Lilith (lilithilien) wrote in eskimo_kiss, @ 2010-04-19 23:16:00 |
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Current mood: | determined |
Current music: | Tom McRae - Can't Find You |
Entry tags: | [tutorials] fanfic |
A Massive Missive on Fandom Foibles
CRAZYSKATES! We always knew the Eskimos were an insanely talented bunch, but you're wowing us even more than we expected. Every day, fabulous new shinies are showing up -- new fics, new vids, new icons and illustrations! You're making it hard to keep up and I LOVE IT!! (Honestly, you don't know how much I love it!! When I got addicted to AWZ there was exactly ONE fic in English. ONE. And a lot of vids that did nothing more than compile kisses/sex scenes. Everything was truly DIY, which has its own rewards, but can be frustrating too. This little fandom's grown up and I'm so proud of it!)
From reading the friending meme and your posts in IJ, it seems like a lot of you are entering fandom for the first time. That's brilliant! It can be the most amazing place, where you'll make connections and find kindred spirits and form some of the richest friendships you can imagine. At the same time, it can be daunting when you start out. We thought that it might be useful to share some of the things that we've muddled through over the years. Nobody says you've got to do things like this -- one of the beautiful things about fandom is that it's wildly diverse -- but following some simple guidelines might help your works reach a wider audience.
(Note: This will necessarily be fic-focused, since that's always been my niche; I never felt inspired to vid until AWZ came along. I'm hoping to convince Shelly to put together some vidding tips for us soon. And if anybody else wants to take on vidding/graphics questions, please feel free to jump in!)
Step 1: Writing
So you've got a brilliant plot bunny nibbling at your brain. CONGRATS! As you're writing, you might want to check out some of these great fandom resources -- I've got them bookmarked and return to them often:
Big Style Post O'Doom: One of my favourite style posts, Push covers just about everything in a matter-of-fact way.
Making the Talking Sound Like Talking: With Buffy examples FTW.
Blending Action and Dialogue: All of Gabe's writing tips are worth a read, but this is my favourite.
Minotaur's Sex Tips for Slash Writers: Essential reading for smut writers, if only to put an end to that "1-finger-2-finger-insert-penis" routine.
Narrative Point of View: Whose story are you telling?
Faithwood's Beginner's Guide to Fanfiction: Easy-to-use guide for some of the common questions; also some very good resource lists.
Although not fandom-specific, Building Your Own World and Creating Great Characters are also worth a read. The devil's in the details, and these tips can help you make that devil work for you.
Finally, if your discipline is lacking, you'll need Write Or Die: A vital element in every writer's Box of Woe.
Step 2: Beta
(Vidders use betas too, but I am so unqualified to speak to that. Maybe Shelly can take over that part of the conversation, after the moving madness.)
You've written the story -- it's ready to go, right? Unfortunately, no -- writing is just the beginning. An important stage of getting your story ready for the world is having it betaed. A good beta reader will find your typos, plotholes, and much more. And they've become such a given in fandom that many people (including myself) rarely bother to read a story of any length that's unbetaed. If the writer can't be bothered to take that step to improve the story, then why should readers bother to read?
If you don't have a beta reader, don't panic -- they're usually not terribly hard to find. Writers often make a post to their journal with a few details about their story, asking if anyone can help, and generally someone is eager to do so. You might try a few beta readers out until you find someone you're comfortable with, but a good beta will give you the critiques you need to have confidence as you share your writing with the world.
Step 3: Posting
Got your story or your vid or your artwork done? Check! Betaed and revised? Check! Now it's time to post! Wheeee!
But don't just plop the whole thing into your journal and call it a day. Certain standards have arisen in fandom -- they're pretty easy to follow and they'll go a long way in making you look like you're a serious writer who deserves to be read.
First, you need a header. They usually look something like this:
Title:
Characters:
Rating:
Summary:
Warnings/Spoilers:
Author's Notes:
Title and characters should be self-explanatory. The rating standard varies -- some people use the MPAA system for rating films in the U.S. (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17); others use a simple "Gen/Teen/Mature/Explicit" system. Whatever you prefer, it's considered proper to give some indication of which category your fic falls into. The same goes for warnings. Readers going into a fic for cuddly schmoop don't appreciate being surprised by a graphic fisting scene; likewise, if I'm looking for some pain in a hardcore BDSM scene and it suddenly veers into MPREG and labour pains, I'm going to be miffed. Warnings help people choose what they're getting into, and should be viewed as an enticement as much as a "warning."
(NB: Please don't warn for M/M sex in a slash fic. The list of characters should tell you that.)
Now we come to summaries, which are so very important in presenting your fanwork. Professional authors have synopses to sell their books; fanworks creators do the same thing by writing compelling summaries. These might explain the setting that you're trying to capture in your painting, or the scene that inspired the fanvid, or they might be a single line of dialogue from the story. Take a look at Guide to Writing Fic Summaries for some really invaluable tips on how to sell your piece.
Author's/artist's notes are another place you can sell your story. You might relate what inspired you to use this particular song. You might express your dismay that you started as a drabble but your muses kept talking and now you have a 5000 word character study. You might have a heartfelt comment about a character who's touched you. Many people also use this space to thank their beta and anybody else who contributed to the work. Like a book dedication, it can be very personal -- these can be the most engaging.
(Too many people use this space to make apologies for not giving a damn. If you haven't betaed your story or vid, if you know it's out of character ("OOC") but haven't bothered to fix it (unless it's a crack fic), if it's chapter 1/? and you don't know where you're headed and just posting for comments to tell you to keep going, if you say something like "this story sucks but I thought I'd post it anyway" -- then your story is not ready to post!)
In your journal, the header will usually be the only thing that the reader sees as they scroll through their friends' list. It's good journal etiquette to put your longer posts and pictures behind a cut. (See info on the lj-cut tag here.)
After the cut tag, you'll paste your fic. The fandom standard is simply to separate your paragraphs with a single line. Don't post your fic in huge blocks of text or with indented paragraphs; these are hard to read online. Ditto with CAPSLOCK (unless you're on a capslock comm), blocks of italics, or any other special characters.
You can fit quite a lot on a single IJ post (upwards of 10,000 words). But if you go over that, you'll need to post your story in chunks. Don't make it hard for people to read straight through your story -- handy links leading from one part to the next will keep them "turning the pages." (See this post if you're not familiar with creating links.) Basically, you'll just need to post part 2 (or part 3, or whatever the succeeding part of the story is) and then go back to the previously section and edit in the link.
Step 4: Comments & Feedback
Ah, now we come to one of the thorniest issues in fandom: feedback, and what kinds are expected and appropriate. I'm going to shift to the audience POV for just a second. Some people comment on everything they read, some only when they read something exceptional, some not at all. Some give brief comments of praise, others go into detail about what they like, some get down and dirty about what they don't like. I cannot speak for anyone else here, but my personal feeling is that feedback is really the only reward that creators get for fanworks, so give it as freely as you can. But if there's something that might be controversial, a critique that you personally wouldn't feel comfortable receiving publicly, you might consider sending it in a private message unless the creator's specifically asked for constructive criticism. And even then, keep it constructive. Helping someone improve their fanworks means there'll be more better shinies in the future.
As a creator, you want comments (to varying degrees, of course, but I defy anyone to say that they only post fanworks for themselves and don't get the tiniest rush from the response). The trick is to get your stories read. Our fandom is a tiny wee fandom, but there are still some places where you'll want to put your stuff: