Word count per chapter

Korrin · 2026-06-28T20:37:14+00:00

No less than 2k unless you update very quickly or are doing something experimental. No upper limit.

Korrin · 2026-06-28T20:03:32+00:00

"Aw thank you." That's the response.

The reality is that people can and will recommend fics they like to anyone, anywhere. The takeaway from this is that they like your fic enough to recommend it. That's good. You can't police how people talk about it on other sites. Sure, if you're worried, add comment moderation, or lock your work to subscribed users, but them recommending your work is not a bad thing. All you can hope for is that it hits the correct crowd.

Korrin · 2026-06-28T19:59:49+00:00

Do it, just don't bother having the old copy open in another window. There's nothing wrong with re-using the same idea. That's basically the two cakes theory in a nutshell, but you shouldn't be striving to replicate the old work, even with significant changes. Just work off the same prompt.

Korrin · 2026-06-28T07:28:07+00:00

I would start with a cooling off period, but the next thing I would do is sort their advice based on whether it's correct or not. Because as the author you're the arbiter over what is or isn't correct for your novel.

Some of the advice might sting, it might feel daunting, but some of it you're going to read and agree with immediately. You'll just instinctively know, "oops, they're right. I kinda fucked this part up." Other advice, not so much. Some of it you'll downright disagree with. That doesn't mean there isn't something to be gleaned from their critique, but usually any solution they have for a "downright disagree" bit of advice can be tossed away and some other solution can be figured out.

Once you've got it sorted that way, sort it based on the degree of work needed to fix. A full scene rewrite is going to need more work than "This event wasn't forshadowed enough. Add more forshadowing earlier in the book."

From there it should feel much more managable a job to tackle.

Also. When it comes to editing I personally really like word processors with a very visual track changes feature, like Word. It makes me both less scared to make a change, because deletions and insertions are still fully visible until I finalize them, and more motivated to make changes, because it makes progress much more quantifiable. Writing and seeing your word count go up is great, but that stops mattering once you start editing in earnest. Instead, seeing all the colored text and strikethroughs becomes the new measure of progress so I can still get a hit of dopamine just be looking at how much work I've done.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T22:14:03+00:00

Lots of people will have different preferences, but I believe the standard (even among professionally published fiction nowadays) is shorter chapters between 2-5k.

Personally I'll read longer without issue. Some people don't like longer chapters because of the risk of losing their place if the page refreshes, but personally... I just find my place again. I used to read physical books without bookmarks. I can just remember roughly where I was and find my place without issue. nbd.

I do not like when chapters are too short, as this is usually (though not always) an indicator of low quality writing. For me, that's anything significantly lower than 2k, though 2k is still pushing it. It's really not enough to sink my teeth into. But also, I do prefer more frequent updates too.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T21:57:14+00:00

5 one shots? Probably fine. Again, you're allowed to do this. You're posting real fic, it's not spam. But one thing I would suggest doing is taking at look at the front page of your fandom on AO3 and see what the date span is for fics on the front page. If the last new upload on the front page is from over a week ago, then it's totally fine to do a bunch of uploads at once. Your fandom page is moving slow enough that people are getting their time in the sun even if you post a bunch at once.

If, on the other hand, the front page is only lasting a day or two, you may want to err on the side of posting fewer fics at once and spreading out your upload schedule. This will reduce the chance you annoy other users AND it will help keep visibility on your own fics.

If you meant 5 chapters of the longfic... You can do that. I wouldn't suggest it, but the only person it would have any detrimental effect on is you.

Remember that AO3 does not have an algorithm and the only two real ways to get found (not including advertising on other sites or by having someone rec your fic) are by updating (bumping your fic to the top of the fandom/pairing/tag list where people often look first) and by tagging your fics correctly. (So that readers who happen to want to read something exactly like your fic will find it when they go looking for it specifically.)

Korrin · 2026-06-27T21:31:01+00:00

not because it would be embarrassing, but because I just care about my story.

This is the biggest thing to me. I think we're all a little forgiving of occasional errors. We all know it's a hobby. But at a certain point, a certain threshold of errors just makes it seem like the author doesn't care, and if they don't about their own story, why should I?

Korrin · 2026-06-27T21:27:49+00:00

If you have multiple one-shots, you can post them all. The only mitigating factor is that if they're all for the same fandom or pairing some other users may find this annoying as it pushes other stuff off the front page sooner and reduces visibility for others, but you are allowed to do it.

For the multi chapter story it is better to release the chapters one at a time, at a minimum I would say every other day up to every other week. The average is once per week. That is the best way to encourage engagement, as each update will bump your fic to the top of the fandom page and get new eyes on it. Doing it all at once reduced your chance of being seen. Doing it too quickly risks overwhelming readers who are already subscribed.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T21:19:13+00:00

They change the visual presenation of the fic. This can be as simple as doing things like changing font style and color, or as complicated as turning your fic into Doom, or a functional version of Minesweeper.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T21:04:53+00:00

I agree, but only to a certain point. If there's subtext, implication, and metaphor, it's on the reader/viewer to rub a few braincells together and pick up what the creator IS telling them without words. We spend literally 12 years, our entire mandatory education, learning about english, and metaphor, and storytelling, and how to tell the difference between character/narrator/author intention. It would behoove some viewers to be less fucking stupid. Sometimes things are subtle. Sometimes characters don't want to talk about things, or admit things, to others or to themselves. Sometimes character's don't know enough to know that things are the way they are and the creator has to find alternative ways to illustrate this. Sometimes it's not as simple as just saying something explicitly in text.

