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silveradept[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]
Some people get their best work done by writing by themselves. Some are fortunate enough to have a place they can go to not be distracted by anything on the outside while they get the writing they want done. Isolation, and a supportive enough structure to their life, means having the ability to think and compose away from distraction and the things that often get in the way of focused attention and work. Like kids. And household requirements. And, sometimes, partners and others who demand time from you for their own purposes. (Not all of which are terrible, honest.)
But sometimes writing by yourself isn't fun, or you want to noodle around in a fandom in a low-pressure environment, or the well of ideas isn't producing anything immediately that wants to turn into something. That's where the communal parts of fiction writing can come in handy.
If you're interested in a specific fandom, there's a good chance there's a community for it on your preferred blogging and social media platform, assuming it hasn't imploded, exploded, or had the advertisers bring the axe on it so that it can't or won't host the content that the fans are there for. If it's Dreamwidth, there's a good chance that in addition to the community about the fandom in general, there's one specifically about providing a place for writing and/or inspiration for writing. And probably one more that is specifically about that fandom and NSFW inspirations for writing. At least. And, for the most part, the people on DW like it that way, and seek out the things that are appropriate to the level they want to be involved, at the kinky classification they want to be involved at.
Many of those communities offer prompts in various forms - solicitations from the community's members that then other members of the community can claim and write, or "bingo cards" composed of words, tropes, characters, situations, or just about anything that someone wants to throw into a randomizer and then spit back out a 5x5 grid of possibilities from. (Some of those generators aren't strictly random, as they might want to put various thematic elements on specific columns or rows. Some of them, though, anything goes.) Bingo cards can be played any way the person likes, but cover-all-squares or "blackout" bingo is one of the more popular ones. There's also prompts from other works, pictures, thematic ideas, and a whole lot more. If you're looking to up your writing game, but you don't know where to start on a particular work, there are a lot of ways of getting inspired, or at least a few of the bits filled in to start writing with.
My personal favorite community-based writing exercise is the fiction exchange. Exchanges generally work in the following way:
There are other ways to engage your community in shared writing, like workshops, write-ins, and other things that can happen in the world around you as well as the on-line spaces that you inhabit. Fandom is a community at heart, even if some of the elements of that community can be toxic as fork. It's neat to go out and participate in that wider community, and depending on the things you do, you might end up making some new friends and seeing familiar faces in and around the spaces that you're part of. Plus, there are the kudos and comments that your work gets, and sometimes, there's downright wonderful amounts of squee from someone about something you wrote. It really helps to reinforce the idea that You Really Are Good Enough when someone is gushing about the work you made to the point where they hit the character limit for a comment and have to go into a second (or third!) comment just to capture what they found was so interesting about it.
So, when you're ready, and you feel like you have enough practice under your belt, step out into the community and find the people interested in the same things you are. There's a lot out here to explore.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]Some people get their best work done by writing by themselves. Some are fortunate enough to have a place they can go to not be distracted by anything on the outside while they get the writing they want done. Isolation, and a supportive enough structure to their life, means having the ability to think and compose away from distraction and the things that often get in the way of focused attention and work. Like kids. And household requirements. And, sometimes, partners and others who demand time from you for their own purposes. (Not all of which are terrible, honest.)
But sometimes writing by yourself isn't fun, or you want to noodle around in a fandom in a low-pressure environment, or the well of ideas isn't producing anything immediately that wants to turn into something. That's where the communal parts of fiction writing can come in handy.
If you're interested in a specific fandom, there's a good chance there's a community for it on your preferred blogging and social media platform, assuming it hasn't imploded, exploded, or had the advertisers bring the axe on it so that it can't or won't host the content that the fans are there for. If it's Dreamwidth, there's a good chance that in addition to the community about the fandom in general, there's one specifically about providing a place for writing and/or inspiration for writing. And probably one more that is specifically about that fandom and NSFW inspirations for writing. At least. And, for the most part, the people on DW like it that way, and seek out the things that are appropriate to the level they want to be involved, at the kinky classification they want to be involved at.
