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[KSuri]

Sarah1281 wrote...

SurelyForth wrote...

Sarah1281 wrote...
That really is impressive. I've played far less given that I'm on console so there's no option for mods or screenshots and I have a very short attention span. Now I'm kind of curious as to just how much time you spend on fanfics...

I think I'm about to embarrass myself here, but I'd say I spend between 15 and 20 hours per chapter (and my average chapter length is ~6,000 words). It's not all writing but I compose quite a bit during downtime at work and during my commute (actually, that's all I do when I commute, so that's 5 hours a week). And I dedicate Saturdays almost exclusively to manhandling my laptop to get words onto a page. Multiply that by 43 (which includes my main fic and the three canon but not included shorts), and that's...a lot of hours.

This is why I called my story the big, stupid timesink for the first few months I was writing it. Because of my own weird writing habits and general mind wonkiness, I've had to be fairly committed to this fic thing.

Mine takes forever as well. I don't know how many hours are involved and I do get distracted sometimes but I usually just set aside two days that, when I get home, I do pretty much nothing but get through my next update. I've got to admit, I will be so glad when it's over as this is - without a doubt - the biggest story I've ever done.

Typicall, for me, it's about 15-30 hours for around 4200 words. I get a lot of distractions from my little girls so it makes it hard to sit down and hold onto a thought for any length of time. Currently my "Muse" is sitting on her big fat Dvia butt eating chocolates and refusing to co-operate so it's taking even longer.

I don't want to think abou the time I spend reading fics, too much time. I have Awakening beckonging to me and I'm trying to ignore it until I finish this one story. Oh sweet siren song of the DA-verse!

[LupusYondergirl]

Ooh, you should play Awakenings. You're missing out on the awesomeness that is Anders!



And I may be an anomaly here... I take maybe a dozen hours a chapter. But that's clock time, not actual writing time. So it would include general web surfing, wandering away from my computer to cook or hang with my roommate, stopping to do homework, etc.

But I type very, very, VERY fast.

[mousestalker]

I don't spend a lot of time typing. I daydream my stories and spend a lot of time doing that, talking to myself in the car and giggling in public. Then I type. Then I reread it and delete the whole thing. Then I type it again. Then I rereread and spot lots of typos. Then I revise. When I finally post, I spot even more typos and mistakes and so revise again.

[Sialater]

I write here and there. Through out the day at work and a couple hours at night. That is, when I'm not distracted by shininess.

[KSuri]

LupusYondergirl wrote...

Ooh, you should play Awakenings. You're missing out on the awesomeness that is Anders!

And I may be an anomaly here... I take maybe a dozen hours a chapter. But that's clock time, not actual writing time. So it would include general web surfing, wandering away from my computer to cook or hang with my roommate, stopping to do homework, etc.
But I type very, very, VERY fast.

I admit that I caved a bit when I first got it....as it was my b-day gift and I was dying to see it so ran through the very beginning with an Orlesian named Oscar. I met Anders and have to say....*cat call*! But, alas, trying to be good and not succumb to too many distractions. I only have around 25 or so people actually waiting for me to add content to my story and I feel terribly guilty for not delivering.

BTW.....I'm really enjoying your story and I did hop to the end to get a fix of Zev smut. I'm horrid....I know, but who can resist? I was talking to my spouse about the differences between Alistair and Zevran in a sexual context. There is a lot of sweet sexiness in regards to what I see written for the Alistairs out there.....but, when it comes to Zevran, fanfic goes wild! lol  I was telling my hubby, 15 years ago I would have been all "Oh isn't that so sweet! He wants to wait and make it all special and stuff." Back when true love was just a dream and youth prevails. Now that I'm older I'm more, "You know and I know what we want. Why are we wasting time talking?" lol Clever, clever DA writers had a bead on a target audience they didn't even know existed. The over 30. married female casual gamer. lmao!!

[SurelyForth]

mousestalker wrote...

