#ship names that are actual words are impossible to search the tags for lol

[cyberstarlope]

hi I'm very ill about them

[meraki-yao]

20 Questions For Fic Writers ✒️

I have a bit of time between now and my consultation for my essay so I’m finally answering these! Thank you to @luainthewild and @typicalopposite for the tags!!!!

How many works do you have on ao3?

13 right now! I’m a baby fic writer lol I only started in 2022 as a coping mechanism from university fucking me up, but I’m fully in love with it now. It’s so good to get back into writing for myself after writing for school and exams according to a marking scheme for so long.

What's your total ao3 word count? 43,982!

What fandoms do you write for?

浪浪钉 LLD (The collective ship name for the main ship Wenzhou and the rps Junzhe), Shadowhunters (mostly Show canon but I do have book canon fic ideas in my drafts), RWRB

I have a Sanders Sides Hadestown AU in my drafts too but that’s been gathering dust there for a while😅

Top five fics by kudos:

I’d Hang the Moon for It to Shine on Him Sleeping (RWRB)

I Need Comfort (But I Hate Being Comfortable) (RWRB)

Dancing Under Red Skies (Shadowhunters)

Take Me Out and Take Me Home (Shadowhunters)

Achilles Come Down (Shadowhunters)

Do you respond to comments?

Not really, mostly because I have no idea how to handle compliments🫠

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I’d say my first fic? Four Times Love Meant Sacrifice and the One Time It Didn't Need To, because that was literally four ships with a bad ending (or at least endings presented as bad) with one final happy ending ship. But otherwise I mostly stick with happy endings, or at least hopeful endings

But I will say my WIP that I posted on Wednesday is gonna break that record and have the angsiest ending, because it’s about Arthur Fox’s cancer diagnosis and Henry’s emotional journey through that point of his life

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I’d say most of them are fairly happy? But I do think I do hopeful endings more.

Probably Can I Have This Dance? It ends with Alex and Henry dancing around in the Texas family house after the election

Do you get hate on fics?

So far so good, no, and I’m hoping it stays that way 🥹

Do you write smut?

Very, very tame. The most explicit thing I’ve written is The Word of Your Body, which is a RWRB Movie Paris scene fic. It’s very tame, but writing the main event gave me such a crisis

Craziest crossover:

I don’t think I’ve done a crossover? Between fandoms, that is. And I don’t think I’ll ever plan to? Unless you count what I did for Four Times Love Meant Sacrifice and the One Time It Didn't Need To because I was mixing the actor’s characters from different projects and shipping them together (which is a really prominent thing in the LLD/JZ fandom)

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, not that I know of

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but with my growing interest in translation, I am thinking of translating some of my own fics, starting with the LLD (since that’s a dominantly Chinese fandom to began with)

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, not yet!

All time favorite ship?

Aw, you can’t make me choose, that’s impossible!

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have way too many ideas in my RWRB draft box, so there’s a lot of doubt there

But for fics I actually already started, it’s a song fic on “I’ll Cover You” from Rent for Junzhe. I was like 40% done with the draft, but the last time I touched it was in 2022.

It’s supposed to be a sort of exploration on cross-dressing and femineity which started because I was pissed at the government’s “Anti-sissy” declaration, and Zhehan (one part of the ship, but don’t search him online yourself a lot of shit happened and there’s massive misinformation everywhere about him) was really loved and known for his perceived femininity after holding a dominantly masculine image for most of his career. The gender neutrality in his style during and after Word of Honor suited him better, and I wanted to write about that

What are your writing strengths?

Descriptive writing and character studies, which is why most of my fics are either putting visual media into words, or missing scenes, or canon compliant

What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue and anything regarding movement and action, so choosing to write a Tangled AU for the RWRB Big Bang is a challenge I set for myself

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Be careful with it, and be respectful. (and of course, if it’s Chinese, I will be extra critical)

First fandom you wrote in?

Lang Lang Ding/Junzhe! Or if you categorize according to AO3 tags, Word of Honor RPF

Favorite fic you've written?

Eh, I’m pretty happy with most of my fics but I’ll go with I’d Hang the Moon for It to Shine on Him Sleeping, The Word of Your Body and Achilles Come Down

No pressure tagging @o0anapher0o @pippin-katz @lfg1986-2 @noemiettedraw @thinkof-england

[starrose17]

Fic Writer Questions

Fic Writer Questions!

Tagged by @fandom-hoarder

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

On Ao3 I have 24, but that’s a fraction of all the fics I’ve ever written that are now deleted or lost on the ancient world of yahoo webrings.

