Haha, we'll see how good my resolution re not posting until it's all written goes! On the plus side, I have a few shorter stories (3-6 chapters) that I can write & post while I'm working away at the next long-fic, so I reckon that'll help.
No buffer as of yesterday's posted chapter & I'm halfway through the next chapter so I think I won't be posting for a couple of weeks. Gonna grab a couple of hours tomorrow to finish the WIP chapter & maybe start (or at least plan) the next one.
Getting close to the end of this story & I think I might be unconsciously dragging it out because once I'm done with it, I have no excuse not to move onto other ones. I have a couple of big life changes coming my way over the next few months & while taking a little time off from planning to write is definitely the break I need, right now the thought of starting a new story feels a little like another project I just don't have the bandwidth for. Need to keep reminding myself that the plan for future stories is no posting any of it until it's all finished!
I had a chat with another author in the broader Star Trek fandom after reading their OC/OC fic & based on how that got received, I'm not getting my hopes up. I'll still write it though (& probably post it regardless). And it will have some canon characters as secondary characters (& it'll be set on the Enterprise) so it won't be completely unknown to fans.
Love that your 99% OC story got so big! 😁 There's hope for OC-centric stories yet. Pity about the unfriendly community atmosphere though - like, you don't like the premise, don't read it. No need to give grief to the authors about it. 🤷♀️
Yeah, I can kinda balance it out if it's a one-shot or short multi-chapter story competing with a long-fic. But 2 long-fics (& in the same series)? Lord, give me strength!
I have a series (2 stories at the mo) that's very fluffy slice of life romantic. Early this year, shortly after starting the 2nd story, I came up with a bonkers idea for the 3rd story. AU/multiverse, paranormal weirdness from the fandom that I just ignore in my series up til now, dragging bits from the original 2 stories & reusing the characters (& angsting the crap out of one of them).
And it has been killlling me that I had to finish the 2nd story before I could start on the 3rd. At one point I had to comfort-write a couple of chapters just to break writer's block on story 2. I reckon I've got less than half a dozen chapters of story 2 to go & then I am launching myself bodily at story 3. 😅
😂 I was starting to think the lack of responses was the answer in itself to my question (i.e. no-one likes OC-centric or OC/OC pairings).
I totally get the love for OC-centric stories so long as there's a core character in the mix, as I tend to be there myself, but I do think I'd have to stretch myself to take a chance on OC/OC with no canon characters in the main pairing or group. That said, the fandom I want to write it in (Star Trek TNG-adjacent) has no characters that work for my idea & really has none I'm interested in writing as core characters. So I guess I might just be writing this one for myself if other people aren't willing to take a chance (& I can't blame them because I know exactly where they're coming from). 🤷♀️
I like a well rounded, realistic character, as I do with my protagonists to be fair. No 2-dimensional mustache-twirling "I'm just evil 'cos I'm evil" unless there's a real good reason behind it or it's hella fun (think Andrew Scott's Moriarty). I don't need them to think they're doing good by being in opposition to the protagonist but I want them to at least be a sufficiently well written character that I could believe that they'd have an opinion on the matter & ideally feel some little bit of conflict over it like a real person would.
I need to get back into happy rabbit-hole mode. The last one I went on was trying to figure out the length of time a side character would go to jail for a specific crime in a specific US state in the 1970s/80s. And then I didn't even bother mentioning it in my story.
I find trying to maintain a posting schedule has kind of killed my ability to deep-dive on research as my buffer of chapters has fallen away. Yet another reason I'm never going to start posting a multi-chapter fic before I finish it again!
I'm starting to understand the affectionate hellsite attitude. Although I feel like I'm in the honeymoon phase with Tumblr right now & this comment is going to bite me in the ass in a month's time when it turns out it's an actual hellsite.
Thanks! To be fair, it's not an awful worry to have in the grand scheme of things 😅 but now that I've found something I really like, I want to stick with it (at least that's the way I feel at the moment). And yeah, maybe if I do bounce, it'll only be as far as another fandom (which is a pleasant thought!).
I view Simple Misunderstandings, especially for stupid reasons amongst characters who are smart enough to know better, to be in the Idiot Ball realm of bad writing. Although, funnily enough I think I find them more often in non-fanfic writing, e.g. TV shows. Such a lazy trope.
Oh, conversations about what people want from relationships, be they friendship, romantic, family, are great! I think they tend to come up more in non-traditional relationships IRL, whereas the run of the mill "heteronormative romance equalling marriage plus kids" dynamic tends to have very little introspection/interrogation of assumptions (this is totally my opinion). It's great to see when writers/creators bring those often ignored conversations into more traditional relationships on the page imo because they're inextricably linked to consent.
So, I'm one of those people who tends to hop from hobby to hobby. Tbh writing fanfiction is probably the one I've been most consistent with since I started a year ago, & I'm kind of terrified I'll end up dropping it because I really enjoy it! It definitely feels like a hyperfixation for me & I worry one day I'll wake up & that focus will be gone. It's also the one that's most freeform creative so I think that may be linked to my worry (I'm usually much more of a consumer than a creative).
I guess if someone is at peace with hopping between hobbies & concluding a project & then they're done with the whole hobby, then that's not sad. But where I am at the moment, I feel I'd mourn it a bit. But then I guess I'd forget about it because I have terribly poor autobiographical memory... 🤷♀️