Talking about writing

Rewriting

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:02:05 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

I posted some brief meta about issues that came up while rewriting (and re-rewriting, and re-re-rewriting) a fic. :-)

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Roses are red, violets are blue

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 18:53:47 GMT

Posted by: author_by_night

Good morning, afternoon, whatever time it is for you when you find this post!

In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought we might talk about writing relationships. A few questions:

Is there anything you find challenging about writing relationships?

What do you love about writing relationships?

Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?*

Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?

Any other observations?

*In case it needs to be said, this isn't about yucking anyone else's yum. It's about our own experiences trying to write particular things, without judgment towards others.

I've provided my own answers in the comments.

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Come vs cum: a vocabulary discussion

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 10:43:22 GMT

Posted by: mific

Hi everyone and welcome to 2026!

I wrote a brief discussion of this important topic on my journal, so feel free to hop over and join in. I was inspired to write it by my current fannish obsession, but it's a multifandom, and indeed, profic, topic.

The post's here.

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Post haste or not so much?

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 18:11:47 GMT

Posted by: rattfan

I've been pondering two questions regarding posting fic online. One involves chapter length. I know this can vary tremendously, but what do people actually prefer? I'm not a fan of very short chapters; I read fast and find there's not enough to settle into. In terms of number of words, is there a preferred range? I've been cutting them at around 4000 words, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more if I can't find a good spot to break it.

The other question is posting something that you haven't finished writing. That's something you never do in pro writing, of course, but it happens quite a bit with fanfics. Perhaps the author is hoping for input to help them decide where to go with it. I do surreptitiously go back and fix things I didn't notice first up, whether or not anyone has seized on them! But I like reading the comments and responding to them. And kudos, of course, are how fanfic writers get 'paid.'

So is there an acceptable length of time between posting chapters? Is it too annoying to have it go months between chapters, as I admit to sometimes doing? I do have notes and a vague plan for the ending, but not certain atm just what will happen between now and then. So I'm debating whether I should finish the thing first before releasing any more chapters into the wild.

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Sun, 23 Nov 2025 19:37:37 GMT

Posted by: author_by_night

Let's talk about crossovers and crossover AUs . For example, "Sam and Dean from Supernatural hang out with Buffy and Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer"* and "Buffy and Dawn are Hunters, like Sam and Dean." Two different things, but similar concepts.

ETA: I used "fusion", but I don't think that's quite the right term.

With crossover AUs, how do you make it its own story, as opposed to just Buffy and Dawn speaking Sam and Dean's lines? Do you include other character parallels?

What do you count as a crossover, versus a cameo? Do you consider it crossover if Sam and Dean show up briefly, or would that be more of a cameo?

When it comes to tagging, you tag the fandoms, or just the characters? For that matter, how closely do you prefer crossover AUs follow the original canon?

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Epithets - the good, the bad, and the ugly

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 01:01:48 GMT

Posted by: mific

Epithets! Phrases used to describe someone, rather than using their name, like "the tall man", "her girlfriend", "his lover". In general, the advice is to avoid them, and if I hit a story with a ton of epithets (often an older one from the earlier days of fandom) it does make me wince to read them.

I've seen some good explanations about how to use, and how to avoid, epithets, and this recent tumblr post by starpains about epithets in tight 3rd person is useful, as it explains why epithets are often jarring for the reader, especially in tight 3rd person POV. It's because we're supposed to be inside the POV character's head, so the writing needs to depict what they're thinking. And hopefully very few people go about thinking of their significant others like this: "she felt a flood of affection for her partner". No, they think: "she felt a flood of affection for Tony".

