Comments: This is such a good fic, I can’t wait to see where it goes!
The writer:
Here’s this gem showing up on my dash again.
if you're a writer i wish u a very plot/story/character epiphany
Some reader, lightly commenting on my fic: hey i liked this.
me, me eyes enormous: you COMMENT me? you comment on my fic, like the story? oh! oh! love for reader! love for reader for One Thousand Years!!!!
list of favorite things as a fanfic author:
- When someone is really freaking mad at me for inducing an emotional response from them
- when readers give me a background of how/when they read my writing
- when readers give me a background of why they shouldn’t have been reading my writing (usually while at work)
- when readers quote my work back to me in comments
- the frickin’ real heroes here, the ones who comment on every chapter of an ongoing multi-chapter fic
- when someone notices something I deliberately left as subtext and cries about it in the comments :3
bygodstillam
- When someone notices something I did by accident and tells me how much they loved it and I get to feel like a genius XD
not to be emotional on main but fanfiction is a gift and it’s so fundamentally human to tell each other stories and i am deeply grateful to have that in my life. thank you all for adding so much emotion and meaning to the world with your words
I did a google search and it said that you invented death??? is this true?
It is true.
Long ago, people lived forever, and when they were done with everything they had wanted to do, they would take a bus to Bognor Regis, on the English south coast, and sleep in small seaside bed and breakfast hotels. They would spend the days walking along the seafront, possibly crunching along the shingle. Hundreds of them to begin with, but eventually millions, and then millions of millions. Needless to say, Bognor Regis became uncomfortably crowded, and there was nowhere to buy an ice cream or even a postcard. All of the Bed and Breakfasts had “No Vacancies” signs up.
I was only a boy, but I could see that this was untenable. “What if,” I suggested, “We make it so that instead of going to Bognor by bus, people who have finished just stop existing, and rot down. And what if we make it so it’s always been like this?”
“You are seven years old,” they said to me. “It will be many years before you take the bus to Bognor. Why do you let this bother you?”
“Because this is not tenable,” I told them. It was a big word I was proud of knowing and I used it whenever I could. “By that time the town will be so full that I will have to sleep on the pebbled beach at night, or even in the road. It will not be a good thing.”
I showed them my drawings, which included suggestions for how death would work, and stressed that for it to be successful it would also need to apply to everything else as well. Not just people.
“Even cats?” they asked.
“Even cats,” I told them.
“The cats won’t like that,” they said. But the cats thought it was going to be great, and explained to us that they had plans for the mice and the birds under the proposed system, and my invention caught on. These days almost nobody remembers what it was like before.
...
Also, there’s a character called Death in SANDMAN. I made her up, and Mike Dringenberg made up the way that she looks.
the line between brainstorming and procrastinating is VERY thin, apparently
oh so this hit the relatable nerve with you all huh
Lets be honest all of us writers are on tumblr to procrastinate
Write fanfiction guiltlessly. Do it not only because it’s good practice, not only because you don’t feel like putting your energy into original stuff, but because you do feel like putting your energy into fandom. Write fanfics of epic proportions or tiny one-shots; write fluff or angst or cliches or tropes; publish the roughest version or keep the twelfth draft for only yourself. Do it without feeling bad. You owe no one anything; the act of creation is a gift in and of itself, and it doesn’t matter if you’re creating fanfic or original stories or whatever else you want. All that matters is you enjoy it, because why else would you do it at the end of the day?
Write fanfiction guiltlessly.
This is good advice.
:)
proofreading my own writing like wow. u sure do love those commas, buddy. what if u tried to cool it with all those commas, pal. all those run-ons, friend. why don’t you tone it down, my guy
my mind be like ‘i know a spot’ then takes me to an entire fictional universe it created
You’ve just realized something strange about the humans. They’re a race that joined the galaxy recently, but you’ve just found evidence of them already been part of it for many millennia before, but it feels like everybody’s forgotten.
We were delighted when the people calling themselves ‘humans’ joined the spacefaring races. They were clever and agile, hot-tempered and humorous, fierce and yet friendly, a young species with much to offer us.
Most species are still delighted. But we are the Bybleotekar, the recorders of the spaceways, and we have begun to wonder. Our merry companions are… not different, but too much the same. They understand so readily, accept so quickly - most new species have trouble adjusting to dealing with aliens, to the realities of space travel, to the sheer bigness of the universe. But the humans are so adaptable, so ready for it all, they might be remembering something they’ve forgotten, not learning something new.
Some of us, the Izaslanik of the Bybleotekar, the gatherers of information for the record keepers, began encouraging humans to join us, that we might study them more closely. They like the work - they are a curious species, delighting in new knowledge, and they make able assistants. My human companion is named Mira, a young female. She is a good companion, who sings sweetly and laughs often.
When Mira struck the first blow against what I thought I knew of the universe, against illusions soon to shatter that I had thought were truth, we were attending the coronation of a lesser Netar of the Kktil, recording the customs and ceremonies and unofficially enjoying the colourful celebrations. Mira was watching the dancing, her mouth widened in a ‘smile’. “It’s so pretty,” she said, her hairless face sheened with sweat under the hot sun. “I love the turquoise jewellery.” She pointed to the bright blue stones that bedecked the dancers. “I should buy some. Our homeworld doesn’t have any turquoise, you know. Only a few pieces we brought with us when we came.”
It takes me a little while to understand what she said. It is only later, during the feasting, that I turn to her again. “You said your homeworld doesn’t have turquoise. Only… what you brought with you. Do you mean turquoise you have bought offworld, since you joined the spaceways?”
someone, reading my writing: wow great story!
me, sticking my hands in the plotholes: thanks it has pockets :)
here have 10 pieces of writing advice that have stuck with me over the years
- every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person
- even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday
- exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them
- if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love
- make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you
- if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders
- don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts
- i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less
- sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer
- a story written in chronological order takes a lot more discipline and is usually easier to understand than a story written with flashbacks
you ever start rereading your WIP to get in the mood and write more and you get so caught up that when you get to the end you’re like “bitch? where’s the rest?” and you realize you’re the bitch and you have to write it
all fanfiction is funnier and sexier and vastly better-written when you read it at three in the morning, in the dark, lying on your side, tucked into bed, with screen rotate turned off. that’s just how it works. that’s just facts.
“If you’re not interested in the gritty realism of a story in which your favorite characters could die horribly at any time, it’s because you’re a naive comfort-reader who can’t handle hard-hitting fiction.”
No, friend. I just prefer to read stories featuring characters I find interesting, and if they drop out of the narrative, I no longer find the story compelling.
“The real world features graphic sex and senseless violence! If you can’t handle merciless realism in a piece of writing, you’re kind of a delicate snowflake.”
The real world also contains yeast infections, bowel movements, jury duty, and standstill traffic. A narrative dense with attention to these things is going to lose my interest very quickly. “Realism” is seldom a selling point in fiction.
“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Over-long, detailed to the point of distraction - and ultimately without a major resolution.”
~ Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
I was writing something for a client today and when I used a semicolon instead of a comma he said, “I see you like the finer things in life”