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Nov 3

Post on Wattpad or not?

Posted on Tuesday, November 3, 2015 in My life, Writing

I’m still considering posting more of my original fiction on Wattpad. The two main drawbacks are getting cover images for all the stories and the fact that I’m having trouble getting my new account to work. I still can’t figure out how a story could go from having six readers to just one without ‘unpublishing’ in between. Oh, well. The mysteries of the internet. I’m sure there’s a ‘secret’ to how you get people to read your stories on Wattpad (apart from the advice the support page gives you). Surely it can’t just be that the people who get many readers have many friends?

My sister tells me that she’s posted her stories on G+ many times, but no one even reads them. When someone else among her circles (?) says he’s maybe going to write a story some time everyone starts commenting that they would love to read it and buy it when it becomes available (or rather if it becomes available). I don’t really get that. When I decide to read something it’s because I think I’ll enjoy reading it, not because I want to stay on the good side of someone I know. Or am I the weird one here? I mean, sure, if a very good friend asked me to beta read something she/he had written, I’d love to help out, but I think that’s different.

Actually, I’m also wondering if I will get any more readers of these stories just because I post them on Wattpad as well as on my own site. Most people who come to my fan fiction (which is also my more ‘adult’) site, seem to be interested in fan fiction, not original fiction. They don’t give any feedback there though. The only feedback I’ve had over the years have been on fan fiction archives like AO3. It’s possible to leave comments on my wordpress homepage so I don’t see why people don’t. I’ve had that site for many more years than I’ve had my account on AO3. Nowadays, people can also ‘like’ posts and pages on my homepage. It’s just that people don’t seem to consider that option at all. Not that they have to. I’m just wondering.

Mar 7

Jessamy Taylor’s top 10 castles in fiction

Posted on Saturday, March 7, 2015 in Fandomlinks

Jessamy Taylor’s top 10 castles in fiction | Children's books

“There are many things you can do with a good castle. Hide in it. Feast in it. Break into it. Break out of it. Plot in it. Live your whole life in it. Fiction is full of castles: on hillsides, in forests, in towns, on clifftops. Castles dreaming in the distance, or castles looming over your head. Castles made of stone, of wood, of ice; with passageways tunnelling deep into the ground, or spiralling high with turrets and stairways. Castles safe and warm, or frightening and oppressive; busy and functional, or lonely and ruined. They’re everywhere, and they are hard to resist.

Read more here.

I think my favorite is Howl’s Moving Castle. I love how it’s in four different places at the same time. Imagine the possibilities.

Dec 25

Writing Numbers in Fiction

Posted on Thursday, December 25, 2014 in Writing links

Writing Numbers in Fiction

Read more here.

Sep 26

Guide: Naming Months in Your Fictional Calendar

Posted on Thursday, September 26, 2013 in Writing links

Click here to read more.

Feb 17

Ratings

Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 in Fandom, Other, Whining

A while back, I posted about ratings. I think I mentioned that I practically never use them for my Swedish stories/fics. We don’t require them (yet anyway), and I really don’t think they’re necessary. In fact, I was amazed when I found out about ratings/warnings, but since I want to be read, naturally I complied.

When I first started writing fan fiction everyone used the MPAA ratings so that’s what I did Then I found that FanFiction.net and FictionPress use the FictionRatings system and I switched to that instead. Having a separate system (quite apart from the legal aspect that I’m not going to go into) for fiction makes sense.

I also made up my own system that I use on my site (in addition to the FR system). It’s very simple, if not very detailed. Green means G and PG/K and K+, Yellow means PG-13/T and Red means R and NC-17 or M and MA respectively.

Yesterday I quite suddenly realized that there’s another system, one specifically for fan fiction. I was amazed. After all, I’ve been into fan fiction for about ten years (how time flies!) and I’d never heard of this before. While I haven’t had time to update my fan fiction site yet (too busy with RL) I will definitely include the Fan Rated Ratings System. I’ll still use the FR system though and still keep a page with the old MPAA ratings as a reference.

So, apparently, even after ten years, there’s something new to learn. Great. In fact the past months or so (which have brought me much personal pain and worry) have at least given me a couple of new fandom-related things to try and by now, use: Dreamwidth and Archive of Our Own. Maybe I should also mention the terrific Fan Wikis (though they aren’t completely new).

Dec 19

Dreams as inspiration

Posted on Friday, December 19, 2008 in Writing

This is nothing new, I know, but I think it’s quite interesting that dreams can be inspiration for fiction.

In my case, it’s happened a couple of times already. Once, it was a horrible nightmare (which might not sound quite as horrible if I recounted it), that turned into a short horror story (which is extremely rare for me – normally, I neither read nor write horror).

In fact, thinking back, I think most of my ideas based on dreams, have been horror or at least scary. One reason might be that those dreams stand out, which makes me remember them.

On the other hand, I once had what was (at least when I woke up) nothing more than a scene, but that one scene turned into a fantasy story. I can still remember how it felt to be ‘there’ – where I witnessed the scene. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to work all that into the story, but I was quite happy about it anyway.

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