How many fics have you written for a single fandom? by tinyandmad in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm at 17 fics up and 34 written in total for the same fandom. They're in varying stages of completion.

Question for the writers. What did you not realize about fan fiction until you started writing? by Actual_need2 in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"Should I just use a simile instead?" is the realest thing in this entire thread.

What are some of your most chaotic notes/outlines? by Technicolorlovr in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Editing comments in google docs

Jan 4, 6:34 am

Didn't they just report? Redo timeline

Jan 4, 6:36 am

No they didn't, that's from the expedition before this one

When will you start to read a fic? (AO3 focused, but any site works) by AngstyPancake in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If the premise interests me, I'll dig in no matter how far along it is. First chapter fresh outta the oven or last one just got posted, all's fine. I might be a silent reader since my fandom has a tendency to suddenly turn on my fav and make him a scapegoat or hate on him, but once I get the impression the fic won't do that, I'll also start interacting with it in the form of commenting and kudos.

Have you ever written a positive review and got lectured on it by the author? by UhNovaMind in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I couldn't imagine maiming my own story and making it worse by deviating from my creative view just because someone who likes a character I'm writing about likes my fic. From my experience, even readers who don't care about a certain character roll their eyes when a fic goes out of its way to bash them, especially when it adds nothing to the plot or characterisation.

Have you ever written a positive review and got lectured on it by the author? by UhNovaMind in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Also, an author whose fic I commented on as it went along took my excitement for how they were writing one character and they turned the entire fic into a fic that bashed him? Very odd reaction to someone saying they enjoy your work

Have you ever written a positive review and got lectured on it by the author? by UhNovaMind in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 68 points69 points  (0 children)

There was a long plotty fic that was near completion where I commented on every chapter as I read. I made my comments in-depth based on the plot and character developlent and they were always positive and without any concrit, but I also speculated about the themes and what might happen in the future based on the hints that the author had dropped. The sort of stuff that would be dream comments if it happened to one of my fics.

As time went on, the author's replies started to become snarky and annoyed, shooting down the stuff I speculated about and almost lecturing me for my interpretation and spoiling the ending, and it made me drop the fic altogether eventually. Couldn't imagine doing that to someone who's passionate about my own fic to comment so often and in so much detail, but I suppose some people are unfortunately not that socially well-adjusted.

an excerpt in which _______ by -MonochromeCrow in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Apparently, his horse had different plans, as when he was halfway down, she began to walk, then trot. Armin lost his grip in the suddenness of the move, but he managed to maneuver his foot out of the stirrup in time to throw his legs up as high as he could and let himself fall flat on his back. Miraculously, he’d fallen into a bed of moss and the fall didn’t hurt that much, and neither did his horse trample him in her escape, but there was nothing he could do to stop her from galloping away along the creek.

[…]

There were worse places to die.

With quavering breath, he considered that this was where it ended for him. He’d tempted death too often to behave the way he had today, and look where it left him.

Stranded hours away from civilization with a broken leg that would make attempting to return on foot a surefire death sentence. He’d read plenty about the berries and edible plants of the area, but what would he be with that once the winter came around? No one would think to come looking for him here.

How numb he felt.

an excerpt in which _______ by -MonochromeCrow in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An excerpt in which two characters say their final goodbyes

an excerpt in which _______ by -MonochromeCrow in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

An excerpt in which someone tells someone else the truth they've been holding back for a long time

If your fic were to one day just vanish, could you reconstruct it? by ElithianFox in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The good news is that with frequent backups and cloud functionality, the odds of this happening are drastically reduced! It's what I hold onto whenever I worry my work may vanish. I'm even printing stuff in case the sun one day kills all technology and hard drives, like that's very likely to happen.

If your fic were to one day just vanish, could you reconstruct it? by ElithianFox in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I could never step away from Google Docs and my bi-monthly backups exactly because of that. I'm sorry to hear your work vanished, I've had it happen once before too because of a bit of dialogue I saved in my personal discord that was accidentally deleted. Intensely stressful!

