No.342
Alrighty! To start us off here are various links that I think are/could be helpful in regards to writing fic. If you've got other suggestions/helpful things, by all means, post them!
>The basicshttps://eznguide.neocities.org/This is a general beginner's guide. Don't let the MLP focus put you off, near everything it covers can (and should) be applied to other types of fan work. Greatly recommend if you're totally new.
>Punctuationhttp://theeditorsblog.net/2010/12/08/punctuation-in-dialogue/https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/
>Smuthttps://retroactivebakeries.tumblr.com/post/158905766411/writing-smut-likeThis is extremely helpful. While the ranking is obviously subjective, I generally agree with it and think it's good to have at hand if you're writing and feel like you're on the verge of using absolutely off-the-wall euphemisms for penis.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9661958/1/The-Ultimate-Guide-to-Writing-Smut-FicI personally haven't looked all that deep into this. It does seem to offer up a lot of synonyms/varying descriptions you could use, though, so maybe it's alright?
>Varioushttps://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/18/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/This is a great link. While it may present itself as something for Sci-fi writers, quite a lot of the terms/examples cover things that can occur in a whole range of genres/fics, especially ones written by newer writers. I encourage a peek into this.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TerribleWritingAdviceTWA covers a wide range of tropes/topics with a comedic slant. Generally solid advice and enjoyable enough to watch IMO.
https://www.thesaurus.com/Woo, synonyms!
http://theeditorsblog.net/fularchives/A site filled to the brim with various writing/editing related blog posts.
>Sites for viewing/posting contenthttps://archiveofourown.org/https://www.fanfiction.net/https://www.wattpad.com/https://www.royalroad.com/welcome
>Other Writing Communitieshttps://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/ No.343
>>342Nona thank you so much ily!!! I was hesitant to make this thread since I didn't have any resources or tips to share so I'm eternally grateful that you made this post
No.344
>>342Thank you so much for that MLP link! I needed a thorough overview like that.
I have no links to give, but one thing I've discovered in my, admittedly mediocre writing, is that having a bunch subject-focused dictionaries around. For example I have pdfs of Military dictionaries and witchcraft dictionaries so I can find the terms I'm looking for in fields I'm not an expert in.
No.346
>>342Thanks a lot for the resources anon! I went back and reread some of my fics after reading that mlp guide and I noticed
so many glaring issues with my writing. The grammar was fucked, the paragraph spacing was fucked, you couldn't even tell which character was saying which line. I hadn't even noticed how borderline unreadable my writing was lol.
Weirdly enough, I still do get kudos on those old fics somehow. So to any of the anons who are nervous about putting their work out there, don't be. No matter how awful you think your writing is, as long as you're passionate about what you're writing, there will always be someone who is willing to read it ;)
No.347
Yw to all the other nonnies itt! I'm very happy Ezn's guide was so helpful. I'll also post this site link;
https://brians.wsu.edu/common-errors/It covers a ton of errors/misuses that can be made when spelling or using common phrases. The author's American so there'll be some obvious differences but I do think it could still be helpful even if you're EU/AUS/Etc. I'd definitely consider a look into this, ESL or otherwise.
Affect/Effect still fucks me up lol No.417
Thanks nonnies for the thread. It's helped me improve my writing a bit already. I hope kind anons keep sharing resources! I'll drop some too if I find them.
>>342EZN's guide is a good starter if you're wanting to write conscientiously. Great tip about pacing, which has been one of my biggest struggles.
>As you can see, the simple act of making one’s sentences and paragraphs shorter can create an urgency not present in more long-winded writing, and more long-winded writing can be relaxing in a way that tiny sentences just can’t. You can use these simple techniques to great effect in pacing different scenes in your writing appropriately – choppy writing with few transitions is good for an action scene or a tense situation, whereas slower sentences full of clauses and commas are great for description, introspection, exposition and downtime between high-intensity scenes.The reminder to "show, not tell" is probably the most important.
No.451
>>447GIRL! I ran to my documents and half if not all are structured like what you mentioned, pic rel something I was working on last weekend, the story is garbage and the fujo I was writing it for quit being a fujo and we don't talk anymore so I ditched it.