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

800,044 (but it’ll be ALOT more than that)

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Oh so many. Lemme think in order I’ve done Pokemon, StarGate SG.1, Kyou Kara Maou, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fruits Basket, Harry Potter, X-Men: First Class, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, Vikings, Black Sails, The Witcher, Good Omens, Supernatural...and I’m sure I’m missing some others.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

-) Guardian of the Soulless - My Witcher fic, Geralt/Jaskier, and my favourite fic I’ve ever written.

-) The Impatient Snugglebug - A very old Harry Potter fic, Harry/Draco.

-) We Met At The Park - My X-Men Erik/Charles fic that shot me into fandom fame, where the now world famous @fahrlightloki cosplayed my Charles.

-) To The Stars - My Good Omens fic, Crowley/Aziraphale, based on the movie Titanic.

-)  Final Night - One of my very rare short fics, for Vikings, Ragnar/Athelstan.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do respond, cos I believe it’s the right thing to do.

6) What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t write angsty endings.  I have angst and drama in the fic itself, but everything always has a happy ending. Though I suppose final night kinda had one but that’s only because it’s a fic that is written within an episode and the episode didn’t end well.

7) What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

THEY’RE ALL HAPPY! They also all end in weddings, like, all of them. I had a certain plot in all my fics that I found appeals so well to everyone so I write the same outline in different fandoms and it always 100% works.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

I did for the X-Men fandom, I wrote a few crossovers with the other films that Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy were in.  The craziest one I did was unfinished and called The Xavier Brothers Household, where I took a bunch of James McAvoys characters from other things and made them all brothers to Charles.  It was crazy.

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

The odd one here and there, but nothing major.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do, an it’s always hot and heavy and very romantic.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes, see the below answer.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Pretty much all of them until my most recent Bad Reputation one, but then I stopped saying yes to people who asked because I always asked them to send me a link to where it’s posted and they wouldn’t and I’d find it myself and it’d be under their name with no mention of me or a link to the original fic, so I stopped saying yes.

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

No.

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

That’s impossible to answer there have been so many, but I think the first one you have is one you can always fall back on, especially when you’re between fandoms, so I still find myself picturing Jessie and James from Pokemon ^_^

15) What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There’s very few fics I’ve never finished, only in the early days never anything recent.  There was a Harry Potter drarry fic of mine called Openly Confused, which isn’t even on AO3 but I think it’s still on my fanfiction.net account. I’d got to the last chapter and lost all interest in it and never finished it.

16) What are your writing strengths?

I like to think anything romantic. I could spend pages, and HAVE, with one character just thinking about the other.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m not the best writer I don’t know too many big descriptive words and such so my writing is very basic.  I’ve been told that alot. But also been told that people like that cos they can get lost in the feelings rather than the imagery, and I’ve also been told that people who don’t have english as their first language enjoy my fics cos they’re easy to read, so it is a weakness, but it had a plus side too.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

As I don’t speak any other language, that’s never come up.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokemon. Rocketshipping. Most of my fics are still out there on what’s left of the yahoo webrings.  I found most of them still up on an angelfire site, they were written in 1997/8 and are the most corny crappiest pieces of writing I have ever read lol Yet I still remember being so proud of them at the time.  They’re here if you’re interested, just do Ctrl F and search for starrose and it’ll take you to them.

20) What's your favorite fic you've written?

Definitely Guardian of the Soulless.  Why? I couldn’t really tell you, I guess I’m just really proud of the story I did, of the relationship growing between Geralt and Jaskier.  And the bomb at the wedding scene, my God I’d never written anything so intense, and the shootout near the end, so much blood omg it was really outside my comfort zone and from the feedback I got I think I did really well.

Having said that, all of my long fics hold special places in my heart. My Black Sails fic L/S: I Will Stand Here With You, Flint/Silver, had the most amount of porn I have ever written in a fic before lol It was my longest ever fic at 165,104 words.

My x-men fic We Met At The Park got super famous in the fandom, had so much fanart done for it, and of course the cosplaying mentioned up above.

And of course a shout out to my most recent fic Bad Reputation, which has become my comfort love since I began it in February.  My version of Jared and Jensen live rent free in my head, they’re all I currently think about, even more than Sam and Dean.

Now as for tagging, I don’t actually read fic that much, so anyone whose a fic writer and reading this, feel free to tell the world about your fics!

[tydy-the-megnet]

Get Ready for a Long Post: Elby9001 Writing Stats for 2017

Uh… What? Fics I’ve written this year? Jeez, I hope I recall them all.

