#i think i average 2-3k per chapter now

[silverskye13]

In which there is a fall.

[mylittleredgirl]

20 questions for fic writers

thanks @annerbhp for the tag! i really enjoyed reading her answers too!

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

215

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

646,705 (average of 3k per fic, which sounds about right)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

stargate atlantis most often, followed by sg-1, various star treks, and the x-files (with other miscellaneous fandoms on demand for exchanges and gifts).

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

No Sooner Met (voyager, janeway/chakotay)

Career Day (sg-1, mini!otp)

Next Chapter (the good place, chidi/eleanor)

First Date (voyager, janeway/chakotay) editor's note: man my title game was weak in my voyager era

Occupational Hazards (the good place, chidi/eleanor)

it's so funny to spend my online time in small or inactive fandoms and look at statistics because i'm like yeah... i'm kind of a big deal... people know me... i have many leather-bound volumes... and not a single one of my fics crack 300 kudos (& very few over 100). the person i reblogged from topped out over 9,000! what's it like to write long fics for popular fandoms? is it cool?

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do now! and it's awesome! for a long time i was intimidated by praise and had a hard time responding, but my brain works now and i really enjoy exchanging comments that turn into long threads of headcanon back-and-forth and sometimes new friends.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh god PLEASE let me unburden my soul about Twilight (sga, john/elizabeth). it's so uncharacteristically hopeless for me -- far future fic, complicated family dynamics, elizabeth has dementia and john is estranged from their son... really no one is having a good time. i think it's interesting and a cool departure from my usual writing style, but it's also a big sad mess.

i still feel sooooo guilty about these two thousand words of misery that i REGULARLY think about writing a sequel where john and his son fix it with time travel and mend fences. like i lie awake at night worrying about these characters because one time in 2007 i didn't give them a happy ending and suggested john might not break the bad father generational cycle. normal fic writer behavior.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Weaving Loose Ends (sg-1, sam/jack)! i love happy and hopeful endings but i think of all of them, this one is the most resolved and least complicated.

8. Do you get hate on fic?

nope. oh!!!! there was the one time when i caused Big Drama in a corner of the Dancing With The Stars fandom by turning people's headcanons into rpf, which everyone liked until one included porn. people got so heated with each other over this one smut fic (doxing! splinter factions! a fandom schism!) but somehow no one was ever actually mean to me. i didn't even get blocked or banned for my rpf transgressions, i was just standing there at the eye of the storm. so... i guess the answer is still no??

9. Do you write smut?

yes! i should probably write more, though. it has been all slow and gauzy the past few years, somebody should really get railed pretty soon.

10. Do you write crossovers?

nope.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so. happily toiling in obscurity.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

back in the x-files days i think someone translated some of my doggett/reyes fics for a spanish archive, so those might still be out there.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no i haven't!! i am really not doing well collecting my fic writer girl scout badges here!!

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

john sheppard/elizabeth weir my beloved.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

i have 10k of an sg-1 episode-by-episode soulmate fic that started really strong and i would love to share someday, but i lack staying power so it will surely just go to seed in my dropbox forever!!

16. What are your writing strengths?

hopefully character complexity and dialogue. dialogue is interesting in fanfic, because the dialogue on many TV shows is really different than how real humans speak (it's scripted to be clearer, more concise and direct, uninterrupted, etc), so it's a fun challenge to balance that and get something that sounds both in-character and realistic.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

long fics!

the big related weakness is that i find it incredibly difficult to keep writing on a fic after i show it to anyone (as a sneak peek, or because i want feedback / encouragement / brainstorming help). i lose steam on my own, but posting or inviting other people into the process is like pouring sugar in the gas tank. why is that!! how do i fix this!!!

and i don't know if this is a "writing weakness" or an "egregious personal character flaw" but i sure did finish an exchange fic this year literally forty seconds before reveals, so that's... pretty bad.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

SO SCARY aughhhh my fear of Being Wrong really nukes me here. it doesn't even have to be a real language. it's like the ghost of JRR Tolkein himself is standing over my shoulder telling me that if i don't backwards engineer an entire proto-latinate space language instead of just chucking words into google translate and calling it Ancient i'm committing unpardonable sins.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

star trek! first internet-published fics were x-files, but first limited-print-edition fics were xeroxed hand-bound voyager stories my sister and i would give as "gifts" to family friends (and then stand there staring at them while they read the first few pages and told us how clever and creative we were and promised to "read the rest later").

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

new answer! i have always answered this before with ain't no sunshine (sga, john/elizabeth) or career day (sg-1, mini!otp), but i think i really stuck the landing this year on pieces (sga, john/elizabeth). which, incidentally, is the one i finished forty seconds before reveals so i'm definitely not going to learn anything from that narrow escape.

tagging @ussjellyfish if you haven't already done this one, @coraclavia, @havocthecat, @lonesomehighways, and anyone else who made it through this long post and would like to do it!

[t3kandson]

New life

WordCount; 1,484

Fandom; AB6IX

Rating; Explicit

Pairing; Jeon Woong X Reader & Park Woojin X Reader

Characters; Lee Daehwi, Kim Donghyun, Park Woojin & Jeon Woong.

Warning; Angst, pregnancy, Violence, Gunshot, degrading words and threatening to Kidnap.

Notes; Chapter 1/12 of part Two, part one here

Welcome back after five weeks hope your ready for a dramatic twelve weeks due to the 2-3k words on average per Chapter compared to the 1-2k words I be doing one Chapter per week instead of two.

“Y/N,” The Radiographer called, “That’s us,” you whispered to your bump as you patted. “Ready?” your mum said holding her hand out.

It was your 18 week scan, you was nervous, excited and scared all at once. You entered the darkened room greeting the staff and obeying their instructions.

It wasn’t long before you saw your baby on the screen moving just as you felt they was doing inside you. Their was no mistake your child had their father’s family temper. Your stomach and especially your spine being their very own punch bag. “This one’s quite an active littlein,” the radiographer said as she placed the transducer over your stomach. Grimacing as your unborn child made her job harder she checked to make sure that they was growing well. “Y/N’s always moaning the cherub’s keeping her up,” your mother chuckled. “He is ok isn’t he?” You asked, looking worried at her silence. “Oh, sorry so far so good, just,” she went silent before finishing her sentence. “Did you say he?,” she asked. “Well yes in my head i suppose that’s what I imagine,” you smiled. You imagined him just like Woojin, his temper, his grumpiness, but his smile, the rare one he shone that warmed your heart, even though you knew that the very chance was this baby could be his brothers.

“Well I think you might be a little disappointed then,” she smiled as the news sunk in. “Wait, it’s a girl?” you asked. You never imagined you could be having a daughter. Woong’s pretty features flashing your mind as you easily could imagine his daughter. “Yes, and from what I can see a very active but healthy girl,” she said, handing you a paper towel to mop the gel from your Stomach.

“Your husband will no doubt be going grey from that unexpected news,” she chuckled, your face falling. “I’m not married,” you confessed. “The dad isn’t around,” you added tears threatening you. The radiographer apologised and went to write in your notes.

You held your hand over your stomach, your heart hurting yet a strong protectiveness growing. You could do this, be a single mum, keep this bundle safe and away from the very world that Four months ago you didn’t want to leave. Their was a time that you would have done anything to be near Woojin again. But now you had felt your child move in your body, your desire to keep her safe so fierce and so strong, them finding out you was pregnant scared you. You needed to keep your little girl safe from their world, even if your heart ached over Woojin’s absence in your life.

Your mother had dragged you to the baby store the second you emerged from the hospital. The proud grandmother excitedly looking through the baby girls clothes section looking at dresses. You smiled as she got lost in her excitement when you saw something odd from the corner of your eyes. Someone was watching you.

