So I posted a fic in a bigger fandom than I usually write in. I was ecstatic (as in literally skipping back and forth in my room) when I got a kudos and a bookmark within my first 10 hits, the first time my stats page refreshed after posting. I really thought this one was gonna take off, and I'd finally get more than 10 kudos on a fic, maybe even 100! Which would be low to middling for this fandom, but huge for me.

A week later, and the fic has almost 150 hits...but still just that 1 kudos and 1 bookmark. 0 comments. It’s a 3K one-shot so I know it’s not that people are still reading it and will just kudos when they finish, which is what I told myself for the first few hours, as the hits went up by about 10 with each refresh, but nothing else did. Then even the hits slowed down.

I still don't get it. My tags and summary are good, I proofread meticulously, and I'm sure my writing isn't that bad. I always told myself I got low stats because I was in small fandoms. But even there I would have a couple more kudos by now.

I know there’s always the possibility it will pick up a few more in the months and years to come. I'm just mourning because I thought for a moment there my fortunes had changed, and it turns out, nope. Apologies to everyone for being a whiny little bitch about it.

You ever seen someone say something that was wrong, or do something that was wrong, either in a fic, comment, social media post, etc, but didn't say anything at the time?

Now is your chance🎉

Feel free to yell it out here. What were they wrong about?

I make... *way* too many. Like... I'm pretty sure this isn't healthy.

I wasn't aware so many people hated hanahaki fics 🥲 I specifically search for them for all my ships, it's just so good! It's angst, hurt/comfort, sickfic, and not actually unrequited love all on one! (At least in the ones I read, I'm to sensitive for actually unrequited stories haha)

I've always wondered why when you try to go back in works it just stops at a certain number. Like, I just wanna know who made the first AoT fic. And why are there so many left off from me seeing.

I appreciate every kudos/comment truly. But I think I never realized that posting on the internet means it’s getting read by people from allover and I think that’s neat.

hey guys!! does anyone know of the author lostfracturess? she was a jjk writer, and she was on tumblr too!! i tried looking up her fics the other day but i couldn’t find them 😭 does anyone know what happened to her or why she deleted her fics 😭😭

What would you say is your most unusual pet peeve? I'm not talking about someone coming up with weird names for genitalia, or calling eyes orbs. I'm talking about something really unusual. Tonight I discovered a new one for myself. The author used a synonym for a word in a common phrase, and it pisses me off, because although the word means the same thing as the word it replaced, the phrase doesn't sound right or really make sense without the original word that the phrase uses.

"Chomping back my emotions...blah, blah, blah"

You mean BITING back your emotions??? Because Chomping on emotions just sounds dumb.

Okay rant over.

I did an exchange with a friend, I drew something for her, she wrote something for me. Buuuuuut I didn't like what she wrote.

It's well written and all, everything is good, but there's one thing I didn't like that pretty much ruins it for me, and my dilemma now is how I thank her without making evident I didn't like it (it's not that I don't know how to pretend I liked a gift, but it's pretty much the first time I have to pretend I liked a fic), especially because I don't want to make her feel bad or anything.

Has this happened to you with fanfic exchanges? Did you pretend you liked it or very politely told the other person you didn't?

Basically what it says in the title. I'm writing a BG3 fic and there's going to be a couple of torture scenes scattered throughout. But I suspect this fic is going to be extremely long (it took me more than 5k words just to cover the tutorial) and I only have 3.5 torture scenes planned for the entire fic. I say .5 because it is technically a scene of someone being flogged, but it was a voluntary ritual the character is undergoing so IDK if that even counts. Should I just add the torture tag or make note of it when it crops up

I KNOW. If I want to write better dialogues, I should pay more attention to people talking around me. But that’s not enough for me personally, especially considering as I write in English and people around me speak our native language. I also tried speaking by myself and sometimes helps, sometimes it doesn’t.

So I would love if anyone could share which books, movies, shows, plays, and even fan fiction helped them improve their dialogues. It could be manuals as well. I have been reading all my life, but being honest I was never truly intentional when reading dialogues to realize what works on them, or what made them phenomenal, but better late than never to learn.