Tagged by @sp4c3-0ddity (i love your blog so thx!)

Tagging… Um… @jackandlanterns ? and… @yojimbra and… um…… @hopefullypessimistic84 you wanna do it? @fuckingchatnoir too, if you want?

Okay, Let’s do this. Luckily, I tag all my fics on tumblr with #fanfiction so finding all my fics is easy (especially if you want to find them right now *winks with boths eyes*) MOVING ON

Also You can search for this post under the tag “Masterlist” because it has links to ALL my fics. You’re welcome ;)

Breakdown: Fanfics Posted

23 Voltron fics – 60.6%

5 Miraculous Ladybug fics – 13.2%

4 Camp Camp fics – 10.5%

4 Naruto fics – 10.5%

1 RWBY fic – 2.6%

1 Harry Potter fic – 2.6%

Tumblr Fics (Found on my blog, obviously)

–Voltron: Legendary Defender (All Pidgance)

Nonsense (Pidge? Like him? No way)

Together, But Not Together (Lance rambles to Pidge)

Just Like Home (Aw, they’re homesick)

Feline Affectionate (Lance wants the pussy Pidge is a Cat?)

Where Are We? (Lost, but not stressed)

Baked (”Lance, are you… high?”)

Coding (Actually, ciphering)

Freedom (When FInals Week ends)

The Box (Lance has a box. Pidge is curious)

Headpwnd (Dancing)

Treasured (Treasure hunting)

This Guy’s... (Operation: Find-Out-Lance’s-Type)

Iron Paladin (Iron Man AU)

Laundering (Who doesn’t love a good laundry mix-up?)

Preprogrammed (Flirty Robot)

Hopelance Romantic (Lance is a hopeless romantic)

Virtually Impossible (Lance? Winning at video games?)

It’s “Pining,” Not “Piping” (Pidge pining for Lance)

Soulstice (Soulmate AU)

Growing Plance (Pidge has a green-ish thumb)

Snow Angel (Pidge likes the indoors, but miracles do happen)

Tall Tales (He was so tall, and she was so short)

Through the Looking Glass (glasses fluff)

That Cute Green Monster (Green [with envy] Paladin)

–Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir

Marinette DuPun-Cheng (Marinette makes a pun. Adrien Approves)

Dadrien (Adrien makes dad jokes. Marinette does not approve)

How to Pick Up Ladybugs (Adrien finds out Ladybug’s ID and turns up the charm) (Adrienette)

Getting into Character (Adrien and Nino dress-up for Halloween)

Aishiteru, Adrien-kun (Adrienette, Mari tries to confess in foreignese)

–Camp Camp (All Marris)

Pixie and the Python (Max asks Gwen for dating advice)

Making People (Somewhat of a sequel to above)

The Questgivers (Max vs Nerris’ parents)

The New Girl (High school AU)

Fanfiction fics (found here)

–Naruto

The Ultimate Ninjutsu (Team Kakashi wins thanks to Naruto’s jutsu)

Oh, It’s You (NaruHina Soulmate AU)

Assassination Exams (normal school AU – know the game “Assassin”?)

New Soul Revamped! (My take on an OC in Naruto’s body. one of my only multi-chapter fics)

–RWBY

This Is JNPR (Lancaster JNPR band AU romcom)

–Harry Potter

Let It Sink In (Sirius is up to no good, Amelia catches him.)

Total Work Count: 38

Ship Breakdown: PIDGANCE WINS at an overwhelming 60.5% of my fics. Blame @pidgancemonth2017 for that.

Character Breakdown: Pidge Gunderson, aka Katie Holt, wins. Again, protag of 60.5% of my fics.Lance McClain has a good second place, but I focused more on Pidge throughout because I like her more

BESTS AND WORSTS

Best Title(s)? I’m very fond of Through the Looking Glass because I’m a fan of Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland. Also, Growing Plance because I like puns and I adore that ship name.

Worst Title? This Guy’s… I am NOT proud of that one.

Best First Line? From Just Like Home 

“Voltron’s yellow paladin walked into the kitchen with one purpose: snacking.”

I like that line because, like why else would you walk into a kitchen lol

Worst First Line? Direct okay. From New Soul Revamped!

“It was a bright day in the Land of Fire and in the Village Hidden in the Leaves as well.”

I don’t like it because if it’s bright in the Land of Fire, it’s gonna be bright in the Leaf Village duh you idiot

Best Last Line? Well… From Preprogrammed

“‘So,’ she concluded, ‘Why would someone else’s robot flirt with my boyfriend?’”