You spun around looking at the empty spot where you swore you saw him. You was certain your body felt the very energy of him there near you. Your mind was then taken to your stomach as your unborn daughter decided to kick really hard. You swore she was validating his presence, could she feel him or was your mind playing tricks? “You ok Y/N?” your mum asked. “Yeah,” you lied. The thought that Woojin had found you pregnant and buying baby clothes scared you at the same time then making your heart feel warmth.

You somehow though tried to convince yourself that your mind was playing tricks with you.

Weeks had passed and you swore at the corner of your eyes you felt your very movements being watched. It unnerved you but sometimes brought you comfort as if Woojin was watching over you. You had a mixture of happiness but sadness that he hadn’t made himself appear. Your pregnancy hormones making you a bag of confusion.

Flora had to dash, she had made arrangements with Yuto to drive you home after leaving you to close the bar. You went to the back to put the rubbish out and found two blokes leaning by a car, feet from you. They straightened theirselves standing and started approaching. “You need to come with us,” one growled. You knew the moment you feared had come.

Woojin had come for you, but he should know better to think you would do as you was told. “You can tell Woojin that I’m sorry but I will have to decline,” you said bitterly stepping backwards towards the door. “That’s so cute she thinks Woojin sent us,” the longer hair shorter man chuckled to his accomplice. Your heart fell, Woong had sent them, of course he would, only you and Woojin knew you slept together and you knew Woojin would likely not have spilled that secret.

Before you could answer a gun shot went off missing them by inches. They looked startled and looked to the right of them. The muscular one of the two scowling as he stepped forward. “Next time I won’t miss, i promise,” you heard a voice that instantly made you smile. “I wouldn’t piss him off, you know what men and their whores are like,” you heard the high bitchiness pierce the air.

Your eyes widening as you took Donghyun and Daehwi in. Donghyun’s face more scrunched up, the gun aiming at the two men, looking a lot more fiercer then you remembered. Daehwi his usually air and graces as he raised an eyebrow at you. “And that whore is ours,” he said, his eyes not leaving you.

Another shot bellowed out this time it impacted with the muscular man’s leg, he buckled looking surprised. Seven men you knew who was Woojin’s appeared, guns all aimed at both the men, “Last warning,” Daehwi threatened. The men heeded the warnings and hastily left, the car screeching as it left you all.

You instantly wrapped Your arms around Donghyun as he chuckled into you. You went to hug Daehwi before he backed away. “I don’t think so missy,” he shot out. “I’m sure that wasn’t in the deal when we let you free,” he added pointing his finger at your bump.

Your heart dropped they knew, you knew you hadn’t imagined it.

“They know?” You said twiddling your fingers. “Did you think we would leave you unguarded?” Donghyun said smiling as he walked towards you. “To your question Woong doesn’t know,” Daehwi said raising an eyebrow. “Woojin decided it was best he didn’t know, otherwise your ass would have been dragged back home,” Donghyun said his hands holding yours. “But this changes things, this you living a normal life it’s not safe for you Y/N or the baby,” Donghyun added. “It’s time to come home Y/N,” he said placing his hand over your belly, “both of you.”

You stepped backwards your mind racing, this was the very thing you didn’t want. Woojin knew you was pregnant and he didn’t come, and Woong was still blissfully unaware. That world wasn’t safe for you let alone your baby. Donghyun’s face fell watching your mind race. “I can’t Donghyun, I have a life here,” you said. Daehwi rolled his eyes, “their was me thinking you had changed now your becoming a mum, but nope,” Daehwi scoffed. “Your world it’s not safe for me and my baby,” you said, taking another step back as Daehwi stood closer, his jaw clenching. “Y/N they know your pregnant, they know your linked to us, your in more danger then ever and if you think for a second I’m letting my own flesh and blood be put in danger you can think again,” Daehwi spluttered. “Y/N the second Woong finds out he’s coming for you anyway, that’s his baby it’s not safe,” Donghyun said softly.

Your heart beating as the words slipped out, “It’s not Woongs baby.” Though it was a half lie you heart broke telling it nevertheless. Donghyun looked confused as Daehwi rolled his eyes, “Y/N stop lying we all know you and Woong was sleeping together and the dates all add up. Don’t mistake this pretty face for being as dumb as them,” he said.

Your face fell, “how would you know my dates?” you asked. Daehwi’s eyebrows raised as if you was asking a dumb question. Of course Woojin found out your dates, he was the kind of man to find that information. “Well if you know the dates you would know that I fell pregnant when I got home. Remember Daehwi I’m a whore,” you spat out.

“Ok you expect me to believe that,” Daehwi chuckled.

“Well yes because this baby’s mine,” a voice behind said, your heart thumping as those familiar arms pulled you in. Donghyun and Daehwi eyes raised almost in shock.

You gulped at how much your boyfriend had heard!

Previous Chapter. Next chapter

Masterlist

[katierosefun]

hey so hm just came across one of your recent answered asks and you said in the tags that you could talk about outlining for a long time so: would you? Talk about how you outline in depth? And simultaneously help a girl out? 👀 (when you have the time!!)

hello hello ann!!! and yes, i would love to go on about outlining, although most of my outlines are for either in-depth / complicated longer one-shots or longform fics:

for longer one-shots (long-shots? is that what they’re called? i hope that’s what they’re called asfadf): 

i make a bulleted list of major plot points / events that i want to hit, so like, in terms of my....monster of a long-shot what died didn’t say dead, i created a quick list of the key plot points that i really wanted to include in this fic: 

when i started this outline, i actually didn’t highlight anything--but the highlighting was just a signal to me that i had finally written that scene! 

as you can tell, i have some broad sentences like “bail asks obi-wan for help” is pretty general--but you can see that i’ve got some things in italics / quotes to signal just some really significant moods / details / dialogue i’m going for. some parts i’ve either taken out of the fic because i felt like it didn’t fit anymore, but most of the time, i’ll get to the gist of the scene with this guided list! and it helps me see the trajectory of the story, and...it also helps me see just how long this fic might go. (so this wound up being like....a 14k/15k word fic, which was about 4/5k words longer than i anticipated, but that was okay!) 

i also find it super helpful to just like,,,know how long i want the fic to be overall? i don’t really go for a word min / max when writing one-shots, but if i feel like it might be over 3k words just because of how much stuff i want to tackle in a fic, then i’ll try to ask myself what i can reasonably fit into that word count. (and idk i think it’s helpful to understand how many words you can usually write per scene! because i’ve discovered that my scenes tend to be anywhere from 400 to 1500 words depending on how Into It i am!)

for long-form fics: 

okay, so first up, i guess it’s always helpful to understand how many words per chapter you think you might average? like, if you think you might write in incraments of 1k words, then it would be helpful to ask yourself what plot points you can reasonably fit within 1k words. (again, you can skim over your other writing / test out your own writing to see what that sweet spot might be!)

once you figure that out, it’s always helpful to just have the chapter header, then list the main plot points you want of your chapter, so like, for lost again with no surprises, this is a quick outline of chap. 2: 

it’s an ugly chunk of text, so i apologize for that, but like...that’s genuinely how i outline. a quick summary / synopsis of the chapter, maybe some very specific ideas for dialogue, but that’s about it. if i don’t hit all the plot points, i don’t give myself too much trouble over it, because i’m usually flexible enough to just include it in the next chapter instead! (unless i feel like a plot point has to be covered by a specific character’s perspective, that is!)

bottom line: don’t work yourself up over the really specific stuff. you don’t have to know the twists and turns of literally every single scene or every single plot point, but just aim to  keep things relatively general! that’s the key to the outline, because the point of the outline is just to get out some thoughts and give yourself a general direction to go in! you’ll work out the specifics when you’re actually writing! 

and just...misc. outlining tips, but mostly for longform fics (altho tbh some of them could work for shorter fics too)

- identify what a character wants vs what a character needs. those two things are going to be the things that drive the story foward. (so for like,,,again, with lost again with no surprises, ahsoka and obi-wan both want to find anakin. what they need right now is actually to like,,,work through their super complicated past.) 

