Depends on Genre,
SciFi: Spacebattles and Sufficiant Velocity
Alternate history: AlternateHistory.com
Fantasy, Gamification: Royal Road
Romance: Fictionpress
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I want to Write Fanfiction and don't know where to start
- Thread starter Illusion
- Start date
Depends on Genre,
SciFi: Spacebattles and Sufficiant Velocity
Alternate history: AlternateHistory.com
Fantasy, Gamification: Royal Road
Romance: Fictionpress
Like with any creative work, the best advice is to get a finish product and put it out for others to see sooner rather than later. There's no point in taking over a month to plan and write your first story. Just crank out something in a week or even a day and get some feedback.
I find this to be highly dependent on the fandom. For instance I read for a lot of game fandoms where the main character is practically an OC anyway since they barely talk. And if the OP writes Gen they're probably not gonna get a high viewcount anyway.
While I don't think your advice is wrong I think OP should be focusing more on writing for themselves at first and what get's them excited than trying to get a high viewcount and please readers.
I am just giving advice on what I know from being in / studying fandom for 20+ years. OCs will repel 99.9% of readers. Out of character canon characters will repel readers too. Yes. OP should write for themselves, but you can write for yourself anything you want. If you want to be successful at fanfiction, which is what the op was asking about, you can't write OCs. :/
Of course op should be excited about what they write. But I started off with the OC thing because that is everyone's first mistake when approaching fanfic for the first time. And no one who reads fanfic wants to read about OCs. Not cause yours are bad, but because all the OCs they've read are self insert fantasy fulfillment characters that only the author will get anything out of. So even if your OC is amazing, everyone is going to click the back button when they are introduced.
Established authors can get away with. Minor characters can as well.
Again, just my experience.
To find an audience, you'll want to post on AO3. You can I don't know if you'll be able to get much good critique there, though.
AO3 is absolutely the gold standard for fanfic organisation and archiving. Most of the good stuff will be properly tagged and the search function is excellent. But it's fanfiction; there will always be a sea of mediocrity to wade through.
This is definitely true. Most fanfic readers aren't looking for OCs, and good ones are extremely rare anyway. Off the top of my head I can only think of two authors who have written significant OCs that I actually liked.
The best advice I can give to write better fanfiction is to read fanfiction already written. There is a wide range of quality amongst fanfiction, so it'll be a bit of a treasure hunt to find the really good ones, but once you do you can analyze how they pace things and try and emulate that.
Yeah...and my post was my own experience with this. I'm not arguing with you, just saying that just because that's what's popular in some fandoms doesn't mean that's the case for every fandom out there.
Sure, OCs and SIs languish on AO3 and FFN. But it's very dependent on the culture of the archive in question.
Go to SpaceBattles or Sufficient Velocity, and you'll find them absolutely full to the tits with main characters in-name-only, min-maxed quests, and SIs building canals across the breadth of Westeros. Its just genre-fics with power-trips as far as the eye can see. Of course, that's hardly a patch on the tendencies of some of the fandom-centric sites. Dark Lord Potter and Twisting the Hellmouth were filled from stem to stern with delicious OOC wankery. And I'll leave the worst excesses of Fimfiction up to your imagination. (Hint: 4channer SIs)
Every fanfic archive has its sins, which become the basic background radiation of the place -- like FFN and romantic teen pining, or AO3 and trashy slashfics. Find one that matches your fetish, and go to town. Bonus points if you find a fandom-specific site where you can pander shamelessly.
You are wrong, dead wrong. At least with the percentage.
Many self-inserts are driven by OC's, and I would argue that taking over a character from a franchise also makes it an OC.
Especially with big franchises, the current meta is about OC's and Self-inserts, because the writing about the 7 years of Hogwarts with the same characters gets stale after 100.000 fics.
On AO3 alone are 300 fics above 300.000 words (up to 2.2 million words) who have hundreds and thousands of comments, like their non-OC counterparts. When sorted by comments, OC fics have over 200 fics with more than 1000 comments.
Here's yet another recommendation for Archive of Our Own, with a couple of caveats:
1) AO3 is currently undergoing maintenance so invitations are disabled for a few days. Just check back after the weekend and hopefully things will be back up and running full tilt.
2) AO3 recently hit the 6 million fanworks archived barrier, so it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. I'd take the time to look at some of the popular fanfic in the fandom you're writing in - you can use the search system to sort by kudos and/or comments to quickly find well received stories - and pay close attention to the way they're tagged. As mentioned earlier, you don't want to overtag everything but you also want to put enough information out there that the readers there can find your story.
Good luck with the story!
1) AO3 is currently undergoing maintenance so invitations are disabled for a few days. Just check back after the weekend and hopefully things will be back up and running full tilt.
