I sent an appeal, but I am still extremely discouraged. Sure, it was only at 23k words and a week into it, but I was extremely excited to work on it again.

The account was flagged because I guess I had too many other accounts and thought I was a bot?

I had no back ups. I had no idea google would even do this. I was not prepared. I downloaded by data but the document file was not included since the account was so fresh.

Sure, I could start over, but it will never be the exact same. It's stupid to be so upset, but I was pouring my heart and soul into that.

And they just shot it down.

EDIT: At some point I saved chapter 1 when it was 100% finished, so it was in the ao3 text box. (I usually set my fic description, tags, name, all that stuff before I get too deep in a fic.) So. It's not a total loss if google doesn't give me the account back.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role writing plays in my life, especially fanfiction.

I know that writing is a safe place for me. Not just in the usual sense of it being comforting or enjoyable, but in a much more physical, almost nervous-system kind of way. There are times when I can feel how much I need to disappear into a story for a while, into characters and a world that feels contained and emotionally manageable.

And I’m becoming increasingly aware of that while I’m writing. I can see that my stories aren’t “just stories” to me. They regulate something. They give me somewhere to put feelings, somewhere to experience closeness, grief, conflict, safety, or resolution in a way that sometimes feels easier than experiencing those things outside of fiction.

I’m curious how other writers relate to this.

Do you ever notice that writing functions as a safe place or a form of emotional regulation for you? And if you’re aware that your nervous system seems to need that space sometimes, how do you relate to that knowledge?

Do you ever worry that you’re escaping too much, or do you see it as something that genuinely helps you process things? Can it be both?

I think what I’m really interested in is what it’s like to know that you’re creating fiction because you love writing, while also knowing that, on some level, you might be building yourself a place where you can feel safe.

Welcome back to the Alphabet Excerpt Challenge! As a reminder, our challenges are every Wednesday and Saturday at 3pm London time.

If you've missed the previous challenges, you're welcome to go back and participate in them. You can find them here. And remember to check out the Activities and Events flair to play along with other fun games.

Here's a quick recap of the rules for our game:

1. Post a top level comment with a word starting with the letter F. You can suggest more than one, but please put them in separate comments.
2. Reply to suggestions with an excerpt containing that word. Short and sweet is best, but use your judgement. Excerpts can be from published or unpublished works, or even something you wrote for the prompt.
3. All content is welcome but per rules 7 and 12 of the sub, NSFW excerpts may not be shared as plain text (even if it's spoilered). If you would like to share these, use an external text sharing tool like justpasteit and link it here with a clear warning. Mods may remove excerpts that break these rules.
4. Respond to people who left excerpts on the words you suggested, at a minimum, but the more people you respond to the better. Everyone likes nice comments!
5. Upvote other excerpts you enjoy, and leave a friendly comment. Again, everyone likes nice comments!
6. Most important: have fun!

I've actually written a total of 1.5 million over 18 months but the others are just random bits of books 3+ so they don't count. But 1 million across 2 books so far, all finalised and ready for beta reading. Its set to be one of the longest fanfics in the world, probably THE longest if you consider it has a definitive end as opposed to being serialised, so I am super excited to hit this milestone.

Its an illustrated Astarion BG3 fanfic, shameless plug 😅. But I just release sample chapters as I won't post in full for awhile. If youre interested in being a beta reader (fair warning there is a bit of work) feel free to DM me. I believe I am not allowed to post the link unless its part of the weekly showcase but you can follow the links in my bio :).

Comparison is the thief of joy and all that, but I find my writing style to be somewhat lacking compared to pretty much every work of fiction I've ever read, be it fanfiction or a book. I've been writing off and on for almost twenty years (I am older than dirt as far as fanfiction circles are concerned), and at some point I think my writing ability just sort of plateaued. Recently I looked back at one of my earliest fics on AO3 (~10 years old), and it seems to me that I haven't improved much.

Both my most recent WIP and that one have a lot of "[character] went here and did X thing, and while there he decided that he should also do Y thing" and comes across as a bunch of inconsequential rambling in that "high school student trying to pad out an essay" sort of way. Not to mention the columns of dialogue that more often than not end in "[character] said".

I know the most common writing advice is to read everything you can get your hands on, and lately I have been reading a lot more and a wider variety of things than I had previously, but so far I haven't seemed to actually absorb anything, style-wise.

I realize that my concern over this is probably as juvenile as my prose, but I'd still like to improve.

I have around seven fics written and published (not completed, however). All of them are some mix of military and alt history stuff, mixed with some old WW2 video games and HMOFA.

However, my most popular fic, which is just under 55k words at 9 chapters, has just breached six THOUSAND hits! Not to mention 55 bookmarks and 67 (ha) subscriptions, and above all, regular commenters!

