Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2021-01-05 04:29 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2021-01-05 04:29 pm
[ SECRET POST #5114 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5114 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #732.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 01:25 am (UTC)(link)There are tons of tropes in published fiction. How readily apparent they are depends on what genre you're reading and what is selling this hot second. Romance, for instance, is chock full of tropes. YA is I guess cycling back to vampires?? (God help us.)
The thing about fanfiction as a genre is the tropes tend to jump from fandom to fandom until you see them everywhere. AUs/Crossovers/ABO/CrackyTropeFicslikeFakeDatingorOnlyOneBed
And tropes aren't bad. They've never been bad! Like, I think TVTropes has made people think they're bad. You can have the trope-ist story to trope and as long as it has engaging characters and an fanciful setting it will sell. See, Star Wars, Alan Dean Foster's Journey of the Catechist, Harry Potter, Avatar; The Last Airbender, and the Expendables. But if you rely on tropes to push the story without the great characters and fun setting then it's going to be a slog. (I won't name names, b/c I'm not mean.)
And as someone noted up thread, voice, pacing, structure, characterization, world building, those are things editors point out. And yeah, so much fanfic is unedited b/c it's for fun. And that's okay!
What should be sad is the amount of indie authors out there who are writing and publishing works not even hitting the bar of decent fanfic who need to get editors, development editors specifically. And some can't afford it, and there are some who simply don't WANT TO. Good authors write, great authors EDIT.
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Catch 22.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 02:01 am (UTC)(link)Yeep. It's a crap shoot if you're going to hit with your book at just the right time. I've seen authors go "I watched publisher's marketplace and saw this specific trend so I banged out my book and queried just then!"
Me: "I wish my brain worked like that."
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Nope.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 02:15 am (UTC)(link)At 25, I didn't even have an original idea or JUST had gotten an original idea. (Does math) No. I got my original idea at like 28? I've switched computers since and Word is shitty about keeping the dates on the word files right.
With agents having manuscript wish lists too, I think it just adds to the pressure of having the exact RIGHT thing as a debut. I don't even want to look anymore. Nope. I'll come up with my ideas, query, if I'm rejected, I'll publish elsewhere. This is fine. -watches world burn down-
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I had a ton of original ideas, but none of them were really...marketable (at least, I didn't think so, back then). I mean - same-sex leads in a sci-fi or fantasy world where gender norms are queered all over the place and sometimes there is kinky sex?
Not high on the list of things people wanted to market in the early 90s.
When i first got into fanfic, I wrote for a year, several thousand words every three or four days, posting every week, on one story. I can't even come *close* to that output now. It's so depressing.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 02:43 am (UTC)(link)Oh yeah, the 90s were a majorly different time. Having same sex stuff in SFF is only sort of, and I do mean, sort of, slide it in under the radar most the time, getting published. Chalker was writing weird stuff back in the late 80s but he was the exception! (And I don't think it was that bad even. But there was alien sex in it. It was kind of like reading Anne Rice and going "oh, that's it, I was expecting... more.")
CoolCurryBooks keeps a database about scifi/fantasy books WITH Queer relationships. https://queersff.theillustratedpage.net/
Her tumblr had books in SFF by women and POC too.
Now, it feels to a slight extent if you are Queer and aren't producing Queer content, you can feel pressured to do so/guilty if you don't due to OwnVoices being so pushed in the writing community.
I try not to think about word counts at all. That's another thing that bothers me about the writing community in general. A huge push on word count updates to say you've written so many words, and not say, "I spent the day outlining my story, developing my world, figuring out my character's hobbies" updates. Because you have to come up and flesh out the idea too, that's part of writing! And it's work, so if your energy is being taken up by other things, it's okay you can't write that much anymore.
-hugs- Hey, I spent today working on book covers. Sometimes, the energy just goes to other parts of your life, and that's fine! Even adding a sentence is progress. Or going "this needs editing!"
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And thanks for the link! It's interesting to see what's going on out there.
I absolutely love CJ Cherryh, and she is in a f/f 'ship with another writer, and has had gay characters in her books. But man, it was always so buried and low-key and never any sexyfuntimes. Disappointing.
It does, I guess...I dunno. I knew I was into boys *and* girls, but didn't have a word for it for a long time, and certainly didn't have a community for it until my mid-twenties. But I was always *writing* bi or gay or just queer characters - it was just so much more interesting and fun, to me, than plain old boring m/f blah blah.
