Life as I know it: Using fanfiction as a motivator

My WIPs got deleted and my life as a writer flashed before my eyes.
And then. I started again.

Life as I know it:
Using fanfiction as a motivator

So a few weeks ago my laptop died. 

And for someone who only uses their laptop to write, it hit me pretty hard. 

Though I haven't worked on any projects for the past six months (minus Project M which is always on hiatus because people that know me in real life read it and...yeah, the teasing hasn't stopped), I've had several incomplete, unedited one-shots and stories cooking, including original work that I hoped to publish one day. All of it was the result of almost three to four years worth of stories, and they were gone within seconds. 

Word to the wise: Backups are important in life.

However, once my laptop revived itself, instead of shutting it down and hiding out in my blanket fort out of depression, I opened up Word, and wrote. 

Throughout the last six months since the completion of Sibling Intervention, I didn't feel like I could write anymore out of exhaustion. But looking back, I realize how productive I was when I had fanfiction in my life.

A little look into my personal life:

At the beginning of 2014, I received my results from my final exams and was officially a high school graduate. During 2013, I wrote next to nothing since I felt that my education took precedence over writing stories.

Initially, I did well. 

However, within three to four months, I felt drained in every sense of the word. 

When I closed my eyes every night, I opened them to another morning; living is hard when you're exhausted. My weekends consisted of sleeping and during the week I was literally a machine. I was in a rut, and even when I forced myself to sit down and write just to finish Sibling Intervention, I could feel my brain frying in my head. And even with my good marks, I wasn't happy. 

Eventually, I gave in to my exhaustion and shut the lights off upstairs. My motivation to do well for my exams had dwindled; I succeeded in burning myself out in less than six months. 

By the time the exams rolled around, I didn't care about passing well - just passing. And I achieved that. 

When I started college in February this year, I was excited about a new beginning, studying towards something I was interested in (no math, no physics, no reciting textbooks). 

Out of the desire to immerse myself with the real world, I kept away from fanfiction after completing Sibling Intervention, saying to myself that I took forever to finish a story anyway and that I didn't have the juice to start another. 

The day I decided to just throw ideas at Word was the day my laptop committed suicide only to be resurrected with nothing left. It was a clean slate. And a seeming punishment for being gone too long.

I rolled with it though, and that's how this happened: 

I've been toying with the idea of writing a Twilight story for awhile. How I feel about Twilight as literature will be discussed later, but the fact of the matter is, I wanted something new and I got it. 

The story I wrote: Flavor of the Month, was completely different to Sibling Intervention, and though I've only just started it, I want to do something different than the hordes of romance stories in every AU fanfiction out there. Along with my first Twilight fic, I started the second part of Sibling Intervention called Brotherly Advice and Sisterly Persuasion. 

It's been less than a month and I feel more motivated to do things again. 

My real life concerns like course work and projects are planned and completed as soon as possible in order to give me time to write before my next self-imposed deadline. 

It's more of a challenge now in order to get things done. Whereas in the past, my marks were for me, in fanfiction they were both for me and for the people that read my stories. I hate disappointing people so writing fanfiction and using the desire for updates (which every fanfic reader knows to their soul) to push me in my real life have helped. 

I hope it isn't a few weeks kind of thing, but time will tell. 

Until then, I'm going to ride the high and hope I don't crash when it stops. 

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Book club: The Name Mix-up by LadyandtheTurtleDuck

The names Levy and Lily sound similar when people are drunk. Gajeel knows this.

Book club:

A review of The Name Mix-up by LadyandtheTurtleDuck

Fandom: Fairy Tail

This story was short and fluffy. And sometimes that’s a problem because its easy to be cliché.

But this one?

I’M GONNA SQUEAL.

It was short and sweet, uncomplicated by heavy description or fancy word play – this was bare knuckles, romantic fluff that didn’t destroy Gajeel’s badass character. Only highlighting the fact that he’s secretly adorable.

As it was a short oneshot, there isn’t much else to say other than how the characters themselves behaved and what exactly happened.

SPOILERS BELOW!

 The story takes place at the guild after another round of heavy celebration which is typical of Fairy Tail. (√)

Everyone is wonderfully wasted and in hilarious situations left to our imagination because no one was named or described as the main focus was on Pantherlily, and his attention of his two favorite people: Gajeel and Levy. (√)

Our lovely couple is trying to sleep on the floor because they’re just too drunk to go home and find a comfortable bed so they make do like everyone else apparently. (√)

Gajeel, who in head canon, is a major cuddler, requires his pet cat to make sleeping on the floor less of a pain in the ass and because he’s drunk, he thinks his cat is Levy. (√)

Levy, being in love with him, only struggles slightly before accepting her fate. (√)

The cuteness doesn’t end there, oh no!

If anything, morning afters are just as cute. If you’re lucky.

As usual, Mira is the one to discover them and Gajeel reacts like Gajeel and refuses to believe he initiated cuddles. With three against one, the odds aren’t in his favor and he decides that either Levy or Lily must change their name for the sake of his reputation. (√)

I promise it’s cuter than what my summary is.

But basically everything that happened made absolute sense from setting to character reactions.

What I loved the most was the simplicity of the story – it’s all about Gajeel getting his cuddle on, and how it happened as well as how it was handled when he was caught was done so adorably well, even if it was horribly written, I’d probably still enjoy it.

The dialogue was pretty standard, they definitely sounded like themselves, but the punctuation needed work and when dialogue happened there was an unnecessary need to add He said/She said afterwards.

As for the characters themselves: it was an impressive portrayal considering the amount of cuteness in the fic, Gajeel was still sourly and grumpy, and then just confident and cute at once – my favorite! Lily was pretty basic as was Levy, and Mira made somewhat of an unnecessary appearance, but she was also very familiar.

I loved the story just the way it was regardless of everything I just said above.

There’s your example of a successful fluff fic without over fluffing!

And here’s a word to the wise for those attempting fluff:

KEEP IT SIMPLE AND DON’T LET THE CHARACTERS OVERREACT.

Brownie points:

Gajeel loves cuddles = WIN

Characters-in-character

Health deductions:

NONE. ENJOY WITH CAKE.

Red pen level: 8/10

A few missing words and punctuation missing (a comma or two), there’s also an issue with dialogue, but nothing alcohol can’t fix.

Characterization: 8/10

Plot: 9/10

Kept it simple and took it home for cuddles!

Overall: 8/10

Recommendation:

Clean up dialogue and you’re good to go!

Have you read this fanfiction? Do you think I got it right, or are we going to agree to disagree? Review the fic in question or leave me a line below.

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The awkward moment in fanfiction when...readers don't understand what you're doing

That awkward moment in fanfiction when...readers don’t understand what you’re doing

One of the biggest tips of writing is to “show” not “tell”.

Unfortunately writing involves walking a thin line between knowing and speculating.

As a writer, it’s hard sometimes not being able to tell the readers straight out and coming across completely wrong guesses based on the clues and subtle cues you, as a writer, left for others to find and interpret.

That’s the key word: interpret.

Interpreting means the chance of misunderstanding and being totally lost, and though I value transparency, letting the readers figure things out for themselves what is happening is important.

The reason for the “show don’t tell” advice is simple: Spelling everything out all the time makes readers feel stupid and underestimating the intelligence of your readers is a huge mistake.

But overestimating your readers can also be a pitfall.

It’s all about figuring out the balance, and that is unfortunately something that can only be done through trial and error.

Here’s some help: make sure the story is 40% vagueness, subtle hints and cues to act as a mystery and for something for your readers to contemplate while the remaining 60% should be obvious to ensure your readers aren’t bombarding you with confused reviews, and also so they have something to base their theories on.

Word to the wise: try not to take it personally when your readers are confused. It simply means you need to add more clarity to the story and that can be an easy fix in the next chapter, and a good thing to know for your next story.

Have you guys ever come across vague elements in stories; did the author resolve them in the following chapters? Have you as a writer been told a chapter was too confusing, and do you know why?

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That awkward moment in fanfiction when...the hiatus bites back

That awkward moment in fanfiction when...the hiatus bites back

3 December 2013

Sibling Intervention, Chapter 24

When it comes to chaptered stories, going on a major hiatus is the worst possible thing you can do. Seriously.

You actually forget certain aspects of your own story, how far you are in the plot, how you’ve characterized everyone and what your end game was when you started it i.e: this character ends up like this; the story ends here because; have to bring up and resolve this issue, etc.

There’s no real cure that I know of other than to reread your own story and hope the inspiration that came from writing it in the first place comes back.

And that can be a huge pain in the ass when the story is long…

Mine wasn’t so bad, but the word count from chapters 1 to 23 was about 101K so that was a lot of reading to do, and since it was something I wrote I tended to jump over things I shouldn’t have.

Fortunately it gave me a chance to do edits and re-familiarize myself with the story I had left behind.
Unfortunately it made me forget how much time had passed since the readers had seen the story.

I mentioned a conflict that happened two chapters before the recent update.

Not so bad.

The lapse between updates was almost a year.

Now it’s bad.

I knew that with chaptered stories, updates could be irregular, so I always added a “recap” section at the beginning of each chapter.

Sadly I forgot that my “recap” always involved what occurred in the previous chapter and not before, and frankly it wasn’t very descriptive.

Word to the wise: When writing chaptered stories, keep reminders up where necessary. Not enough to be repetitive, just enough to give readers (and yourself) an understanding that the information you’ll mention isn’t new.

Any tips of your own from bouncing back from hiatus and carrying on a story? How does it feel as a reader to carry on a story that hasn’t been updated in awhile?  

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