Discussion You Know You're a Fan Fiction Writer When...

Now, who could you be talking about there, Juliet?

YKYAFF... when you care more about developing the outline and characters for the fan fics you want to write rather than the play you're supposed to be developing.

(Someday I will strike the right balance between fan fic and original! I will, I will! )

 

Gee, I don't know who I could possibly be talking about.

YKYAFF when the finale of your favorite show inspires a few one - shot pieces that you're itching to write.

 

When a 2 page English essay turns into a 15 page story (guilty)

 

...for your English class's writing assignments, you handed in fan fiction.

...At least you did back in high school, during the Cringe Era, when you didn't really care who read your stuff. I look back on the stuff I handed in for assignments and wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

 

I wrote a nine-paged epic poem about Luke and Leia's discovery that they are twins for my grade eight English class. I decided that since I don't like writing poetry, I might as well make it fun for myself. My English teacher raised his eyebrows and kindly didn't say anything.

That was also the same year I adapted part of Frodo, Sam and Gollum's story from The Two Towers for my French drama class (I played Frodo). Classmates complained, saying that I wasn't allowed to do that since The Lord of the Rings was an English-language book, but somehow I got away with it because I got a copy of the French translation to use as my source material.

YKYFF when every time you start a new book or TV show or movie, you absentmindedly wonder how you can turn it into a crossover with fandoms from a similar genre.

 

When all the events surrounding your favorite show the last few weeks have suddenly conspired to drop a fully formed epic plot bunny at your feet and your suddenly researching Mayan tourists spots.

 

Fully-formed plot bunnies are certainly preferable to the partially-formed fetal plot bunnies that are dumped at my feet. *splat* "What the... OH GOD! Put that back into the oven! It's not done, yet!"

...when you manage to have a ton of plot bunnies for an RP that you're in, but absolutely none for the projects you have to do.

 

A lot of my plot bunnies come fully formed. It's just finding the time and motivation to work and finish them. There's also the fact that it's been at least a good year since I've written anything, including my WIPs.

... When even the title for the fully formed epic plot bunny comes to you.

Edit: I've even got a frelling timeline figured out for goodness sake!

 

You no longer can imagine EU canon without your OC in it.

 

It's 3:30 am and your in the middle of posting your fic.

 

You spend way too much time playing around with formatting. Should these quotes at the start be bold and italic or just italic? Should I italicize this word or this one? Did the boards just mess up my formatting when I copy-pasted from Word? Whaaat? Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! [/Vader voice].

 

What is it with formatting? If I post from word sometimes it takes away all my spaces between paragraphs. Other times it adds an extra space between paragraphs. Then when I try to edit sometimes when I push delete to take the extra space out it actually adds a space. I never had these problems with the old boards and I don't think I had them with the temp boards...so I have no clue.

 

It usually adds extra spaces for me and changes the font and/or font size. I tried doing BB code on a post, copy-pasting it to Notepad and then copying it over (I've found that dealt with the formatting problems on other sites, and it doesn't take any longer than doing formatting for the old boards). Didn't help, especially since there were even more spaces between paragraphs.

It's not just this site. I've posted fan fic at other sites where I had to spend a considerable amount of time adjusting the formatting, The only place where I can pretty much upload and go is fanfiction.net, thanks to their document uploader.

Anyway, to keep things on topic, YKYAFF when your muse creates plot bunnies from any piece of fiction you come into contact with, even when it doesn't have an established fandom.

... or when you've considered writing fan fic for your own produced work and your actors also want to write fan fic for said produced work. But then since we created the work in question, we're not sure if anything else would qualify as fan fic or "alternative material".

 

Pretty much why I learned to get the basic hang of HTML coding and most places just hard wire the code of I'm fic (or icon) posting. I don't trust most Rich Text Editors not to frell up my copy/pasting.

 

YKYAFF when you tell you sons not to talk about their mother's writing hobby (I admit I am a closet FF writer).

 

When your up until about 6am following a plagarism report.

 

YKYAFFWW... Your sole purpose for going to a screencapping site (even though I have several graphics challenges I need to get done soon), is to look up a grave marker to find out when a character's mother died so you can calculate their age when the event happened so you can plot out a reasonable age for said character and her family to have a drop trip prior to the mother passing away. And for some reason that research has to be done right this second.

 

YKYAFF when your muse decides as you're trying to sleep 'MUST WRITE NEW IDEA NOW!!!'.

And, additionally, won't let you work on established fics till said new idea is down.

 

When you really should be working on your next novel, but instead you're writing Star Trek smut.

 

...when the first plot bunny to attack after illness-induced-writer's-block is verbal judo.

 

...when your aimless discussions lead straight to fanfic... and not your fanfic. No, the person you're talking to, who never writes fanfiction, suddenly starts talking about a plot bunny.

For example, my brother and I were discussing Pokemon, when he suddenly said, "I should write a fanfic about a guy who goes around dating all the Nurse Joys, and then they find out about his cheating ways..."

 

...when you finally sit down after two months of procrastination to spend two hours carefully writing a short and simple post of 1,000 words or so for a fanfic-style RP for which you only have a vague idea as to what you want to do, and 90 minutes of furious keyboard pounding later, you have 1,500 words written on a detailed opening scene featuring starship combat that you never intended to do, and you haven't even gotten halfway through the post or entered the atmosphere of the planet where the main action is supposed to take place.

 

Been there, done that on way too many nights to count.

 

I'm having the exact same problem.

 

Uh... I think you might have accidentally posted this in the wrong thread.