I just wanted to celebrate with you.

I know it's nothing, it's one person BUT.
A few weeks ago, I started writing again after a hiatus of 3/4 years. I got divorced, went back to college and all... It was all very busy. I also took writing classes and entered a few contests (I won 2 here in France, yeah!).
And I went back to the very first thing I wrote, in 2021, my long fan fiction in the universe of The Strain, which is very niche.
And boy. It was bad. The story was bad, my OC was totally a Mary Sue and the writing was trash.
I gave it to a friend of mine who is a professional editor and made me feel even more terrible about my writing.
We spent days building the story, writing each character's arc separately etc. Crazy work for a fandom with like 12 potential readers!

And so, I started posting a few edited chapters in lieu of my old ones and... I got hits.... I got kudos and now... I have this one reader leaving LONG comments on every chapter. And it makes me SO happy.

I was kind of scared the girls who harassed me in 2021 would come back but for now it's only kudos and fun and nice comments. It feels so good!!!

There, sorry for oversharing but I just wanted you all to know that even in small fandoms, there will always be at least one person your fanfiction will please :) keep writing!

Me personally it was: Wattpad ➡️ Quotev ➡️ Tumblr ➡️ Fanfiction.net ➡️ AO3

Welcome back to the Alphabet Excerpt Challenge! As a reminder, our challenges are every Wednesday and Saturday at 3pm London time.

If you've missed the previous challenges, you're welcome to go back and participate in them. You can find them here. And remember to check out the Activities and Events flair to play along with other fun games.

Here's a quick recap of the rules for our game:

1. Post a top level comment with a word starting with the letter W. You can suggest more than one, but please put them in separate comments.
2. Reply to suggestions with an excerpt containing that word. Short and sweet is best, but use your judgement. Excerpts can be from published or unpublished works, or even something you wrote for the prompt.
3. All content is welcome but per rules 7 and 12 of the sub, NSFW excerpts may not be shared as plain text (even if it's spoilered). If you would like to share these, use an external text sharing tool like justpasteit and link it here with a clear warning. Mods may remove excerpts that break these rules.
4. Respond to people who left excerpts on the words you suggested, at a minimum, but the more people you respond to the better. Everyone likes nice comments!
5. Upvote other excerpts you enjoy, and leave a friendly comment. Again, everyone likes nice comments!
6. Most important: have fun!

so i'm turning twenty-one in a couple months and i realised a while ago i haven't really cried to a fic in years. the last time was when i was fourteen and i was properly sobbing at one in the morning. maybe it was because i was younger or because i was just lucky to find something written so beautifully but i'm just wondering whether people have cried to fics as adults?

might be a silly question but lmk!

I’m planning to write an Itoshi brothers fanfic on AO3 that evokes a sense of nostalgia. Since I know that a large portion of the AO3 audience is American—and given that a lullaby plays a significant role in the story—I wanted to ask: what lullaby do you sing to your children, or what lullabies were sung to you?

Update: Thanks to everyone who suggested options. Since "You Are My Sunshine" was the most fitting and frequently suggested choice, I went with that one. Thanks to you, I was able to write and post this work on AO3—though I did have to fiddle quite a bit with the text formatting.

I've been really wanting to write a fanfic lately. Not a huge project — actually, I'd like to keep it fairly small, write it mostly for myself, finish it first, and maybe publish it afterwards if I'm happy with it.

The problem is… I can't pick a fandom.

I have several fandoms I like, but right now none of them gives me that "YES, I need to write something about this" feeling. And when I try to force myself to come up with a plot or an OC for one of them, my brain just goes completely blank.

The weird thing is that I really want to write. It's not the act of writing that I'm tired of. I just don't seem to have a story or fandom that's grabbing me enough to start.

I also tend to enjoy writing OCs into existing universes, so I'd probably like to do that again.

Has this ever happened to you?

Do you wait until a fandom/story naturally grabs you again? Do you use prompts? Revisit old fandoms? Pick something almost at random and start writing until an idea appears?

I'd especially love to hear from people who write mostly for themselves and only publish once a story is finished.

I saw a post about a fanfiction written by Toby Fox about Ant Tenna, and I just thought of this question soooo

I've been wanting to write x reader fics, but my main problem is how do i portray the reader without them sounding like an OC?

if i give the reader a certain attitude, such as their dialogue sounding defiant or sassy, or maybe giving them a habit or two, does that make it sound like an OC instead?

maybe I'm overthinking it, at one point i wondered if giving them a backstory makes it seem like an OC, as if that couldn't possibly shape the plot.

I tried narrowing it down a little, making it an x fem!reader fanfic, but then i thought, do i avoid hair descriptions? because what if the reader is bald lol

it's a whole spiral of "i want to have a scene where the reader's hair gets stuck— wait, but what if the reader reading doesn't have hair long enough for that?" "the reader escapes through this path..Wait but that makes it sound like the reader is skinny—" "the reader couldn't reach this.. But does that make it sound like the reader is short?"

I'm trying to make it as inclusive as possible</3 advice is appreciated, I'd like to know what fellow x readers like or dislike when reading x reader fanfics too!

I understand the commenting etiquette has come a long way for fanfictions and generally people push for just DNFing a work if they dont like something, but I genuinely am looking for constructive criticism on my works. I write for fun, and the challenge of making something work but Im a novice at writing and do like to know what could be improved on.

Im not looking for pure hate (the bots do enough already) but genuine criticism. How would I ask for this from what little readers I have? Like if ive missed a tag, or something in my style is too repetitive ect. I know writing more helps make you better but I also dont want to cultivate bad habits.

I've been struggling with when I'm making a character speak in my recent fics- and have been realizing that it's all starting(or always ending) with just "says [character name], or said [character name)" and I don't know how to stop.. any ideas on how to avoid repeating those things, or any alternatives?