Writers may use epithets as they worry about the frequent use of a name, in the way that we generally try not to repeat words too much, but the advice is that readers don't notice names even if they're used repeatedly. I agree - I don't find repeated names jarring in the way that inappropriate epithets are. Again, it all comes down to how the POV character thinks. They'll be repeatedly thinking of the person's name, so it feels natural when written that way. For example:

"John watched Rodney pace to and fro. Rodney's hair was sticking straight up where he'd run his hands through it in frustration. Finally, Rodney stopped dead and turned back to John."

rather than

"John watched his lover pace to and fro. The other man's hair was sticking straight up where he'd run his hands through it in frustration. Finally, his friend stopped dead and turned back to John." John simply wouldn't think about Rodney like that.

Of course there are some places where the use of epithets is what's needed. If your POV character doesn't know the other person's name, or not well enough to think of them using their name, then an epithet works.

"The strangers stood threateningly in the roadway. John singled out the tall, scarred man who seemed to be their leader." John doesn't know his name so doesn't think of him with a name.

or

"The butler announced Brandon Fenwick, the new Canadian ambassador. Fraser took the ambassador's coat and ushered him into the reception room." Fraser is aware of Fenwick's name, but doesn't feel himself on equal terms, so thinks of the ambassador deferentially by his title (epithet) rather than as "Brandon Fenwick" or as "Fenwick". However, if the scene turned into a siege with Fraser and Fenwick trapped in the consulate, fighting side by side, Fraser would after a while start thinking of him as "Fenwick" (probably after Fenwick exasperatedly told him to use his actual name), and eventually as "Brandon" (when Fenwick had been shot and Fraser was bandaging his wound and reassuring him).

So epithets can be used, like names, to show degrees of intimacy. I run into this quite a bit as my main fandom has a military contingent, and the convention is to use titles in formal settings, surnames in most professional settings, and first names only if the two people are actually friends, lovers, or intimate e.g. as in the example above, if wounded and being tended. And as starpains describes, you can use epithets to deliberately distance your POV character from someone else - as long as it makes sense that that's how they'd think of them. I also once had fun with the vagaries of the Stargate translation function, imagining a situation where only the use of epithets was possible.

Interestingly, the other reason to use an epithet is in very intimate relationships where the role is all important. There have been fashions in the use of names vs epithets/titles for parents across the years, but mostly the role is so important that we think of our parents by their role, not their name. "John sat on his mother's bed, trying not to see how thin and frail she was." He knows her name is Catherine but he never thinks of her as "Catherine", just as "my mother" or "Mom". In the sixties and later, parents sometimes got their kids to use their first names, maybe in a gesture of egalitarianism to get away from "patriarchal roles". It creates an intimacy and informality in the way a child addresses their parent which may feel jarring, transgressive, or "right on", depending on your attitudes. What matters is the attitudes of your characters, of course. They might find it entirely natural, or also be uncomfortable with it. In The Sentinel, Blair's rather feckless mother taught him as a child to use her name, which he still does, partly as she remains somewhat immature and he was parentified as a kid. So the use of names vs epithets can convey subtleties of meaning in close relationships. Like the formality of a boy calling his father "sir" and thinking of him as "my father", rather than "Dad", can show a distant relationship, especially if set in modern times.

How about you? How do you use epithets vs names in your writing, especially in tight 3rd POV?

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Subject or object?

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 02:07:55 GMT

Posted by: igenlode

A quick conundrum: if someone notices that another character is looking at him, does that make him the *subject* or the *object* of an assessing gaze?

I feel that logically speaking one ought to write "found himself the object of an assessing gaze", but my first instinct was to put "subject"; certainly he was *subjected to* the other character's thoughtful look :-)

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Authors as Audiences

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:13:25 GMT

Posted by: guildrone

So, I’ve been on an especially ~~ruminative~~ self-reflective bent as of late—and as per my most recent check-in over on justcreate, one case of such involves questioning where exactly my creative drive comes from. More specifically, I’ve been sitting with a well-worn motto that I once thought I’d taken to heart…

Write what you want to read.

…But might have instead been taking for granted, in the sense that what I’d for a while considered as a writer to be a core appeal of much of my work is something I doubt I’d appreciate as a reader from the outside looking in—if I weren’t the one doing the aiming in the first place, in other words, I don’t think I’d be included in the target (audience) I’m trying to hit.