I can't for the life of me not alternate between languages because one has more flow and rhythm, more emotions and hard hitting insults, the other is easy to write and pick words from since it's not vocabulary heavy and the format won't get messed up because the apps are all in English anyways. I do agree that it slows down writing fics tremendously and once you finally finish and translate to the other language it just doesn't feel the same and you've wasted even more time with the translation.
_:(´ཀ`」 ∠):_
What I'm doing is forcing myself to only write in English no matter how badly the story I'm writing sounds to English speakers, I've purchased an English-English dictionary from local shop but I recommend you download one online, PDF search ability will be more handy than flipping pages, plus it'll be free.
I'm hoping with doing this my writings will improve and finally break the ESL curse. Only issue is when wiring in English word count doesn't even go past 500 because there isn't much ways to be descriptive without repeating same phrases, have you experienced this issue as well?
No.453
>>451Yes this is exactly what I meant,
and when I get stuck I tend to translate all I have constructed up to that point in order to feel a lil bit less unproductive and i end up wasting even more of my time as a result lol
>when writing in English word count doesn't even go past 500 because there isn't much ways to be descriptive without repeating same phrasesOh wow, that happens to me too a bit, I find it difficult to write long pieces, I always assumed it was simply because I tend to prefer to be more direct and simple with descriptive prose but it makes sense that language differences have something to do with that as well.
My first language is Spanish and a lot of the vocabulary tends to be composed of longer words or whole sentences that English can easily shorten in a few words to convey the same meaning.
Good luck with your endeavors noni! I enjoyed the little bit you shared here. Let's do our best to beat the ESL curse.
No.471
rest in pieces old postHere are some tools that you can use to help you proofread/clean up your story!
>https://www.grammarly.com/Probably the most popular, you can paste your fic into this and it'll catch misspellings and offer general sentence formatting suggestions. It isn't perfect, however, so don't take every single suggestion as gospel. If you like something stylistically that it paints as an error, you don't necessarily have to change it!
>https://quillbot.com/grammar-checkAnother tool in a similar vein as Grammarly. I personally haven't used this one all that much, but it looks decent. Just as above, use it as it suits you. Free ver should be fine for both this and Gram, I'm pretty sure.
>https://www.expresso-app.org/An interesting one! This isn't for finding errors specifically, but it'll analyze your writing and drop a lot of neat metric insights. It can let you see phrases you may have used more often than you may like, offer up synonyms for variety, stuff like that. I highly suggest taking it for a spin yourself since I don't think this post'll do it justice.
No.578
Is there an android app that bothers you like Duolingo until you spend a daily 10-120mins actively writing? I found what seems to be one for apple, but I don't have an iphone. I know there's discord bots you can program but I don't want the distraction of discord channels on screen.
No.579
>>578i use an alarm that activates an hour to 30 minutes before writing that helps me "prepare" for the flow i'm about to enter. like a permission-giving signal that allows myself to put everything aside and just focus on my story for however long.
No.580
>>579Going by my track record with getting up with an alarm on days off, just an alarm isn't enough to guilt me into doing something. I need a pestering power that bullies me if I stop.
No.581
>>578>>580i don’t use android, so this i don’t know if this would work, but is it possible to use some sort of parental control app to lock you out of the apps you spend the most time on? so that way you can’t use social media, the browser, games etc for a certain time, and get writing done in the meantime.
No.653
I've been thinking about makinc a story since a very long time with my OCs. My art is pretty bad and I stopped practicing a few years ago because of circumstances so I want to write it in my first language instead but now I realize I have too many ideas so the story could potentially be really long, do you think I should just write a summary to make things consistent and then write the scenes that interest me the most and that seem the most important to me and then I fill the gaps little by little? Or should I stick to writing chapter 1, then chapter 2, etc? It's just a project for fun tbh I don't plan on publishing it, I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable showing it to my friends so it's not like I'd have a deadline to take into account or anything. I want it to be a urban fantasy story with mostly female characters but I plan to have a gay recurring character whose future love interest would be very important but show up late for plot related reasons. It's gonna be mostly something about stuff I like in stories all compiled in my own story.
No.655
>>654If you're going for a longer fic I'd suggest considering it in a "three act scruture." What is your beginning, middle, and end? Once you have that you can begin making a skeleton outline of all the steps the characters need to do to get to those beats.