Oh, I don't care about word counts. It was just so *awesome*. I would be all 'okay, next part needs to be at my beta by Thursday so I can post on Saturday, lets get this done!' and the words would just come pouring out.
Now I have ideas, and stuff I want to write, but I just can't seem to get the words to flow as well. I still hit a good, solid writing stride sometimes, and that's awesome, but it's so frustrating that I used to write two or three stories *at a time*, and now one takes all I got.
*sigh*
Oh, well.
Do you do book cover art, or are you designing them for an artist to make? Oh, HA - editing! I do tend to (way too often) re-read what i've got and then poke and edit and futz around, I need to get out of that habit, it takes up way too much time.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 03:31 am (UTC)(link)-big hugs- I understand. I'm that way right now too especially on original things. I end up writing a LOT of notes. Which is honestly really useful b/c once I hit that writing streak I can read the notes and get a lot done.
Right now, due to lack of funds, I'm a one woman show on my books. I do the covers and the interior formatting. (Getting it wrong can be very silly.) I try to keep my covers simple-ish. A lot of the people who DO these character art covers make my eyes cross. I can't find stock art photos that really represent the characters in my books. (I'm fussy.) Because I'm going to start posting stuff to RR and Wattpad to drum up readers, I needed to redo/rebrand one set of books and I haven't touched them in at least 9 months. So, "how did I have that set up. Sigh."
I might have to pull the titles/author name off the covers for Wattpad/RR depending on how BIG the picture is in the lists. That at least is simple enough. It's AMAZON that's a pain in the patootey. PDFs. GiMP does NOT like saving PDFs.
The best way to STOP editing is.. to when you're about to stop writing give yourself a paragraph summary of what comes next, that way you don't have to reread the entire thing next time you sit down to write! I edit when I'm tired/anxious and reading my old stuff to self-soothe. "Why is that spelled wrong? Good thing I haven't posted this!"
Course, I have paragraph outlines at times too to refer to, so, read the last scene I wrote, check the outline, hope I can get in the groove. Tie myself to my chair with the sash of my bathrobe. :P
I dunno if that will help or not. Everyone is different.
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A lot of the time, especially if I haven't messed with something in a while, I go back and re-read to get into the 'voice' of that character/story, you know? I've found if I don't re-read at least *some*, i'll start writing in a tone that's too different than what went before.
I've never done outlines of what I write - which could be a bad thing, I guess - but I generally always know where/how I want it all to *end*. I just have to get there.
I get sidetracked into research a lot, but I also really can't write with placeholders at all, like, 'A picked up the (really old book about gods) and blah blah.....', no, I need to have an idea about what A is holding and looking at, that's gonna inform how I write about it.
I really *like* research, but it can be a time-suck.
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 03:53 am (UTC)(link)The fun part is looking at covers and seeing different artists using the SAME stock photos. It's hysterical.
Oh yeah, I can't write place holders either! Like, to save time you're supposed to be all parenthesis and google this later and I'm like "nah, I can google it now." I was working on Rodeo's Run and I had it planned out and went... "wait... how far can a horse go in a day?" And it didn't completely change the story but it definitely was like "Oh, this is going to take more time than I expected." To be fair, I got to add in a cool convo between the crazy scientist guy and his buddy the cowboy. "Stop thinking of horses like machines!"
Coming back to something if you haven't worked on it in a while, you really do need to reread from the beginning. I'm just weird I think, I outline/tell the story in my head before I fall asleep, then I'll tell my editor, then I'll make notes, then I'll actually write it sometime later. The planning gets to be a bit much.
Research is a crazy time suck. That's why when I get too far into research for a fanfiction story, I tend to reorient myself "can this be original? Yes. why isn't it? Okay... put it into an original folder." Sometimes, I go with similar settings, like both witch stories are currently in England, just to SAVE ON RESEARCH. But it doesn't always work.
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The covers are just so *weird*. I would be really disappointed if a cover like that were slapped on something I wrote.
Also, of the three books I downloaded, the first two I've poked at were really just...not attention grabbing. At all. *sigh*
Research can be *so* time-consuming, but I love it so much. And it really helps, for me at least, to know what I can and can't write (like how far a horse can go in a day), and what the character is seeing/hearing/smelling. That's important, for me at least.
Homg, I must to bed. It's been fun chatting about all this! :D
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(Anonymous) 2021-01-06 04:12 am (UTC)(link)Yes, many free ebooks are that way, sadly.
I like putting limitations/rules onto things. That way things aren't crazy all of a sudden. I must have a frame of reference. LOL
It has been fun chatting with you! Get some rest. See you around! :D