Author says: When I have to raise the white flag

In the ten years now that I've been writing fanfiction, I've written and deleted more stories then I can even remember. Posted on the site however...If you were to ask how many, what names, which fandoms, I could probably tell you because deleting a story/taking it down for whatever reason can be pretty embarrassing.

It's kind of like stringing people along - baiting them with this wonderful idea, and then telling them, "Hey, joke's on you, I'm not actually going to write this anymore!"

And I hate it when that happens.

I've been reading fanfic as long as I've been writing it so I've been lured into incomplete stories before. Years have gone by and nothing.

The worst is not knowing when a story hasn't been updated in a while, and you reach the last of the story so far and you hope that in a week/month/year it'll continue...and then you check the last update and your heart falters - TWO YEARS AGO. SERIOUSLY.

I think that's why I prefer to delete rather then leaving them there to linger...

If there was an option between incomplete and complete, perhaps labeled "hiatus" or "abandoned", it would be a different story. But considering my reasons for not continuing stories in the first place, there's a chance I wouldn't even use those...

Real life problems aside, I'm a very sensitive person.

Sure I can take criticism from others, but when it comes to my own? Hoo boy, there's no competition there.

I've always been pretty self conscious about my stories, they're an extension of myself: my self-conscious, behavior, thought process. Unfortunately as most of my stories are driven by the plotbunnies, it's usually a jumbled mess.

In the past that's why I rarely ever finished a story, in fact, Sibling Intervention was my first one, and even then I wasn't completely satisfied.

The reasons for that was simply because upon rereading, my head hurt.

There was pacing problems, characters that should have had bigger roles were sidelined, scenes lingered unnecessarily, there was all this build up and no pay off and I had words upon words. If I had written that for NaNo I would've finished with weeks to spare because that's how bloated I thought it was and it still wasn't going anywhere.

The reason for Permission Granted getting the fanfiction erase button was just as simple.

Despite the story only being two(three) chapters in, I felt lost.

It was likely because as the readers hoped, I continued a story that I hadn't thought further than the first chapter for.

Sure Liberties Taken was satisfying to a degree, but as one of the reviewers said, it had a comfortable amount of potential to be left on its own. Though I felt the same, I ignored it. Why?

Well for one thing, the reviews for the story was amazing. Liberties Taken has, since today, hit 51 reviews. I've never had that many for a single one-shot. And, though Permission Granted was only two chapters in, it had hit the same amount fairly quickly.

And as a writer, feedback is my drug. I need that ish.

If you're a writer of any kind you know you want someone to talk to you about your work, it's the best feeling - it means someone has read it, spent time on it and thought about it enough to voice an opinion over it. The only way to get it though was with a good story so that's how my stories become my dealers.

What I needed though, was a redo if I wanted this story to be satisfying not only to read, but to write as well.

I didn't want to be using half baked ideas and suffering the same problems as Sibling Intervention.

After sitting with it for awhile whilst NaNo is happening (which I'm not sure I'll continue considering the problems I can already foresee), I had an idea of what I wanted to do with Liberties Taken. Unfortunately it required a bit of a face lift which simple editing just would not fix.

Plus, because of the encouragement I received with Sibling Intervention I wanted to try my hand at publishing, maybe with SI and maybe with LT. Who knows...?

Regardless, this face lift didn't need competition within my own stories.

Just yesterday, after posting a one-shot I had written out of the blue, a reviewer praised the story before asking about Permission Granted.

Sigh. Anyway.

My random bouts of OCD aside, a part of me was embarrassed for caving to the review craving.

I didn't even know what the point of Permission Granted was when I reread it.

Though, Lady Ruthless was kind enough to say,

"It seems more like an Emma fanfic than P&P"

And, though I truly love Emma, writing Emma and not Elizabeth was not my intention.

I felt just as embarrassed by it as I was by Sibling Intervention when it was over. I had no desire to keep on writing Permission Granted, but I did want to let the plotbunny have its glory day, the idea had merit and I owed the people who liked it enough to want more and give them more.

Hopefully I won't disappoint, though I'm afraid I already have.

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Anatomy of a popular one-shot

Yes I'm aware I'm tooting my own horn. 

No. I don't care.

Anatomy of a popular one-shot

I've written many one-shots. Not exceeding a hundred yet mind you, but I've had my fair share of them - thirty plus if you count the stories from my inactive account, and ten to fifteen on my current. 

For those of you who don't know what a one-shot is: It's basically a short story, the shortest short story ever. It can really only count as a one-shot if it's a single chapter so word count is relative. 

Some people find it easy. Others not so much.

I write one-shots as experiments and mainly to scratch the writing bug that pops up. I don't have the best track record with long running stories, so one-shots and collections of one-shots are my safest bet which would explain the number of them that I have.

I'm no expert at it, but I've come to recognize a few things once the story has been posted. An example being the two one-shots that spurned the creation of this post.

Before I give away any misleading secrets, it's important to note a few things: 

A story's popularity depends on a number of factors, these include, but are not limited to:

• The fandom you're writing for
• The pairing or main characters involved
• The genre you categorize it under
• The rating of the story

As you may have noticed, the actual writing isn't mentioned because those are internal factors and what makes a story attractive to potential readers is the bare minimum they see which in fanfiction is limited to a 455character summary, a title, and the above already mentioned. 

Note: Readers will notice any spelling and grammatical errors in your summary and it could be held against you. A good first impression is important.

Now, as I said, I recently posted two one-shots three days apart (they're practically twins), here they are, their first picture outside of my brain -

Despite the fact that the stories were three days apart they had nothing else in common: Not their fandom, not their rating, not their word count, nothing. 