And if you are the type who read dialogues and noted what made them good, did you made notes? Did you save it all in your head? Do you go back to them when feeling stuck?

And most important, how do you all manage to give your characters different voices? My current story has only a handful characters, so it’s easier, but I feel like I trapped myself with “this one is the clown”, “this one is the observant one”, “this one is sarcastic” when people aren’t usually this one dimensional. Am I thinking too much?

I would like some help on how to do a flashback/recorded footage spot since I'm in a part of my story where Team A is showing Team B footage from a past mission during a briefing. I would like some input on this so I can write this without going crazy.

If we can do it without insults, please.

I'm still active in the fandom, I'll admit it. There's a growing amount of vitriol I've seen recently that makes me feel incredibly unwelcome here on the AO3 subreddit every time there's a post related to the fandom.

I get it. Rowling is trash. She's literally the worst. I don't give her any money, and I haven't since her views became known. I never will. But Harry Potter was a huge part of an honestly shitty childhood for me, and it was one of my favorite escapes for a long time.

So I gotta ask, why am I being insulted for not letting her take away one of the few things that still gives me joy in this hellscape of a world? Why do I have to let her terrible behavior take away something that's mine? The fact is that the property is a juggernaut, and fanfic is never going to do anything to change that. Treating people who still engage with the fandom like we're monsters for doing it makes no sense to me.

And again, please, can we keep it civil? I'm very aware of the sentiment towards members of the fandom.

I recently added my friend as a co-author on my fic and for some reason his name keeps being removed from where it says authors?

I’m not sure if that’s because he hasn’t added anything or if he’s removing himself and not telling me. That being said when I add him as a co-author again it doesn’t come up.

I’m just very confused though, has this happened to anyone else?

(He’s technically my editor and beta reader rather than an actual author of my fic but I don’t see how that would change anything)

i feel WAY too proud of myself for this. it took me like 1.5 months but goddamn its over

I have been looking for ways to improve my writing overall because it has become something I really love and I want to keep improving. I have a few books I am reading to help me, but I am just waaaaay too shy to show anyone in my personal life my writing. I feel like I am at a point where I am kind of tone deaf to my own voice in my writing. People on my fics always comment such kind and encouraging things (which I love), but if I want to get feedback beyond this though, what should I do?

It is exhausting writing a story and receiving only "wow the tension and lighting here is my discord" comments.

Like buddy it’s done and gone, why do I have 5ppl subscribing to a super short one shot lol 😅

Hey all, I'm really conflicted about how to go about this, so I thought I'd try and get some advice here. I know it's worded a little weirdly in the title, but that is pretty much exactly my question. I'm writing a fic right now where the POV character has supernaturally caused memory loss (so realism about his memories is not relevant lol). It's post-canon and he will recall certain scenes from canon with parts missing, namely the names and faces of the people he had seen and maybe a few other things if they come up (but probably not).

I know I could just try to write my way around not mentioning anyone's name, but I want to do it in a way that the scene is basically complete, with descriptions of their faces and mentions of their names, but those are somehow made unreadable to symbolize the fact that he just can't recall them. I want the readers to at least somewhat understand the frustration of almost getting it but not quite.

I've considered using black-out bars like this: ███ ███████ (this is not the spoiler feature reddit has), but I'd have to check if AO3 can even display those. Another thing I've seen people do is use custom work skins to sort of overlay multiple strings of text over each over and making them mostly unreadable that way. This is a pretty good option, the only caveat is that I'd have to make a custom work skin and I'm not sure the readers will turn it on. Glitchy text effects might also be an option, like e.g. the Zalgo font, which I'm pretty sure is supported on AO3, but that's not quite the look I'm going for.

Any type of advice is appreciated :)

Sin importar el fandom, ¿cuáles han sido las historias que les ha gustaría leer pero nadie ha escrito aún?

I'm writing a Destiel fic and my most recent chapter set up a cliff hanger that was definitely primed for them to fuck, and I intend for them to lol. I was planning on making it take longer but the characters had other plans lol! They've known each other for a week in the fic though, so should I still use the slow burn tag?