2) AO3 recently hit the 6 million fanworks archived barrier, so it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. I'd take the time to look at some of the popular fanfic in the fandom you're writing in - you can use the search system to sort by kudos and/or comments to quickly find well received stories - and pay close attention to the way they're tagged. As mentioned earlier, you don't want to overtag everything but you also want to put enough information out there that the readers there can find your story.
Good luck with the story!
I think AO3 is good.
Other options:
-Wordpress Blog
-Tumblr
-DevianArt
-Sites similar to previously mentioned.
Also, just write! Do not let the fear of the story being "bad" stop you. No one writes a novel in a day.
Other options:
-Wordpress Blog
-Tumblr
-DevianArt
-Sites similar to previously mentioned.
Also, just write! Do not let the fear of the story being "bad" stop you. No one writes a novel in a day.
Honestly not a fan of Archive of Our Own, I find FanFiction.net far easier to navigate and find what I'm looking for.
Like I recall wanting to look up cross-over stuff between two series on AO3 but you get results for way more than that. So it was hard for me to actually find anything to read.
They've added an "exclude" option so you can filter out fandoms you don't want to appear in your search results.
Maybe I'll have to re-check it out then. I just like how on FanFicition.Net I can just go to the cross-over section, select one series and see either all crossovers or see all crossovers with just one other specific series. Now while there is still some that will be listed that have more (typically in the description), generally it filters it pretty well.
I don't like Fanfiction and Fictionpress anymore. The search is mediocre. Only able to look for wordcount above 100k is garbage. At least give me an option for 200k or better, freeform. At least let me sort by word count!
OP
OP
Thanks for all the advice so far folks!
I've been just writing down my skeleton ideas for the setting, locations and concepts I want to introduce and focus on for the story. And piecing together the necessary characters for the long term story.
In the short term I'm trying to come up with individual short stories that come naturally to one another for each chapter. Setting up my long term mysteries (whether they are super obvious or not) and the topics I want to tackle both short term and long term.
Again, I'm not writing for any desire of having people will read it. But more so just wanting a site to release the work so its just not sitting on my computer as an exercise in writing.
I've been just writing down my skeleton ideas for the setting, locations and concepts I want to introduce and focus on for the story. And piecing together the necessary characters for the long term story.
In the short term I'm trying to come up with individual short stories that come naturally to one another for each chapter. Setting up my long term mysteries (whether they are super obvious or not) and the topics I want to tackle both short term and long term.
Again, I'm not writing for any desire of having people will read it. But more so just wanting a site to release the work so its just not sitting on my computer as an exercise in writing.
I agree. It is one of the things FFN has over AO3 in terms of organization. AO3's way allows for more inclusion of other series if your crossover is covering more than one other fandom but it's definitely misused by a lot of people so it defeats the purpose of allowing that level of tagging.
My anxiety/depression has drastically curtailed my writing post-2016, but before then, fanfiction really helped my ability to write characters. When I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was world-build and my characters were super-flat, more kings, ministers, and generals who did things rather than being characters of their own. Fanfiction invited me to get inside characters minds, to understand and bend their motivations. In that regard it really helped me, and I want to start on an original novel that I've had percolating since I was 12 later this year (going from a world that was a fantasy melting pot with races from a bunch of existing IP's in it, to a world that's still a melting pot but with the serial numbers filed off certain races and more thought given to an organic history that allows for more meaningful character journeys).
As others have said, the best advice is to just start writing. However, I would encourage you to develop your own world and characters rather than lean into fan fic, even if you don't envision yourself ever getting published or turning creative writing into a career. Writing effective exposition and character introductions is a good exercise that is generally undermined with fan fic when you take so many pre-existing character motivations and dynamics for granted. I just think it's more creatively rewarding to build your own world and characters.
That said, if you are unsure of your plotting and writing skills, fan fiction is usually an effective way to more quickly get an audience and feedback for your work. But if you're doing this for your own enrichment and an creative writing exercise, I'd encourage you to do your own thing (as someone who used to write a ton of fan fic in his spare time).
That said, if you are unsure of your plotting and writing skills, fan fiction is usually an effective way to more quickly get an audience and feedback for your work. But if you're doing this for your own enrichment and an creative writing exercise, I'd encourage you to do your own thing (as someone who used to write a ton of fan fic in his spare time).
I write fanfiction myself, though the fandom I write for, My Little Pony, uses a specialized site that acts differently from AO3. Over on FimFiction, there's more emphasis on following particular users, who will release not just stories but also blog posts and often have their own Discord servers. There's also more community emphasis on fic writing, so people are more likely to give unprompted criticism of stories, there are more fic writing contests (often with money prizes; some with prize pools in the thousands of dollars), and there's a much greater expectation that you'll have people preread and edit your fics.
My route to fanfic writing involved joining the Discord of an author I like, her holding a contest, and me deciding to just write something for it. People in the server looked over the fic's draft, and ultimately I published this semi-crossover between MLP and Kaguya-sama: Love is War.
www.fimfiction.net
After that, I continued writing, most often for other contests.
