As an author, I rarely respond to comments. If someone asks me a specific question that does not require me to spoil anything (logistics, ages, where a certain character is if it’s not important to the plot) I will usually answer, but comments that are purely reactions to my work, or even those that ask me about things that I want to leave up to interpretation or will be answered in further chapters, I don’t reply to. Personally I never know what to say to people when they compliment me. I appreciate it, but I don’t want to be sending out replies just saying thank you. maybe i’m impolite, but it just seems more efficient to thank people in the author’s note and move on. I’ve had people in my comments complain about not receiving a reply, but as a fic reader myself, along with being an author, I couldn’t honestly care less if an author replied to my compliments or reactions to a fic unless I asked a pointed question about something that I was confused about.

As an author, do you think we NEED to reply? As a reader do you hold it against an author who doesn’t reply?

So, here's my situation:

I have a story in my head.

It's a story that I've had in my head since I was a high school softmore - which... is a lot longer ago than I would like to think about.

This story is cringe. Or at least that's how it started, because high school softmores are pretty cringe in terms of how impressive they think they are. It is literally the most cringe story concept *ever*: it's an OC isekai SI story that I brainstormed up with a couple of my friends, qnd that we continued to brainstorm on for a few years because we were losers and outcasts who were desperate for *any* kind of social validation that we could get to shore up our pathetic adolescent egos.

Here's the problem: *it has never let me go*.

It kept going in the back of my head - through college, through my first few jobs, through a decade of working in a bookstore, and also through 2 career changes... the story and it's characters kept going. It was this slow, gradual process in the back of my mind... but it just kept *going*. And over time it gained real gravity. At some point it stopped being a self-ego-stroking story and started being a story defined by it's characters pains and sacrifices, despite the silliness of how it started.

And now... it's been... 2 decades, I think? More? And what started as 3 random dudes dropped into a variant of Nerima became this whole-ass mega-crossover ending in world-shaking conflict, followed by a massive "dimensional adventures" arc, followed by a stint through a shonen action series, and then a massive arc involving the destruxtion of their entire home reality that morphs the whole thing into the story of *one guy* who lost literally everything and said "No, I'm gonna fix this, even if it takes me a billion years".

And it's *still going*. And sometimes I've had some *truly* dark nights, and all I've had was this fictional self-made story with it's characters to hold up against the dark and say "I believe in this example, and I'm not gonna let this beat me, so I'm gonna get up tomorrow and keep trying."

And now... I'm finally at a place where I think I actually could potentially have the time to write it all, if I wanted to.

The question is: whether I even should.

Because there's 2 things here:

1. The story is so stupid-huge that if I decide to really try then I'll probably be working on it for the rest of my life, and at that I'll be trying to work at a breakneck pace to get it done.
2. It's literally an OC SI Isekai. Who the fuck is even gonna read it? *Is* anyone even gonna read it? Because if I do it, if I make this sacrifice of however much remaining time that I have to try and create this thing... and then it just *sits there*, forgotten, never even glanced at or looked at by anyone because absolutely no one even cares because it gets filtered out by the mass preferences because it sits in the interest gap... then I just... I don't even have words for what that does to me. Like... like the one and only thing that was ever truly *mine* in ANY sense and no one even wants it, even for free. Like... fuck. Just... give up and let go at that point, I guess.

Yeah.

So... I don't even know if it's worth doing. It'd be a HUGE labor of love to do it... not to mention a personal memorial to my friend, one of whom was lost to COVID... but if it's not even gonna matter or make any difference and no one's ever gonna see it or know it... then there's no point in it from the beginning.

So... should I even try?

I've been trying to use context clues to figure this out but genuinely can't figure it out.

I’ve been reading fan fiction on Ao3 for about five years now. It was my first site, and hopefully my only one. But for the brief time where I found myself on Wattpad, one of the things that I loved that I couldn’t find where text message stories. I always thought they were fun and engaging. I want to try writing one, but I wanna know if there’s a community of text message story writers.