- if you’re stuck on outlining a chapter, move onto the next. literally bracket off with [INSERT SOMETHING TO FINISH THIS CHAPTER], move on. get back to it. (this works for actual writing too!) 

- idk why, but i focus more writing outlines while listening to ambient music? idk i just can’t really write outlines while listening to lyrical stuff but that could just be me. 

- how should the character change over the course of the story? (so for the case of to these memories, i kinda wanted anakin to go from “still kinda clinging to this idea of having to remain a jedi and be included” to “realize that he can’t have two things at once and now one part of his life is more important now”)

- (kind of a bonus but) what’s the thing that you want readers to take away from the story? i mean, you can kinda take or leave this, but when i write a story, sometimes it’s just to see characters happy, but other times it’s because “hm i want readers to feel a Very Specific Thing Right Now with This Story”. do you want readers to fully bask in the tragedy of the work? do you want them to go away feeling happy? hopeful? mortifyingly crushed? how are you going to get there? your last scene should deliver that final punch of what you want readers to feel!

and that’s all the tips i have!!!! hope that was helpful!!

[kasienda]

Fanfiction Year In Review - 2020

The rest of 2020 was rough, but I sure wrote A LOT! And that feels good. 

1 List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

Confessions to a Statue (Ladybug) - I’m lowkey shocked that this was finished in 2020. I feel like I wrote this one an eternity ago! It’s honestly not my favorite story, but I’m grateful to it for getting me writing in this fandom! 

Stutters (Ladybug Reveal - Marichat)

An Open Secret (Ladybug for Gift Exchange)

Instagram (Ladybug Reveal - Ladrien)

Anything to Protect You (Sailor Moon for Gift Exchange)

Locked in a Closet (Ladybug Reveal - Sequel to MissNoodle’s wonderful work.)

New York (Ladybug Reveal - Ladynoir)

A Craving For Chocolate Milkshakes (Sailor Moon)

Eight fics in total! Four of them multi-chapters! Crazy!

2 Number of words written: 

Written: 139k (as tracked by 750words.com)

Published: 105k (according to ff.net).

This is amazing! This is the first year (that I know of anyway - I’ve only been tracking for three years) that I broke 100k in one year!! I wrote every month, and I published at least one thing every month except August (I was moving in August).

I’m thrilled to see the written to published ratio as high as it is! It’s not something I’ve tracked before, but I always feel like I’m writing a ton and publishing very little, but it looks like that impression is fairly inaccurate. I’m publishing a lot more than I realized relative to how much I’m writing.

3 Your most popular fic:

My Miraculous Reveal Series has also gotten the most recognition of all my works this year, but it’s difficult to splice out which short is the most popular because I publish it as one series. Keeps my dashboard neater and gives the old ones a bit of attention whenever I post a new one. 

4 Your personal fav:

I think I’m insanely proud of both An Open Secret and Anything to Protect You. As I published each chapter, I often had the thought “This is the best thing I’ve written!” And that feels good. 

But right now, I am going to have to say an unfinished fic that I started this year - Restorative Justice - is my favorite. This is a fic that has pulled me out of my usual genre and gotten me closer to my life as a teacher. And it’s powerful and cathartic to turn these experiences into a story. I also really enjoyed exploring Chloé’s headspace. She’s just so angry, and like, this year that has been really easy to channel for some reason, and it all transferred to paper rather well. I’m kinda stuck in this fic at the moment though… 

5 Your fav scene:

I literally cannot decide. I could maybe pick a favorite scene in each fic I finished, but just one?! Nope! I can’t do it. So here’s my favorite scene in the three works I’ve spent the most time on this year: 

An Open Secret - the scene where Ladybug confesses to Chat Noir in the rain. The moment it all comes together for Adrien. I made myself cry. 

Anything to Protect You - Honestly, this one is HARD to pick. I really like the UsaMamo kiss in the first chapter, but I also love the dates. Especially the moment where she tells him she’s Sailor Moon and he thinks she’s joking. And the cattery date.

Restorative Justice - Chapter 3 - Where Chloe and Marinette are screaming at each other. I found it so satisfying. 

6 A fic or scene that challenged you:

Writing the festival scene in Anything to Protect you was an absolute slog! I was struggling so hard with trying to somewhat accurately capture a cultural event that I myself have never directly experienced (I did so much research - I read a lot, I listened to music, I watched videos), and at the same time not stall the pacing of the story or emotional anchor of the piece. It was so hard, but I was really happy with how it came out. 

7 A line of writing you’re proud of: 

From the most recent update of a Craving for Chocolate Milkshakes: 

So she dove back into old habits and started drawing chibi-tuxedo masks all over her worksheet.

Go ahead. Do your worst. 

He always had some playful or snide critique of her scribbles.

She waited a whole ten seconds before she realized the mental silence would not be filled. Because he wasn’t there. He couldn’t see her doodles.

She burst into tears.

8 A comment that touched you: 

Honestly, this year it wasn’t so much what was in a comment, so much as it was when a comment arrived. Like when I was ready to tear my hair out arguing with the bank or insurance company, and then a review would pop up out of nowhere! Or when I was sitting next to my son at the hospital. Sadly, I don’t remember which comments were the ones that did this. But I think LitaKino had especially good timing more than once this year. And jennagrins as well! But there were so many others! I’m tell you all - comments are love!!

9 Something that inspired your writing:

There’s lots of the usual suspects - life, husband, children, students, etc.

But a lot of it this year has actually been reading other people’s stories and wanting them to keep going, or wanting them to have taken a different turn in the story arc. And then I have to open a doc a start a whole new fic! It’s kinda a problem honestly. I have thirteen active stories and another ten that I’m like - I would like to work on that, but it’s not happening at the moment. 

10 Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

That I finished four multi-chapter fics! (Though two of them it was just the last chapter). I think I’m proving to myself that I can be somewhat disciplined about what I’m working on, so that the projects I want to finish, get finished! 

And I’m also learning that you can write a lot with just chewing away at it bit by bit. It’s not about the 3k word days. It’s about it being a habit. If you can write 100 words every day that’s 36k words in a year! I wrote an average of 378 words per day! My goal is only ever 200 words, but I try to have an unbroken chain. I did not succeed this year in that due to weekly work deadlines, but I came a lot closer than I ever have before.

11. Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I read my goals from last year and laughed. (Apparently, I wanted to finish Chocolate Milkshakes by the end of January. Bwahahaha!) But that’s okay. I wrote a ton this year!! It just wasn’t where I expected it to be. So that’s what I want this year to be about. I want to focus on my own personal projects by not making commitments for exchanges or events.

I have three WIPs right now that are just far more personal than anything else I’m working on. And these three stories are the ones I want to focus on this year. 

Invisible Wounds - (Ami/Zoi - Sailor Moon)

Restorative Justice - (Chloé POV - Ladybug) 

Right Behind You (Unpublished Adrino story - Ladybug) 

I imagine though that there will be one-shots that demand to be written in between, or one shots that will work me out of ruts, too. Or one shots that will explode into seven chapter outlines like jerks! Haha! 

But overall, my main goal is to just try to write every day!