So, I figured I’d spin this uncomfortable case of arrested authorial development into my first shot at actually sparking discussion around here—and thus pose this variably obvious question to you in turn: What is the relationship between what you read(/watch/play/etc.) and what you write?

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Inspiration from 'Processed' Canon

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 13:30:42 GMT

Posted by: g_uava

How inspired are you to write new fic if someone else has picked out and organised the parts of canon most interesting to you? Think of it as if a fellow fan has 'processed' the raw ingredient of canon for the creation of creative works. Examples of 'processed' canon include meta/fan analyses, screencaps, timelines, supercuts and detailed guides locating the appearances of certain characters or important events.
( Read more... )

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Poetry meta by obsidianpegasus, about writing

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 12:40:20 GMT

Posted by: mific

I just saw this post by obsidianpegasus on tumblr, and wanted to share it here.

Say it with me:

I am a writer. Not a content-producing machine.
I am a writer. Not a content-producing machine.
I am a writer. Not a content-producing machine.

It’s okay if I don’t have time to write.
It’s okay if a chapter is delayed.
It’s okay if my words come out messy.
It’s okay if I need to take a break.
It’s okay if I don’t update every week, every month, or even every year.

My value as a writer is not measured by how fast I post.
My worth is not defined by kudos, bookmarks, or comments.

I am allowed to be slow.
I am allowed to rest.
I am allowed to write for joy, not for an algorithm.

I am a writer. Not a content-producing machine.

And if anyone thinks otherwise, they can wait.

the post on tumblr

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Comments

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 23:54:32 GMT

Posted by: author_by_night

I've been seeing a lot of people talking about the lack of comments. So, let's talk about it.

I have a few theories.

First: Are kudos being counted in this conversation? Because I think that makes a difference. It took me a long time to see kudos as comments, given that I'm a Fandom Old who remembers when you couldn't really hit fancy buttons. You had to hit reply, hope you were logged in, and type a comment. Over time, I've come to count them, but I still prefer comments. Especially on chapter fic. I've written chapter fic where I didn't receive many comments, and I wasn't sure if it was because people lost interest, or they'd used their one kudos and that was it. Like that one call from jail.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, some of my theories:

I'm going to be an old fart here and blame phones. Okay, I give them only a small fraction of the blame. But here's the thing - going back to my fandom old days, people generally went online when they had time. Baby was napping, they were home from work, they were on their lunch break and lucky enough to have an oblivious boss who thought Livejournal was a news website, it was Sunday afternoon. Now I talk to friends on Evilbook Messenger who are in between soccer practice runs. People go online on the toilet. I actually think that's stilted internet communication in general; there really isn't a captive, attentive audience the way there was 20 years ago, or even ten years ago, really. (I feel like it was about ten years ago that people started using the internet on their phones regularly, and not just in times of desperation.)

The other issue with phones? They're hard for some of us (me) to type on. I'll own it, I have meant to leave a comment before, but I read the fic (or whatever else) on my phone, meant to comment when I could type something longer than "I'm at the restaurant got us a table", and it never happened.

I think in the case of some fandoms, they became active in 2020. What happened in 2020 that meant a lot of people weren't leaving their houses very much? Yup. And it seems to me that a lot of people really didn't become active again until early 2022. I know that while I was back in the office by late 2020, I wasn't seeing people in large quantities until early 2022. So that's two years of people being able to read and comment a lot more, before their lives went back to being busy.

Going along with this, in general, the fandom may have been inhabited by people who had time in the social distancing years, and then everyone moved on. And even if 2020-2022 has little to nothing to do with it, it is true that fandoms don't seem to have a very long lifespan these days. So it may just be that the fandom's gone stagnant.

Some people are afraid they'll comment the "wrong" way. It's weird to comment on older fics. Your comments need to be long. They can't be too long. Emojis are cringe. Among other worries.

