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

I read the dialogue out loud to myself (even though it may seem weird) to hear if it feels like a natural conversation or not. The way I can tell if the dialogue is 'good enough' is if this is how I imagine the character may carry out the conversation given the situation they are in; if not, then I revise or step back a bit and reflect a little. Maybe this is helpful?

 

As Harrison Ford once told George Lucas, "George! You can type this ****, but you sure can’t say it! Move your mouth when you’re typing!"

YKYAFFWW you insist you're not talking to yourself out loud—you're quoting your fictional characters talking to each other...

 

Anxiety was literally making you sick over writing but thanks to the magic of true friends and Bruce Springsteen you finally wrote words down again.

 

You watch the new Kenobi series and almost immediately get inspired to dust off a story you've been meaning to work on since forever

 

You start replaying KotOR and SW:TOR, remember your old username through that, and THEN remember it's been six years since you put any pen to paper in your story you outlined FAR beyond where you ended up.

 

When you're working on an epic fanfic (and feeling like you might even manage to actually write this one) but you can't come up with a good title for it.

(Or even a half decent working title. Seriously, I need help.)

 

@Cowgirl Jedi 1701 My go-to for titles is Springsteen songs song lyrics. I have a whole list of lyrics that would be perfect titles, I just can't write the stories to go with them. Quotes are good too.

If I don't have a song lyric/quote/some inspiration in mind, I'll just summarize the plot or pick out a key line or word and stick that on.

For a working title, I usually use a short form of the full title if I know what I want it to be, otherwise I just do a plot/idea summary (and that's how I end up with documents titled things like "Jerry Springer" or "pizza" ).

Good luck with your title and your fic!

 

My titles are literally what the story is going to be about, no strings attached or flowery language, just literally the thing it will involve (sorry if this isn't too helpful @Cowgirl Jedi 1701 ).

 

When you read your hundredth Star Wars fanfic and you get to the part where the heroes face Palpatine and you wonder if he's going to use his lightsabers or Force Lightning or both. The good authors will have him use both and the exceptional ones will have him use new powers that have never been seen before. Facing the Emperor is like facing an implacable force of nature and he should never be defeated easily.

 

Eh, I rather like the simple way Palpatine was killed off in RotJ. Like Dorothy just needing to tap her shoes to return home, Anakin had the power in him all along, which is both satisfying and sad. The task itself may be easy, it's believing you can do it that's hard.

 

When the absolute most frustrating part of trying to write the story is getting that first sentence! Maybe this is one for the advice thread, but I sure do seem to reacquire my impostor syndrome with every single first line. The thing is I know that in the end I'll just slap something on the page and that will be that and the story will move on and just have a first line that isn't quite as perfect as I want. Happens every time, and sometimes I come back a few months later and it turns out that first line is not nearly as blah as I thought. But why why why must I reinvent the wheel every time?

 

Oh, that is so frustrating! That really is the best solution, though - just write something down and keep going. It's just so hard to actually do it sometimes. Sending you lots of good writing vibes!

 

How how how did the notification reach you///??/// My Gmail is mum on the subject of TFN notifications. As for titles, I always am reminded of how many classic Marvel comics were titled, "WHEN TITANS CLASH!!!"

 

Interesting re notifications ... so this would be a reason for asking for Author to PM when updating? I believe this was done some time back and became deemed pimping for one's fic ...

YKYAFFWW a profound life change affects your long time preference for writing/reading "H/C" to prompt a sea change to "give me only fluff ... "

 

IIRC, PM notifications for updates was a thing back when a) the boards moved a lot faster (back when I first registered we only had the one board and you were lucky to have your fic stay on the front page for a couple of hours; even after we split the board into the three era-specific fic boards things still moved fast enough that a full day or two on the front page in Saga or Beyond was a good run) and it was easier to miss seeing that a fic had been updated, and b) there was no such thing as the Tapatalk app and the board's mechanics didn't include notifications. At that time, if an author was willing to PM readers who requested notifications, it was a reliable way of keeping track of stories you loved. These days it's pretty superfluous.

 

When you’re writing a scene from the POV of an OC who had her eyes burned out and never got cybernetic replacements getting emotional and have to google if people without eyes can still cry and suddenly become unsure if you want to write the scene from her POV due to the potential ick factor or have her put her glass eyes in before the conversation or wondering if you should have that all of her tear ducts were destroyed when her eyes were burned out.


For those curious look it up because it explains things better than I could. It’s nothing disgusting but it might be unpleasant to describe and probably unpleasant to read about.


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

...when your mother, while discussing story lines, points out that maybe killing another ten or so ink pens wouldn't be a bad thing. (If I do it, we get to blame my mother. Ah.)

 

*tries to picture what this was like*

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It was craziness. If you ever go into a thread on the classic board (or even one of the older threads from after the split, which was in 2003) and you see a whole bunch of posts that just say "up!", that's why. We sometimes got creative in how we upped our threads, but back then it was totally normal and acceptable to do so, because otherwise no one would ever see your story. As things slowed down in the years after RotS came out, the practice shifted so that it became unacceptable to up your own thread unless you were replying to comments, and even then you were supposed to wait at least a day before doing so. It's really interesting to see how things have ebbed and flowed here over the years.

I can't speak much for 2016-2019 because I wasn't really active here during those years (and only occasionally active for a couple of years before that), but before then PM lists for updates were very much an acceptable practice, and many people expected you to have one. It was only considered pimping ones fic if you sent PMs to people who didn't ask for them. But yeah, there used to be no way to get notifications for specific threads. (Or if there was, I was never aware of it ). The pre-XenForo boards were in some ways a very different place.

Yep, that about sums it up.

Isn't fandom archaeology fun?

 

I started venturing into the (Classic) Fanfic Board in 2002 and dabbled around the fanfic boards during the split. The unwritten rules back then ingrained themselves in me pretty strongly as a newbie, and I still find myself following most of them by default because my mind is still stuck in That's How It Is™-- things like waiting for x period of time before replying to comments, waiting to reply to multiple comments vs. a single comment, etc. When making a new story post, I have to consciously stop myself from putting the date in the title. I miss being able to edit titles and put the date of the last story update in there for multi-post stories.

There were e-mail notifications (Active Topic Notifications) back in at least 2002 if you activated it for a particular thread. I still have said e-mail notification from my first story as a souvenir.

I miss having the PM Update lists. @The_Face had the absolute best PM updates. Instead of simply saying, "Hey, the story's been updated," he made each PM into a unique little story interlude or a sort of commercial break. I loved getting his PM updates almost as much as his story updates, LOL.