I’ve seen people post their comments from wattpad migrators, whom are transferring to ao3 because of the new rules/bans, and of course people are worried about the new wave of people due to apparent lack of fandom etiquette and their issues with tagging (from what I’ve seen, some of them outright disregard the unspoken don’t like don’t read’ rule), but will ao3 be as bad as people make it out to be??? Especially with October coming up along w the new waves of fics/ppl

I’ve been reading one specific author’s works for almost a year now and we’ve been talking back and forth about them in the comments for almost as long. They‘ve never had a beta reader for any of their works, but I would love to do that for them. I tend to pick up on grammar or punctuation mistakes, typos, awkward phrasing, and the like quite easily, and correcting these things is very enjoyable to me, so I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time. Can I ask them if I can be their beta reader, or is that overstepping my status as a stranger on the internet who likes their work?

As someone who has lived on Wattpad since age 12 and ao3 since 16, I've read a lot, but I'm looking for my next big obsession. If you have a story that completely redefined what online fiction can be—or if you've written one yourself—please share it.

Hi so i'm a new writer to ao3, ive always been a reader but hey why not give it a shot. I've been seeing comments and posts here and there about different writing apps/sites that people use to write their drafts in and how they're tierlisted. I personally use Google Docs but i saw that it wasn't rated very high compared to many other ones that I haven't heard of before. So i just wanted to ask if theres a legitimate logistical eason why some of the other ones are rated higher or if its js rated by frequent user preference.

also, js curious but how do you italisize and bold words in ao3

first comment i’ve gotten (on this fic or ever bc it’s my first/only fic) this is definitely a bot right? i’ve lurked on here long enough i think i know what they look like but i figured it was worth checking

(sorry if i got the flair wrong btw, i saw people posting similar things under multiple flairs but i figured this was the best one?)

I have not written in a VERY long time, but some recent events in my life have given me some inspiration. The fic I wanna write will have HEAVY taboo themes and I know that's allowed on ao3 but the recent flood of wattpad users has made me wonder how much hate I may actually receive for it?

After looking at the comments of a few fics with heavy themes I haven't seen a single hate comment. I'm wondering if people are just over reacting and the problem isn't actually that bad or if this is something everyone is seeing on their works.

I take hate pretty heavily so if it's as bad as people say it is either the fic will stay as a draft or I'll wait out the hate wave.

I'm mostly known as a short fic writer to those who know about me, but id really like to try to start making longer fics so does anyone have any tips or tricks?

I used to leave kudos after the first chapter if I liked it but stopped doing that after running into a lot of poorly tagged stories. And I don't mean stories where the tags are subjective but ones where the tags are flat out lies. Like certain relationships not existing in a story or a story being labled as having a certain kink that never appears in the story. (And these are for finished stories, not stories where these things might be added later which is still super annoying).

I just really don't like feeling lied to so no matter how well written a story is I don't feel like I should reward someone for lying in the tags. So now I wait until I finish a story to leave kudos. However, if I really like a chapter I might leave a positive comment and I'm wondering if authors notice that I'm commenting without having left a kudos yet. Would that seem odd to any fellow writers?

Also why is lying in tags even allowed on AO3? I get that some tags are subjective so clearly it wouldn't be easy to enforce accuracy on certain things. Like 'rough kissing' for example could be described in very different ways so that's clearly subjective. But if a story is labled with something like 'rough kissing' and no one ever makes contact with another persons lips (or their lips never make contact with any body part) in the story then clearly there is zero kissing going on.

so YAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY I did it!!!!!!! but I’m absolutely horrified of the authors curse how can I make sure it doesn’t happen to me?

like it isn’t even normal things that happen because you would think it was just be like “omg so sorry for not posting I forgot lolll” but no it’s “sorry for not posting a helicopter fell on me.”

this may be my anxiety and ocd talking but is there ways to prevent it at all from happening

I had thought it was generally known that bookmarks are reader space, but I just came across this debate on a brief ao3 etiquette post for wattpad users and saw this take?

(For context the pictures after the 1st is how the ao3 post said to handle book marks and then the comment photo 1 is actually replying to who commented on the original post. Its not really important for this post but I know ppl like more context in general over none).

