Sometimes I Can’t Believe How Cool Yet Weird Fanfiction Writing Is. I Have So Much Power To Do Whatever

Fanfiction is great because you can see so clearly how people learn to write.

Some people, it's clear, learned almost entirely through absorbing the world around them. Grammar and punctuation will be all over the place, spellings are approximate, but the voice of the narration will come through so clearly. You can hear the dialect of the people around them as of they're telling the story. It's not a written story, it's a transcription of how they talk in their day to day life.

Some people learned through reading a gazillion books as a kid. Grammer and spelling will be rock solid, formatting occasionally based on the single tab of physical books rather than the double tab of online scrolling, but dialogue is often stilted and overly formal. You might notice a lack of contractions and very rigid rules they made for consistency that actually have a lot more flexibility than they think. They tend to have a fantastic grasp of sentence flow, though.

And other people formally learned how to write. This could be anywhere from taking school classes seriously because they enjoyed writing stories as a kid to literal certifications and jobs in the field. Grammer is flawless. Punctuation is triple checked. Foreign words are in italics. Characters have distinct voices. But their self indulgence is tempered by perfectionism. They know precisely what they want from a fic. Authors notes often feature mutterings about their happiness with the chapter. Kaomojis often appear! They seek a style to their writing, and it makes for some wonderfully clever plots! These are the ones most likely to get fun with formatting!

And some people.... Some people examined it all. They dissect dialogue, people watch, cross reference behaviours and compare characters to people irl. You can tell almost immediately who had formative experiences with Terry pratchett and/or ghibli, because it's these people. While others see writing as fun, expression, craft, they see it as art. Plain and simple. Sure, the grammar is occasionally sacrificed on the altar of creative freedom, and the occasional sentence might miss a full stop, but these people seem to self reflect on themselves as part of the art making process. On occasion, these people have the most masterful grasp of dialogue and invocation and hand sewn characterisations. Formatting is pretty standard because all the focus is on the actual words. These fics can be edited to the moon and back!

All of these can vary wildly in forethought and quality, and betas can often catch individual problems before they hit post, but just. Isn't it so cool? What's that one Oscar Wilde quote about every mask just being another fragment of yourself?

Did you recognise yourself?

What happens if my family already is cursed?

“But if you forget to reblog Madame Zeroni, you and your family will be cursed for always and eternity.”

Writers are scary because we’ll take personal trauma and think, "Hmm… what if this happened to my fictional characters but worse?"

I will happily submit to this AND be the one giving the hugs :>

everyone who reblogs this will get a hug in their inbox

me: I write for myself, not validation

also me after posting a fic *refreshes ao3 every five minutes*

(two things can be true)

90% of the time it's the 2nd 😭😭

Going back to old writing is either just like:

1. “Who wrote this masterpiece?! It was ME?!”

2. “Who wrote this absolute shit? Oh fuck my life, that was me, wasn’t it?”

reblog if you believe fanfics are as valid as books that were published and sold by authors who write as their main careers. I'm trying to prove a point

Petition to get Ao3 to remove this category.

Write it shitty, write it scared, write it without a clue but don't you be so spineless and have an AI write fanfic for you.

I really need to actually start routinely writing again at some point, but I’m now in the headspace where, now that I’ve put the routine down, I can no longer pick it back up