I don't spend a lot of time typing. I daydream my stories and spend a lot of time doing that, talking to myself in the car and giggling in public. Then I type. Then I reread it and delete the whole thing. Then I type it again. Then I rereread and spot lots of typos. Then I revise. When I finally post, I spot even more typos and mistakes and so revise again.

So this sounds pretty close to what I do. It needs a little more "obsessively send snippets to Sandtigress and pester her a lot on Twitter" to be totally accurate, though.

One weird thing I realize I do is that, while I can write chapters and scenes weeks or months ahead, when I'm working on a chapter, I have to pretty much finish every scene close to perfection ("perfection") before I can move on to the next scene or vignette. It doesn't matter how the chapter is structured, or who is narrating it, or even if it's switching between two timelines. I have to write it in the order it's going to be on the page.

[jenncgf]

I'm more like Lupus, although it depends on if "the idea" for what I'm writing is strongly in my head or not. 

(I also type VERY quickly - in my heyday I could type 95 wpm or so.)

If "the idea" is in my head and I know what it is I want to write, I can write a 3000 word chapter in a couple hours.  I then reread it two or three times and revise, which takes up to an hour. 

If "the idea" is more nebulous or isn't quite there, it takes a lot more time.  The last time this happened to me was last week and it took five DAYS of false starts and frustration to get the first 500 or so words for the chap to go in.  Then, all of a sudden, "the idea" clicked and I did the rest of the chapter in something like 3 hours.

I can't really tell how long it takes "the idea" to happen, and I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to write in general terms.  But I don't actually approach my word processor until I get an image or phrase or scene in my head and I "know" it's going to work.

[Sialater]

I'm going to say I have to agree with jenn and Lupus. If it clicks, it comes out fast and I'm also a fast typist due to my job. If it doesn't, it's like pulling teeth and it takes forever.

[Maria13]

Sialater wrote...

I'm going to say I have to agree with jenn and Lupus. If it clicks, it comes out fast and I'm also a fast typist due to my job. If it doesn't, it's like pulling teeth and it takes forever.

Same here.   Written about a third of a story today but inspiration came a knocking, touch typist so no keyboard slouch.

[Maria13]

LupusYondergirl wrote...

We're back! Woohoo!
And I finally finished that damned smut bit that had been taunting me for a week.
Turned out he didn't want Lords of Acid.  He wanted Venus in Furs.  Covered by goth bands.  Go figure.

Liked this.

[Sialater]

I'm using angst to work on a Shepard fic today. The Rescue's not angsty enough for me, for once.

[nefand]

Sarah1281 wrote...
So I just realized that I've probably spent more time writing DA fanfics than I have actually playing the game...

Guilty as charged.

Each chapter of my current story represents anywhere from 20-40 hours of plot, obsessive analysis, emo rant (usually with my beta, but sometimes with my fiance) and write time.  I come home at night and it's pretty much dinner and then *plop* to the keyboard, either desktop or laptop, and work on the current chapter.

Sometimes I end up staring at the screen for a while.  A lot of time I'll write the dialogue, which tends to come first for some reason, a la play style and then go back and flesh out the rest of the scene's descriptors.

During the regular day I keep a notebook with me for idea scribbling and a digital recorder for when I get "character rants" that I can't write down when driving.

Since my current story took 20 chapters just to bring my warden to her rock bottom, I can't even begin to estimate the timesink involved to rebuild her based on the plot outline.  But my time investment in this story, and a 2nd one that I (thankfully) finished behind the scenes before posting on FF.net, is far and beyond what I ever spent on 4 full game play thrus.

One lesson I learned between the two, though, is that it is INFINITELY better to work with the beta behind the scenes to finish the story first, then just post the chapters on the final polish process.  The difference in story traffic and review feedback for the one I did that with vs my current Epic was staggering; it really made a huge difference, being able to keep it high on the radar while putting out 1-2 chapters every other day until it was finished.  I'll never do WiP again once EoG is finished, that's for sure!

[mousestalker]

nefand wrote...