While I realize you're supposed to "write for yourself", we can't deny that people like comments. They like feeling part of a community. Also, it's just nice when your work is appreciated. So, what can we do? I have a few ideas.

If you are one of those people who won't respond to things while you're on your phone, try marking for later, or emailing the fic to yourself.

I try commenting on chapter fics, if I've already used up one kudos. Please let people know you're still reading. If you're not reading at all because you don't read WIPs, may I suggest letting the writer know if you've interacted with them before? I'll be very honest here, I once almost trashed a WIP because no one was commenting.

Don't be afraid of commenting the "wrong way". People LOVE reviews on their old work. People don't care how long or short your review is. Emojis are adorbs. If the writer doesn't like it, welp, that's their problem.

What does everyone else think?

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Points of View

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 23:07:58 GMT

Posted by: mific

So... Point of View. Is there a POV you prefer to write, or do you vary it depending on what you're writing? Are there certain types of story you think are best done in a particular POV?

I'm talking broadly here, about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person and the variants within those, also Outsider POV, and Unreliable Narrator POV (and any other examples you can think of).

Then there's reading different POVs - any differences there from what you prefer to write?

Tell us why you like different POVs or how you use them, and if you really dislike a specific POV maybe try to discuss why you think that is, rather than just dissing it.

Have you ever written something from one POV, then decided you needed to change it to another POV? How did that go? How about sticking strictly to a single POV in a story, versus telling the story from several POVs?

china_shop posted about 2nd person POV a while back, here: Come speak to me of second person POV and there's a fair bit of discussion at that post. Plus, here's a vid discussing the basics, and one about weird POVs, which has a bunch of POVs I'd never considered before.

And if you can think of a good example of the use of POV, let us know what works for you about that piece of writing, and link us to it.

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Feedback: when, how, what, who

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:46:01 GMT

Posted by: troyswann

So, I'm currently constructing a course to teach young artists (in this case dancers) to build the habit of creative journaling as a foundation for developing collaborative projects and writing grants and stuff. *handwave* That's not relevant except as the impetus for this musing about feedback.

I want to teach them a little bit about how to fruitfully solicit, receive and offer feedback, and that got me thinking about how much I've learned from fandom about this process. Having a good many years and a few hundred fics-worth of experience working with beta readers, I can say that fandom did a fantastic job of preparing me to take and give feedback in my other professional spaces (teaching and learning, pro publishing etc.). The idea of involving beta readers in the creative process was just woven into the fic-writing experience and fandom culture when I dipped my toe into it, and that expectation trained me to hold my deathless prose lightly and to onboard the help and insights of a reader way more graciously than I ever had before. This shift of mindset was due in some ways to the gift-culture ethos of fandom; the delight my community took in working to make cool stuff together helped me to shift my stance from defensive protectiveness to openness. This is something I would like my students to experience in their own work.

So, to that end, I would love to hear what y'all think about soliciting and receiving feedback on your work.

Some things I'm chewing on in that regard:

1. The right feedback at the right time: When I'm asked to beta read for someone, the first question I ask is what kind of beta they are looking for: cheerleading? Line-by-line? Structural? etc. I have found that getting the wrong kind of feedback at the wrong time can be harmful to the process. When I'm struggling with the question of whether this story is even viable, telling me that I have too many adverbs and dangling modifiers is gonna derail me completely. How do you articulate to a beta reader what you need at a given stage of the process?

2. Building trust: Asking for feedback requires a lot of trust, I find, since you're giving someone your baby and asking for help raising it. I used to lean on people I already knew and whose work I admired (sometimes different people for different sorts of stories). What do you do when, for example, you're in a new space or are interacting with someone, either as beta or author, whom you might now know very well? How do you establish trust and boundaries necessary for a good experience?

3. Articulating values and qualities of useful feedback: I have found that building a good beta relationship requires me to "hold my values strongly and my opinions lightly" as a colleague of mine wisely advises. For me, some core values can be captured in the "think" model for feedback:

true, helpful, inspiring, needed and kind.

