(no subject)

[laceblade]

How do people write epic fanfic?
I get that the primary answer to the following questions is, "Do whatever you'd like!" but I really want a sense of what happens in the parts of fandom that I'm not in touch with! If I'm going to defy norms (if there are any), I'd like to know about it so that I can preen.


Is it the norm to keep quiet about your project and then reveal it once you're done, whilst cackling?

Do you create the fic by making posts about all your ideas and confirming "OMG IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?!" and receiving affirmation or asking for suggestions?



From a non-fic-specific standpoint:
For longer stories, do you try to map out the plot ahead of time, and then start writing?
Or do you just write the first chapter with a vague idea of where you want to go, and make it up as you go along?

Comments

[sasha_feather]

Step 1: read epic fanfic! :D

But seriously, I don't think most people post about their ideas. They hash them out in chat, or in Google docs or whatever, with co-authors or with betas. Although, people have written fic in comments, back and forth with each other, talking it through as they go! It's happened all in public like that.

As for planning it out, some people do things that way, but some people don't. I personally can't plan ahead that far?

[laceblade]

HMMM. I feel like this one will be hard to find people to chat with about it, as Inception/FF7 is kind of a random crossover. FF7 is an old(ish) fandom. BUT. I could discuss in Google docs with myself?! HEINOUSLY?!

[starlady]

I tend to not discuss my ideas with people beyond fairly general concepts (such as "Sherlock Holmes steampunk AU! With female aviators! Yeah!"), since I kept my writing almost entirely to myself for nearly a decade.

I tend to write long fic, though. The steampunk AU was 37K words; I knew it would be large because it was a large idea, but I had no idea how many specifically. The 10K fics I've written have started from smaller ideas (such as "Watson + Irene = kick-ass"). So really, I just write until I'm finished, usually making it up as I go along--though I tend to have an endpoint in mind when I start.

[were_duck]

Well, you've written long fiction before! Epic fanfic is not necessarily any different--outlines and hashing out plot points and things as they work for you?

For our ridiculous monster fic we've done it all in googledocs and gchat, pretty much, hanging out with cowriters and betas and chatting through plot ideas, then pasting them into the doc, then writing and expanding around them and chatting through worldbuilding elements and character work (and, okay, RELEVANT PICTURES AND VIDEOS) and whatever as needed.

That sounds like a pretty small crossover fandom idea but surely there are FF7 fans who have seen Inception?? Do you know anyone familiar enough with both fandoms that you could chat out ideas with? Seriously, doing it in gchat where gmail remembers it all for you and makes it searchable later is GOLD.

[rydra_wong]

For longer stories, do you try to map out the plot ahead of time, and then start writing?
Or do you just write the first chapter with a vague idea of where you want to go, and make it up as you go along?

People can go either way. For example, synecdochic and I are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum (linkage to discussions of our respective processes):

http://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/76077.html
http://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/129059.html
http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/117588.html

IMMO, either way can work really well; you just need to know what your natural tendency is and how to make it work for you.

Re: posting about it, again I've seen a variety of options. Some people do lots of talking it over with select friends in chat or e-mail. Some people will post sections of drafts to an access filter, or use that for the "OMG IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?!" discussions. Some people will post publicly to vent in general terms about how the project's going, without getting into specifics.

I don't think I've seen people post first drafts or plot-wrangling completely publicly (most people seem to want to keep some control over who sees the embarrassing behind-the-scenes stuff, and/or distinguish between process stuff and finished work that's being put out there for readers), but it wouldn't surprise me if someone's done it.

[littlebutfierce]

My friend eggcrack is into FF7... I dunno if she's seen Inception, though.

Other than that, I have no help to give you at all! I don't think I am the longfic type. I am much better at moments or snapshots.

[laceblade]

I know a bunch of people who have played FF7 and who have probably seen Inception (or I know they have), but probably aren't up for chatting about fic, :[

[laceblade]

I have! Although my major pitfall was that it never went anywhere/never finished....PERHAPS because I never have an outline. So I guess that means I should try it with an outline, even if minimal!

I know people who've seen/played both, but I don't think anyone who's interested/has the time to talk about fic? I might just have to draft The Boyfriend into service!

[laceblade]

Wahh, so many options!

I'll probably freak out and post about it in my journal as I go, because I'll be excited/insecure.

I will read the discussions about outlines/not at length, thank you for the links!

[littlebutfierce]

... she writes fic herself, & has talked about it in writethisfanfic sometimes? So maybe chances are higher? (but not guaranteed, obvs...)

[wheatear]

Write... really long fic? I don't know, what do you mean by epic fanfic?

Personally, I like to plan the story before writing it rather than making it up as I go along, but different people find that different methods work for them. There isn't any one right way to go about it.

[sasha_feather]

You got meta-fandomed! :D

[solarcat]

What feels like "epic" to me is probably much shorter than what you're thinking of, but in writing longer stories I tend to write up my ideas and have huge, verbose conversations with a small circle of friends about those ideas until I've worked through any major tangles with my plot. Then when I actually set about writing it, those same people leave comments (like, "love this part!" or "wait, what's going on here? I thought ______...") and if the plot gets thorny again we chat it out (again) and then somewhere down the line I end up with a finished fic of actual length! It's like magic. XD

But I generally don't post bout it publicly, other than perhaps on my WIP roundup where I give it a short description ("The one where they're all werewolves!" etc), and if someone specifically asks about it I'll expand a little. But the details of the plot stay within a closed group of Trusted Advisors until it's done. :)

[laceblade]

OMG! *hides*

I was wondering what was going on....

