Worrying about writing

[frith_in_thorns]

I'm killing time before leaving to catch a train, so here is a bit of fic writing/posting angst I've been dwelling on for a while.

Ok, so, the thing that's making me go "I don't know the rules for this" right now is chapter-fic. Prior to Guardian I hadn't posted chapter fic for a looooong time. When I did, it was about on par with what everyone else in that fandom was doing -- chapters between 1-3k long, posted every couple of days.

(Edit: I forgot about the W359 fic a couple of years ago, that was ~3k chapters every two days.)

Except now it seems to be chapters 5-9k long, posted every week? And I've seen people say that posting every week is still not enough time to expect readers to keep up. Goblin Fruit I posted in 3-5k chapters every three days and I did have people tell me I was posting too fast for them. And, to be fair, I started falling behind with comment replies.

Frankly, I can't write 9k chapters. I sort of feel a chapter should be two or three scenes long at most, and my scenes tend to cap out at about 2k maximum. Do I write too concisely? Everyone's fics seem to be full of internal thoughts and musings and I... well, I don't do that either in real life or in writing. Do people really have thoughts they have time to think about in the middle of conversations? I can narrative narrative narrative in my head about stories I want to tell but the only time I get internal narrative is if I'm basically imagining I'm writing a DW post of getting my thoughts in order on a subject. I kind of feel I should be writing in a way to give characters space to think about how they're thinking but it doesn't come out naturally to me. I'm just action action talking action. Maybe some descriptions sprinkled in at the edges of paragraphs, and brief notes on the main emotion a character is feeling or speaking with. But that doesn't get you length. I'm a concise sort of person.

To be quite honest, I much prefer shorter chapters around 2-3k, and posting them quickly. It's how my fics split up best, since my scenes aren't terribly long. (I send scenes to my betas as soon as I've written them and I really like doing that!) But it seems like that's going hugely against the grain. And as you may have gathered, I spend a lot of time and energy worrying about going against unwritten rules.

Thoughts?

Comments

[sholio]

I know a bunch of people have said reassuring things already, so I'm probably repeating some of them, but I think it's EXCELLENT to have variety in any fandom - the desired state, even! - so everyone can find something that suits their tastes. Some people like a lot of introspection and some people like a sparse, fast style; some people like short reads and some people like long reads; and so the very BEST fandoms are the ones that have plenty of both. If you're writing something a little different from what other people are writing, that just means you're writing someone's favorite fic in the whole world, that they've been wanting for SO LONG and haven't been able to find.

[naye]

I love this comment and will apply it to all my own insecurities. ♥

[sholio]

I'm glad!! I hope it's helpful. ♥ I do try to think that way about my own fic, especially when I'm writing something especially far out of the fandom mainstream.

[sheron]

THIS.