Sarah1281 wrote...
So I just realized that I've probably spent more time writing DA fanfics than I have actually playing the game...

Guilty as charged.

Each chapter of my current story represents anywhere from 20-40 hours of plot, obsessive analysis, emo rant (usually with my beta, but sometimes with my fiance) and write time.  I come home at night and it's pretty much dinner and then *plop* to the keyboard, either desktop or laptop, and work on the current chapter.

Sometimes I end up staring at the screen for a while.  A lot of time I'll write the dialogue, which tends to come first for some reason, a la play style and then go back and flesh out the rest of the scene's descriptors.

During the regular day I keep a notebook with me for idea scribbling and a digital recorder for when I get "character rants" that I can't write down when driving.

Since my current story took 20 chapters just to bring my warden to her rock bottom, I can't even begin to estimate the timesink involved to rebuild her based on the plot outline.  But my time investment in this story, and a 2nd one that I (thankfully) finished behind the scenes before posting on FF.net, is far and beyond what I ever spent on 4 full game play thrus.

One lesson I learned between the two, though, is that it is INFINITELY better to work with the beta behind the scenes to finish the story first, then just post the chapters on the final polish process.  The difference in story traffic and review feedback for the one I did that with vs my current Epic was staggering; it really made a huge difference, being able to keep it high on the radar while putting out 1-2 chapters every other day until it was finished.  I'll never do WiP again once EoG is finished, that's for sure!

What is the name of your story, if you don't mind me asking?

[Sarah1281]

. The difference in story traffic and review feedback for the one I did that with vs my current Epic was staggering; it really made a huge difference, being able to keep it high on the radar while putting out 1-2 chapters every other day until it was finished. I'll never do WiP again once EoG is finished, that's for sure!

That's strange. I've always found it to work the opposite way for me. I usually just update stories at most once a week but I had this one story I just wanted to get out so I had six chapters in two weeks and I found that the longer I waited between chapters the more people read it because it was floating near the front page longer. Not to mention you get more reviews because if, say, someone planned on reviewing but only read fanfiction on weekends then they were probably only going to review the story once that week no matter if you had one chapter up or four.

[nefand]

Sarah1281 wrote...

That's strange. I've always found it to work the opposite way for me. I usually just update stories at most once a week but I had this one story I just wanted to get out so I had six chapters in two weeks and I found that the longer I waited between chapters the more people read it because it was floating near the front page longer. Not to mention you get more reviews because if, say, someone planned on reviewing but only read fanfiction on weekends then they were probably only going to review the story once that week no matter if you had one chapter up or four.

Yeah, that's along the lines of what I expected to happen going into it, but the reality played out quite differently. I pontificated on the subject at length with my beta, dissecting the differences in the two stories to understand why one struck a chord with the readers whereas EoG has continued to fall short of my expectations in that arena.

It came down to two key areas: content, being one (a straight up 40k word excuse for a Coulistair, which seems to be the most popular pairing in the fem!Warden lineup), and the aggressive posting schedule being the second.  When I put up the first chapter I clearly stated that 'hey, this is a finished story, chapters will go up as they come out of beta' so people knew to watch for it.  I walked away from that project with 80+ reviews and a dozen PM's in a three week period.

Compare that to EoG, which has a much more involved storyline and isn't an in-your-face romance, both of which are factors which I think hurt the audience-building process in the fanfiction medium.  Which is why I think too that a story of that scale, in hindsight & considering it's complexity, would have benefited more in terms of building an audience if I had sat back and finished it first before starting the chapter publication process.

IMHO it really comes down to what type of story you're going for whether or not you'll be able to capture and hold on to the audience over the long haul.  What I see on FF.net is that, among the epic length tales, the serialized soap operas with regular romantic interaction between the protaganist and the love interest tend to hold on to their audiences better over the long term than other set ups.

I am happy to entertain other perspectives on it, however, since I'm an obsessive analystical type who likes to figure out how and why things tick the way that they do.

mousestalker wrote...