I tag the following people to tell us about your fic writing accomplishments this year because you’re amazing!! @tinacentury @floraone @starlingsinclair@mikauzoran @chronicallylatetotheparty @ladyofthenoodle @alexseanchai @galahadwilder And anyone else that wants to! And of course, if I tagged you and you don’t want to, there is NO pressure. I’ve just enjoyed doing this over the years, and wanted to share the joy! 

[tothelasthoursofmylife]

“Malady 1″ Notes and This Shit is HOW Long???

*chugs a mug of milk*

Welcome. It’s time for a new update - pretty much exactly eight months after the last proper chapter (and about six months since the last upload in general).

I really did try to get this chapter finished before the end of 2019, but, well, things seldom work out the way you want them to which meant that the final chapter of 2019 was the Zucchini one and I’m so sorry.

Anyway.

I outlined like a third of Arc 4 all the way back in July 2018. Back then, all that mattered for me was to keep the arc as short as possible with as few chapters as possible. But then I started actually writing it and uhm, uh...

Well. The chapter-length exploded. “Travelling” was 18k, “Mystery” 19k + extra.

12k into “Malady” and only like 4-5 bullet points into my outline, I thought about either splitting the chapter into two separate proper chapters (Like I did before; the “Malady” content was actually supposed to be in “Mystery” too, July 2018!Me was super optimistic.) or just doing a Part 1 and Part 2. I chose the latter because I am too lazy to find a new chapter title I think they just belong very closely together.

Apart from not finding time to write, I actually had a bit of a hard time writing when I did find some. Trying to test my luck and just wanting to write something else for a change of pace so that I wouldn’t get sick of “Watchdog,” I applied for a zine last July. I actually got picked for it, and I wrote my piece in November. The word limit was 1,500 (!!!). My initial draft for it was more than twice as long and, of course, I had to cut it. It was super traumatic in a way (but also an interesting challenge) to trim it down through rounds and rounds and rounds of editing. Anyway, I’m sure something inside me short-circuited while editing my zine piece, and I just went crazy finishing “Malady.”

“Mystery” is 19,330 words long and the bonus file has a length of 1,511 (total: 20841).

And “Malady”? “Malady” ended up at a whopping 21,440 words. Less than 3k more and it would have been half a novel!

While editing it and seeing the word count hit 21k (the 21,000th word was “murderer” btw), my soul left my body for a second and I asked some other fanfiction writers about their average word lengths per chapter which ranged from 800-4,000 with 7,000 being a super long chapter. And I could have cut “Malady” not only once in half but many times more. I only didn’t because a) it has been months since my last update and I wanted to give you something longer as compensation and b) I wanted to trick myself because “relatively few chapters = short fanfiction! and I want to keep it short!” (We are only 23 proper chapters in and the entire thing has over 200,000 words yikes.)

Anyway, TL;DR: This chapter is 21k. It’s ridiculously long. I will try my very best to cut the chapters into more reasonable lengths starting with the next proper chapter (not “Malady - Part 2″, but the one after that which may or may not be named “Clockmaker,” let’s see).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other Notes

The explanation for “Jeanne/Jean Gauthier” and “Alexandre Vidocq”: It’s John Watson and Sherlock Holmes :) Sorta.

Jean is a French John, Jeanne is a French female John. Watson derives from “Walter” and Gauthier is a French Walter.

“Sherlock Holmes” is just a super weird name. So I couldn’t do it the same way. Instead, I googled “real-life French Sherlock Holmes” or something like that.  Alexandre Lacassagne and Eugène-François Vidocq popped up, and I just combined their names.

The “anniversary” mentioned in “Malady 1″ is January 19, the day the events of the first three chapters happened.

Finding French food they could eat was a bit annoying. Because I would find sites saying that “Tarte Tatin is something eaten at French afternoon teas!” but Tarte Tatin was created in the 1880s. Anyway, now I know at least about the “Club des grands estomacs.”

Lastly, Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure ends tomorrow. It saddens me beyond imagination, but it was a wonderful run and I am very grateful for it. The series and its songs influenced a lot of “Watchdog” and I feel quite bad not being able to talk about it because we are not far enough into the story. :( Still, I wanted to mention it here briefly because it’s ending and it means so much to me (and “Watchdog”). I will really miss getting new content.

(There’s a small song reference in “Malady 1″ which I added during the final read-through because I saw the opportunity and just had to change the wording to make it a little reference.)

[lovelylapins]

hi, question!! im a new fic writer to the ml fandom and im so used to doing extremely long one shots; im not necessarily sure how long to make my chapters? especially ones that dont have a definitive break.... how long do you think is a good word count for a chaptered fic? thank you in advance

honestly chapters really depend on the content and what you feel comfortable pushing out each go like for me each fic gets sat down and plotted out and the word count is done on average (say: 3-5k per chapter for 5 chapters equals 15-25k fic). there are the outliers every now and then (call me, text me was supposed to be a 2 part fic with like 1.5k per chapter, and the 3rd chapter ended up being 5k 🤷🏻‍♀️) but overall it works well if you have a general idea where to go.

there’s no like definitive thing to aim for each chapter because every fic is different, but it’s always 3k+ for chapters for me (clockwork is different shhh let’s not look at her in her 8k per chapter glory) because that way i can give people enough to read and sort of train my brain at the same time if that makes sense

[livingbutamireally]

AY2020/2021 Y3S1 Module Reviews

This sem went by quite quickly I would say. Good thing now is that there are no longer CS mods I am freeeeeeeeeee. Despite the other mods or faculties already requesting for in-person classes I still had a total of *drum roll please* one *crowd cheers* physical class per week. 

Tbh i must say i adjusted too fast to online classes, sleeping in, skipping on lectures getting distracted from doing actual work wastign my time away in the name of selfcare distorted sense of time ive truly experienced it all. At least physical classes make me ykyk make good use of my time spent travelling, i mean at least be there not necessarily mentally but it helps kinda when you have friends around you all studying but nah now we just on our own in our beds doing jackshit. 

Other than that I dont have anything else to add on so without further ado the

Overview

BT4221 Big Data Techniques and Technologies

BT3103 Application Systems Development for Business Analytics

BT4012 Fraud Analytics

IS3103 Information Systems Leadership and Communication

IS3240 Digital Platform Strategy and Architecture

BT4012 Fraud Analytics

Lecturer: Zhao Rui, Zhao Yiliang

Syllabus

Weightages

Individual Assignments (35%)

Midterm Examination (25%)

Group Project (30%)

Individual Assignments (35%)

There will be two homeworks, centered around working on a fraud detection problem using appropriate machine learning techniques. The deliverables are code implementations and concise answers to related questions. Details of the assignments will be announced later.

Midterm Examination (25%)

Students are expected to attend the Midterm Examination. It will focus on the understanding of basic concepts and application of the materials covered in class. The mode of the delivery of the examination will be determined and announced later.

Group Project (30%)

You are required to form a project group with 1-2 members. Your task is to do a literature review on methods for fraud detection. You will write a maximum 5 page review (Arial, 11, single spacing) of papers excluding Appendix and references. You will need to do a presentation on the review. You are highly recommended to propose new ideas based on the review. Reviews should be done in a critical and rigorous manner.

Instead of doing the literature review, with approval from the lecturers, you may also choose to do a project. Please email a brief description of the project plan to the lecturers to get approval.

The Group Project will consist of two parts: (I) Group Project Presentation (15%) and (II) Group Project Final Report (15%). More detailed instructions and the guidelines for this course project will be announced later.