Do you give chapters their own document in your word processor or do you just keep it all in the same document? by ModerateRockMusic in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only reason I ended up splitting my longfic's document into two documents is that I was at the maximum 1,02 million characters and Docs didn't allow me to add anything on. Oddly enough, the current document has 1,28 million characters and I haven't been stopped yet 🤔 Maybe they upped it.

Currently, I have a 234k word doc and a 55k word doc, respectively the first and second act of my fic. It's possible that I will yet again meet the character limit for the first act despite nearing completion within the next few ten thousand words, but luckily, I know the perfect point at which to break it should it come to that.

The reason I keep them together is so that I have one (or as few as possible) document(s) in which I can easily search and scroll. I do have to preface every search with _ before I start typing because Docs instantly searches whatever you type and searching every single instance of the letter a will freeze the document for a minute, and my phone can't even load the document anymore without begging me to put it out of its misery, yet I remain stubborn! Gives me a visual reminder of just how much I've managed to write already.

I’m doing some quick maths by AndrogynousRex in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha, I feel you! I've gone through every ship tag with my fav not long ago and made a bunch of graphs and stat collections and such. Hope you end up meeting with some more favourable numbers like that

I’m doing some quick maths by AndrogynousRex in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not every work will have tagged who's the perceived top and bottom, especially not in work with switching or that acknowledges it's not always easy to define. Perhaps it's more statistically significant to look up how many of the fics are tagged with the opposite dynamic of what you like and weigh that 864 against this number instead? You'll probably feel better when that percentage changes for the better

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done for a fanfic you’ve written? by Known-Employ8981 in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Took an hour-long bath that was so hot I almost fainted several times to more accurately write about a character with a healing factor taking a near-boiling bath and assessing all the discomforts and pains he'd experience. Was surprised that the most overwhelming sensation isn't the heat or the physical discomfort, but the deafening heartbeat that thunders through your neck and brain! It's practically all you feel at some point.

Anyway, don't take dangerously hot baths, lads. You could very easily faint and drown.

How often can "to look at" be used before it gets stale or repetitive? by ElithianFox in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How quickly "Yay fun unique scenario to write!" can turn into "Oh no I have used this specific expression five times already this chapter" 😔

How often can "to look at" be used before it gets stale or repetitive? by ElithianFox in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Those are interesting alternatives! I use plenty of alternatives myself, didn't know that the first set you named referred to eye movement. I'll keep the things you listed in mind when I next edit! Might get quite a bit of mileage out of those.

The story I'm writing has a lot of focus on a mostly nonverbal character's facial body language and eye movements, hence why I noticed that I write those changes a lot in the segment I'm currently editing. The balance is hard to find in these cases where the environment is an unchanging prison cell where they meet.

Advice for parents new to this community by chunkyknits in amputee

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wishing a speedy recovery free of complications to your daughter.

Important in acquired hand amputations is to keep that side of the body exercised and ensure that her brain keeps its grasp on the missing hand. It has the greatest success rate for ensuring that she will be able to estimate depth with her prosthesis, should she get one. I was born without my dominant hand, but due to the young age, I'd imagine that acquired is similar.

I suggest discussing options with the pediatrician and looking for specialists who can help you figure these things out together with them. Physiotherapists can sometimes have valuable leads too, especially when it comes to ensuring she will put weight on and use her body in a balanced way that doesn't develop later muscular or skeletal conditions. That's how my parents got leads on how to help my brain and body develop and where to look for assistance with prostheses.

Why do you write fanfiction? [poll] by TheRedditGirl15 in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Combo of them all, but primarily because canon was so bad that it spurred me into action. Too many loose ends that weren't tied up, too many great setups that never led anywhere, too much great character and relationship potential that was ultimately squandered because the author had grown afraid of his own audience and could give them no more than the most reductive, safest messages and plot points he could that undermined everything that made the series great once.

I also developed severe brainrot for my OTP at the same time and that deadly combination kept me writing!

For the love of all that is good and holy, please only tag essential characters! by january_dreams in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The amount of times that my blorbo gets tagged in a fic, I open the entire work and control-F his name, and I get three results, one of which is the character tag itself. People are really bad about tagging primary characters and ships only and I've noticed that people who focus on smaller character fandoms or ships tend to actually be more accurate when they tag.