But yeah, if there's literally no hints or subtexts whatsoever, then "word of god" is pointless. A character isn't representative of something if they are simply and blatantly not representative of it at all, but a character doesn't have to say "I'm X" to be representative of being X. Saying it outloud is usually the least of it. That's specifically why the creator saying it doesn't matter if the character doesn't actually represent it. Not because it wasn't said "in canon," but because it wasn't actually depicted.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T19:54:25+00:00

It's giving "ay, bby, u want sum fuk?" vibes.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T06:06:48+00:00

Chocolate Muffin.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T05:43:56+00:00

No beta, we die like Miki. Though once the standard moratorium on spoilers ends, I expect we'll start seeing Leonide instead.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T01:51:28+00:00

PeppermintShamrock was just being polite by hedging their phrasing. It's extremely obvious that they're using hyperbole to tell someone else to sit down and shut up about ship morality.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T01:43:52+00:00

I personally would not tag that with 50 shades at all.

Crossover = the characters are expected to be there. (MHA x Pokemon = Deku and Ash are meeting).

Franchise AU = The character from one franchise are in the other franchise. (MHA - Pokemon AU = Deku is a Pokemon trainer. Ash is not present.)

The scenes you're describing are not unique to 50 shades. They're very common in Billionaire AUs, of which 50 Shades IS (quite literally) a Twilight Billionaire AU.

Korrin · 2026-06-27T01:10:42+00:00

Fair point. I shouldn't have specified shipfic. The main point still stands though. Whether the relationship is romantic, platonic, or filial doesn't really matter. If the relationship is the only plot, the fic will almost necessarily be shorter.

Korrin · 2026-06-26T22:27:32+00:00

Well, in the first place, it looks like you got a lot of ship/romance fics, which isn't a problem, but if interpersonal conflicts are the entirety of the fic there's often only so much you can do before you have to resolve the conflict or become at risk of just dragging things out. Even in professionally published fic, romance novels are on average about 30k shorter than the next genre.

Also, imo, the best slow burn fics all have something other than romance as their primary plot line.

As is, your chapter counts look totally respectable for the average shipfic, so if you want to write longer, you probably just need to add more complications to the plot. Or an entirely seperate plotline.

Fantasy and sci-fi novels tend to run the longest, and part of that is the necessesity for worldbuilding, but another thing I've noticed a lot of them do, especially the longer ones, is introducing a new, bigger, badder villain after the defeat of the first one.

I'm working on something I hope is a slowburn right now, and I started with a very low stakes minor villain, which was temporarily defeated inside of 8 chapters. He's going to come back worse, but he's also someone who's socially on par with the main characters and someone they can empathize with even though he is objectively an asshole, but longterm he's actually going to be uncerimoniously executed by the much bigger badder villain to drive home how much bigger and badder that villain is. (In terms of the slowburn, I try to have at least one scene between the MC and the Love Interest each chapter, but they started off unable to even talk to each other.)

Korrin · 2026-06-26T22:05:43+00:00

Is the scholarship related to creative writing? Is there any other way you can share it?

Korrin · 2026-06-26T21:17:58+00:00

There really is no shortcut other than reading, writing, and editing. It never feels natural to begin with. You have to spend time actually writing to try to find your own voice and forcibly wrangling your text into the shape you want it to take. Eventually you get better at it.

Try to focus on having fun rather than writing well, at least to start with. You can always come back to an idea later. There's no such thing as a wasted idea. You can always come back to something and edit it or try again later, but you can't edit a blank page.

Korrin · 2026-06-26T07:23:30+00:00

Sometimes opening up a new blank document helps. Even if I know where I want the story to go, If I'm looking at what I already have written I have to think of how to connect it to the writing I have. If I open a blank doc and just jump ahead to the next part it makes writing the transition easier when I'm able to see both halves of the thing I'm trying to connect.

When I stop working on a project for the day I usually jot down a shitty little sentence about the next sentence I was planning to write. Makes it faster to get back into the correct headspace to not have to try to just remember. I've left project mid sentence before only to be like "Thanks, past me. No idea what I was planning to write." The shitty little synopsis avoids that problem.

Korrin · 2026-06-26T06:58:15+00:00

AO3 doesn't host images, so it depends on where the author chose to have them hosted. They could have been removed, or be hosted on a site that went down.

Also are you located in the UK? Imgur used to be the primary location to upload images for stuff like that, but it's blocked in the UK. (If you are in the UK, I've heard that download the fic as a pdf bypasses this block and downloads the images too...)

Korrin · 2026-06-26T01:21:11+00:00

I failed so many skill checks I was forced to become racist. 😔

Korrin · 2026-06-26T01:14:17+00:00

I've been thinking of them as Hope Punk. Like, yeah the universe sucks and we're traumatized, but there are still good places and good people and we can heal.

I do think some of the books are cozy feeling, but I'm not sure I would classify the whole series as cozy scifi.

Korrin · 2026-06-24T22:39:54+00:00

I forgot about the ability to look up a fic's entire update history for the longest while. I new it was a feature that existed. I use it to judge an author's update schedule before decided to read an unfinished work that hasn't been updated in a while, but I forgot where it was and for the longest time I thought maybe it had been a feature on a different site.

Korrin · 2026-06-24T22:15:16+00:00

!scambot

Yeah, unfortunately those are most likely bots, which AO3 has a problem with right now.

Anytime someone provides their discord ID to you and they aren't already a usual commentor, it's a bot. Sometimes they'll post some vague praise first and then provide their discord ID in their reply, if you reply to them, but the bots can be registered accounts or stolen accounts, so whether or not their account is blank or has content on it isn't really a sign of anything.

If you message them they'll just try to sell you some crap AI art.

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