#fic writing

[rekas-bitches]

I love, love, LOVE it when I can tell a fic author has integrated their specialized knowledge in a fic. I was reading a fic that at some point included the character going to visit an art therapist, and it's so clear that the author is an art therapist themself, and the details included are just immaculate and I love it. I've previously read about a character doing fencing for no other reason than the author clearly wanting to write a sport they understood. A character being given a hyperfixation on bugs just so the author can infodump themselves.

I eat it up every time, it brings such a smile to my face

[wishingforatypewriter]

Me to my draft: You are a oneshot.

The draft: Wrong. I am the pilot chapter of a multichapter fic that you do not have the bandwidth to take on, but will haunt your every waking thought anyway.

[morallygreyintrovert]

I love when I’m reading a fic and it’s evident that the author has a favourite word/phrase/metaphor they like to use because it’s used again and again.

As a writer, I worry that people will find it annoying when I do this but as a reader I find it so endearing, it’s like walking into someone’s bedroom and its immediately obvious what they’re favourite colour is.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

[dancelikeanarchitect]

Still waiting for that mallet strike, idk about y’all

people might think creating OC lore involves a lot of thinking & planning, but in my personal experience, OC development is more like a divine vision from a god slamming you over the head with a mallet while ur doing the fuckin dishes or folding laundry

[chodzacaparodia]

It's frustrating that you can come up with the plot of an entire fic in just a few seconds, but writing it all down can take anywhere from never to forever.

[euoniatz]

okay, look, since ai debates keep popping up everywhere, i thought i might as well throw my input into the mix as someone who has used chatgpt and really fucking regrets it.

first off, i understand that people can struggle to produce works (art, writings, etc.) in this society that can at times make you feel like you're only worth something if you're spitting out 5 masterpieces a month. +especially if you're neurodivergent like me.

that's how it started for me - as a tool that could assist me when my adhd paralysed my ability to create when my motivation was finally there. i wanted structure, and thought that ai could help me outline my works so i could just get straight to writing next time.

but, it never ends there. because at some point it takes over, and you start to compare your own skill to that of a computer. or at least i did. in the beginning it was only outlines, then i wanted to brainstorm ideas - ideas i then "needed help" expanding into scenes i then "needed help" planning, and finally, i needed help writing anything at all.

see the pattern?

the more i used ai as a crutch, the more it took over, and the less i knew. truly, comparing myself to a robot became more paralysing to my writing than my adhd ever could. it crippled my ability to create, and i still find myself wondering "if ai could write this even better than i can, what's the point in me at all?"

i never did and i never will publish anything that ai wrote for me, because all i did was have ideas that i was too insecure to write, which i won't take credit for. i lost my confidence in my writing, and i still have not recovered, months later. writing was already hard, and i managed to make it way fucking harder for myself.

there are no shortcuts to being a good writer.

you might think there are. you might think that ai is helping you. it might feel like it for a really long time. but i promise you - it's not going to last. and you are going to be kicking yourself when the time comes where you are forced to live without that crutch.

it will ruin the potential you already have, set you back ages in your development. it is not worth it.

and to be clear - if your goal is to be able to write 5 novel-length stories a month, you are not going to achieve that by having a robot do it for you. if you, like i did, felt like you have to write to please someone other than yourself i suggest you take a second to find what made you want to write in the first place. that pure motivation and passion is what is going to make you great, not some artificial, soulless computer.

[vivsinkpot]

How to Structure a Oneshot That Hits Like a Thunderclap

“A good oneshot is a single breath—sharp in, slow out.”

A oneshot isn’t just a short story. It’s a moment, a mood, a slice of intimacy that wouldn’t survive being stretched into a full-length fic. Here’s how to make it count.

Pick One Core Emotion

Build the whole thing around a single feeling. Obsession. Longing. Regret. Euphoria. Grief.

If a full-length fic is a symphony, your oneshot is a single piano note.

Ask: What should the reader feel when they finish?

Ex: “This oneshot is about the moment someone realizes they’ve already fallen in love.”

Limit the Timeline

Don’t span days. Or even hours, if you can help it. The strongest oneshots focus on a single scene or moment.

A kiss in a hallway.

A final goodbye at dawn.

A confession said too late.

Tight time = tight tension.

Start Late, End Early

Drop us into the scene already in motion—no lengthy set-up. And leave us just after the climax, not long after.

Don’t: “They met three years ago and…”

Do: “It’s raining the night he finally says it.”

Your oneshot should feel like eavesdropping on something private.

Structure Like This

ACT I: Setup (15–25%)

Who are we with? Where are we? What’s simmering under the surface?