(Copied off the luminus module overview its surprisingly still open)

But yeah you get it, its your typical BT module. The module itself does quite a fair bit of refreshers incase you have forgotten your BT2K and 3K mods the basics of regressions, measurables (averages and statsy stuff - cant expect me tor mb class content help) but basically the barebones and then it dives into the world of machine learning we have a few deep neural network models CNN RNN etc etc. Its very interesting. I think I really like that the profs went the extra mile to compile the codes for us theres a lot of compiled codes per chapter so its the barebones implementation u just copy and paste and get it do what u want it to do simple as that. The code structure is p much the same whichever your case is anyway so its really resourceful not so much the you-code-yourself-cannot-tolerate-plagiarism thing going on in CS i mean i guess it forces u to think the computational thinking is the true takeaway in those. The first IA is very easy jsut copy and tweak the kind everyone would get full marks ish the second one is a class competition  hosted on Kaggle to get you to predict anomalies and you are ranked according to your accuracy against private test sets. I’ll be frank and say i did so badly in the rankings i was the bottom few. But i did kinda okay ish?? when i got my grades back so dont worry lmao theres the report thing u gotta write after the competition about what methods you used, and your justifications etc basically you explaining your process of finetuning your model to get the best accuracy.  The Lit Review portion of weightage is just a fancy term to coin a 5-6 pager reflections based on a research paper of your choice related to the content taught so e.g. use of CNN/ other NNs in anomaly detection under any context/industry better to reflect what you have learnt or describe your inputs on areas of improvments/ pointers that may have been overlooked in the research paper. Of course, more marks are awarded with more effort and this quite chill one you have all the time to do after the midterms since technically chapters after midterms are not tested. Frogot to mention, class part is graded even tho its not here there are quizes scattered across the weeks and you need to be present to submit all of them in time during like 5 mins of the lecture so unless you have a friend who to tell u theres pop quiz then i recommedn not to skip. personally i dont pay much attention in class as much as the announcment of the quiz i just rewatch lectures after.

BT4221 Big Data Techniques and Technologies

Lecturer: Um Sungyong

Weightages:

Exams (30%)

Projects (40%)

Assignment (20%)

Peer evaluation (5%)

Class participation (5%)

There is no tutorials for this class just the lecture itself once per week held over zooms and recordings can be found on Luminus. Pace was okay. I get mixed reactions when it comes to the profs teaching but to me its fine, his baby cries sometimes in the background which is cute. Other than that at the start of the sem, he goes through some of the theory that you will need in this course such as the RDD and how it all comes together regarded hwo data are spliced and stored differently in Hadoop vs Spark. But we use Spark more since Spark is based off Hadoop and it helps in increasing the efficiency of data processing. To me a lot of it feels kind of like the aggregations used in MySQL or the streams part of CS2040. He provides base codes as well and we just change things from there. During the half way mark aka recess week theres one optional week to learn about data streams from Twitter. This ones not tested in the finals so i didnt pay much attention. You will need a developers account if you want to follow along the tutorial, which require some time for Twitter staffs to approve as well as your reasons for opening a dev account. Theres also some bit of AWS at the start of the sem as well, on using S3 etc but I didnt pay that much heed (Regret?) and since it is not compulsory for us to use AWS as cloud storage for the project and since we did not have to use it for the project we chose then.... But heads up about the project he will land you a final blow to tell you SURPRISE you have a project due near week 8ish that leaves you about a month to W13..... which everyone knows will be busy.... Come on he could have told us snice the start for us to prep. Its kind of a big scale project? From sourcing data to determining how you want to include the things that are taught over the weeks Id recommend for you guys to mental prep early bc it took very long for my group to decide on one topic to do. We all had our own ideas, and we were going to incorporate everything we decided, only to slowly slowly rule out one after another which again is a lot of wasted effort. I guess in the end its fine since he drags out the due date to some weeks after reading week 2/3 weeks later. So for that project you need to submit 1. project report 2. codes? 3. presentation recording.

He also allow for in person presentations durnig the final class nd may award you higher scores but he also assures us that people who do not present real time aka submit via recordings are not at too much a disadvantage he will be fair and stuff even tho hes very open to giving out scores (?) if that makes sense. Like he just want to see you progress and award you for the effort kind very chill prof. Go for the consults!! He will offer invaluable advice as to what he wants to see kind of guide u abit in case u losted and most importantly he will remember you exist AHHAHA. He throws extra credits for that too.

For the assignment its about 6 of them all spread across the content delivery with a few weeks in between and its not very hard (doesnt take you very long) just use the codes he realised tweak a bit then you submit the code either in pynb or doc. Submissions are not exactly graded for its correctness but rather just to ensure that you do your work? I think i had some issues and did not manage to upload in time he was nice about it to open the deadlines for me to submit and kept asking me not to worry about it nice accommodating understanding. 

After the twitter optional class, he goes on into neural networks which ties in really well with my other module BT4012 a good refresher for each other. But the NN part more important since it will be the base of your project. Project question is up to you to decide for yourself the theme setting everything, as and whne after he release the project details he will ask for one pager to see your ideas and stuff so its a project proposal kind of thing, to see your project through from the start so good to start early about how you come up with your topic and what you have tried so you can include these experiences or findings in your final project report. 

Other than that theres one exams which is the finals (bitch you thought) they dont tell you that in NUSMods. But the topics are fine i think in general the content is p manageable. This mod is fine. 

BT3103 Application Systems Development for Business Analytics

Lecturer: Shashank

Weightages

Class part (15%)

Quiz and individual assignments (30%)

Mid sem project submission (20%)

Final project submission (35%)

Assessments

Mid Sem Project Submission (W7)

Final Project Submission (W13)

Intermediate Assessments aka Quiz (W3,5,8)

For this mod we learnt the very basics of HTML CSS and Javascript keyword basics really just minimal syntax here and there for us to move on to the bulk of the content that uses nodejs npm to build a website the language is somewhat an addition to HTML/CSS and quite easy to play around with in terms of containers and getting it to do what you will it to. It can be slightly difficult to grasp from the get go but trust me you will get better over time. Apparently they teach this vuejs thing bc its easier? but for me at the start i felt going back to the conventional html css was much more easier but i guess its easier to do certain things in vuejs. You get to learn a bit about Waterfall and AGILE which are methodologies used in the workplace when it comes to having a framework to base a project on from the start ideation etc requirements gathering, to the development, continuous improvement and alignment and release of the final product etc etc. Some other things of note is that (disclaimer personal experience) despite this general consensus among us students that he is actually q chill and laidback as a prof.... please dont trust what you see. So for the final project which is to develop this web app for our chosen problems statement, tehre were other classmates who will consult him of their own volition like our group didnt know so we didnt.. but there are and he probably will be able to better gauge how ur group has improved over the trials that you faced compared to when you just show the final thing duirng the presentation in the last week. Other than that, we had this mini consult thing in class the week after submitting our mid sem project proposal but he didnt have much to say in fact none about our proposal. And not to be biased or anything but my groupmates and I didnt feel like theres any better that we could do? I mean we had like 40 over requirements analysis thats really overdoing it plus we made sure to detail the manual of our webapp very specifically in terms of every elemetn and what it does so our guide was pretty comprehensive. Yet when the grades from luminus was in it didnt feel like it matched the effort we put in? I had more grievances about him not telling us where we could improve on when he gave us such a underperforming (below average) score.. Other than that jiayou seems like he likes very hitech kind of stuff the other groups used APIs with inbuilt zoom functionalities (Crazy i know... for the amount of content he covered.... which is very minimal) and thtt kind of adds on to his overbearing expectations for our cohort compared to what was taught. and like he likes very innovative stuff so good luck on that..... For our sem despite already being in our 3rd year of covid, so many of the other groups perhaps (90%) had problem statements revolving around covid LIKEEEE yoo dont we all have adapted enough but anyway might also be that our problem was not based on covid..... that we kind of lost marks to man idk. But anyway i think our ui is decent and in general we all worked hard on this give in our all its just a bit sad la har.