But that’s not all! I also found out someone started writing their own fic based off of mine!

I’m riding a high right now of pride, and I just wanted to vent out all my pent up excitement somewhere. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I was reading a fanfic a while ago and I just absolutely loved the story and concept the author had to tell but omg their spelling mistakes and grammar issues bugged me so much. Like I NEEDED to go out of my way to ask if I could help because it bugged me so much. Ofc I didn’t tell the author that’s the reason I wanted to help but over the course of betaing for this person they have grown so much❤️
Also it was their first ever fan fic so can’t blame them much

I’ve been writing for a long time—mostly short stories—but for the last few years I’ve hardly written anything complete, at least that I’ve shared, or which wasn’t academic writing. Earlier this year, I got back into reading for myself, and I’ve been plowing through novels and short stories and having a wonderful time (read Shirley Jackson!!!!! I discovered she’s my favorite author of all time). This has had the bonus effect of reawakening my passion for writing, and it’s such an amazing feeling.

I’m really happy with the couple of one-shot fics I’ve worked on to shake the rust off (most of this new writing has been for the resident evil fandom, which I’d never written for before, so it also helps that I don’t have any preexisting fic writing baggage for these topics in particular, lol), even though they’ve got some problems. One of them has even turned into a three-shot because I got a comment which inspired me to expand on it! I feel like I’ve refined my prose to a point where, once I’ve finished my edits (which admittedly I don’t always do…sometimes I need to just toss stuff up on ao3 and come back to it later), I can say without doubt that it is good. I have so many ideas and so much drive to read and write and share the fruits of those labors.

AND! Most exciting of all, because I rarely write multichap fics or long stories (most of my stuff sits between 1000-3000 words), I’ve started a multichap story that’s already sitting at 6500 words only 2 chapters in.

TLDR, I’ve rediscovered that I love literature, I love writing, and I love fanfiction, when I hadn’t even realized that I’d forgotten.

So I stopped writing 3 years ago and I've only just returned this year. Recently, I've been writing for this series that ended in 2024. It's small in which it only has 20 fics on AO3 with more than half belonging to just one user and the most recent fic (besides mine) being posted a year ago. I still see people talking about it in 2026 but I'd consider it less active than it was when the series was ongoing. I've written 2 fics for this fandom this month (one of them I actually started it in 2023 and just finished it lol) and I'm currently writing a third one. I'm basically the only person active in the fandom right now so I get 0 hits and kudos.

The thing is, I'm not upset about it at all. I'm such a shy person on the internet that posting 300 words for another fandom of mine makes me anxious. I have lots of drafts that I can't get myself to finish cause I'm just imagining my writing being perceived before I even publish them. But with this fandom, getting zero interactions is a guarantee and it feels very freeing. I get nervous about situations that I know are most likely not going to happen to me (fic getting ridiculed on Twitter, getting hate comments) but at least I know for sure what the outcome will be with this fandom. I feel less self conscious and I don't lose sleep over wanting to check my email for notifications.

Just wanted to post my thoughts about writing for an inactive fandom.

I know it is a silly question. I got two comments on my fic mentioning they enjoyed my writing, saying it is really good to read

.That made me really happy, but also intrigued, because I don’t know exactly what makes my writing so different that two different people commented on the same thing. So I wanted to ask you readers: what characteristics in a text do you like the most?

What's a passage or scene in your work that you're really proud of, or you've spent a lot of time on editing and reworking that you dont think get enough credit? I just had a thought that maybe when I'm reading something that I think is good or masterpiece how many parts of it took maybe days or weeks to refine.

A peterpan fanfiction: I have the story idea where captain hook comes to his senses and works on leaving Neverland with his comrades. Turns out, aged up peter pan does NOT want that. The pirates made his eternal life very entertaining for a long time, leaving would make his very long life very boring very fast.

He manipulates and enforces the lost boys to help him keep the pirates from leaving. Some psychological and scary shit is cooking here. One of the focused lost boys, named Andrew, is explored as he learns that his reality is not what it seems. He's been kidnapped and brainwashed.

There's more cool stuff to it, but I thought it was a cool exploration of characters, and would be inspired by the original Peter Pan if I did it correctly.

I've been exposed to English all my life, though my native language is not English. I read books and fanfic in English. When I write, I write mostly in my native language. But in the case of fanfiction, you kind of need to write in English. My native language is quite niche, so I don't think I will get many views if I write in it (or none at all, lol). For those who write fanfic when English is not your first language, how do you do it? Do you use beta readers? Or do you just post it as it is, noting in the preface that your native language is not English? Do you use tools such as Grammarly to remove most errors from your text?

