30 Days of Fanfiction: Days 15, 16 and 17
Nov. 21st, 2015 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smallhobbit15: Warnings: What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
I think it's important to warn for the major things: violence, rape/non-con; major character death. I post to AO3, so I will warn or use the "does not choose to use warnings" tag, because if I'm writing something which has a surprise in it I may not want to reveal what it is. Having written a number of spooky type fics during October, I tended to put "This is written for a Spooky challenge, be warned" or words to that effect. Because if someone gets spooked reading something like that it's the reader's own problem. Last year I wrote a Spooks (MI5) fic, called "Haunted" for a "Haunted" prompt, with the summary saying "After Connie James death Lucas North starts to see her again" and was told I should have used a "supernatural" tag - which I felt was unnecessary. Other than that, I may say something to the effect that this particular fic is not in my usual style, if what I'm writing is darker than normal.
16: Summaries: Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
I hate writing summaries. It's not so bad when the fic is of a reasonable length, but with ficlets and drabbles how do you summarise something which only has one brief point?
17: Titles: Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?
Titles are the bane of my existence, which is why so many of my fics have one word titles. And then when I receive kudos from AO3 I haven't a clue which fic they refer to. I rarely write chaptered fics, but when I do, the chapters are titled. Since most of my chaptered fics are part of my Sussex Retirement series which is based on prompts from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
older_not_dead I tend to base my titles on the prompts I've used.
I think it's important to warn for the major things: violence, rape/non-con; major character death. I post to AO3, so I will warn or use the "does not choose to use warnings" tag, because if I'm writing something which has a surprise in it I may not want to reveal what it is. Having written a number of spooky type fics during October, I tended to put "This is written for a Spooky challenge, be warned" or words to that effect. Because if someone gets spooked reading something like that it's the reader's own problem. Last year I wrote a Spooks (MI5) fic, called "Haunted" for a "Haunted" prompt, with the summary saying "After Connie James death Lucas North starts to see her again" and was told I should have used a "supernatural" tag - which I felt was unnecessary. Other than that, I may say something to the effect that this particular fic is not in my usual style, if what I'm writing is darker than normal.
16: Summaries: Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
I hate writing summaries. It's not so bad when the fic is of a reasonable length, but with ficlets and drabbles how do you summarise something which only has one brief point?
17: Titles: Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?
Titles are the bane of my existence, which is why so many of my fics have one word titles. And then when I receive kudos from AO3 I haven't a clue which fic they refer to. I rarely write chaptered fics, but when I do, the chapters are titled. Since most of my chaptered fics are part of my Sussex Retirement series which is based on prompts from
older_not_dead I tend to base my titles on the prompts I've used.
