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Sorry. My swing is in the shop being repainted. Or something.

Hey, now. This article is full of fantastic advice. Am I the only fanfic writer left on the net who has yet to craft a threesome featuring two characters from different universes doing unspeakable things to/with a toaster oven?

Just wondering.

heh.

I was in a writer's group a few years back, and we generally had an excellent ensemble... but one time this one woman showed up reading something really bad, something that aspired to be a trashy romance novel but wasn't good enough to be even that. She wasn't invited back. Those rules reminded me of that woman's story, although it wasn't fanfic (at least, not of pre-existing characters. maybe fanfic of romance novel stereotypical characters).

in my view, "bad" and "fanfic" don't have to go hand-in-hand. look at all the bad poetry almost anyone ages 15-20 writes.

it takes trial and effort to write well, of course, but it also takes criticism - of self and others. Enthusiasm alone does not replace craft/skill... look at the vast majority of Christian rock.

keep at it, folks. practice, practice, practice. Don't be discouraged by less-than-gushing feedback, but do heed it and learn from it. See it as a challenge, not a barrier.

Oy. Romance novels. I used to have an HM who wanted to make money writing those things. She bought all the manuals and a huge stack of the books themselves. Lord help me, I would actually read some of the damn things to shut my brains off after a hard day's work, because I was on swingshift at work; unlike every last one of my friends. This was before anyone outside the military had ever heard of the internets, so socializing was pretty much out of the question.

Anyway, in accordance with Sturgeon's Theory, I did eventually stumble upon some tiny fraction of these books that were not total crap. Oh, they still had all the expected tropes: sex every thirty pages. Good girl + Bad man. Nice guy who hangs around for awhile as a place-marker and then gets killed so the now Saved By Love Bad Man can come back. Everyone's royalty because that's what we all wanna' read about. Etc.

The saving graces of the books that weren't total crap had to do with the overall quality of the writing. Somebody putting their back into the historical research instead of just talking about gowns and jewels ad nauseum. The occasional acknowledgment that there were some people around that worked with their hands, and maybe they had lives, too. Even --gasp!-- some perfectly nice people not attracted to the opposite sex or, --double gasp!-- not interested in sex at all. A sense of realism as to how people age (and occasionally mature) and how it changes their outlook on love/sex and blah blah blah.

So, yeah, it can be done. Whether or not it can be done profitably by even occasionally slipping nourishment into the candy dish (as a scant few romance authors do) is a whole 'nother issue. At least with fanfic, the profit motive is eliminated and you don't have to give a flying rat's ass about that part.

Here's another good one via Bartleby:

The Columbia Guide To Standard American English .

For instance, I was reminded today that it's actually okay to interchange "toward" and "towards." Also "franticly" and "frantically," no matter what your spell-checker says. So I felt a little less inept. That's always nice.

Also, I've started perusing some of the fic-watch boards on LJ, but I'm not sure if I'll start linking to them or not. The how-not-to-write-about-sex one, for instance, kind of broke my brain on Saturday. I'm still recovering.

I consider myself a decent writer but i always welcome links and tips to become even better.

I have seen so many stories with tons of grammar and spelling errors and they vary so much in degree.
Spellcheck functions are ok but often sort of blind to some errors, so a manual spellcheck
after that is often advisable and it's also good to have a beta reader or two.

SL, I think your English is better than mine. I rarely if ever notice any typos when I'm reading your work.

On a vaguely related note for you fellow/sister FF.net masochists, I just recently noticed that they no longer allow you to use HTML. Also that I can no longer go back and nitpick the HTML I've already uploaded without completely messing up all of the formatting when I hit "save."

Please pretend not to notice me standing in the corner having a nice half-hour scream.

[totaling half an hour]

Thank You.

A beta reader is indispensible. If you were easily able to see the mistakes you made in your writing, you wouldn't have made them, would you? My own mistakes are practically invisible to me, and I sometimes go back and re-read something for a fourth or fifth time (Yeah, I like my own writing. I'm weird.) and spot some completely lame typo or sentence fragment that makes me want to scream, knowing it's been like that for *years* without my having noticed it before!

Thanks Cleome. Really? I hadn't noticed that yet on ff.net. *cringes*

I have had a beta reader for 2-3 of my stories and the rest of my stories i check a few extra times.

Set said:

"A beta reader is indispensible. If you were easily able to see the mistakes you made in your writing, you wouldn't have made them, would you? My own mistakes are practically invisible to me, and I sometimes go back and re-read something for a fourth or fifth time"

I agree and i pretty much do the same. I check all my stories a few times (even those i'm going to send to a beta reader.)