So I'd say the most useful thing for writing fanfiction is being part of a community that supports it, and will give feedback as you go.
My route to fanfic writing involved joining the Discord of an author I like, her holding a contest, and me deciding to just write something for it. People in the server looked over the fic's draft, and ultimately I published this semi-crossover between MLP and Kaguya-sama: Love is War.
RariTwi: Love is War
Rarity and Twilight are in love. Now if only they could get the other to admit it. Inspired by the anime/manga Kaguya-sama: Love is War.
www.fimfiction.net
After that, I continued writing, most often for other contests.
So I'd say the most useful thing for writing fanfiction is being part of a community that supports it, and will give feedback as you go.
Everything you posted is completely contrary to everything I've learned from being in fandom for forever.
You do you I guess.
can confirm. I write 100k words of normal stuff, get a handful of reviews and page views.
people bang, and folks be throwing endless praise and kudos.
internet be a thirsty bunch.
Yeah, facts and statistics are different than what you learned.
I found this out way before I even wrote fan fiction.
A long time ago I was part of this online RP thing. Basically we wrote for characters and scenes like it was a book or shit. A sort of amateur but proper story with each person writing new chapters and that. There was quite a few of us in it.
Anyway, my part was never that important. But I had two characters that were always at angry ends with each other. A bad guy and his second in command who hates his guts. I wrote one scene which people interpreted as romantic (which was not the intention) and suddenly every one was trying to push those two together.
Like every person involved immedietly went into setting up events where they would be together or encouraging it. Even the ones who didn't seem like they'd be into romance stuff were trying to egg it on or writing about it like it was a thing. It was like none of them cared about the plot anymore.
Completely blew me away how eager people for that sort of stuff. Not smutt but like an engaging romance story between characters they're familiar with.
Jesus dude wtf? Do you write Ocs or something did I personally offend you?
Yeah, sure searching tags for original character and sorting that way is going to bring up a shit ton of popular fic because any time a writer writes a character that's not canon they tag it with OCs. Are ocs the main characters? Unlikely.
I've been in fandom for 20+ years. Link me your facts and statistics. I actually write college papers on fandom culture. I don't call myself a fanthropologist for giggles.
Why the crazy fucking hostility? Is this another guy fandom vs female fandom thing?
Do dudes tend to write more OCs or something?
I do notice the MLP fandom is much more accepting of OCs than your post would imply, so there may be something to that.
Heck, there are OC-led MLP stories that have their own fanfiction. Fallout Equestria has fanfiction of its fanfiction even.
It has to be the male fandom vs female fandom then. Women want to read about the characters they know and love. I also noticed a bunch of people talking about crossovers which are way less popular in female fandom.
There are a ton of reasons behind the differences but I'm on mobile maybe BDS can help out.
That poster was rude but I can see why when you call OCs a "mistake" and "no one will read them." Like I know you're just trying to state facts or something but it was worded in a very condescending way and disrespectful to OC authors. Yes, OCs are a niche, but that doesn't mean that "no one will read them" and measures of success vary from person to person, not every fic has to be bursting with hits and comments for someone to be satisfied.
Just a quick shout out to all the people interested in writing fan-fiction and original fiction, Era does have a writing thread in case anyone ever wants to pop their head in.
If I had to play armchair psychologist, it could be that male-skewed fandom tends to be interested in the world, setting, and "lore" of a fictional work, which makes it easy to create their own characters and scenarios to insert into it, while female-skewed fandom tends to be more interested in the specific characters themselves, and want to read stories about them. This is also why AU stories are extremely popular, because it's the characters that the readers like, not necessarily the surrounding setting.
It's also probably closely linked to shipping culture which is, of course, very female-skewed. Fanfic in general is very shipping-heavy so people are going to be more interested in reading a story that is shipping existing characters rather than something involving OCs.
IMO the OC [protagonist] just has to be decent-well written and perhaps interesting.
Always love the 'next-generation' stories, kids of the protagonists where they have their own plots with the original cast having cameos, or the ones being needed to be saved/changed by the OCs.
Always love the 'next-generation' stories, kids of the protagonists where they have their own plots with the original cast having cameos, or the ones being needed to be saved/changed by the OCs.
What are you on about. No reason to get personal. There is no hostility in my posts. And what has my gender to do with anything about this discussion?
You said that writing OC, and tagging OC in Fanfiction is a death knell on viewership. I brought up facts to the contrary.
And what are you on about guy Fandom and female fandom? many female fanfiction writers write OC. The most successful currently are female (OC or gender bender) self-inserts or straight up OC Like Morgana Deryn, Egypt Legends (Sphinxs Legend), Vixen Tail, jacques0, Silver Queen, etc.