P.S. side note i actually finished up this portion but forgot to save it and when i came back its gone.... 

P.S.S PLEASE APPEAR FOR THE QUIZZES COS EVERYONE WILL FULL MARK THAT DONT BE LIKE ME i missed by a few minutes he didnt bother re-opening it for me.... had like 2 grades difference with my project mate....and the quizes are damn ezpz plus even if dk.... if i can do u cfm can... can google and is like those damn simple google questions they also got give ans i think he also google for the questions cut and paste

IS3103 Information Systems Leadership and Communication

Lecturer: OLB, Tutorial: Yurni

Weightages

Tutorial engagement (10%)

Simulation game (10%)

In lecture survey participation (5%)

Recitation engagement & contribution (20%) - Pitch 10%, Engagement 10%

Reflective Learning Journal (15%)

Digital Transformation Proposal Project (40%) - Proposal report writing 20%, Oral presentation 20%

Omg guys.... i hate every single module put out by c*lc.... censoring in case someone comes for my head.... its a pattern..... Ok time for me to go in depth.

Cant remember but for my sem its about 7 recitations starting week 3, somewhere nearing the recess week theres a break for 2 weeks ish then 3 more recits after. Guys.... why does this mod even exist...

Okay so basically for lecture can pretty much skip unless like you are really into the hierarchies and stuff of how IT roles work in the workplace CXOs all that but like really no interest. but Then sometimes theres pop quizes so if u can find a friend that is ncie enough to tell u theres quiz that week then thats nice.. but i just open it usually and just wait for 730pm (usually thats when he puts out the link for the survey) and this goes to your no3 in lecture survey participation.  He talks about history of leadership and stuff like that very dry and thw way he talks also is very dry. There are weekly quizes in mcq form on luminus for this but can just ctrl f the slides for the answers and if u get wrong u can just put in the correct answer on ur next try. So go get full marks for this. The part where it is the most dreadful is the recitations. I have nothing against olb but the recitations omg.

Recitations are physical btw i think 2 of them are graded pitches, one is sometime before recess week i think maybe w5? then the last one for the project pitch nearing the end. Okay first few recits are fine basically every week u go to school for 3 hours and prior to the class u got to prep some presentation at the first few will be your takeaways from the links they provided then after which is some group presentations to teach the class about what u have learnt from links... which is damn stupid if u think about it. if u can learn about communication just by reading links wow sugoi amazing bravo spectacular daebak phenomenal and like some of the classes we just sit in 3 hours to read SOME links to soem fot heir chosen articles.. man we pay 800 for this.... to read LINKS to learn about comms..... and we also prep our slides according to what we learnt from the links split across the groups so like uh... but this is compulsory so bobian got to suck thumb and those more serious presentations were roleplays.. role play that u are getting hired for an interview and in that interview u are presenting to ur hirers how you will communicate with your to-be subordinates ??? which is very? to me like which interview will make u go roleplay being a leader like uhh and the way they kept drilling us to include personal stories to make it more relatable its very.... sometimes its not very appropriate la i would say... take for example u first time leading a team somehow have to have past experience to share?? either that or u have to forcefully weave in some grandmother story that is kind of unrelated just to bag that scores for audience centricness in terms of relatability? theres one even weirder prompt which was giving a 5 min pitch about one abstract item which can be anything so they dont shwo u and on that day they flash an image on the spot and ur group has like 10 mins to prepare how u plan to pitch that to ur audience but alos in a way that is not very venture capitalistic.. think shark tank thats the opposite of what they want... even now idk what they want.... and sorry lor ppl like me not much story sia... much less sth that fits those absurd prompts that is like 2000% unrealistic asked my parents nad there were like WHAT did they make u do now 

tldr very bad experience 2000/10 do not recommend anyways u know who bitched about this during the mod reviews so yup apparently they had went through a few revamps and lesser in person recits from previous.... it used ot be much more time consuming but it is still p time consuming now..... and for naught....

IS3240 Digital Platform Strategy and Architecture

Lecturer: Anand

Weightages

Case Analyses (25%)

Individual Exercises (20%)

Final Exam (30%)

Final Case Analyses (25%)

I know you here bc there aint many reviews for this out there except for the one on nusmods probs so sit tight. First the schedule. Across the weeks, 1 group will present and other groups (about 3 groups of 4-5 ea per timeslot) will be the audience for each tutorial timeslot. Fixed groups for that particualr timeslot which makes sense. Theres a total of 4 case studies that each group will need to present. It gets incredibly harder partially because of the cases getting more grandeur in nature, the scopes of which to think about, as well as content covered in lectures. Content is q interesting. Lectures will cover the content you need but its also on you to think of novel ways... take on novel mindsets in approaching those business problems. more of a thinking class than anything else rather than presenting the msot generic solution which ofc will fare u not so well. Cant just present something based on your the most common knowledge (As though youve never taken the mod ebfore) but if you have determined groupmates that will be nice.. We spend more time in our own groups on our own time to discuss the case studies, debate our points, draft up solutions refining them, thinking of how people can fault our solutions and countering those potential pitholes to have an all-bases-covered holistic solution that would be the best. So after u are done presenting the other teams will start their Q&A which is usually a anal battle of any problems ur solution might have or like understanding the rationale in comparison to say another viable alternative... resources constraints and other factors.. Q&A participation is graded btw haha so every member needs to ask like at least one question not the clarifying content kinds but actually contribute to the discussion in terms of making everyone all think as well. its a very refreshing move tbh. after which the audiences will fill up this questionaire to rate your groups presentation, q&a skills and give their comments this too is graded. oh and if u are not presenting that week u will also need to answer like 2 brief questions on the case study to make sure u have read through and are prepared for the discussion prior to attending the tutorial. for the presenting group only need to prep the presentation u confirm need to read the material... oh ya and the case study need to ownself buy one.... he wont provide our sem one person buys each weeks case study and distributes to everyone and we all pay like a few cents. cant rmb but about $5 per issue so one copy for ten weeks ish and the cost split across all the students. Final exam is 2 case studies, one of which is one of the case studies you have seen and the other isnt, questions are long answer type can write as much as you want on luminus quiz. final case will be the same for all groups aka Case H and that one the scope also quite huge la ofc... and at the start presentations go from 10mins.,. the next few to 20 mins ish all that to prep for the final one which can go up to 1h ish confirm by that time a lot of things to input about so have to be selective and choose the points wiht higher priority? yee thats about it. i know nusmods review person said v fluff v low workload but no eh my group spent a lot of time in prep work discussing non stop revisting points made and revising our slides even up till the very end we spent a lot of time on it la which we were rewarded for bc of the quality in terms of depth research and ensuring few vulnerabilities for attacks by the audiecne (having substantial counters for those) i suppose

[blueraith]

Some folks still need to learn how to constructively comment

Wish I could say that I’ve been writing Chapter... 12(? Legit, I don’t often remember the chapter numbers outside of the Google doc) since posting Chapter 11 (we’re just gonna assume I know where the fuck I’m at in my own story, okay? Give me this).

But that would be a bald faced lie.

(Mostly because of my sister’s graduation and all the family visiting and the concurrent back injury I was suffering. Really kills the writing mood when you can’t sit up properly to type.)

This is going under a read more, because this incident Vexed Me To The Max(TM) and triggered a Rant of Epic Proportions(TM).