What is the name of your story, if you don't mind me asking?

Not at all.  Echoes of Grace; EoG for short since I'm a lazy typist who assumes everybody can read my acronyms on the interwebs.

[Rikudou Sennin]

There.s just not enough sleaze in these stories... WE WANT MORE SLEAZE!! lol

[SurelyForth]

Rikudou Sennin wrote...

There.s just not enough sleaze in these stories... WE WANT MORE SLEAZE!! lol

If you want sleaze, go find the kink meme. If you want smut, start going through the M rated romances on ff.net. You'll find them.

[Sarah1281]

I know I'm in the minority if the tales I've heard of stories getting more popular once they get an M-rating are anything to go by but smut? Doesn't interest me in the slightest. In fact, I often just skim if not outright skip those sections whereas many other people tend to have pretty much the opposite reaction to these things.

[Sandtigress]

You're not alone, Sarah. I'm a fade-to-black kind of person myself - it will be obvious that something happens, but I don't feel the need to describe it. It's probably better in everyone's heads than what I could write anyways. :-P

[KSuri]

SurelyForth wrote...

Rikudou Sennin wrote...

There.s just not enough sleaze in these stories... WE WANT MORE SLEAZE!! lol

If you want sleaze, go find the kink meme. If you want smut, start going through the M rated romances on ff.net. You'll find them.

Sometimes I have to wonder what really constitutes smut. A lot of what I've seen on ff.net isn't that 'smutty'. A lot is subtle sexuality and not right in your face. I guess that I have always thought of smut as being in line with something you'd find in a romance novel. You know the ones with the sexy picture on the cover.  LOL
Anything that doesn't drag on foreplay for three pages is pretty tame in comparison, no? Maybe I just didn't look into the M rated content on FF.net that much but that is my meager observation from what I've seen thus far.

So I'm left asking.....
What is smut? Sleaze? Sexy? Kinky? And if something truly erotic is what a person is after why look on FF.net as opposed to other known erotic sites? Wouldn't they have more saucy fiction in relationship to specific characters?

[soignee]

currently writing again. This is a big thing for me, as I haven't been. What it came down to was that I had to work out how the main protagonist's entire lifestory panned out. How weird. Once I worked that out, I could continue.

[Raonar]

soignee wrote...

currently writing again. This is a big thing for me, as I haven't been. What it came down to was that I had to work out how the main protagonist's entire lifestory panned out. How weird. Once I worked that out, I could continue.

AHA! Soignee returns!

DDW I suppose? The Power of Choice has been the last chapter for months now.

And I noticed you still didn't add any dwarf fanficiton links to the first post of the dwarf thread.

Not to accuse you of anything of course. Anyway, moving on!

[Sarah1281]

soignee wrote...

currently writing again. This is a big thing for me, as I haven't been. What it came down to was that I had to work out how the main protagonist's entire lifestory panned out. How weird. Once I worked that out, I could continue.

Congratulations on getting back in the game.

[Maria13]

soignee wrote...

currently writing again. This is a big thing for me, as I haven't been. What it came down to was that I had to work out how the main protagonist's entire lifestory panned out. How weird. Once I worked that out, I could continue.

I can understand this completely, it must be discouraging to write unless you have an awareness of how it is ultimately all going to end, even if that is not something you're going to cover in your current fic, but you still need to POINT towards something final...

Modifié par Maria13, 23 septembre 2010 - 08:40 .

[Sarah1281]

IMHO it really comes down to what type of story you're going for whether or not you'll be able to capture and hold on to the audience over the long haul. What I see on FF.net is that, among the epic length tales, the serialized soap operas with regular romantic interaction between the protaganist and the love interest tend to hold on to their audiences better over the long term than other set ups.

Yes, and if you have an epic that pointedly pretends that the characters in question don't have hormones than you get bombarded by 'tell us the pairings! Does X get together with Y or Z?' and even some 'Sorry, I can't read stories that don't have X and Y go to w together.' Shippers can be very, very scary people...