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Starting out

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Deadmaniac, Feb 24, 2016.

  1. Deadmaniac

    Deadmaniac Squib

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2014
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    There have been a couple of similar questions to my own but i can't really find exactly what i am looking for. I am thinking of starting out writing fanfiction because

    a) I am sick of not being able to find specifically what I want​

    b) I will need something to keep me busy next year. ​

    My question is to current writers of fanfics. How did you start off? I have a basic idea of how to write and plan a story but I want to hear how you started and how you have improved since then with more practice.

    Any challenges you have faced or are still facing today and how you are trying to overcome them. How is the overall community for writers outside of dlp are they useful in pointing out your flaws in stories or does some critism actually hurt the story as a whole?

    Should I try and keep to a schedule and sacrifice quality to keep to deadlines at the start until I have more experience or should I try to aim for high quality and update when I write new chapters? Building on from the previous question should I build a buffer of chapters and space out when I upload them to give me time to write new chapters or should I upload as I finish them and read the criticism and try to address that in my next chapter?

    Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my post and for any useful reply.
     
  2. Jon

    Jon The Demon Mayor Admin DLP Supporter

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    I started reading fanfic and then I had an idea and I decided to write it. My first proper story had an output of 2-5k per day for about a week before I slowed down and over the course of the years, when I write I aim for about 2k per day with the average chapter coming in around 10k. So, when I'm serious about writing I average about 5-6 chapters a month of varying lengths.

    I can't atest to every website in regards to their critical analysis, except for ff.net. FF.net is basically there to stroke your ego, that's it, and it fails at that most of the time with their shitty 'update plz' reviews.

    Until you get more experience you should just focus on writing stuff you enjoy, otherwise you'll burn out quickly, unless you have previous experience writing.
     
  3. ScottPress

    ScottPress The Horny Sovereign –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    If you're just starting out as a writer, the best thing to get into the flow is writing. Just put words on a page. You can worry about quality later, once you have the competency with writing techniques down.

    There is this argument "if you're learning something, learn to do it the right way from the beginning" but you can't really teach that with writing the way you can do with skiing for example. Writing is much more about learning from own mistakes than it might seem.

    Basically, you have to know what is this "quality" you're looking for before you start aiming for it. But I guess it's also largely dependent on the person. Myself, I prefer to just have words already written before I start editing. Other people kind of edit as they go. You won't know which type you are until you start writing. So just do it. Take your idea and start writing. Talking about it is nice, but it doesn't really accomplish anything.
     
  4. Seratin

    Seratin Proudmander –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    If you're struggling putting any words at all down try this; sit down and take a passage from a book like Harry Potter, of that's the FF you're writing. Copy it into your browser and read it. Then tweak it.

    "Hmm, what if Hermione said X instead?"

    How does that change what follows? Edit and adjust. Soon, the passage doesn't resemble anything of the original.

    It was something I did when I started out and felt lost before I could type a single character.

    For the record, this is just an exercise and you should never post the resulting passages as part of a larger story as if you fail to change enough you could be accused of plagiarism and that's not tolerated in the least.
     
  5. Skeletaure

    Skeletaure Magical Core Enthusiast ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    My advice would be to start small. Write some short one shots that cover a single event/scene. That will allow you to focus on getting the mechanics of writing down: how to set up a scene, how to write good dialogue, what level of description is right. It will also allow you to play around with different styles, tones, atmospheres, etc.

    Then, after you're happy with how you're doing, move on to longer one-shots that cover a sequence of events. This will introduce new things to think about: how to order events that is both logical and dramatic, how to build tension and pace out a story. Essentially you have to start thinking about beginnings, middles and endings.

    After that try your hand at a short multi-chaptered story with a relatively small-scale plot line. Again, this introduces more things to think about, most particularly the more "plot" elements. One shots are good as exercises in technical skill but they don't really exercise your characterisation or plot muscles. With a multi-chaptered story you have to start thinking about things like character arcs and threading multiple plotlines together.

    By this point, if you've been taking an attitude of critical self-reflection during all of the above, your writing will have transformed completely and will be unrecognisable from what it was when you started. It will still probably be shit, but it will be significantly less shit XD

    Now it's time to try your hand at that multi-volume epic you've been dreaming of since you started writing.