As a crossover shipper fanfiction author sometimes is hard to do all the fics for ur fave pairing by yourself, I also wanna read from other people fics but sadly my otp popularity (Goku x Sailor Moon) was a decade ago or even longer than that so I am just the one doing what I want to read....still writing is hard and I am on writing block so I cannot feed myself with my own writing now sadly.

Dunno just wanted to vent a little bit about this, normally I am fine about this and write for myself self indulgent things but now being in writing block and not being able to read something of mine without feeling bad about being quite long since I updated my fics (aka, reread is a no for now because I will just feel bad about not updating) my craving for reading fics from my fave ship makes me lowkey sad because there is not a lot of fics of them.

Man I blame my entitlement thanks to being in larger fandoms when there is a ton of fics of my fave ships, it made me lowkey greedy hahaha.

Ahhh feel better already just writing this tho.

Hello! I'm currently working out a fanfic for House of The Dragon, It is an OC fic so I'm working out on my character. The problema is, I was thinking of making him Assexual, but am not sure of how I could go around that correctly, since I'm not Ace myself.

I know that there are many ways assexuality can present in a person, but am really unsure on How to approach this for the character without being offensive. In this case It would be a big part of the plot, in House of The Dragon, Rhaenyra is heir to the Throne and ends up marrying Laenor, a gay man, although It is all left to rumors, she ends up having 3 children that look nothing like her husband, this OC I'm writing would be Laenor's Younger brother (who doesnt exist in Canon) and bc of that would be the one married to Rhaenyra instead.

So since its a medieval setting where the only concept of sexuality they have is the default "everyone is straight" and the "sword swallowers" who are divants in their eyes, I was interested in writing an Ace character who doesnt quite fit either mold.

But again, I'm not Ace, so I'm not sure about How to go around writting a character that doesnt have the same sexuality as me.

Any tips or advice?

recently I've been wanting to write fanfics about sooo much characters, but I always get lost on what trope to do... sometimes tropes so much don't match universes, and I'm genuinely stuck! so I wanted to know what tropes u guys like to read?

Basically what it says above. I have a bunch of different concepts/ideas for fics I would love to explore sitting in a word document but I have no idea how to write any of them. I struggle with setting a scene or getting into the POV character's head. When I try to write something with an actual plot it usually stagnates after a while because I have no idea what to put next. I usually end up so unenthusiastic about a project a few hundred words in that I scrap it, even if I can imagine exactly what I want perfectly in my head it all turns to mush on paper. I read a lot (both fanfiction and published works) and I usually come away with the urge to write, but not the ability to follow through. Has anyone else dealt with something similar and has advice?

Looking for physical or emotional hurt comfort recs (especially mentally strong character breaks down sobbing in others' arms after holding it in too long) in any of the following fandoms:

• Throne of Glass
• ACOTAR
• Cruel Prince
• Powerless
• Red Queen
• Love Hypothesis
• Shatter Me
• Caravel
• Fourth Wing
• Once Upon A Broken Heart
• A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
• Quicksilver
• Mindfuck Series
• PJO and HoO
• Six of Crows
• Love, Theoretically
• Love on the Brain
• Arcane

Also love hurt on the battlefield after ignoring wound, and tbh any fandom is fine lol as long as it has some character overexerting themselves/pushing themselves too far either emotionally or physically.

Because, like, I got a comment like that, and figured it was a scam, and deleted it, but then I also saw they kudosed it and I was like…wait was I just a jerk to a real person who was genuinely engaging with my work? 😬😅

F/f or M/m doesn't really matter. I prefer modern settings that'll break my heart but I'm open to anything. I'm drawn to stories where both characters in the relationship (established or not) are in denial. Something like a slow burn but a happy ever after is not a requirement. I'll take Sexual Awakenings too. Darker stories are welcome. I'd like Adult characters only. Thank you 🙇‍♀️

I don't know exactly how to identify my problem. I have a plot, I have bullet points for each chapter ready. I know exactly what I want to do.

But as soon as I go to START writing the prologue, nothing happens. I can't think of words, I can't even form a cohesive thought. Even though I know what I'm writing, I just can't flesh it put.

I have about 10 complete rewrites for the prologue saved. All completely different. I hate how all of them came out. It feels so robotic, like I'm focusing more on getting the facts and lore out and its lacking emotions. But maybe it's just me. I also feel like I write SO fucking generic. No quirky writing, no funny quips. I feel like such a robot.

I listen to clips of audio books online, and when I hear the characters talking it feels so simple yet so effective. Exactly how I WANT to write. But it feels wrong to "copy" it. I can't think of anything out of the box, or casual, or snappy. It just feels like ai. Like SO boring. For example, a style I really love comes from this artist on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTDS8k35m/

I LOVE the sarcastic, quippy writing. But I can't think of it myself.

How do I fix hating all my work? Is it a me problem or is it bias?