My trouble is that I get caught up in trying to get a whole story worked out on screen before the inspiration slips away. Then I forget that a beta would be really helpful until it's too late. Actually somebody did look over the first few chapters of the story I'm working on now, but I'm embarrassed to ask somebody to adopt a piece that ends up running 10-12 chapters. I need to start with little things and work my way up.

I like writing little short snippets. Small scenes that get connected by the little stuff. No matter what I always seem to get caught up in the small personal stories.

http://theuniqueadventuresofthelmb.blogspot.com/

New stuff. Short but sassy.

Yk:

You should work up a Facebook for the entire group, too. Oh, and some fake Twitter exchanges. That seems to be all the rage amongst the young fic-types nowadays.

[gets box scores and pitcher of lemonade. goes out to rocking chair on front porch.]

Say... that group shot looks... familiar somehow...

Swiped Lewis Shiner's Turkey City Lexicon from somebody on LJ. Thought it might be of interest, though it's written primarily for SF prose writers.

I encourage people to argue with me, because that's what makes life interesting. However, I personally find some of the sandtraps (turkey traps?) described in here to be iron-clad no-nos for anyone. Such as:

Quote

Brand Name Fever

Use of brand name alone, without accompanying visual detail, to create false verisimilitude. You can stock a future with Hondas and Sonys and IBM's and still have no idea with it looks like.

Never liked that myself. I suppose you can get away with it if you're Ian Fleming or one of his wannabees, though.

OTOH:

Quote

"As You Know Bob"

The most pernicious form of Info Dump. In which the characters tell each other things they already know, for the sake of getting the reader up to speed.

This is pretty tough to avoid, at least once in a while. At least, if you're like me. Then you're trying to write a fic in which something actually happens, without the fic in question running for 500 chapters. I think it may be a necessary evil in some cases. YMMV.

I wish this link weren't helpful, but it could be. They seem to have had a fairly busy 2009, and I know that Sarcasm Kid has mentioned that plagiarism is a frequent issue over at Deviant Art, as well.

stop_plagiarism at LJ.

Hey, better forewarned/forearmed and all that, right?

It's not just fanfic. There was quite a fuss over some kid putting up a puppy photo that wasn't theirs. It got thousands of favs before someone realized it was stolen. But you can see why it was so popular. (That's a ligit source, near as I can tell. It's the first pic.)

I was thinking about starting a thread like this for art. Does anyone know a good source for art tutorials? Manga Revolution was my favourite, but it's been shut down. DeviantART has a tutorial section, but it's kind of hard to find the good stuff there.

Whoa. Those pics make me think of the "Hoojibs" from the original Star Wars comics. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad.

I'd read that art thread, Arachne. I'm a terrible neo-Luddite when it comes to computer art, but that's more due to cowardice than hostility. Of course, if you'd rather piggyback on this thread, I think that'd be cool, too. It's all "creative," right? I could alter the thread title as necessary.

Whoa... I did start that thread? LOL I totally forgot. I'll have to bump it when I get a bit of time.

Oy. Some of you fanfic writers and fan artists might end up morbidly fascinated with The Continuing Adventures of Keith Mander , would-be fanfic profiteer.

I know I've been fascinated, in a disgusted/rage-y sort of way.

In a nutshell: some jerk decided that he could make a bundle buying up already existing fanfic archives and loading them up with ad space. This way: he could profit off work that fans do for free without having to reimburse them, AND he could simultaneously piss off entities like Tolkien estate and the people who publish Twilight, possibly landing a lot of fans who haven't done anything wrong in a whole mess of trouble.

My advice would be: if you see this creep's name anywhere on a site you're using, run like hell and take your stories with you.

This, as the cliche' goes, is why fandom Can't Have Nice Things.

While tooling around some LJ fansites (much, much) earlier this year, I got an invite to a newer site for posting fanfic called An Archive Of Our Own , or AO3 for short.

Procrastinator that I am, it's only in the last couple of weeks that I've begun backing up my fanfic over there. I shouldn't have waited so long to dive in. It's a very user-friendly site. You can even use the Document Manager at Fanfiction.net to copy and re-post your stories on AO3.

Usage of the site is free, but you have to have an invite at this time to set up an account. <strike>I have one available at the moment, so if anyone's interested, let me know.</strike>

Their FAQ is here, if you're interested in learning more.

This thread is good stuff. I already know that fanfic writing, or any sort of writing, requires thought and rereads. However, the tips here can cut down on the time needed for that.

Thanks

IB, you should put in some links and tips of your own, if you want.

Also, since I wrote the previous post about AO3, they've updated their main page. You can now request an invite of your own, if you want. I hope more fan writers here will consider it, because Legion stuff in particular needs more love over there. (And their general DCU section is still growing, so there's that, too.)