But what's interesting is that I felt exactly the same when I wrote both. I was suffering from writer's block about another story and I wrote those two to make them better. They were written practically the same day but released seperately because I felt like it (no joke, I didn't think either of them were particularly good so I was reluctant to release them onto the internet).

As you can see from the reviews though, the stories garnered different responses. 

The first, my shot in the dark - first Fairy Tail one-shot was me writing away my obsession with a pairing that isn't particularly popular. I thought it was the better of the two so that's why I posted it first. I didn't expect a miracle, if anything I'm surprised I got any reviews at all. 

The second was posted under the excitement that my Fairy Tail one-shot survived without a flame or troll in sight, and I hoped I'd get the same response. 

If you're on the Facebook Group Fanfiction Writers Unite you'd know how it was received: I got eight reviews within two hours of posting, and the numbers kept going...

I still think it's a joke, and I honestly laugh about it because it's so unbelievable. 

Looking back, the stories are pretty different. 

Fandom and pairing:

Fairy Tail, though popular as a fandom, didn't have a big community of Laxana shippers.

Pride and Prejudice on the other hand, is quite active, and its  DarcyxLizzy/Dizzy ship definitely takes up the entire harbor.

The up would go to the Pride and Prejudice story.

Plot wise: 

The Fairy Tail one-shot was my version of a Laxana trope: the pairing being drinking buddies. 

The Pride and Prejudice one-shot was a complete out of the box: the pairing in the same economic situation (a trope that is rarely ever explored though I've yet to figure out why). 

It would be a toss up, but since the trope was more uncommon in one then the other, the up would go to the Pride and Prejudice story

Rating:
The Fairy Tail one-shot was rated T for safety (Cana's a big drinker, plus the trope was drinking buddies so there was that).
The Pride and Prejudice one-shot was rated K because it was still regency, no one swore and no one did anything mildly inappropriate (for our time period besides a kiss)
Both ratings show up without having to fiddle with the filters, but the more G rated it could be the better chances the story has of being read (safety first). The up would go to Pride and Prejudice story.

Word count:
The Fairy Tail one-shot was 3k
The Pride and Prejudice one-shot was 1k
One-shots are usually read because they're always complete and because generally, they're short so the up went to the Pride and Prejudice story.

Genre:

Both were categorized under romance, with Fairy Tail having the added Friendship thrown in because the actual romance was more implied. 

In that, there are no differences. In fact, having another genre can attract more readers, so the up might have gone to Fairy Tail if I wasn't so unsure of how obvious my preference for Laxana as more than a friendship pair.

Summary: 

I've changed the summary twice for the Pride and Prejudice story while the Fairy Tail one has remained the same. For the most part, both stories seem relatively simple in the trope they present - 

The Fairy Tail one-shot was clearly going to be about drinking (Cana and alcohol always go hand in hand) and I had it easier putting into words what exactly it was about while the Pride and Prejudice one-shot was a little more vague, but implies the pair are in the same situation, though it was difficult to word it in a way I was happy with (I'm still not by the way, but what can you do). 

Content: 

I liked the story more in Fairy Tail because it had a clear beginning, middle and end. I got to play around a bit with headcanons. It also read more like a one-shot despite it being 3k in length. I struggled with the tenses though, and people did notice, but overall, the response was the best I could've hoped for.

The story for Pride and Prejudice was a bit more muddled, the only thing really clear about it was the fact that it was happening in the moment - the beginning and end weren't particularly clear, but that seemed to have an appeal to people as they reviewed to say they wish there was more to read.

The thing I was most worried about was how completely out-of-character I thought everyone was, but the readers disagreed.

Also when I reread it a few hours after I posted just to make sure the readers and I were reading the same thing, I found a multitude of errors and missing words, none of which was present in the Fairy Tail story. No one seemed to mind.

So here's what I got from the responses of the two one-shots:

Write what the plotbunnies tell you to. You don't have to put it in a box and organise it. Get what you want to say out and then rework it to make sure it meshes. You'll miss the story if you're too worried about how it'll look.

Content is king. Don't worry too much about the spelling and grammar as you write (though don't post it if you haven't corrected the mistakes), the plotbunnies don't have time for proper English. Let them do what they do and then clean up the mess.

Be bold. Like this font. People want to read something new, just because it's been tried and tested doesn't mean it'll be popular. 

Also, just because a fandom or it's pairing isn't in demand, doesn't mean you shouldn't write that story your plotbunnies have been nagging you about. You could be the start of that ship's popularity. I know, because I've been one too ;-)

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Author says...

Author says...

I've been MIA for about two weeks now, I think...

The last few months of the year are the months I'm the most inactive in everything to be perfectly honest which really sucks considering I have exams in November, plus NanoWriMo which I've been meaning to join and do for years now...

Hopefully by the time my year starts again in October, I'll have my energy and motivation back.

For now though, I've been spending my time watching Fairy Tail and editing Sibling Intervention. 

Why Fairy Tail? Frankly I've only written non-fiction and my end game for publishing is to write things with magic and supernatural aspects and I can't do that if I don't have any basis for it so yeah, Fairy Tail is one of the many sources I'm looking to for inspiration.

Sibling Intervention is being edited yet again in an attempt to combine the first part and its sequel as one whole story so I'm thinking about discontinuing Brotherly Advice and Sisterly Persuasion. So far I've edited, cut and combined roughly seven chapters to four and I'll keep at it until I've covered everything. I haven't a plan yet for what I want to do with the fully completed story,  but bare with me, I'll think of something xD

 

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