For short fics I usually just look at two characters canon interactions and pick something to expand on. I'm a big fan of writing extended scenes, alternate canon,and post canon. They fun for short fics and you have a good base to build off of.
No.657
>>655Extending scenes is great advice actually! I didn't think about it. Thank you nona. It helps a ton especially if you're not used to writing yourself.
No.658
>>657Yeah I thought they were a good starting point when I was tipping my toes into writing and they're still some of the most fun things to write imo.
Good luck with your writing nonna!
No.702
You know how to learn to draw, the best way is to start drawing still life from observation and work through fundamentals, construction etc? Cause if you just draw from imagination without learning, it still looks like shit. Is there any system like that in drawing for improving writing? Cause reading good literature doesn't automatically rub off on my writing, and when I try to write my own scenes they are capital S shit. They are Shit.
No.703
>>702>They are Shit.Do you understand why they are Shit or are you just being hard on yourself? What helps me with prose is not only reading "good" literature, but sometimes engaging with popular genre fiction that I know is mid/bad because it's easier to critique another person's work. For as long as I can stand to read I am thinking about why things are written the way they are and how I would write them instead. Borrow or pirate them; you don't even have to finish!
If you are getting your ideas down but don't like how they are written for a reason you can't identify, a common culprit is passive voice.
No.1044
>>342>Smut fic guidesOh wow, I was actually internally debating whether I should include smut in this one fic I'm writing atm, so these should shed some light on that.
Otherwise, I just puke any prose I can. I've been struggling to write anything original tbh, so I feel that mindlessly writing fics from time to time helps me just putting words down.
No.1080
Does anyone have any guides on writing smut?
No.1081
>>1080This is what aspiring gay smut writers would pass around back in the day:
https://www.squidge.org/~minotaur/classic/eroc.html IMO it veers a little too hard into "teh yaois must be realistic!" for me, but it's informative. I hold him in higher regard than other Gay Men With Opinions About Fujoshi because he actually wrote slash fic and entertained Q&As (
https://www.squidge.org/minotaur/mqa/browse.html). He died back in 2009. :c
My personal advice is to read a lot of smut and make note of what gets you going, then go back and examine the prose. For example, with Ao3 it's easy to just pick a tag for any kind of sex you want to study. Go read a bunch of blowjobs in a popular ship you like (or are at least familiar with), then think about why some of them were hotter than the others when it's all just words describing the same act. You could also read original erotica but I will be real I do not give a fuck about reading OCs boinking unless it's incidentally to my taste in lit and I feel like around fujochan we are probably all like this?
No.1082
>>1081Oh interesting, he even has a suggestions tab I'll have to give this a read. Thanks, admittedly I struggle with smut because in general I have a pretty low sex drive. Fluff comes easily, but I want to push myself outside of my comfort level and try something new.
No.1134
>>341I've been reading nothing but manga and tweets for like a year now and I feel like it's seriously fucked up my English language skills, I've never written fanfic before this but I used to write OC stuff as a kid and looking at my current writing and back then is a world of difference. I tried reading some real books but all I have right now are older classics and I end up imitating that old fashioned style while writing which doesn't work for the setting I'm trying to write :/. I have a problem where I can imagine the scene in my mind but I can't put it into words for some reason.
Another issue I have is that writing dialogue for anime/manga characters is super hard especially when the translations aren't great, I know enough Japanese to understand the character's style of speech but expressing it in English is tough, especially since my vocabulary for slang and such isn't great… The pairing I'm writing for bicker with each other a lot but I can't come up with clever insults to use like they do in canon so the dialogue is very dull and repetitive.
No.1135
>>1134>older classics and I end up imitating that old fashioned style while writing which doesn't work for the setting I'm trying to writeSame issue, not specifically the "old timey" style, but I feel like all my dialogue is super stilted and stiff. I'm happy with my descriptors and plots, but any time the ship actually needs to engage in conversation I dread writing it.
No.1163
Anon here from
https://fujochan.org/ot/res/203.html#12099, I might just go the Blue Archive route and make plot relevant female characters cute furry creatures or something. Like Nyanko-sensei kek. Or like Kaneoya Sachiko's art sometimes.