Other models add to that basic structure: timely, specific, honest and brief.

At the heart of these qualities I find two key requirements for both sides of the relationship: the focus on the work; and, as a corollary, leaving our egos at the door. We have to be both kind and courageous, to simultaneously consider the human being and to ensure that the work itself is at the centre of the relationship. It's tricky. What values or qualities do you see as central to the beta relationship?

PS. Thanks to all the folks engaging in interesting conversations here. I really appreciate this space.

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Is sharing part of your creative process?

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:39:25 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

I'm not a frequent tumblr user, but I just happened across this post by exhuastedpigeon:

Realizing the writing doesn't have to be done alone and is often more fun and more engaging when you're doing it with friends is a life changing experience.

I don't mean co-writing either. I mean having a friend or two who you talk through plot ideas with, who you bounce ideas off of, who you trust to tell you if something doesn't work.

Nothing is created in a vacuum and nothing can be created alone. Sharing drafts and ideas is a vital part of the creative process and it's a really fun part too.

As someone who mostly writes "black box" style, this naturally made me want to make a poll. ;-)

View Poll: Interactivity

ETA: My arms are mad at me, so I might be slow to answer comments. *sigh* Please feel free to chat among yourselves!!

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Meta: What Middles Are For

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 03:12:16 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

I just posted an essay called What Middles Are For. Come over and check it out! It begins:

Arguably a story consists of 1) promises, 2) progress, and 3) payoff (cf Sanderson, Youtube). The promises are "here's what you're in for", including main characters, setting/genre/tone, goals and stakes. Most of that gets set up at the start. The payoff happens at the end, obviously, as all of it comes to fruition or failure. But middles can feel a bit formless. What does "progress" even mean?

Here are some thoughts about what the middles of stories are for.

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Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:05:03 GMT

Posted by: author_by_night

What were the first) fandom(s) you ever wrote fanfic for? What do you currently write for? Do you think there's a pattern?

I'll post mine in the comments, just to keep this neat and tidy.

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What happened to the DVD Commentary?

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 22:36:57 GMT

Posted by: mific

Remember the "DVD commentaries" that fanfic writers used to do? They were often fun and I wonder why they've almost died out. Maybe as DVDs are very nearly a thing of the past?

If you haven't seen one, it's where a fanfic author, a while after posting a fic, posts a version of the fic with their comments interleaved - about why they wrote particular lines that way or what they wanted to convey about the characters or situation, or what inspired a particular section. Kind of like a self-meta discussion interwoven with their story. It's interesting, and useful to see the writer's process or thoughts with concrete examples. Here's an excerpt from Synecdochic's commentary on Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose (SGA), to show what they're like.

SGC finally stops calling him by December. Rodney celebrates by writing a final exam for his relativity class so difficult that it reduces four students to tears in the exam hall. Upon reflection, he decides to be merciful and offer partial credit.

(Commentary) This, to me, was where the story started to turn. I hadn't at all realized that I'd been building up all these little details of an ordinary life, hinting at all the major changes that would lead to it, until I caught myself typing that first sentence. At the time I didn't know where it was going, or why Rodney had cut ties with the SGC so completely and thorougly; I just knew that he had.

A lot of this story worked like that for me. I tend to write in a very linear fashion -- I have the starting image and I know where I want to get it, but the entire middle is this vague unsurmounted wasteland, until I get there and the story tells me where it wants to be going. This is a perfect example of how that works, because I was putting in semi-ominous hints and foreshadowing before I had any idea where it was leading

Here's another entertaining example: Gozer's DVD commentary on LtLJ's Raiders of the Seven Systems - also SGA. This one was written and posted with LtLJ's permission - doing these commentaries on other peoples' stories was encouraged by specific challenges at the time, but it was a bit more common overall for authors to do a DVD commentary on their own work, sharing their internal processes while writing, and their reactions. In the comments of this example by minxy on a Janet Fraiser-centric SG1 story there are links to other DVD commentaries, and to this list - it's old though, so many of the LJs with these commentaries have gone.