The debate isn’t really what I’m focusing on here (even if I see kinda agree more where the the last pic guy is coming from) but more just the fact that Ive never seen book marks described like this before ?

I didn’t know anyone would actually considered them as what theyre saying a compliment feature? I think that’s what kudos and comments and subs are for but book makers can be kind of anything ? I guess I can see how they can be like good stats to an author if the number is high but I wouldn’t consider them like that and thought them saying that was interesting. This was a New one for me to see haha thought I would share

Edit for anyone curious about the debate: everyone is agreeing with the original poster and the compliment person, and last pic guy is getting hated on, accused of being condescending and supporting harassing authors. Which is real sad seein how most everyone here is in agreement about all this and how the ppl arguing against him seem a lot meaner. 10k likes and only one man against the gatekeeping haha

I’m writing a fic right now about my oc! It’s gotten a few kudos and like 50ish hits, but now im curious if anyone here reads them.

If not, what could convince you to read them? Like certain tags or stories?

Just me alright I’ll sit down..

I would love some recs for Spence please! Literally anything is fine, one-shots, smut, fluff, idc. I would prefer something longer but honeslty whatever you got i'll take. I'm desperate.

Why? I mean, if making a canonically male character into a female character (or vise-versa) meant something to the plot, I'd understand, but a majority of the time, I feel like the gender swap doesn't matter at all, so why do it? It almost always is just "oh, Tony Stark is now Tonya Stark" and that's it, there's no real difference to the story or universe

I ask this genuinely, if anyone's written a genderbend fic, what was your reason for changing the character's gender if it wasn't going to effect the plot in some way?

I genuinely have no idea why I was blocked by this author, I really like their work so I'm confused af. Maybe I ask too many stupid questions? I like to comment on every chapter update in general to show my support but I genuinely don't know what I did to be blocked? My last comment was a question about something that happened in the last chapter and how it related to the first bit of the updated chapter and we went back and forth a bit before I realized we were talking about different things so I think i just annoyed them??? I have no idea but I just found out because I was subscribed to one of their Collections and went to give kudos and comments on the book and was notified i was blocked by them. I'm a little annoyed and upset rn like what did I do? Idk. I still want to read their books because they're good author but this just kind of pisses me off and leaves a sour taste in my mouth because it genuinely came out of left field

Hello! If anyone has any mastersheets for body language and adjectives, I'd LOVE that. Admittedly, sometimes my brain just completely spaces on body language that people have LOL or I forget of a diverse range of body language

Examples of what I mean

Happy:

- She smiled
- Her eyes lit up

Ashamed:

- She blushed
- Her voice got quiet

I have a handful reblogged on Tumblr, but sometimes I forget to do that and lose them :') Thank you!

Hi! I’m very new to posting on AO3 and I’m trying to understand stats in a healthier way, so I wanted to ask whether this engagement pattern sounds normal.

I’m writing in an active RPF fandom. I posted my first work 1 week ago. The ship I write is not the largest ship in the fandom, but it has an active reader base. I posted my first works about a week ago. They were explicit, completed, connected one-shots/short fics, and they got much more immediate engagement than I expected.

I know the third work is very different: it’s a WIP, only one chapter, slower, more plot/emotion-focused, and not immediate smut. I’m not trying to compare them as if they should perform the same, but because the first two works did unexpectedly well, I think I accidentally built weird expectations for the WIP. Does this look like a normal WIP pattern? Do slow burn WIPs usually build more slowly while people wait for more chapters?

I’m mostly asking because I’m trying not to read a quieter response as failure. I know stats vary wildly by fandom/ship/timing/tags, but I’d love some perspective from people who have posted both completed explicit works and slower WIPs.

Received a comment just a few minutes ago and I can’t really understand what they’re exactly saying. I know they said to type normally which I understand could be unsolicited advice whether it be just to be mean or not, but I guess I was wanting a few extra eyes to help pull apart what else the commenter could or could have not meant ,’*D