#does this count as a sneak peak in a wip lol

[buthappysoverrated]

How's that troublesome WIP going? And how's life - had any good cups of tea lately?

currently contemplating going into the computer and strangle every single character in this show

[pepsiwriteswords]

ヾ(￣▽￣) ~ Hi!

My turn to break containment for the ask game! (Also 30!?! wips, holy shit)

15, 👀? 8, 👷? 30, 🏷️? 1, ✍️?

（＾∀＾●）ﾉｼ Hiya!

(XD I know, but like I told you - most of them are just vibes & maybe 2 characters right now lol.)

Now, somehow you managed to land on none of the WIPs you expressed interest in, which is incredible lol.

So!

👀 Can you give us any sneak peaks?

WIP 15 is Backyard Promises, & I have almost 900 words in that doc, so sure! xP

Larsen Suarez testing after eleven o'clock at night is concerning on its own, no extenuating circumstances required. Larsen Suarez texting after eleven asking about places to stay the night is more than concerning. Alice wastes precious moments looking between her phone screen and the world outside her window. Like she's actually considering not going out to talk face to face. Shaking her head at herself, she grabs her sneakers and shoots off a reply before shoving her phone in her pocket and creeping out of her bedroom. Park. 10 mins. It's the first place that comes to mind that they'll still be able to get into, aside from the singular shitty convenience store a couple blocks away. Sneaking out of her house isn't an art, or actually all that difficult. Anna will be pissed if she gets woken up, of course, and that's never great, but after three years she's more into threatening to call Alice's social worker for a new placement than anything else. She waits until she's closed the back door behind herself to put her shoes on, tucking the trailing hems of her pajama pants into them to keep them from getting wet in all the puddles she's sure she's going to step in.

👷 How has the creation of the story gone so far? Stressful or fun?

WIP 8 is Brimstone Butterflies (working title). xP This is one of those 'no words/plot, just vibes' WIPs, so. xD I don't know that I'd call it stressful, but I'm not sure I can really call it fun, either lol. It's more of a 'I figured out names of the characters & then put it on the backburner for a time' thing. (Apparently that 'time' was almost 2 years, whoops!) ...Okay, this was a short answer, so if I'd done my WIP count based on my WIP page, you would've gotten Ebb and Flow, and like. This one is also pretty 'just characters & vibes' but. I love the characters & at least 2 of them have gone & gotten married while my back was turned so it's a lot of fun! (Since my brain is being ... my brain, maybe there'll be some Ebb & Flow snippets during NaNo lol.)

🏷️ Does it have a title yet? If so, where did it come from?

WIP 30 is Ember(/Flame/Ash)! Another 'no words/plot, just vibes. XP So, yes, there is a title - potentially 3, if it turns into a series! & those titles came from the NaNo 'adopt a title' forums. Because it seemed cool & so far as I have thought of, there's some kind of rebellion & I like it. >.>

✍️ How far have you got with it?

& WIP 1 is Masquerade! & . . . how far I've gotten is hard to say. xD I get a few thousand words into a draft & take a break & then completely revamp the story & have to restart. So, right now I am ... not far. The last notes I have are about aging down the antagonist some, so she's not like, a middle-aged lady still extremely fixated on a thing that happened when she was like, 16 & harassing an 18-year-old about it, so. This may not even be a superhero story anymore! & which characters play which roles may be swapped around! I dunno! This WIP has become a mess! XD

Thank you for the ask! ♪(´▽｀)

[the-prophet-lemonade]

do you have any advice on getting a story to be seen? i made an ao3 account not too long ago so no one has seen my fic at the moment but i was wondering if you had any tips on that, or would i just have to wait?

hello! i can’t claim to know what makes a fic popular as it’s 99% luck, but i can speak for the remaining 1% that has worked ~reasonably~ well for me in the past. 