On another note I also feel like I've been saying "as" and "before" a lot in my stories too.. I feel like I'm having same face syndrome but with writing

I feel like I need a word bank GIGGLES

(EDIT: I just want to say thank you to everyone who comment! It all really helps :3 <3)

this isn't necessarily about real world places (which i feel should have more research and accuracy on them, personally), but more about fictional buildings and areas. how much of a stickler are you when it comes to distances or exact locations of a character's house, place of work, school, various landmarks in canon, etc? if there's a general idea of it in canon. are you the type where it should be as exact as possible, or do you like taking liberties with it to fit your story? likewise, how do you feel about it as a reader when you notice these details are accurate/inaccurate?

i end up taking creative liberties with it, sometimes unintentionally because i can't be bothered to remember exact geography (which i'm terrible at), or it might fit the story better if i change it a bit. but i still have that perfectionist voice in the back of my head yelling at me that people will get on my ass. i doubt that will happen, but now i'm curious as to how other people feel

I need bat blob in my life idc if he’s a Eldritch being or if his cape makes him like that. I need big white eye, good dad, ear-montional bat in my life

Has anyone ever tried going for the Persona approach of a character that is labled with a Major Arcana, with their personality being based off it?

I'm trying to do the same, but I want to know some traits people think are a given for ceirtain Arcanas.

I really love the game Stardew Valley. But I haven't found any fics for it(minus a horror fic that I lost 😭😭). I love to see how people think of different things that could happen in the world. And how they do the relationships between the characters (since everyone has different ways of seeing them). So if anyone has recommendations(preferably on Ao3) I would love to read them. Doesn't matter what the topic or how long they are. Thank you very very much in advance!!!

Hi!!! So I am new to the fanfic universe and I feel like I opened my life to a world that I wish I found sooner!! Apparently Marvel is the most popular fandom that has the most fanfics which is amazing because my current hyperfixation is MCU and I’m rewatching all the movies.

BUT I love a good OC romance fic and I usually read M/F but I’m honestly open to anything so what are the best fics out there? Like the CLASSICS like I know in the HP fandom the classic fic was Manacled, does MCU have any of those?

Thank youuu❤️❤️

I write for niche fandoms, so I’m used to my fics not getting much attention. But, last week, when I published the latest chapter on my long fic, the guest kudos exploded in a day.

I‘ve heard of the bot that randomly gives a handful of kudos, or maybe a lot of people saw my fic that day—so I didn’t think much of it. But, I’ve been getting around 10 guest kudos every day since and it’s starting to get a little ridiculous. This isn’t happening to any of my other fics either, just this one.

Will it ever stop, or is it stuck on some glitch that will repeat indefinitely?

I assume many people have already asked the same question on this subreddit, but I think I have a specific case.

I have a setting where two characters have the same goal and have to get through certain challenges to achieve it. Of course, during this process they fall in love and stuff.

The thing is - I really want to portray internal homophobia in the best way possible. My only question is… how? How should a character act with someone he’s romantically interested in if he has internalized homophobia? What should he think of? What his internal monologue should look like? What’s the right way out of it and figuring things out?

I’d really appreciate your help

I think I'm too in my head about this one, so turning to the internet for guidance. How quickly would you want/expect an epilogue to be posted after the final chapter? Sooner or along the same schedule the rest of the fic has been posted?

Edit: thanks everyone! I'll probably post the final chapter today and the epilogue tomorrow as a compromise. (Also I want to mark the fic as complete already haha)

ive noticed this thing in some fics on both ao3 and wattpad (In my defense of wattpad some old fandoms I like have no fixs in ao3 but have some on wattpad) sometime even tumblr. Basically they tag a ship but they mena it in a friendship way even if they are using the romantic tag. in the end it turns out they are shipping one of the characters with an oc or reader.

so Im just wondering has anybody else encountered this? Cause in almost any fandom Im in I always see this.

Hi everyone!

I'm trying to find a Brazilian Wattpad fanfiction that I read between 2021 and 2023, but I think the author deleted it or changed their username. I'm hoping someone here might recognize it.

Here are the details I remember:

- It was written in Portuguese.

- The original story was Draken × Reader (Y/N).

- Later, I believe the author deleted it and rewrote the story as Baji × Reader, keeping almost the same universe and characters.

- It had over 100 chapters.

Some very specific details:

- The reader's father was named Daisuke.

- At first, Daisuke seemed like an ordinary businessman, but later it was revealed that he had ties to the criminal underworld.

- A character named Akira secretly worked for the mafia and eventually ended up dating Daisuke.

- There was an original character (OC) named Hakkey (or Hakkei/Hakey—I'm not sure about the spelling). He was basically the reader's adopted brother and was dating Hanma.

- In the Draken version, the reader almost ended up with Baji, but the author kept Baji's canon death because she wanted the main couple to remain Draken × Reader.

- In the Baji version, I think the story was rewritten so that Hakkey died instead of Baji.

- The story used multiple POVs (Reader, Draken, and other characters).

- The plot eventually became heavily focused on the mafia.

I also remember that the same author wrote other Tokyo Revengers fanfics, including one about the Haitani brothers (Ran and Rindou), and possibly fanfics for other anime as well.

Does anyone remember this author or these stories? Even the author's old username or any archived copy would be incredibly helpful.

Thank you so much!

I'm looking for a fanfic where Naruto is raised by Mei Terumi in Kirigakure, trained by Zabuza, and has a harem with female Haku and Fu. In this fanfic, the Shinigami grants him demonic powers, and Minato and Kushina are still alive and have other children with the power of the Nine-Tails. If you manage to find it, I would be incredibly grateful, as I've been feeling nostalgic and want to reread it.