Shout-out to everyone who writes fic with OCs and self-inserts

You’re doing great, loves, keep it up.

that ‘pakige?’ post but me, a couple hours after posting a fic, like ‘comints?’

F5 F5 F5

… F5 F5 F5 F5F5F5F5F5

Long fic writers

Special shout out to long-fic writers who churn out what are essentially novels and for doing it for free. Purely because you have so much love to give to your fandoms. You guys are awesome.

I think the problem with writers & showrunners is that they think everyone’s interest lies fully in the story itself when that is almost never the case. in reality it’s carried by the characters. & when they treat their characters like they’re expendable & then turn around & ask why everyone is mad at them it’s like well what did you expect?  no one connects through experiences alone. we connect through the people who’ve shared them.

I got into writing because of the plots tumbling around in my head, but the further I go in my career, the more I realize just how much true fans are in it for the characters. You can take away the superpowers and the life-threatening disasters and the magic systems and the beautiful words. People want characters they can love, no matter how evil or selfish or heartbroken or foolish or too-pure those characters are. Look at fanfic–most of it isn’t even set in the same universe. Everything’s different but the characters, their emotional core.

Write characters people will love. Not because they’re perfect, but because they seem real. Everything else will follow.

some of yall have never read an abandoned fanfic that stopped on a cliff hanger and it really shows

Some of you have never WRITTEN that abandoned fanfic and felt the guilt for the rest of your days, and it really shows. :p

As someone who’s read a lot of writing advice books, the advice of ‘find your best writing time and stick to it’ can fuck off. My best writing time is from 10 to 2. I am working at that time, because unlike the writer who married rich or was rich or has made enough money to lose touch with what it feels like not to be rich, I need to pay rent and have health insurance.

To be fair, most writers know this. Most writers work other jobs, juggle kids, or at the very least still remember what it feels like to only write when they can. Any piece of advice that feels out of touch or comes from a perspective so remote to you that it might as well be from an alien planet can safely be ignored. You’re not a failure for not living up to Write Every Day or not being able to join the 5am Writer’s Club (I physically cannot, my dudes, my brain just doesn’t function that early).

Do what you can.

all i want to do is write that one fic that takes people’s breath away and kinda lingers in the back of their minds. i want to write something that makes people want to make art and play with my versions of characters or in the universe i created. i want to be able to create worlds that feel real enough to walk into and write lines that stick with people until they forget where exactly they heard it because it lives in their bones now.

When a writer/author comes up with a story

me writing dialogue: “what is man but a vessel through which a higher entity may see? what is his purpose? must he find a purpose? we are but stardust; the universe comprehending itself.”

me writing action: they ran real fast from the bad men aand legs hurty

me writing action: Her legs pounded against the earth, the familiar jolt grounding her like nothing else could. Magic, gods, royalty—she didn’t know anything about that. But running? That’s something she’d been doing since day one.

me writing dialogue: “I dunno man whatchu wanna do” “I dunno. What do you think?” “Hey man I don’t know”

me writing action: room go boom

me writing dialogue: noppity nope, that ain’t dope

The holy trinity of writing

Something to repeat to yourself in the shower:

My stories are not for everyone. 

My stories will bore some readers. Some readers will hate them. Some won’t understand, won’t connect the dots, won’t relate to the characters. Some won’t because they can’t, some won’t because they don’t want to, but most won’t simple because my stories just aren’t for them.

My stories aren’t for everyone.

My stories are for me.

And they’re for the readers who will love them. They’re for the reader who have already loved them. For the readers who will see what I see in them and feel the characters and the world the way I do. They’re for the readers who wanted these stories before they even knew they existed. They’re for the readers they’ll make smile, the readers they’ll stick with, and the readers they’ll save.

And just because my stories aren’t for everyone doesn’t make them worth any less to the people they are for. 

Not everyone likes butterflies. Not everyone likes spiders. But the people who love those creatures more than anything else would lose a part of themselves if they didn’t exist. 

So no, my stories are not for everyone. But that doesn’t matter. 

Because they’re for someone, and to that someone, they’re irreplaceable.

The writer's blessing:

May you write 1,500 words with ease. May your characters be lively and not cardboard. May you need little editing. May your muse visit you as soon as you sit. May the Internet not distract you much. May your phone lie dormant while you write.

John Updike (b. 18 March 1932)

if you're a writer i wish u a very plot/story/character epiphany

I could write a whole essay about this, but.

Fanfiction as a collective exists as a combination of the ideal state and all the broken pieces that are left behind. Fanfiction shows us all the things that should have happened, if the world was a little bit kinder: someone adopts Harry Potter, the Avengers live domestically together, people fall in love and admit it. Fanfiction says, things are awful but we’re kind anyway, because we can be, because kindness costs little and gives much. It is democracy at its best, a collection of people solving problems together, solving plotholes and heartbreaks and deaths, a conversation of solution responding to solution because the whole of fandom is, itself, its own canon.

But at the same time, fanfiction is about all of those holes and jagged edges and wounds left unhealed, about what happens when the war is over and everyone who’s left needs to go back home. It’s about the fact that surviving is usually the hardest part, and we rarely get to choose what’s done to us but we do get to choose how we survive afterwards. It’s about the child soldiers who no longer have a war, and about the trauma of getting past the trauma you’ve survived. It’s about injury and depression and PTSD. It’s about recovery, yes, but also about those things that do not recover, those things that will never recover. It is a reminder that we live in a world where many people don’t get white picket fences and 2.5 kids and a happily ever after, but also a reminder that there is life beyond that, survival, yes, but also life. It is a reminder that characters’ lives don’t end with the last page and nor too do people’s lives end with their trauma, but that after that hurt comes comfort and healing and putting one foot in front of another because the best way to get through hell is to keep going.

if you ever feel bad about your writing, especially structure-wise, remember: you’re still not the one who put “somehow, palpatine has returned” into a multimillion dollar franchise produced by one of the greediest and richest corporations on earth. you’ll always be better than that one.

if you want your female characters to both have agency in the story and be complex human individuals then sometimes bad things have to be their fault