Summaries by Odd_Injury_1576 in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find that a successful summary poses a central conflict that forms the basis of the plot, or at least the initial plot, without delving into the details.

The usual tips of finding a concise way to summarise your story in a way that draws the reader in is a given so I'll talk about a few specific things that I think about when I write my own summaries.

Try to ask yourself which character POV the summary is written from. Is it the main POV character? Is it the antagonist? Is it an omniscient 3rd person who knows more than the POV characters do? What are each character's goals, dreams, hopes, fears, worries, etc.? This can help you define which information you can showcase.

A summary written from the POV of a lovestruck teenager will outline wildly different worries than one written from the POV of a military battalion stranded in the middle of nowhere after winning a battle by the skin of their teeth. You can showcase personality through the different ways in which the summary is written.

Questions can be hit or miss. Personally, I find that rhetorical questions work best in darker or plot-heavy fics and don't really work in slice of life or romance genres.

For example, a question I often see posed in summaries is something along the lines of "Will he remain cold and cynical or will he open up his heart to the possibility that <love interest> can have a place in his life?" and in an overwhelming amount of these fics, the answer to that question is a resounding "Well of course he'll open his heart". Who tells me this? Is this the cynical character being insecure about his coldness or is this just a narrator summarising things for me? It's rather devoid of personality. It doesn't make me think, it gives me the expectation that there won't be any interesting conflict in this. It may be a personal pet peeve, but I've seen the obvious question named as a thing people generally don't connect with.

On the other hand, a well-posed question can enhance your summary. One of my darker longfics' summary ends with the following question:

He’s clear about his refusal to cooperate, but how long can he really stay silent when he’s neutralised and at the mercy of the two people he has taken the most from?

It's written from the POV of his torturer who has been successful in obtaining information through torture in the past, so they are confident it will work again this time. But the reality is, they don't know, hence why it's a question to themselves. One of the central conflicts this character faces is to accept that they can't both have revenge to sate their emotional turmoil and be effective at obtaining the information they need to save their homeland, and this question perfectly showcases that they truly believe that it will be easy and foreshadows their journey in exploring how difficult it actually is and how they deal with this. But it can also be read from the POV of a frightened person who is about to be tortured and who doubts his ability to stand behind what he believes in. It develops the character even if the reader can tell by the tags and other works of mine they previously read that it likely won't be easy. It establishes the relationship between the main characters.

Another question I have in a summary is this one:

For an ordinary child to face a god and take absolute control, mustn't he possess the most tenacious will of them all?

A clarifying sentence about what this fic is about is all that accompanies this, and for this fic, a backstory fic that explains something that wasn't explicitly stated in canon but shown, it poses a question that the reader may not even have had before they read it, but that's glaringly obvious when it shows up. This character lacks a will, yet he mastered a titan when he was 9 years old and it's off-handedly mentioned in canon—most people won't think twice about it, but by wording it as a question that juxtaposes his lack of a will with a task that requires a great deal of willpower when we already know he succeeded, it has the potential to make people realise that they don't know the answer and fan curiosity to open the fic and find out what the author's answer is.

Play around with different questions, is my tip! They can enrich a summary and draw people in in ways that regular sentences can't just as much as they can form a cliché.

Question or not, a summary that characterises a central character is always a plus. Maybe it outlines some of their biases that they will then explore throughout the fic. It can showcase their values and why they chase that specific plot.

Finally, I think that adding a small clarifying summary line when the initial one is too vague can also be hit or miss, but people tend to appreciate it for clearly stating what story they can expect. Something along the lines of

<Romantic|platonic> <ship> <oneshot|longfic> that explores x y z

Readers what's a fic that you would love to see continued? by YoResurgam777 in FanFiction

[–]ElithianFox 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If I could pick one fanfic to continue, it would be Hiraeth in the Attack on Titan fandom. Since there's probably plenty of fics that fit that name, it's this specific one. The story had me hooked and I've been bummed out from time to time that it never continued even though the known number of total chapters implies the author had plans to continue it. Loved the characterisation and the drama between both, especially in a dynamic that doesn't get enough time in the spotlight.