All those female OC writers have fics hundreds of thousands and even over a million words on length and have thousands of comments and reviews on those fics.
Don't know what your problem with OC is, but what you try to tell people is not the reality.
I read Fanfic, OC, and Original Fiction regardless of the gender of the Author, (one of my favorite fiction is "Tuck" from transgender Author Elen Hayes, I recommended that fic several times here) or what Genre it is. it just has to be somewhat good.
Best of luck, OP! People will joke about fanfic (there's a depressing amount of that in this thread, even) but I personally find it a lot of fun and a great way for me to write with some of the worldbuilding burden taken off my shoulders. That said, the best way to write a good fic is to treat it with the same respect you would writing something original: look for ways to put your own twists on worldbuilding details, come up with your own deeper interpretations of the characters, and so on.
I was never in the Avatar fandom so I can't speak to it that much, but if there are still any Avatar-dedicated fansites (or Discords more likely these days) that can be a great place to get a first set of eyes on your work. I wrote a lot of Bionicle fanfiction over the years, and I generally got much more feedback and reaction from BZPower, a dedicated Bionicle fansite, than I did from just posting to the Bionicle section of ff.net and AO3.
I was never in the Avatar fandom so I can't speak to it that much, but if there are still any Avatar-dedicated fansites (or Discords more likely these days) that can be a great place to get a first set of eyes on your work. I wrote a lot of Bionicle fanfiction over the years, and I generally got much more feedback and reaction from BZPower, a dedicated Bionicle fansite, than I did from just posting to the Bionicle section of ff.net and AO3.
Sorry if I offended, I was trying to post generalized 'tips' for newbies on fanfic and didn't know I was going to offend Oc writers by saying they are less popular especially from newbies.
Which is what I thought op was asking for.
I won't post anything else. Sorry again.
I've unfortunately found out the hard way there's really no guaranteed place to find to post fanfiction that isn't sex shipping stuff, if you write an original story taking place withing a prestablished fictional universe you're interested in most folks probably won't pay attention to it
It's killed all momentum I've had when I experimented with a bevvy of spin-offs within fictional universes I love.
It's killed all momentum I've had when I experimented with a bevvy of spin-offs within fictional universes I love.
I'm not into it, but one of my Twitter followers keeps sending out their Alara Kitarn (The Orville character) fanfic on this site: https://www.wattpad.com/
It seems there's a lot of fanfic writers there. *shrug*
It seems there's a lot of fanfic writers there. *shrug*
My two bits on OCs. I think it is dependent on fandom whether it is popular. For example, in Danganronpa, there is a whole genre of fanfiction called fan killing games, where people make up their own killing game scenario with a group of 16 original characters. It's decently popular genre from what I have seen. And also, the more popular fandoms does have a bunch of OC self insert stories that are popular. That said, I think Fiction is correct that for non established writers, and in smaller fandoms, writing just OC will not find them much of an audience.
Op should write what they want to write, even if their first fic is not that popular.
I never suggested otherwise. And Fiction's suggestions is one way about going things. OP doesn't have to listen to her if they don't want. That said, some of Fiction's suggestions can be useful and it is an additional thing to consider.
Good for you OP. Writing can be very therapeutic. My understanding is that AO3 is the big fanfic site right now, so that might be the place you want to post. It sounds like you have a solid idea for your story, so you just have to figure out how to write and pace it. The best advice I can give with this is to form an outline or breakdown of how you want your story to progress. What character story beats should be prioritized versus pure plot progression. If you have specific details or descriptions you really love, find the best way to fit them in without it feeling very separate from the prose surrounding them.
I haven't read fanfiction in a very long time, but I do remember liking the ones that kept a consistent tone throughout their entire run. So if you take long breaks between chapters and posts, it might be good to try and find a way to keep hold of that narrative tone and pace you've already established.
It's really cool to want to do something creative in these stressful times. I hope you have a lot of fun writing your story.
I haven't read fanfiction in a very long time, but I do remember liking the ones that kept a consistent tone throughout their entire run. So if you take long breaks between chapters and posts, it might be good to try and find a way to keep hold of that narrative tone and pace you've already established.
It's really cool to want to do something creative in these stressful times. I hope you have a lot of fun writing your story.
Can we talk about crossover fanfiction?
I've always been interested in what fans of crossovers specifically like about two (sometimes very different) properties being smashed together. I like all kinds of fanfiction, including au, but I haven't ever been able to put a finger on why crossovers haven't hooked me.
I've always been interested in what fans of crossovers specifically like about two (sometimes very different) properties being smashed together. I like all kinds of fanfiction, including au, but I haven't ever been able to put a finger on why crossovers haven't hooked me.
It's usually just two series people like and want to see how their favorite characters interact with each other.
Or similarly to an AU, main character in another situation, but without having to heavily build new backstory for it.