    You'll abandon it, but that's okay. You will have learnt a lot about writing in the attempt. You'll start another one and that one will be better. You'll abandon that one too, but again, you'll have learnt a lot from the process.

    Eventually, if you keep at it, you'll reach the climax to one of those multi-chaptered novel length stories and realise that, even though you thought you had it planned out, you have no idea how to end it in a satisfying way. Your planned ending suddenly feels silly or logistically impossible or falls short of delivering a satisfying answer to the question the story was asking. Congratulations, you've now come further than most fanfic writers ever do.

    Time to start from the beginning again, only now you'll have realised that you need to be thinking about the ending of the fic right from the start. Stories aren't about interesting set-ups or situations. Stories are about dramatic and satisfying endings. That requires careful planning and even more discipline.

    But finally you'll finish this planned out fic and sure, it's still full of problems, and yes, when you go back to chapter one you cringe at how bad some of the writing is because you've improved dramatically even since then... but even so, for the first time you've got a piece of work that you feel vaguely proud of. It's finished, the ending makes sense and completes the arc that you had in mind from the start. Hurrah!

    And now you have a choice. You decide that you've had enough of writing or you decide you want to make something more of it. If you choose the latter you've still got a long way to go, but you've now got the fundamentals down. From here on out it's mostly practice, experimentation, and doing lots of reading.
     
  6. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    There's usually a specific idea or scene that I want to write. Like, say I want to write a scene where Harry invited Daphne Greengrass to the Yule Ball, so then I start planning out the why's and how's. A specific idea usually comes around because I read a story that has potential, but severely dislike how the author handled it, so I'll try writing it myself. But always, the best place to start is to just start writing, and recording down ideas as they come to you.

    For my most recent fic, it was a fairly straightforward process. It's a Harry/Fleur story, and I wrote it because I was sick of all the random gimmicky bullshit that people put into theirs, when none is needed. Things like changing someones age, or making it a Harry/Fleur/Daphne three-way, or having love at first sight, or soul/veela bonding... none of that bullshit was needed, and I just wanted a straight-shooting fic with no needless and arbitrary complications... so that's what I did. Actually finishing it was the hard part, because I am a habitual abandoner of fics, and the last one I finished before this was six years ago. So, what I did was not post a single chapter of it until it was completely finished, and that seemed to work out alright.
     
  7. trollolol

    trollolol Third Year

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    You can utilise DLP to see what criticisms people have had in the past about fanfics, in particular pay attention to anyone who themselves writes technically good fanfiction (some of them posted above me!), and then try to simply *not* do those things.

    For example, you can find a lot of useful information about what is considered too much tell (or too much show), what concepts are cliche, what characterizations frustrate people (e.g. Sesc rightfully often points out that calling Daphne an "Ice Queen" is a bit retarded).

    As for the technical side of things, I suggest yWriter (which is free) and reading the stickies in this subsection e.g. about dialogue. And, in case you are not already familiar with the concept, look up "Show, don't tell" and consider what level of show vs tell is appropriate for what you hope to accomplish.

    As Taure said, its obviously a lot of trial and error, doing the actual writing, getting feedback, looking at it later and thinking "The fuck did I do?" and then getting better.

    Oh, and looking at fiction not just from a "I'm reading this for enjoyment" view but with a more critical eye that takes note of how an author chooses to present information to you, describe things, build plot, et cetera.
     
  8. LittleChicago

    LittleChicago Headmaster DLP Supporter

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    Say the story out loud.

    It sounds silly, and will make you self-conscious, but if you have a few minutes or an hour to yourself, say things out loud. Tell yourself the story. It's how I started, and it taught me two things; natural sentence structure, and flow of dialogue. In short, I won't write it down if I can't actually say it naturally.

    The first few times you do this, you might not even get to writing. the story will simply take on a life of its own and you'll find yourself repeating certain passages, certain lines of dialogue, subtly tweaking or completely changing them until they fit your real vision.

    Then start writing them down, a piece at a time. Eventually (and I'm talking *years*, here) you won't have to say anything; you'll have a properly developed head-voice that won't let you write anything down that doesn't sound right.
     
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