i think there are three key elements to getting a fic “seen”: marketing, branding, and presentation, and they’re all very important. this post got very long, so please find everything under the cut! i hope it helps :-) 

i. marketing

fic marketing may seem a bit narcissistic if you haven’t done it before, but trust me on this: it’s the best way to attract readers and you deserve to promoted your story as something you worked hard upon!

drumming up hype for a fic is great. you can do this by posting on social media, providing sneak peaks on your twitter, involving yourself in the fandom community and discussing your wips with other fans, and just generally being excited about what you’re creating. engaging with other people’s writing is also a great method to help boost your own stats … get involved with reading other work and leaving comments for other people, because they will be more likely to return the favour! when someone comments on my fics, i often go and check out their profile and see what they’ve written, as it’s highly likely we enjoy the same things! 

making promos is one of my favourite ways to engage with people about fics. once i post a fic/new chapter to ao3, i also crosspost promo posts with links and graphics to my twitter and tumblr. you will need a good hook to get people interested, but also an eye-catching image that summarises the story pictorially can be a great asset (you don’t even need photoshop, just a nice moodboard will do!). when using images however, it’s always important to think how the image size will appear in tumblr’s dimensions and on your own blog … make sure it’s not stretched or the resolution too low, and create something with a good visual flow i.e. the title appears first, then the necessary information, then any teasers or extracts. you need to make your fic post stand out on someone else’s timeline, which may already be filled with a bunch of other fic posts, jostling for attention. make it neat, clean, informative, and professional.

make sure to use the tagging systems efficiently for your chosen social media platforms: only the first five tags count on a tumblr post, so choose them wisely (i.e. use the key fandom tags first and save your personal blog tags for after), and only two hashtags count on twitter before it’s marked as spam, so go for the ship tag!

creating your own fic tag on twitter can also be fun, and i’ve seen a lot more people doing it lately too. you can encourage people to tweet along with a specialised hashtag and then you can find their reaction and engage with them later, which once again expands your fandom circle and will increase engagement on tweets associated with your fic.  

another trick i’ve learned is utilising time zones and understanding the demographics of the audience you’re trying to reach. i am very careful to post my fics at certain times of day in order to reach key people e.g. i will try to hit either europeans or americans during the evening, as this is when most people are home from work and wanting to read fic. as a european myself, especially involved in fandoms with high levels of european fans, i usually post during the early evening for CET time zones i.e. 7 or 8 pm and i tend to find this works for me. 

with tumblr, i often delay my promo posts so that i post when it’s likely to get maximum interaction (you can see when your blog is most active using your tumblr analytics) … use your queue if need be! 

i also take care in reblogging/retweeting my promo posts at certain times of day too. i will usually bump the post just before i go to bed, so as to grab americans in their early evening, and then i will bump it again in the morning when i wake up, to catch australians and west coast americans still awake. i then usually keep bumping my promos once a day for two or three days on my social media to cast a wide enough net to catch as many people who might be interested, as not everyone checks their timeline every day and social media swallows up posts so quickly, especially tumblr which is not built for original content creators to do well (lol). i will usually bump a promo post 5 - 7 times before retiring it and this is a model that’s worked well for me in the past, especially for droplets, which would get 500+ notes per chapter!  if you’re anxious about this, know that most people will only see your post once or twice because tumblr moves fast and swallows posts up very quickly, and sometimes people need reminders to read if they decide to save things for later when they have more time

ii. branding

the benefits of branding mainly come from experience, so it’s a tricky thing to utilise if you haven’t published fic before … but there are still tricks worth trying! 

certain fic writers will attract readers to new fics just because their name is attached to it, and people know the sort of story they’re getting, they know how it’ll be written, the sort of tropes that will appear, that sort of thing. obviously, building up this sort of brand requires publishing a lot of work, and so it must be said that practice makes perfect: the more you write and publish, the more your fics will be seen and your audience will grow. people will regularly see your username in the tags on ao3 and be more inclined to click on you as someone who reliably produces good content. it’s important to remember that everyone starts from the same place and works hard to improve their craft; success doesn’t just come overnight (unless you’re in the right place at the right time) and any creator will tell you that compliments to their talent aren’t what matters, but instead, it’s compliments to their dedication and hard graft. 