But graduation has been over, and my back has been feeling great. What really kept me a bit down since all that was over and done with is that very morning I’m feeling better, I see that I have two comments on the 100 fic I’ve put on indefinite hiatus. Yeah, it’s not an active story, but I still care about it, and I’ve been thinking about it recently. So, in short. I still care about it a hell of a lot. Hell, I care about everything that I write. I’ve written fanfiction at what’s nearing 10 years now, but nothing has erased the fact that putting yourself out there in the public eye takes a hell of a lot of effort and, sure, a smidgen of courage and confidence.

Well, this lovely commenter told me that my word count was way too high, that I was slowing my story down, and that they skipped to the last chapter (from Chapter 2, they skipped 6 chapters of ongoing character development, an ensemble cast, Ark politics, and canon fix-its) “40k words and [Clarke’s] still not on the ground yet??”

This is me paraphrasing both comments. I deleted them with extreme prejudice from the fic because I wasn’t leaving that kind of useless bullshit on my work after it effectively ruined my mood for, like, four days.

Why was it bullshit? Well, for one thing taking the average word count per chapter, it’s only a little over 5k words per chapter. Look. I balance out my word counts very carefully for each story that I write. This fic has a longer than average word count compared to my more recent stuff (which is around 4k per chapter) because of all the fuckin shit I was pulling off in this particular fic. Reworking canon to better explain why the Arkers were resistent to the radiation on the ground while having the superior blood that the Mountain Men wanted without putting them up in their shitty space station for thousand of years that evolution would have actually required them to have gone through to be remotely realistic.

Jake’s alive in this fic because I don’t like dead characters shaping character development on a pre-canon basis. Personally, I dislike orphan/parental loss storylines before the specific original work has even started. I get that orphans exist in real life. But YA media has a disproportionate amount of dead parents. Eh. I wanted to do something different. So, this means there’s an entire extra character in the story that I have to write and develop.

Diana Allers actually matters in day to day Ark life instead of just showing up and nearly murdering everyone because she’s a selfish bitch for little to no reason other than to make Abby’s already pretty damn full storyline even more packed than it already was. (Seriously, why didn’t they develop Allers more? She’s lazily implemented in canon, and I hate it. Lord only knows I enjoyed Abby and Raven’s plotlines far more in several places of Season 1 rather than Bellamy’s Manpain Adventures Lite Before He Turns Into A Complete And Utter Psychopath Later On In The Series).

Jaha is far more competent and slimey than he is in the show, rather than being a foolish man who is barely toddering along in the plot towards something useful.

Abby and Jake are at odds because Jake technically betrays Clarke and allows her to get arrested in the beginning of the story. They adopt Raven in the interim and they’re all awkwardly trying to free Clarke while pretending that Jake and Abby aren’t having marital problems. Well, Jake and Abby are pretending, Raven is as blunt as she usually is and just calls shit like she sees it.

Ensemble cast. There’s literally a tag on this story that tells you all that “This Story Is Literally About Everyone.”

So.

Yeah.

Clarke’s not on the fucking ground yet. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Having skipped past 6 chapters.

Is 5k really that long? I wouldn’t know, personally when I read a longfic, I go into it knowing that the chapters might be long as fuck because I know that I’m reading a fic that could literally take me through several days and I read pretty damn fast. Not that 40k words is really all that much when you’re rewriting a TV show using all the characters who already exist in canon and then getting into their thoughts and motivations because that is literally what books do, this isn’t a screenplay, I wouldn’t be caught dead writing one because I despise them. Sorry, but you’re getting the full range of thoughts and emotions of everyone involved. I know, that’s just awful, getting hours and hours of content for free, but god forbid the plot doesn’t run on your timetable.

But that’s really the crux of this rant, isn’t it? NEVER complain about word counts, people. Too short? Who the fuck cares? The author could be just beginning their writing careers, so to speak. Word counts of any significance takes practice, first of all. So, not only could they might or might not have the required experience to write longer chapters, they may not even want to. And that’s fine. Because they do this FOR FREE.

Same thing with longer chapters. Are you really going to come at me, nearly a year after I’ve written and posted this work, complaining about word count, as though there’s even a remote chance that I’m going to go back and edit down all of that time and effort I put into that work to satisfy your fragile reading stamina?

Pfffffffffft.

I mean, this is funny to me in some regard because I’m over here wondering just what would be a good length for this person. Part of the reason my chapters tend to be at least 4k words long is because that’s generally where I can get a comfortable amount of character interaction, introspective thought, and plot moving forward. All three of those things matter to me when writing chapters. I hate reading too short works (and no, I don’t tell these authors this. I read what they give me and just deal with it because they’re entertaining me for free) and it’s little more than characters just trading dialogue with each other. I want to know what they are thinking about as well. I want a bit of narration. I’m reading something from a specific character’s point of view, and I want that chapter to ooze the personality of that character.

These are all the things I keep in mind when I write to my word count goals, personally. Doing it in less than 3k words might be possible, but it would sure as hell be annoying.

But most of all, it just irritated the fuck out of me. Like I’ve said multiple times in this rant. I do this for free. I don’t expect you guys to know this, but in order to get these substantial updates when I can manage to actually feel well enough to write and get them published, it takes me EIGHT TO TWELVE HOURS of sitting in front of a computer screen to have a chapter finished. On a good day. Yes. Most of the chapters I put out are done in one day, in one block, and I’m often up until 5 AM finishing something up. I have severe ADHD. Sometimes it is a chore to get shit put on a page because I can’t sit down and focus my thoughts enough to sound even coherent. Sometimes I have issues keeping up with what the beginning of a long sentence was about and I have to constantly keep up with what the fuck I’m even talking about in any given thought.

So, you have an author with a severe executive function disorder attempting to concentrate hard enough to get her own thoughts in character for each and every character that is featured in any given story while attempting to resist even the most mundane distractions while desperately hoping she’s going to hit a period of hyperfocus long enough to get substantial work down, but if that happens she’ll probably forget to eat because she’s on a writing binge that goes on with actual significant work for a period of several hours.

I love writing, despite the challenges I have to deal with in order just to get it done. I love most of the comments that I receive. I’m coming off a period of extreme depression from some family issues I was dealing with. My skin is rather thin at the moment and that irritated the fuck out of me, but those two comments knocked more wind out of my sails that I really wanted them to, and that bugs me even more.

But I am more experienced in fic writing than probably your average person. This commenter pissed me the fuck off, but I’ve moved past this, it’s hardly shattered my motivation to write forever.

But a careless commenter could easily do that to someone just getting into fanfiction. And it makes me wonder just how often this happens everyday, every hour, when entitled, spoiled people who think their needs are more important than the author doing this FOR FREE decide to voice their terrible opinions on their works. I love my readers, I don’t hold myself beholden to them, but they are extraordinarily important to me. Plot, pacing, and character development are all my own when I write because first and foremost, I write for myself. It’s a hobby that I clearly have to work very hard at to even be remotely successful at, and taking anyone else’s standards into account is never going to happen when I have to live up to my own already very high expectations. But I do keep y’all in mind when I’m devoting my time, energy, and effort in. The chapter lengths I have partly exist to make up for the wait times I inevitably have between each release. I very much know that I am sporadic and inconsistent when updating. So, when I do, I want to have something that isn’t just a whisper in the wind when it finally cycles to the top of the AO3 listing.

I know there are inevitably readers who didn’t like my content, or do think my stuff is too long. That’s fine. But don’t come into my space and give me two comments that were effectively “TL;DR” and expect that not to be a slap in the face. Because it is. I have wonder if the fandom kids today even know the kind of slap backs this sort of thing would have gotten in LiveJournal.