No.1166
>>1135>I feel like all my dialogue is super stilted and stiff.What helps me is literally imagining the characters saying their lines, like hearing their voices (or the voices that I've assigned to them, if it's not voiced) in my imagination. If it sounds awkward and stilted, then I just adjust it until it feels natural and then write that down.
Idk, I usually just visually picture everything I want to write, watch it like a movie, and then write down what I just saw, so maybe my methods don't work for everyone.
No.1180
>>1134>I have a problem where I can imagine the scene in my mind but I can't put it into words for some reasonYes, you can! They will be basic words and simplistic sentences, but that's fine. You can re-write the bit later on. Just getting the structure of the whole thing you're working on is important.
>I know enough Japanese to understand the character's style of speech but expressing it in English is tough, especially since my vocabulary for slang and such isn't great…You're doing the job lazy translators refused to do :3
Honestly, anime translations being so crap at expressing nuance in speech is a plague. I think the English-language audience just doesn't care, so you hardly ever see it addressed. When a translator DOES put in extra effort, like with the official translation of Thunderbolt Fantasy, it really stands out.
For slang, I recommend
https://www.urbandictionary.com and sites like
https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus which help you search for synonyms. Use
https://en.wiktionary.org too.
>The pairing I'm writing for bicker with each other a lot but I can't come up with clever insults to use like they do in canon so the dialogue is very dull and repetitiveExpose yourself to British comedy.
>>1135>I'm happy with my descriptors and plots, but any time the ship actually needs to engage in conversation I dread writing it.Perhaps because there is very little 'meat' to the characters you write in canon? In other words, they were written to be bland in the original? It's fine to go OOC in fanfic - it's called that for a reason.
>>1166>like hearing their voicesYep, that helps a lot!
No.1181
>>1180>Expose yourself to British comedy. As a bong, I stopped finding random overly verbose insults funny in my mid teens. I already did enough of copying that kind of stuff in my fanfic back then and I still cringe over it today. Maybe if you're writing Blackadder fic, but if the canon is Japanese, I would just tell anon to get familiar with Japanese insults or just copy the kind of things they say in canon. In series like Gintama, the character voices are so distinct and there are so many running gags that it's really easy to emulate them. Why not reuse things already said and change them up a bit?
No.1192
>>1191You could post it here with the names swapped or something if you're (reasonably and understandably) nervous about your identity? I'd be happy to beta it for you.
No.1193
>>1191i'll read it for you
No.1194
>>1192>>1193Thanks for the offer that's very kind, but I don't feel comfortable posting on here
I know at least one person on this site hates the fandom it's for.I wanted to vent but also I was wondering if other people have had similar experiences of being "ghosted" by others. Again, first time I'm wondering if it's common and I'm overthinking things.
No.1195
>>1194It happens. I would gently ask her if she's beta'd your work yet. She may have forgotten. If she sidesteps that, then I'd consider it a lost cause and search elsewhere.
who cares what some random nona thinks about your fandom? if she hates it, then oh well. that should have no bearing on whether or not you like it. No.1214
>>1212I personally did start writing in my mother tongue but I only ever wrote original short stories. I don't think I could ever bring myself to write fanfic in my native language without shriveling up and dying of cringe. Even stumbling upon fic that somebody else wrote in my native language is like a punch to the gut, especially if it's nsfw. I wonder if it's like this for any other ESL nonnies…
However, if you don't feel the same way I do, then why not write the fic in your native language? I'm sure fans who speak the same language would be happy to have more stuff to read.
No.1215
>>1212I begun writing in my native language only recently. Or more like, I write my fics in English, and I translate them afterwards. It was weird at first, since I would think and think how do I properly phrase xyz. But, I feel like the process is growing on me! There are moments where I find myself preferring how I formulate it in my native language, since it doesn't have to be 1:1 but so long it captures what I tried to say in the og English version.
I can't bring myself to write an og fic in my native language, less due to cringe, but more so because I've been conditioned by the internet.
>>1214I definitly get it, nonna, nsfw is the line I don't cross when it comes to writing fics back to my native language. Watching some other fic writers do it, though? Now that is something I can been intrigued about, lol.