One thing I noticed was in a DVD commentary on Hindsight, where Rageprufrock mentions having gotten critical comments after posting the fic - about characterisation or other details - and sometimes explains these choices. That brought home how much fandom etiquette's progressed in the last 20 years (in fan-spaces where I play, anyway) so it's now not OK to criticise a writer's posted work unless they specifically request it - and mostly not then. A DVD commentary done by someone not the author these days would need to be reactions to the story, speculations about where it's going, and positive comments - which is what they generally were, back in the day. I think I've only ever seen an actual author comment negatively on their writing in retrospect, but I haven't read a lot of them.

Actually, there's one place where this style of commentary still happens - in podfic. It's not uncommon for podficcers to make a podfic with their readers notes and chatty reactions to the fic interwoven through the recording - and it's often part of the annual Voiceteam challenge. Kisahawklin both recorded and transcribed an Untamed RPF story containing a lot of commentary and chat. There's quite a history of this - e.g. general_jinjur's DVD commentary on their reading of Your Cowboy Days Are Over by M. - although this is an interleaved written commentary, not a podfic recording that includes commentary. Here's a sample:

At the first knock his body snaps to alertness, and he drops Teyla's shirt in the sink. The peephole doesn't reveal much more than a short shadow standing in the corridor. John drilled the hole himself, but the door's skin-steel keeps trying to heal over it. (Commentary) Nice juxtaposition of high-tech and squalor, again.

Returning to fic again, I guess the fanfic DVD commentary was a thing of its time as there haven't been any posted to AO3 since 2011 - the recent ones are all podfic commentaries, and a few works tagged as commentary because of an author's start or end-note. Here, I'm talking about the older style of (almost) line-by-line, interwoven fic and commentary. I find these old commentaries interesting when they're in one of my fandoms. It's especially fascinating to see the thoughts, inspirations and processes that happened for the author, as they react to their own fic.

Have you ever made a DVD commentary of your own or someone else's fic? Know one that you like, and can link to? Do you think we could revisit the DVD commentary as a way to reflect on our writing, or would it be seen as too self-indulgent and a thing of the past?

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Poll: Three axes

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 22:36:07 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

View Poll: Writing process: three axes

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Relationship Tagging

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 15:18:10 GMT

Posted by: author_by_night

Let's talk about relationship tagging! Does anyone else get stumped by this?

To start: I often write what I call a hybrid between romance and gen. Possibly owing to being acearospec, I tend to focus more on the emotional and collaborative aspects of relationships than the pure ~romance~ as it were, although I've written some fluff as well. So when do I tag a fic as being gen, and when do I tag it as being M/M or F/M, etc.? And when do I use specific relationship tags?

I hope this question makes sense. Perhaps my thoughts will add some clarity. Jim, Doug and Paula aren't real characters, although now I want them to be.

Scenario 1: Doug drunkenly half-proposes to Jim. Obviously this is pure M/M and Jim/Doug. (I actually did write a fic with that premise.)

Scenario 2: Jim and Doug discuss moving out of Jim's apartment into their new shared home. This is still M/M and Jim/Doug, because while there's not a lot of romance per se, they're having an important conversation about next steps as a couple.

Scenario 3: Doug's sister Paula shows up in need of support. The fic entails Jim and Doug helping her make a decision. They're together as a couple in the fic, but it focuses more on their relationship with her than it does each other. This would be a tough call, but I think I'd still say M/M and Jim/Doug.

Scenario 4: Doug and Paula go on a road trip. Jim is mentioned, but barely. I would mark this as purely gen/Doug & Paula, but note that Jim is mentioned.

Scenario 5: On a road trip, Doug and Paula end up discussing his will they/won't they relationship with Jim, Doug landing on the fact that he is willing to risk that Jim might not feel the same way. This I would say is Jim/Doug because even though they aren't together, it very much focuses ON their budding relationship.

