Warning

This is going to be a long blog.

GET YA GUNS ON!

So I was sat at my usual (cramped) space looking like some kind of 40 year old pro writer that was on her last warning from her publishing company telling her hurry up and hand in a metaphorical manuscript that was some months overdue.
With a strong hot coffee waiting in front of me and freshly lit cigarette in the other, I stared at the screen wondering…

What do people actually want to read?

Is there a specific thing? There must be a few.

I know one person can’t speak for everyone, but surely there are some common factors that everyone has in mind.

Some people like romance, others a good mystery and even disregarding the age range on here, some still like horror…

What would you say the most important thing in a story is?
Characters?
Plot?
Twists?
The execution the way it’s told?


Due to Keepers unintentional prompt, a number of things buzzed around my head. And on this off chance, I find such notions worthy of a little attention - Seeing as I was loitering without aim on here and doing nothing productive.

Do readers enjoy flat characters so that they can insert themselves into the tale, or do people still find well made up characters something interesting? Is creativity a thing of the past?

When I first started writing on here I didn’t expect anyone to read my stuff no matter how hopeful I was, but now I have close to 300 subscribers and I’m still not sure how I managed it. My early fics were shameless inserts because I didn’t know any better and the grammar is cringe worthy - Yet people still seemed to like them.

Why?

(Don’t worry, this is going somewhere, I’m not fishing for an ego boost)

Is it because people wanted to fit themselves into the flimsy O.C’s and go on poorly written adventures with their favourite idols, or, by some sliver of a chance, was it that the plots had potential?

Moving onto something else for a moment. Brought up by Yuu.

Meeting the demands of the market.

I haven’t forgotten this is a fan fiction site and no matter how much it irks me to see the same groups/idols on the featured stories, it will still happen because -

[Cute idol group appear] -> [11 - 17yr old girls swoon] - > [Said girls write fanfics] -> [Idol group brings out more material] -> [Initial 15yr olds+ grow out of the group and are replaced by younger girls] -> [More fanfics written] -> [Boy group replaced by younger idols] -> [11 - 17yr old girls swoon]

And the process continues on its Hellish cycle.

So does this mean that only 14 year old pretty boys are what we want to read about? Surely there are only so many things these boys barely out of puberty can do! Apparently not…

How things are looking so far:
The readers of AFF want to read about cute boys doing cute things with equally cute girls?

That’s all well and good for younger people on here and if you’re into that pointlessness. What would you get after reading a story like that? How would you feel? Would you take a different perspective of the world? No! You wouldn’t. You’d be leaving high school thinking the guy who bullied you loved you and wanted to be with you no matter the price. And that is certainly not what he meant. He was a dickhead with an ego problem that will end up living off the dole, taking drugs and beating you up behind closed doors. And I’m telling you now, if you just so happen to be unlucky enough to be pulled in by his onyl redeeming quality - skin deep looks - then you are as daft in the head as the 2D characters in those kinds of fan fictions.

Enough of that. I was beginning to get off track. I apologize A(^_^)

What I was meaning to follow in to was that there are not just 11 - 17 year olds on here, but also 18 year olds up into young adulthood. Being an adult (Apparently) myself, I like to see more complex plots and characters - Especially since I’ve grown away from the atypical idol romance stories.

So, my fellow adults, and even young un’s who want some substance to stories you want to read, what substance exactly is it that you would like to see?

On another important note - One that seems to be the aggrevation of many people on here - Poorly written work in every sense of the word: Bad plot, plain characters, butchered spelling and grammar so bad a dyslexic kid would spit on it.

I know we’ve all come across on story like that, and I know a lot of you have clenched your fist, scowled so deeply that your monitor started smoking and then promptly closed the tab in case, by some magical means, it infected you.

But in stead of bashing and saying pointlessly mean thing to or about it, I think we should try to help. Not everyone can be an excellent speller and I know I’ve stared at a sentence for a long time wondering if the grammar was right on more than one occasion. Nobody can be perfect but if they are on this site, then they must obviously enjoy writing and so they have the right to do whatever they want.

Maybe they don’t have family members to help them with the technical stuff or maybe they were bullied by that prick from six paragraphs back and don’t want to go in school to learn, but still want to improve themselves. As fellow readers and writers, wouldn’t helpful encouragement and a bit of patience be better for everyone?

Which leads me to something I’ve been planning for a while. I know a few others have posted writing tips in blogs, but what if it was all compiled into one place for easy reference? Where a group of people willing to give out help for nothing, where we could post our unwanted ideas and plot bunnies. Not just a simple BETA reader or reviewer that will give a text book answer to what’s going wrong, but people who are willing to spend time helping someone improve?

Asianfanfics has changed so much since I joined. It was a place I was constantly at: doing all nighters, happily chatting with others without someone butting in and ing for the Hell of it. It was a community and now it is not. It saddens me how things have turned out. There was always someone around that you could talk to or someone that would answer a stranger in need.

I miss that kind of community, and I’m sure a lot of others do too. So instead of just saying you miss it, why don’t we try to change it?

This was one of my longer blogs, but it had been bothering me for a while and seeing other peoples views on things had made me actually type it up. Ideally, I would like to get people involved with my little idea of a place for writers to go when they need advice, so if you’re interested in helping, or being helped, don’t forget to comment.

Oh, and the other questions about what you’d like to read were not rhetorical either. I would like to see what people had in mind. I love writing, and I love people getting something from reading my work so an insight into peoples minds would be fun *Creepy laugh*