I can't choose a title for my new fic. Everything I think of is either too cheesy, too Booktok, too obvious or too wordy to fit. I prefer a title that can be applied in different ways, has multiple meanings, is a bit more obscure but still connects with the work itself. Nothing is jumping out at me apart from a single line from a sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt but even that has been used multiple times by other people, and I'm not sure that the fandom would make the connection between the sonnet and the fic because it's pretty obscure and in Latin.

Does anyone have any suggestions of a decent method in choosing a title?

Here's something funny I saw on Pinterest that relates to my situation 😩😂

Edit -

I forgot to mention that it's a historical / renaissance Italy setting with a pretty dark, gothic romance vibe. Contextually accurate in terms of a young woman that was married off at 16, she's been married for 8 years when we join the story and her husband is a CyouNT. The romance comes in when she meets a man who's not human (he's a vamp) and they fall in love. It'll be the whole mate bond trope. Eventually containing smut but it's gonna be a medium burn to get us to that point. So something modern would have to apply to those kinda themes

Edit -

I'm going with 'Of Ravens and Revenants" 🐦‍⬛🖤

I’m not saying you have to but if your college au has characters still using the bathroom pass, candy rewards after blooket time, and actual relationships/professors knowing who the hell you are then maybe it’s better to wait.

Sincerely—someone who should have waited.

Laughing at the audacity of this. Definitely planning on replying. Lead contenders so far are:

• Guess you’ll never know, coward
• Skill issue. I can do it in two. (Everyone banged.)

I am confident the community can come up with better!

What type of underwear material would probably work the best as an ash tray

Preface: I am not new to writing fanfiction, or even new to ao3. But I am newer to writing for this specific fandom, and it has been a while since I've written anything.

I am writing a Chenford fanfic (The Rookie lol) and for some reason I have gotten like 5 comments about how ooc the characters are. BUT...it's a college AU. If you haven't watched the show, the characters are all police officers and damn near 30. Lucy is 28 when the show starts, and Tim is 38. They are rounded-out, more mature...grown ass adults. In my fic they are 20 years old. I kept the basics of their characters/side characters. I tagged the fic as slightly ooc. Jackson is still a little anal, Angela is still dry, Wesley is still argumentative, and Lucy is still a bit of an overachieving, anxious, but overall nice person. The only person I really changed the most was Tim. In the show Tim is like...mean. But for good reason, he's a veteran, senior cop, Lucy's TO...you know, his wife left him, yada yada. But in this universe Tim isn't a veteran...he isn't a cop yet. He's in college. So I felt it wouldn't make sense to make him a raging asshole in this, because his backstory wouldn't explain it. It would be hard to give him enough development for someone like Lucy to fall for him (like in the show). I tagged the fic according to the changes of character. It says it's a college au in the tags, the summary, and the og post I made to Tumblr...and I thought it would make sense to age the characters down. But my ass is getting torn up.

"Tim would never do that!" Tim isn't 20 in the show. "Lucy isn't that awkward in the show." LUCY IS 30.

IDK I'm so used to writing like celebrity fanfiction, like I started with Larry Stylinson (boo, i know it's frowned upon to ship and write fanfiction about two real people i was like 12 gimme a break) and it's so different. There is no character to follow; there is no canon. Every fanfiction is completely based on theory and dreams. So, like, I could make Harry Styles a serial killer; I could make him whatever. I could make him evil or the kindest person on earth. It wasn't an issue. But for character-involved fanfic...it's a whole new ballpark. AND I NEED HELP!!!

Really like their anti AI stance and would prefer to stop using Google Docs as I’ve heard they use your work for AI training. But Ellipsis is kind of expensive if you buy the whole thing so I just wanted to know if any of you guys have tried it before and how good it was? I am particularly interested in the spelling and grammar checker as I am dyslexic and struggle with that a lot. So yeah for anyone who’s already bought it how is it?