another key thing about branding is how you present yourself online. the most important thing in my opinion is cohesion across your social media platforms e.g. having the same username on ao3 as you do on tumblr/twitter/wherever you promote your fic. having an easily navigatable blog with working hyperlinks and archiving of your fic work is also great. basically, building a clean interface for people to engage with your work is vital! having the same icon and username across all your social media makes it so much easier for readers to navigate between your fics and your promo posts … basically, the easier you can spell something out, the better

branding is mostly to do with how you advertise yourself, rather than the particular fic, although much of it overlaps. get your name out there by engaging with other writers and making friends and appreciating their work! this is often the best way to get inspired, plus you get to meet some amazing people. i recommend trying out for zines and big bangs and writing challenges, as these are good ways to show your work to already-established audiences. also, make yourself available by interacting with commentors or by opening up your inbox on tumblr to anons. try linking your social media and your inbox as hyperlinks in the authors note of your fic

iii. presentation

this is really fundamental and is often the main reason people will close out of your fic and not read to the end. people want to read fics that are easy to digest and have had care put into them. this includes a lot of things:

correct tagging i.e. are the tags coherent and not just rambling? are there appropriate trigger warnings in place? have you unnecessarily tagged every side pairing under the sun, rather than just the main relationship?

grammar and spelling. goes without saying … people are more likely to read things that look professional and have had care poured into their preparation. make sure you know how to use speech punctuation. revise how to use commas. avoid epithets (especially racially-aggravated ones). get yourself a beta if you’re worried, because betas are godsends!

paragraphing. so many people will close out of a fic if it isn’t correctly spaced. double spaced paragraphs look best on ao3 and i often won’t read a fic if the paragraphs are too long because it hurts my eyes to read. make sure you’re starting new speakers in new paragraphs. new ideas deserve new paragraphs. basically, every time the “camera” changes, you should be starting a new paragraph. not just a new line. 

summaries. i see so many fics on ao3 with summaries that are either apologising for being bad at summaries or apologising for a fic being bad/being a first fic, and like … stop this! own what you have written, no-one else will have written it the way you have and you should be proud of it. if you’re saying in your summary that it’s a bad fic, i’m not going to click on it as a reader. instead, utilise your summary to get people hooked … good hooks can be written a load of different ways, but the best ones i see often involved a snippet from the fic as a taster, and then a couple lines of blurb. get people excited! 

titles: i’m personally more likely to click on a fic where the title is either (a) correctly capitalised or (b) is clearly chosen for its aesthetic or meaning (i love long lower case titles with parentheses lol). choosing a memorable title is really helpful, especially one that can be shortened or abbreviated for social media (e.g. for hashtags)!

all this being said, traffic on ao3 is a crytpid at best and obeys little in the way of rhyme or reason. you can put blood, sweat and tears into marketing your fic, but sometimes, just being in the right place at the right time (writing for the right niche) is what does it, so being a fic writer requires a lot of patience. first and foremost, write for yourself. write what you want to read and enjoy doing it, because if you get sucked into obsessively checking stats, it’s only going to disappoint when you don’t achieve what you want to achieve. 

just keep persevering and keep writing and appreciating each and every person who takes time in interact with your fic and its promos … because ultimately, all it takes it that one reader to fall head over heels in love with your fic for everything to change. for now, just be proud of your work and keep writing!

[stevethehairington]

Hiii!

