comment somewhere the author can find it. Granted, I literally majored in ‘leaving comments on fics’ (English Education), but once you start doing it it just becomes second nature. Now you’re gonna go to the Ozymandias school of leaving comments: 

Problem: I can’t leave kudos again.

Problem: I don’t know what to say :(

Problem: I’m embarrassed to leave a comment (what if I annoy the author?)

Problem: I don’t know how to express myself/my experience 

This? This is an amazing post. This is the Captain Awkward of commenting posts—it addresses all your fears directly and gives you actionable scripts for each one.

tips for writing bilingual characters

this is the most accurate bi/multilingual reference post on here y’all should take notes 👀

Sometimes there are certain quotes or lines in fanfics that never fail to take my breath away like “What was this writer thinking?” “How were they able to come up with something as good as that?” “This sounds like something out of a movie that people would use as their captions for as long as we can remember” Honestly? Kudos to all the writers out there

#the quality of some fic paralyzes me sometimes

People underrate the great quality and creativity of some fan fiction.  Which is really unfair, human writers write fan fiction and in fact some very famous writers over the past few  centuries have written what technically would be fan fiction, which by definition is just fiction using characters previously fictionally created by someone else-Shakespeare would be considered a fan fiction author technically.

An author I love: i’m so sorry for not updating, please accept my apologies, life has been busy at the moment and i just didn’t have time to write, so sorry for making you wait-

Me, gently cupping their face in my hands: My friend. My dude. I’m the kind of idiot who waits years for the new season of a show. Who gets excited about the new part of a book series that hasn’t been published in a decade. Do you seriously think i’m not gonna be there cheering for you when you come back? That my support is dependent on you regularly publishing updates? That you owe me anything? No no no no no. I’ll love you whatever you chose to do. So go on having fun and living your life you gorgeous being <3

The time between updates just presents an opportunity to revisit and fall in love with the work all over again and again and again

that’s the attitude!!

me: im writing a fic but its not alpha-d

friend: you mean not beta-d?

me: no i mean i havent written anything yet

[fic alignment]

Me, reading my old abandoned fanfictions:

“wow what a great idea I wonder where the author was going with this”

Why do people stop commenting on fics if they’re more than a week or two old? Please comment on old fics. Tell me you like my one shot from 2014. Tell me you like my old multi-chap I finished in 2016 that I spent a year writing. I will be fucking thrilled.

Nothings worst then being unable to write any other fanfics because your currently writing one that’s in such a specific alternate universe that a single distraction from the plot would kill you.

I’m searching for a fanfiction for the right fandom, about the right ship, which the exact scenario and perfect ending.

Spoiler alert: There is none, and I have to write it.

Gosh Dang It.

fanfiction writers: wow! take this shitty fic that i totally don’t care about! (:

fanfiction writers, 0.2 seconds after posting: checking their notifications over and over until approximately 3 days later

Honestly, I think the whole “don’t pay the writers” thing boils down to the notion that everybody thinks they can write. It’s the old saw about the novelist at a cocktail party having to hear someone say, for the millionth time, “I’d love to write a book someday.”

Someone–Stephen King? Pretty sure I saw this in a Stephen King foreword–once said they’d like to say to a brain surgeon, “Boy, I’d love to do brain surgery someday.”

We treat “the ability to put words into a sentence” like it’s just the same as “the ability to form a coherent narrative that engenders a variety of emotions within the reader and puts them in a scene and shows them what they didn’t see before”.

And that’s like me drawing a stick figure and saying I’m an artist.

Writers are constantly devalued because everyone thinks they have a book in them and don’t realize the level of skill and commitment it takes to finish even a short story, much less a whole book. 

This goes well beyond fandom, but man, I would’ve hoped fandom would know better.

Six Ways to Support Fan Fiction Authors – The Lallybroch Library