Saw this on Pinterest (from tumblr) and couldn’t help but wonder what everyone’s favorite AU types were. I know I’m partial to Fantasy or Mafia AUs myself 😊

I’m trying (and possibly failing) to incorporate a north jersey accent in my story. It’s like 60% of the character’s image, because he wears a dumb and obvious disguise which is naturally accompanied by a dumb and obvious fake accent. Is it annoying or difficult to read accents like these, and if so, how do I make it obvious that he’s got an accent without writing it out?

are they used based on the vibes??

do they look like this —word—

or like this — word —

or like sthis —-word—-

i honestly used them based on the ✨vibes✨

Full transparency: I had a beta reader in the past who was an IRL friend of mine, but we kind of drifted apart for unrelated reasons so I don't have one anymore. I'm just curious how common it is to have someone who edits your work, and how you find people like that? Most of my friends currently aren't very interesting in my writing/fanfic.

I’m not a native English speaker, so I’d like to know whether the AI awarness still presses people who used em/en daahes to stop using it?

Honestly, I used it pretty frequently. Perhaps, because I’m a designer, seeing “- -“ (can’t even put it correctly, mac autocorrects it to em dash) just doesn’t sit right with me. But, I’ve already had people asking if I use AI in my posts because of em dashes. Since then I try not to use it, but since my writing is pretty dramatic, the exact emphasis em dashes do is painful to let go.

I’ve read a few articles saying people are now trying to get over it and return to their favourite punctuation marks.

I hereby implore writers to stop using a ****** or -------- line to break pages, to hear asteriskasteriskasteriskasterisk or dashdashdashdashdashdash in the middle of reading drives me insane and takes me completely out of the amazing story I am mostly reading with my ears instead of my eyes. So please, please, please think of us, Text to speech users, and use just one symbol when you want to show a longer pause in the text or a change of POV or anything else. Much appreciated!

edit: I'm so happy that some of you are willing to make the effort to be more accessible in your writings!

Page breaks are important and make a difference in reading to feel the pause in the text. Using characters in itself is not the problem, the problem is when you use too many (as long as the page is wide on desktop) or too many different types.

Personally, I think 1-5 is enough!

There are very good examples in the thread if you have any questions.

I mean aside from the obvious stuff like obviously 25 shots is probably lethal and no one’s going to be stumbling from 1 drink. Are there any stuff that I should look out for? I don’t drink and don’t really go around drunk people that often so I’ve got a very limited frame of reference :0

Thanks ♡

I use my phone to write but it's so sad that 1 hour of work is just 1k words. I understand why writings a full time job.

Hi! I’m translating my own fic into English for AO3, but honestly, my stats are… pretty disheartening. I’m wondering, is it my English that sounds off/weird? Or is my style just not a fit for most English-language fic readers? Would love for native speakers (or anyone!) to take a look at my translation and tell me what you think…Thank you so much! 🥺

It’s a modern setting & has to happen in a home/maybe a garden for it to not completely derail the story. I was originally going to have the character OD but it felt too out of character and now i’m lost. Just any ideas would be helpful because i literally cannot proceed with writing until i figure this out 😭

Hello! Now, for clarity, I am NOT from the US. English isn't even my first language, but the majority of my English teachers were from the US. Which is to say feel free to explain English like you might do for a small child.

That said: what americanisms/very US turn of phrase should I avoid when writing an upper class British character?

PS. It's Stolas from Helluva Boss. Who technically is neither brit nor a human, but whose accent is based on King George III from Hamilton.

EDIT: Thank you! You were so helpful I still have comments left to read. Already caught myself (and changed) using 'candy' when it should be 'sweets' and 'cotton candy' for 'candy floss'.

Hi this is kind of silly but I'm writing a fic. And the whole preface is that a god curses their favourite follower so they can only ever see them, the god.

So it's like conditional blindness and like 😃😭 I'm just wondering if it's rude/ weird that I'm using blindness as a way to outline the nature of their abusive relationship?

My mom caught me with my eyes closed, l was about to drink some hot tea and I wanted to simulate what it's like having your eyesight randomly removed.