Many of those communities offer prompts in various forms - solicitations from the community's members that then other members of the community can claim and write, or "bingo cards" composed of words, tropes, characters, situations, or just about anything that someone wants to throw into a randomizer and then spit back out a 5x5 grid of possibilities from. (Some of those generators aren't strictly random, as they might want to put various thematic elements on specific columns or rows. Some of them, though, anything goes.) Bingo cards can be played any way the person likes, but cover-all-squares or "blackout" bingo is one of the more popular ones. There's also prompts from other works, pictures, thematic ideas, and a whole lot more. If you're looking to up your writing game, but you don't know where to start on a particular work, there are a lot of ways of getting inspired, or at least a few of the bits filled in to start writing with.
My personal favorite community-based writing exercise is the fiction exchange. Exchanges generally work in the following way:
- Based on the theme of the exchange (which can be anything - fandoms, tropes, pairings, kinks, and so forth), a set of characters/works/relationship pairings (and moreings) are nominated to be included in the set of possible things someone can write for the exchange.
- Moderators and exchange runners clean the tag set by removing tags that don't fit the theme, are duplicates of other tags, or don't qualify for the tagset the way they've been nominated.
- With a tag set finalized, the exchange is then opened for people / pseudonyms / accounts to sign up for the exchange. In their sign-ups, participants must meet a set minimum of different requests and offers. Requests are tags the person signing up would like to receive as a gift work to them, offers are tags the person signing up is willing to write for someone else. The requests portion is often accompanied by "optional details," a space that allows the requester to make prompt suggestions or expound upon the things they definitely do not want in their work. Requests may also link to a "letter" (usually a blog post) for their creator where the requester can expound at length about the things they like, dislike, and think might be good prompts about all the requests they are making.
- Once the sign-up period is closed, through the magic of algorithms and/or a lot of hand-sorting and comparison, each request is paired up with a compatible offer (usually the minimum match for AO3 is one fandom, one character or pairing, one form). This doesn't mean that the person filling your request is the person you're writing an offer for. (If that happens, it's a rarity, or you were the only people who matched on that particular fandom/pairing.)
- Writing time! Each person with an assignment creates a work that meets the minimum requirements of the exchange and posts it in the correct place, addressed to the right person.
- Sometimes, due to circumstances, a person can't fulfill their assignment. There's usually a deadline (one or two weeks before the assignment is due) for a person to default on their assignment. Sometimes that carries various penalties with it, but what's important is that the assignment is then opened up to the community as a "pinch hit," where some enterprising writer will see something they like and write a work that fits the assignment, so that there's a gift waiting for the person who fulfills their end of the assignment, instead of having written a work and gotten none in return.
- Once the due date for all assignments is past, the exchange organizers go through and make sure that all the assignments turned in fit the minimum requirements of the exchange and are actual, complete works. A week's time is usually budgeted for this and the inevitable post-deadline pinch hits that appear after someone who didn't self-default, but also didn't turn in an assignment that fits, are then defaulted.
- Once it's been determined that everyone who has written a gift will receive a gift in turn, the collection is opened and recipients get to read their gifts, and all the other works in that collection.
There are other ways to engage your community in shared writing, like workshops, write-ins, and other things that can happen in the world around you as well as the on-line spaces that you inhabit. Fandom is a community at heart, even if some of the elements of that community can be toxic as fork. It's neat to go out and participate in that wider community, and depending on the things you do, you might end up making some new friends and seeing familiar faces in and around the spaces that you're part of. Plus, there are the kudos and comments that your work gets, and sometimes, there's downright wonderful amounts of squee from someone about something you wrote. It really helps to reinforce the idea that You Really Are Good Enough when someone is gushing about the work you made to the point where they hit the character limit for a comment and have to go into a second (or third!) comment just to capture what they found was so interesting about it.
So, when you're ready, and you feel like you have enough practice under your belt, step out into the community and find the people interested in the same things you are. There's a lot out here to explore.