Because same, girl, same.

but ALSO from Growing Plance

“In a fierce whisper, she spoke to PM3, ‘Pidge McClain III. Not. One. Word.’”

I adore this line because Pidge is so cute in that one.

Worst Last Line? Calling for it again ooh boy. From This Guy’s…

“’Hunk,’ Lance glanced to him, stifling snickers, ‘What do you think of Katie’s new haircut?’”

That line is such a week ending ugh.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

Looking back, did you write more or less fics than you expected?

Way more, mostly because of Pidgance month (it brought upon over half of my fics this year.)

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you wouldn’t have expected last year?

Considering I just got into Voltron this year… Pidgance and Voltron. I mostly stick to the same genres, though…

What’s your favorite story that you wrote?

Through the Looking Glass because I wear glasses and every time someone tells me that I explode I’ve ruined so many outfits with that pls help

What’s your most popular story?

On tumblr, with 72 notes as of 01-01-2018 (one more than the second place spot) is Treasured 

One fanfiction.net Dadrien leads with 119 faves (eight above the second place spot) as of 01-01-2018

Least popular story?

Oh boy… on tumblr, it’s Making People with 5 notes

On fanfiction.net Let It Sink In has only 3 faves

Fic that could use the most improvement?

Emphasis on “the most” because ALL my fics could use improvement to some extent. But the one that needs it the most is Marinette DuPun-Cheng. It was just… awful. I’d scrap it completely and never look back, but I use it as a standing point to say “I’m getting better all the time”

Sexiest Fic? *winks with with both eyes*

SPOILER ALERT

HA! I don’t really write sex scenes… So… The closest would be The Ultimate Ninjutsu, where Naruto uses Sexy Jutsu during the bell-test

Saddest Story?

I don’t write sad stories much either… But I’d have to say

It’s “Pining,” Not “Piping” or That Cute Green Monster

one of those is the saddest, but I can’t decide which.

Most fun to write?

Oh goodness. Three-way tie!

of Voltron, Hopelance Romantic

of Miraculous Ladybug, How to Pick Up Ladybugs

of Camp Camp, Pixie and the Python

Story with single sweetest moment?

Hm. Good question… What is a “sweet moment” though? A moment of genuine connection and caring shown between two people whether romantic, platonic, or familial?

Literally all of Making People is Max doing his best to show Nerris he’s trying. I think that’s really sweet. But also, Treasured is really sweet I think

Hardest story to write?

New Soul Revamped! is really hard because I failed once I’m trying really hard not to fail again.

Hopelance Romantic was also hard, just because I had to keep deleting and rewriting because my first few drafts were unsatisfactory

Easiest story to write?

Freedom was literally me just expressing after making it through finals so

Did any stories shift your perception of characters?

Writing Marinette Dupain-Cheng made me think Marinette was boring unless Ladybug was directly involved.

Most overdue story?

I don’t really put deadlines on my stories… But I guess Tall Tales was uploaded like a day after the prompt dictated?

Did you take any writing risks this year?

This is JNPR is my first multichapter romcom, and I’m not far in, but I’ve learned that you can’t be lenient with your readers because no ending is acceptable

What are your writing goals for 2018?

Ohhh boy… I guess I want to keep up with my multichapter fics, This Is JNPR, New Soul Revamped, and Getting into Character. Also, I want to branch out into some other fandoms, too

Wow. Thanks for tagging me. Doing this has felt amazing.

What now? Snack? Snack.

[clexaweekofficial]

Hi, do you have any advice for writing fic? I feel like my Clexa fics hardly get any hits, let alone comments and kudos. There are some fics out there who amass over a hundred thousand views but I can't even seem to get past a thousand... :\

Hey there, first of all sorry for the long wait (like three weeks lol), but I decided to make a poll for this, and then I added in a bunch of stuff I was curious about! 

Don’t be too hard on yourself. The fandom is not as active as it once was because our ship was technically killed off. People aren’t reading fic as much as they once were, but we are still very active! And tbh, it is actually incredibly impressive how active our fandom still is, considering! We are still making new content every day, we raise a ton of money for charity, we win polls, have awesome funkos, we have a Clexa comic going and a Clexacon, we still have great participation in Clexaweek, and much more, it’s amazing! And there are still plenty of ride or die Clexa fans (such as myself) who will always be active within the fandom, reading and writing fic, sharing art, crying at home in the darkness of their closet where they keep a Lexa-shaped watermelon head with candles around it- cough, what, I mean, calmly buying Clexa merch and yeah, etc!