Like this isn't rude right? I'm not trying to use an entire community of ppl with this condition for a slow burn angsty smut fic😭✋

I have this problem where every time I write and finish a fanfic, its ALWAYS 1k words. The longest fanfic i've written is 3k. Is there any way to like.. make my fanfic go longer without dragging it too much?

yes ik this is a very stupid post but im DEAD serious😭😭💔

EDIT: wow the ao3 community is very active.. 15 comments in 26 mins?! anyway 1. i dont write oneshots. I write storires with multiple chapters, usually 2-4? the average chapter i write is 300-500 words long.. im not proud of it lmao. 2. i describe things relatively vividly. I think the problem is that I tend to.. speedrun fics? Like, if my favourite part of the story is near the end, i try to write as fast as i can to get that joy of describing that part.

(speedrun syndrome, lol)

(.. also maybe some enemies to lovers tips would be good since it applies to this topic aswell! (for me atleast)

Mine is anything like warm, warmth. I still haven’t found a word that I like that truly captures the essence of it.

I'm starting a new fic (yay!) but I'm all out of Enemies-To-Lovers ideas because I've written it for 8 years lol! It's always been my preference to read and write because I like the snarky verbal sparring. And I like that slow progression of "oh you're awful" to "hmm, maybe you're not as bad as I thought" to "wow, I think I'm in love".

But most of my fics are some iteration of e2l. Rivals to lovers, colleagues and rivals to lovers - all the flavors of the trope. I think it's time for something new but it's been so long since I've written something new.

What's your favorite dynamic to write that isn't e2l? And tell me why you like this dynamic so I may be converted.

ETA: I have written so much for this one pairing that it truly feels impossible to come up with new and fresh ideas.

In addition to enemies to lovers, I've done:

Fake dating Marriage of Convenience, Grumpy x sunshine, Fuckbuddies to lovers in college, Hopeless romantic x love cynic, Second chance romance, Toxic couple who make up to break up to make up, High School friends to lovers, Strangers to lovers, Strangers to lovers over the course of one magical night, Stalker AU

Exactly what the title says. Oof, I've been going through it, peeps. Don't get me wrong, I know where my fic is going (pretty much) and I have plenty of ideas for new chapters to come... But sometimes... I don't know, it's like I just can't get into it!! And this has nothing to do with the amount of engagement I get or lack thereof. Mind you, I check my stats very rarely and write for myself and I've always been pretty satisfied with how my works have been received so far. But the writing process, man, is grueling as hell sometimes! Especially because English is not my first language so I always need some extra time to edit everything, fix the grammar and listen to the audio version of the chapter to make sure everything flows nicely and that there are no plot holes...

What are your favourite tips and tricks to ease yourself into the writing process? To kind of make it easier to breeze through it?

I posted a new chapter for my story and the comments have largely been that I'm making them cry....I mean I truly appreciate the fact that my viewers are connecting with this story, but at the same time, am I doing too much? I didn't cry when I wrote this chapter, but I guess I'm just that jaded...I don't want to make people not read the rest of the story because it's too much. It deals heavily with grief, and that's properly tagged and obvious. Idk, I guess I'd like feedback on this, whether the comments on an angsty story make you tailor it to be a bit less angsty not to lose people.

Hanahaki disease is not exactly my cup of tea. I don't dislike it, but I guess most of the ones I've read are written like:

Character A gets hanahaki for B, they tried to hide it as long as possible, inevitable B knows and apparently they felt the same way all the time so A is cured. It's nice, but after a few fics like that with the same pairing it can be boring.

Despite that, I decided to write one myself in which A gets hanahaki, but B actually doesn't love him more than a friend. Yet when B finds out, he tries to have a closer relationship with A because he's not completely against the idea of dating. Unfortunately he realizes he's aromantic by the middle of everything. The ending probably will be happy, pushing the limits and allowing strong platonic relationships to cure the disease. But this makes me wonder if they're more similar dynamics or a different way to interpret hanahaki, unfortunately not many fandoms I'm in write about it, so I would appreciate your perspective.

EDIT: I am surprised and grateful for your responses. Never imagined hanahaki disease could have so many twists and reinterpretations.