But, never mind that. I’m a big girl, I took some petty revenge in deleting that bullshit from my boards and then setting the fic to moderated mode, but what I would like anyone who decides to read through what is actually a long winded post (all my rants are, admittedly) to learn is that you are not reading professional work. You are not reading work that has been paid for. You are not reading work that has been professionally edited. I’m not saying that you can’t have standards for fic, lord knows I have many, but I don’t go into an author’s work and leave shitty comments. Never. Constructive criticism on fanfiction keeps the author’s time in mind, their skill level over what they’re actually capable of, and whether or not they’re even open to criticism. Some authors don’t even want your advice. They just want to know that you liked it. And if you don’t, just don’t say anything. I’m not quite that fragile personally, when someone is giving me useful criticism that can be used to actually improve my quality of writing, but I will freely admit that clearly I have a sore spot about comments addressing word counts.

Get out of here with that shit.

In short. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

[allisonilluminated]

How To Pace a Fanfiction

Hey All,

We're going to talk about pacing today, but let me start by telling a story.

When I published my first fic, Serena's Sister (Pokemon, T), I had no idea where I was going to go with it.  All I knew was that I had a cool idea and enough inspiration to turn it into words.  In my entire life, the longest thing I had ever written was seven thousand words, so I was understandably amazed when I wrote three thousand words in two day. At the time, that seemed like a ton, and I was nowhere close to slowing down.

By the time summer rolled around, I had finished the first part of my story, and I was ecstatic.  60k was more words than I had written in my entire life, and I still wasn't close to done!  Happy, I set my story aside for the summer, ready to come back in the fall and finish it for good.  I had the plot, I had my characters, and there was nothing that could stop me.

There was just one thing I hadn't accounted for – I had become a much better writer than I was when I had started.

I came back, and suddenly my chapters were exploding in length.  I wrote five thousand words one week, then six the next.  The scope of my project ballooned too – it wasn't just a drama between sisters anymore.  Now, it was about Erin, Paul, and Korrina, but also Serena, Ash, and their group, but also Alain, Mairin, and the Ninja Village, but also friend drama with Elle, Shauna, Tierno, and Trevor, but also high stakes political drama about Diantha, Cynthia, and Malva, but also villainy with Team Rocket and Lysandre, all while following an overarching plot spanning continents and time lines and dimensions.  Plus, since the fandom was Pokemon, every single one of those characters had a team of at least two Pokemon, all of whom had their own personalities and movesets to keep track of.

Is it any wonder I hit a dead end?

I'm really proud of Serena's Sister – as my first and so far longest story, it holds a special place in my heart.  It has tons of problems – plot holes galore, underdeveloped characters, major fanservice, a protag who borders on Mary Suedom, etc.  However, I think the biggest problem with the story is the pacing.  To understand what I mean, here's my forty chapter story broken down into ten chapter chunks:

Chapter 1-10 (Part One):

Word Count – 26,206 words

Main Perspectives – Two (Erin, Serena)

Protagonists – Six (Erin, Serena, Bonnie, Clemont, Paul, Ash, Elle)

Time Frame – A Few Weeks

Chapter 11-20 (Part One):

Word Count – 32,110 words (+ 5,904 words)

Main Perspectives – Four (+2 Team Rocket, Clemont)

Protagonists – Seven (+1 Korrina)

Time Frame – A Few Weeks

Chapter 21-30 (Part Two):

Word Count – 58,665 words (+ 26,555 words)

Main Perspectives – Eleven (+7 Ash, Elle, Mairin, Alain, Diantha, Zygarde, Froaky)

Protagonists – Twelve (+5 Mairin, Alain, Diantha, Zygarde, Cynthia)

Time Frame – One Week

Chapter 31-40 (Part Two):

Word Count – 59,221 words (+ 556 words)

Main Perspectives -  Fourteen (+3 Korrina, Bonnie, Sawyer)

Protagonists – Seventeen (+5 Shauna, Trevor, Tierno, Yuki, Sawyer)

Time Frame – Five Days and One Timeskip

The problems here should be pretty obvious.  From part one to part four, there was a 126% increase in word count, three times as many protagonists, and 3.5 times as many perspectives – all in a much shorter in story timeframe.  

More importantly, people tend to look for average word count per chapter when they look for stories.  Serena's Sister looks like it has a 4k average word count, but in reality part one has a 2k average and part two has a 6k average.  Once people hit the longer chapters, a lot stop reading, which is the biggest problem with bad pacing.

Okay, so that's the problem with bad pacing.  How do I fix my pacing in future stories?

Here are some strategies to work on your pacing.  None of these are necessary, and it's up to you to figure out what works for you.

Standardize your chapters.  This is the best way to fix your pacing issues – make all of your chapters roughly the same length.  Your goal shouldn't be to produce as much as possible, but rather to make the most cohesive product you can.  Major variation with chapter length is jarring, and it can take a reader out of the story.  Some common standard chapter lengths people use are 2k-3k, 5k-7k, and 10k to 12k.  It's super important that you understand how much you feel comfortable writing, so you don't overshoot how many words you can realistically put into a regular chapter with your goal. This doesn't necessarily include first chapters, which can be shorter, or finales, which can be longer.

Standardize your sections.  A lot of people tend to split their stories into parts – both of my main projects are.  One problem Serena's Sister had was part one only had twenty chapters, while part two was just as long when I hit a wall yet I wasn't close to where I thought the part should end. Try to think about your parts like separate narrative arcs making one longer arc.  If you can make each part about the same number of chapters, your story will feel a lot smoother for it.  It's like building a rhythm – breaking it can throw your readers off.

Limit Your Scope. It's totally cool to want to rewrite an entire show.  Chances are, you're not going to have the endurance to make it all the way through.

Case and point – Ashes of the Past by Saphroneth (Pokemon, T).  It's a time travel fic encompassing every character and event from the first thirteen seasons of the anime in a comprehensive reworking of history.  He's almost done, too – his plot revolves around events from the fourth generation (Pokemon has seven) and that's what he's currently writing.  There's a reason his story is the most popular in the fandom – it's fantastic.

You know what else?  He's been writing it since 2011.  There are 250 chapters and 1.5m words.  There are more rotating perspective and plot points than I can keep track of.  On top of all of that, Saphroneth writes really sparse prose, so imagine how long it would be if he had lots of extra detail and description.

Know your limits.  What's the story you want to tell, and what do you actually need to tell it?  If the background political intrigue arc can be summed up in a single line of dialogue from a secondary character, does it really deserve 10k words of your time?  Tell your story, not every story, because that's what the readers want to see.  This includes limiting your perspective characters, sending unnecessary subplots to the background, and above all understanding what your focus is.

In short, you don't have to turn your idea into an ASOIAF scale project just because it's a possibility.  Control your muse.

Time management.  You know that moment you're reading a fic and thinking, “This is taking them a really long time?”  Guess what – sometimes that's because it is, in fact, taking a really long time to describe a really short period of time.  Try to avoid any jarring or unannounced time skips, or spending too much time on one short time frame.  This is a lot more flexible, so this point is mostly to the extremes.  It's just as important to think about how much time is elapsing in the story as outside.

Your writing style sets the tempo.  Every story has different pacing.  Recognize what speed you want to be going at in the first place!  Are you writing a fast paced thriller or a slow burn romance?  The meatier your prose, the faster your story will feel.  Keeping your style steady is something a lot of people don't have to think about, but knowing what your goal for pace is is super important.

Outlining.  I don’t personally outline, but it can be a wonderful tool for setting out your plot and keeping to a set road map.  Having a good outline can often be enough to alleviate pacing issues, although checking your scope is still incredibly important.

Essentially, the key to good pacing is consistency.  Good pacing shouldn't be noticeable, because pacing is what keeps your reader in the story.  It gives a story a sense of cohesiveness that's essential for an immersive reading experience.  How do you pace your stories?  What's your experience with bad pacing?

Thank you all, Allie

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