Obviously, there many other variants. Thoughts?

(Please tell me if this doesn't make sense. My thoughts are scattered among the millions and that doesn't always result in coherence.)

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Getting Into The Zone

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 04:26:39 GMT

Posted by: esteefee

Posting here per china_shop's suggestion, as we were discussing in this thread:

I feel like when I'm writing, there are two zones. The first is more plodding and difficult, where I'm using prompts of where I want to go in the story (such as an outline) and [I'm] sort of blind emotionally, if that makes sense, and it's very slow going. The writing really suffers as a result. The second is the true zone, where I've really percolated the story/universe in advance, and I'm so deep in the backstories, 'verse, and intent of the overarching plots that the writing kind of just rolls out of me, and individual threads I'm not even consciously aware of pop out and intertwine in a really kinetic way. That is the gold standard for me, but so much harder to achieve. I really wish I knew how to create that zone more readily, but it appears to be an almost accidental thing that occurs when I'm really into a story idea.

mific went on to say (paraphrasing, don't want to steal her words) that sometimes it's the story idea that gets her there, and sometimes it's the headspace she's in that makes the words really flow.

What gets you into the right headspace for a good zone? One where the words come easily and you feel you're doing the kind of writing where synergy really happens?

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Meta: Why and how to blow the dust off a WIP

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:02:45 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

Hi! I've just posted a ramble (with lots of lists) about Why and how to blow the dust off a WIP. I'm 95% discovery writer, so this is from that perspective. :-)

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Links to Writing Meta

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 01:41:10 GMT

Posted by: g_uava

Thought I'd compile these which I saved in my bookmarks and Dreamwidth memories. Great discussion in the comments for most of these.

( Read more... )

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Promote the comm!

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 01:37:43 GMT

Posted by: mific

Here's code for a promo banner that links back to the comm. You can select-all of the contents, then post it wherever.

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Where I Need to Be

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 07:50:55 GMT

Posted by: mific

I'm finding it harder to overcome procrastination and resistance as I get older, so as to write. That means I need to be more careful about the environment I'm writing in - both external and internal.

I'm not someone who can write in the midst of distractions, so coffee shops aren't an option for me, not for writing. I need to be at home, comfortable, and with no background music or loud noise.

And I need to be in a reasonable place inside. Unlike some people I can't write if I'm upset, anxious, or down, or if I'm tired, or mentally below par. So not if I have a head cold, and, increasingly, not in the evening or at night - the Stephen King system of morning writing sessions works best for me these days.

Having figured that out, now all I need to do is actually sit down and write!

How about you? What kind of environment do you need, for writing?

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Introduction post

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 02:27:22 GMT

Posted by: china_shop

Hi, and welcome to fan_writers! This is a comm for meta about writing. Please post or link your writing theory, tips, techniques, and other writing meta here. As the name suggests, our primary context is fanfiction, but original-fiction writers are also very welcome. We're just here to geek out about writing!

fan_writers is intentionally a Dreamwidth-centric comm. Things you can post here:

meta about writing, directly on the comm itself
links to meta about writing elsewhere on Dreamwidth (public posts only!)
links to posts on other platforms only if a) you're including significant context/explanation/reaction along with the link (while respecting the copyright of the original post), and b) you want to discuss the topic in comments here
announcements of writing challenges, events and other communities related to the writing process. That is, multifandom writing productivity comms and challenges like Get Your Words Out or Ushobwri; this is not a place for promoting fanworks exchanges like Yuletide.

Feel free to raise issues or problems you've encountered while writing, and ask for general advice or thoughts, eg, suggestions for overcoming writer's block, or tips for dusting off a long-neglected WIP. We're hoping for some thoughtful discussions; lurkers are also welcome, of course.

Here's code for the promo banner that links back to the comm. You can just copy the contents and post it wherever.

And if you'd like to, please introduce yourself in the comments, either using this template (skip anything you don't want to answer) or freeform.

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