Firstly, keep in mind that it can be hard to get your fic known and out there. If you don’t have a tumblr, for instance, the only way people will see the fic is if they specifically search out the recently updated filter on the Clarke/Lexa tag (I’m assuming ao3; ao3 is most popular so if you used ff.net that might explain some things too), or for it to pop up on an ao3 Clexa feed on tumblr. If you do have a tumblr, if you don’t have many followers, it can still make it difficult. A blogger who is relatively unknown might post a link to their fic and get somewhere between 5-50 notes on it (it doesn’t help that so many people like a post instead of reblogging it, which isn’t sharing it so it therefore isn’t being seen). A popular blogger, however, could post a link to their fic and rack up 100+ notes just in the first day of posting! So if you don’t have a presence in the fandom, that can make it a little harder. Not impossible at all though, just a little harder to get it out there. You are relying on word of mouth, really- you’re hoping people search the tag, see the fic, like it, share it and rec it, and if you are one of the very blessed ones, an artist might love your fic and make some fanart for it, which will in turn bring more views to you. If you have a one-shot, you basically have the short time frame of it being in the recently updated section of the tag; if it has multiple chapters, it will be there more often. If it is well-written and liked, the kudos, comments, and bookmarks will add up and get you on pages searched when people filter the Clarke/Lexa tag via kudos/hits descending, etc. But honestly, you are writing this fic for you, so just have fun and don’t worry about it getting popular. You are writing this for free, for enjoyment first and foremost. Write it and enjoy it, the rest comes later.

Secondly, remember that fandom is notoriously bad at being rather entitled at times. All fandoms are like this! That’s why the effort to reaction ratio is so low, you may get 1000 hits on a fic but only 10 kudos because people are too damn lazy to hit a button. People will read a fanfic and demand an update without even bothering to leave a comment about what they enjoyed. People will repost art without crediting the artist. Stuff like that. 

Thirdly, I don’t know what fics you have made, but maybe you have some errors. People prefer well-written fics, with correct formatting and spelling and grammar. Some people prefer one point of view to another, a type of au to another, etc. And with this in mind, here’s some results from the poll I did! 

In regard to point of view, 73.4% of 1,458 people said that they prefer third person POV fics. Only 17.1% said first person and 9.5% said second person.  For least preferred POV it was pretty even- 44.6% said they disliked first person POV and 44.3% said they disliked second person POV.

Regarding what annoys fic readers most, out of 1,486 responses, 81.8% hated paragraphs not being spaced out. It’s no fun reading a giant block of text. Remember to start a new paragraph when a new person speaks, since that’s usually one of the biggest mistakes I see within fic. People also hate unrealistic sex scenes, spelling errors,, improperly labeled/tagged fics, OOC, etc.

Regarding fic readers’ favorite things, out of 1,465 responses, the majority prefers happy endings (pretty obvious), fluff, soft Clexa, and smut.

Favorite au type is definitely modern aus, followed by friends to lovers, then enemies to lovers.

People seem to prefer when Finn and Costia are good (not villainized) but are not in the fics.

Then there are plenty of questions I added out of curiosity, so you can take from them what you will. For example, 92.4% of people prefer Woods for a surname for Lexa, compared to only 7.1% who aren’t bothered and will take anything.

Now, these are just some examples, I had 1,4500 responses to this survey in a relatively short amount of time. It was pretty fun to be honest, and though I found most of it to go as I expected, there were some surprises too- for instance, I figured most of Clexakru imagined Clarke to be a Slytherin, but out of 1,452 responses, 37.8% voted her Gryffindor compared to only 19.1% for Slytherin. That was neat to learn. 

Anyways, so to sum it up, you know a few things off the bat that the majority of readers like when they read fics- third person, make sure your paragraphs are broken up, your spelling and formatting is all good, etc. But also, take all of this with a grain of salt. There are always plenty of exceptions. Like, most people prefer Woods for Lexa’s last name (myself included!) but there’s a fantastic Politics au which I would argue is one of the best Clexa fics out there, and Lexa’s last name is Ward. No one cares because the fic is awesome. And there are some great second-person POV fics out there too, and plenty of popular fics written by people who do not have a tumblr, etc. These are just guidelines that tell you what some people in Clexakru like in general, feel free to take from it or ignore it entirely, as long as you enjoy what you are doing, then you are doing it right.

Just write what you love, and write it for you and for Clexa. The rest will hopefully just fall into place. I hope this helped!

Here’s a link to the survey responses!