[laceblade]

Yeah, sorry, by "epic" I just meant "really long."

[eatsscissors]

Sometimes I do an ecstatic keyboard-smash post of everything that I would like to write, but at least two-thirds of all of my fic ideas die in utero, so I try to keep that to a minimum. There are a few lurkers who pop up every now and again solely for the fic, and I always feel like I'm making promises that I can't keep when I'm babbling about fics that I know full well probably won't ever be finished. (Though the babble and "AAHH! AAHH! *flail!" in the comments is always fun.)

Anything that feels as if it's going to be over 15K words gets outlined by part. Everything. I have really terrible problems with pacing in the back half habitually, and it is so much easier to see where I'm going wrong in an outline than it is in a draft. Knowing how many chapters I'm going to be completing also lets me start posting before I'm actually completely finished, because I'm a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater and like to be petted. :)

[wheatear]

Ah, right. Sorry, I just realised this comment must seem really late and random. Here from metafandom!

[rubyfruit]

For me personally, it takes a lot of planning and prewriting before I get to the actual writing part. As for discussing the ideas for a fic, I...don't keep too quiet about them at all. In fact, either I write an entry about it, or I talk to people over IM about my ideas, usually with people who are writing in the same fandom or is using similar themes to what my fic is, so that maybe we can swap ideas.

Depending on how long I intend the fic to be, I map it out well ahead of time, while leaving plenty of room for improvisation, because if I try to have everything so rigidly listed, then it'll throw me off and I'll scrap the project entirely.

It also helps to have a better attention span writing-wise than most people. I am one of those people with more "in-progress" and on-hiatus works than finished works because I get new ideas almost all the time.

From metafandom (because I just updated my, uh, epic fanfic)!

[shirozora]

I actually complain a lot when a fic that has a basic prompt, a spontaneous idea, or is the spawn of a chatting/tweeting session decides it's not going to be 1k words but rather 10k! Unfortunately for me it's one of my bigger strengths so I end up spending weeks outlining and writing and yelling at myself to finish the damn thing. All it takes is a simple sentence like "Stan meets Mysterion months before the Coon does" for me to start writing a +15k words long South Park fic, and no I will not be able to tell you how the hell that happened. Right now I'm writing this rather massive Sam/Tron fic for the Tron Kink Meme and I'm still at a loss for how it grew to over 35k words. It just...happened.

Writing epic/long fic is hard because it requires you to keep track of your plot, watch out for plot holes and questionable details, and make sure the story's dynamic enough for the readers. I'm terrible at hashing out a plot with other people - talking about it just feels awkward to me so I keep it all in - so I just ask really specific questions to the few I trust or I complain a lot (in vague terms) on twitter. It's better to keep things a surprise but I find it amusing when a friend of mine tells me she remembers me tweeting about a certain scene she's now reading.

/I am, uh, really hyper due to drinking tons of black tea during a 5hr ficcing session and must now shove myself off to bed. Sorry for the word barf.

[hyarrowen]

Here via Metafandom.

In my case, I was coping with a torn ligament and was unable to walk for weeks. That got me started on a novel-length fanfic; write something long or go bonkers!

I dropped hints here and there to my f-list, aminly to keep my nose to the grindstone, and e-mailed my beta every day (she was doing much the same thing as she was writing a super-epic at the same time.)

And scenes appeared more like bacteria growing in a petri dish than in a linear fashion; I knew what the last scene would be, and three or four others were fairly clear. So I wrote those, and more scenes grew out of them, and I kept writing the things that had sort-of become clear, and eventually joined them up, and after eight months of more or less continuous effort, I had a 55k story finished. Oh, and I could walk again.

I really can't imagine being sufficiently organised to plan something out in advance, though, and am in awe of people who can work that way.

[eustacia_vye28]

Here via metafandom. I feel the need to comment because I regularly do epics, and I don't always mean to!

I'm one of those writers that don't outline, which can trip me up when Big Damn Plot Ideas happen. So sometimes ideas that don't feel quite so huge turn out that way. I make things up as I go along, check earlier chapters as much as I can and try to wrangle bits in my head as I write. For the longest time I didn't have a beta, so I did those bits on my own as best as I could. I would sometimes vaguely wibble on my journal or say things like "OMG I love this bit I'm writing right now!" but for the most part I kept it under wraps until I post chapters. I kinda like seeing the reader responses to evil cliffhanger chapter endings. :)

I have a consistent beta now, as well as some other friends I chat with. If there are specific questions I have, I hash it out with them over chat. Only the beta gets the full fic in progress to squee/point out errors as I go, but she generally waits until the end for the really big inconsistencies. Until it's done, she's more of a cheerleader unless I made a huge gaffe. It's a system that works for me! :)

[yoru_no_koe]

Hi, this is rather late but I'm here from metafandom and ……… um, I would be totally into that. AND discussing it. And I have another friend who would too, though I don't think she has a DW account!

(I'm writing an epic FF7 fic myself, but it's really drawerfic.)

[pandarus]

Um...is this Sherlock Holmes Steampunk AU anywhere online where a person might find it, at all?

::flutters eyes hopefully, thinking of female aviators::

[starlady]

Right here. Don't miss the art! XD