ACT II: The Shift (50–70%)

Something changes. A kiss. A fight. A confession. A memory.

The mood deepens or flips—this is your emotional peak.

ACT III: The Fallout (15–25%)

How does it end? A single line. A final look. A choice not made.

Leave a lingering echo, not an epilogue.

Let Style Do the Heavy Lifting

A oneshot gives you space to lean into voice, imagery, and metaphor. Write like it’s the last thing you’ll ever write.

“He says her name like it’s a prayer, but the gods stopped listening hours ago.”

Mood. Matters.

[fallenangeloflight]

Headcanons and ideas that will never turn into full stories!

Probably. I have so many. Might make a poll idk.

[melodicwriter]

When you read your fic back and read a line so fire it makes you

[robinminustherichard]

If you are so inclined, I think it would also be interesting if you put your answer and age in the tags. My habits have definitely changed--but I would say I give kudos to any fic/chapter I finish; a.k.a if I see the kudos button, its getting kudos, and I am in my early 30s

[phoenixcatch7]

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?

[sokkas-fan-lawyer]

This is hilarious but also so helpful for the distinctions between the categories.

If your fic is 1000 words long, you can’t tag it slow burn. It’s not slow burn. That is a matchstick. And this is my personal bias here but if those motherfuckers you’re writing experience significant forward momentum in their relationship in under 5k words, then that is just a regular old burn. Slow burn should be borderline intolerable and a mistake to start reading at 2 in the morning.

[rochnariel]

There's something incredibly refreshing about writing from Murderbot's POV because normally when I can't remember a word I want to use or can only get close, I spend the next hour looking it up and still can't find it and get annoyed.

With Murderbot, after 10 minutes I remember that it has shitty educational modules and wouldn't know the word either so fuck it.

[frownyalfred]

Okay, another little lesson for fic writers since I see it come up sometimes in fics: wine in restaurants.

When you buy a bottle of wine in a (nicer) restaurant, generally (please note my emphasis there, this is a generalization for most restaurants, but not all restaurants, especially non-US ones) you may see a waiter do a few things when they bring you the bottle.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it

The waiter uncorks the bottle in order to serve it

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle

The waiter pours a small portion of the wine (barely a splash) and waits for the person who ordered it to taste it

The waiter then pours glasses for everyone else at the table, and then returns to fill up the initial taster's glass

Now, you might be thinking -- that's all pretty obvious, right? They're bringing you what you ordered, making sure you liked it, and then pouring it for the group. Wrong. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it so that they can inspect the label and vintage and make sure it's the bottle they actually ordered off the menu

The waiter uncorks the bottle so that the table can see it was unopened before this moment (i.e., not another wine they poured into an empty bottle) and well-sealed

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle so that they can inspect the label on the cork and determine if it matches up; they can also smell/feel the cork to see if there is any dergradation or mold that might impact the wine itself

The waiter pours a small portion for the person who ordered to taste NOT to see if they liked it -- that's a common misconception. Yes, sometimes when house wine is served by the glass, waiters will pour a portion for people to taste and agree to. But when you order a bottle, the taste isn't for approval -- you've already bought the bottle at this point! You don't get to refuse it if you don't like it. Rather, the tasting is to determine if the wine is "corked", a term that refers to when a wine is contaminated by TCA, a chemical compound that causes a specific taste/flavor. TCA can be caused by mold in corks, and is one of the only reasons you can (generally) refuse a bottle of wine you have already purchased. Most people can taste or smell TCA if they are trained for it; other people might drink the wine for a few minutes before noticing a damp, basement-like smell on the aftertaste. Once you've tasted it, you'll remember it. That first sip is your opportunity to take one for the table and save them from a possibly corked bottle of wine, which is absolutely no fun.

If you've sipped the wine (I generally smell it, I've found it's easier to smell than taste) and determined that it is safe, you then nod to your waiter. The waiter will then pour glasses for everyone else at the table. If the wine is corked, you would refuse the bottle and ask the waiter for a new bottle. If there is no new bottle, you'll either get a refund or they'll ask you to choose another option on their wine list. A good restaurant will understand that corked bottles happen randomly, and will leap at the opportunity to replace it; a bad restaurant or a restaurant with poor training will sometimes try to argue with you about whether or not it's corked. Again, it can be a subtle, subjective taste, so proceed carefully.

In restaurants, this process can happen very quickly! It's elegant and practiced. The waiter will generally uncork the bottle without setting the bottle down or bracing it against themselves. They will remove the cork without breaking it, and they will pour the wine without dripping it down the label or on the table.