Ahh! Thank you Sarah/@fxckxxp for tagging me in the talk about your WIPs thingy! (I dunno if it has an official title or anything lol)

Oh my god, I have wayyyy too many WIPs, not gonna lie. (I just counted and I have at least 17 docs in my writing folder eek!!!)  I’m only going to count the ones I’ve worked on in the last few weeks otherwise this list would be way too long haha. So that comes out to be around 4 or 5! All of these are Evak (except for two— one of which is a character study so it’s not exactly about a relationship at all, and the other is a girl squad dynamic!)

If y’all haven’t heard yet, I’m currently in the middle of writing a Camp Rock AU! I have two entire docs dedicated to it— one for the plan and one for the actual writing. As of right now I have 15 chapters planned out! I don’t think that should change, but you never know! I have 4 chapters completely written (also completely unedited, but I’ve yet to get a beta for it so) and I’ve been working on chapter 5 the last few days! I started writing this AU months ago and I kind of  stopped to work on other things and just let it sit for a lonnngggg time, but I’m back to it now, so hopefully I can finish it!! I’m not going to start posting until I’ve finished writing it just because I don’t trust myself haha and I want to be able to deliver the whole thing! Sooo stay tuned for that one!!

Another little oneshot I’m working on right now is another coffee shop one! It’s based off of a post I found on instagram where one character works at the coffee shop and another is the customer and the one that works there serves the customer his coffee (in a mug of course, otherwise this wouldn’t exactly make sense haha) and and the customer asks for a spoon to stir it, but the worker is so tired that his sleep-deprived brain thinks the customer is asking for the cuddling kind of spoon so he goes and does that instead! I’m not going to say who is who because I want to leave that up for surprise (unless you’re on the skamficiton server because I’ve definitely said who is who there hahaha.) I’m hoping to have this one done very soon— I currently have a little over 1k of it written already and I’m hoping to have it done and posted sometime in the next few days/week!

Okay, the third one is something I’m sooooo excited to write!! I’ve had this idea for a while now and I think I’m finally going to put it into words on a page haha. One of my all time favorite characters to write is Magnus and I feel like he wasn’t explored very deeply in the show so I’m planning to write a bit of a Magnus Fossbakken: Character Study. It’s going to be a series of works and I currently have 3 parts planned out! I don’t want to give too much away so all I’ll say is that it’s going to focus on Magnus exploring and figuring out his sexuality and the first part involves Vilde, the second involves Even, and the third involves Isak. I’m like insanely excited for this one so hopefully that will motivate me to write it!

The next one is well... I don’t know how else to explain it other than saying it’s an angsty one. I have almost the entire thing written out already, I’m just trying to put together the ending (which WILL be happy!!! I don’t do angst without happy endings!!) I also don’t want to give a lot away with this one (lowkey want to catch you all off guard with it lmao.) I will say that there are lots of tears and a bit of a panic attack and lots of communication!! Also for the ending I’m trying to do that whole “five months later” “two years later” “five years later” kind of snippets into their lives as the years pass and how things change. If I can get the ending written then this one could be posted soon as well!

I have yet to start (but really need to!!!!) my fic for the Skamfiction Secret Santa. I don’t want to say a lot about this one because I don’t want to give a lot away. Buuut I can say that it’s going to focus on girl squad and their dynamics! :)

As for the other docs in my writing folder that I haven’t touched in ages— I’ll give you guys a little bit about them:

I’m planning a Just Go With It AU, a Peter Pan AU, a Harry Potter AU, a part 3 of my Set My Soul On Fire series, a fic based off of a certain Rihanna song, a Sugarless Gummy Bear AU, a fic that has to do with ice cream and Realizations, the Dog Poop AU (yes, dog poop, go ahead and ask about that one haha), and a Catfish AU. I also have two collaboration projects in the works, one about a bench and the other a possible Star Wars AU of sorts.... 

Annnnnd that’s it! If anyone wants some sneak peaks of any of these just ask and I’ll consider giving one :))

Now I’m going to tag @julian-dahl @vildewlw @littlespooneven and @crackandcanonships and see what they have in store! <3 :)