Roswell Fanatics

April wrote:Vael, sometimes longer stories can spring from short story ideas. It's not uncommon. Originally Passion was going to be one of my shorter stories, but . . . well, you know how that's turned out.

I personally look forward to reading your badass version of Alex. If everyone portrayed every character exactly the same way, then the world of Roswell fanfic would not be as diverse and immensely enjoyable as it is. New-ness is a good thing; it opens up all these unexplored possibilities.

-April

Passion was to be short? i have not read all your stuff yet but isn't Passion your longest?
I wouldn't think my hopefull Alex to be badass, it almost sounds weird saying it. He will be cruel but not wanting to hurt, he's more rash than anything ( like Michael) and goes about the wrong way for control ( like Max) those two will play a big part on him, and he will learn that you can't always protect your heart from the inevitable.

Heavenli24 220,000 words now you really scare me, through all my changes so far i have only the first part which i'm happy with

I've had the same thing happen to me - my original idea for When Love and Loss Collide had maybe 20 chapters if that. Now it's 57, very close to finished, but with a prequel and sequel already in the works (when my muse allows me to work on them). Honestly I wondered for a while if I could actually do anything short, becuase everything just seemed to grow, but I guess it's just a case of the individual story. Sometimes it's right to extend, sometimes not. I didn't with If Only, although I do intend to do some sequels eventually, and I don't regret that despite some pleading from people to do otherwise. It worked as a short story. With others however, I feel I would have left out important parts of the story...

You have to find the right balance for your story, but I think you'll know when you find it. Good luck with the writing

Behrsgirl77 wrote: But it's so hard! I just procrastinate, and it's not for the lack of thoughts and ideas, I've got a ton of them. It's more the fact that so many people before me have written some amazing stories and I'll never live up to it. I read them and think I can never write anything remotely as good as that. That's a great fear, one that I have decided to work on (again). Another year has gone by, and this year I promised myself I would finally do it... we'll see I may creep back into the shadows.

I'm not sure how to explain it except for the fact that I love the characters so much, that I don't want to ruin them with my awful story and awful characterization...

Somehow I KNEW that you'd be on this thread. lol I saw the title and I was like..."Hey that sounds like Tanya and her ridiculous notion that she can't write CC/Canon". Because, babe, you can. And I will continue telling you so until you admit it to yourself.

My main fanfic fears have always been my inability to get my ass in gear to finish stories that should have been finished long ago. Sigh. And this isn't really an irrational fear, because I do have too many stories out there that are unfinished. I totally relate to all who talked about that. I also used to have an irrational fear about writing Michael, which is why he was a zombie in my very first fanfic, "Out of the Woods."

Years ago when I was teaching a fellow teacher told me that I would only write when I couldn’t keep from writing. For me that has been true. Louis L’Amour the western writer said he had to plug away and make himself write every day and the chore some times became greater and greater. So you write whether you are spouting words as fast as you can type or you are struggling to work every sentence for as much as you can get from it. You find your self writing.

I once talked to a teacher who had notebooks full of poetry and short stories. The teacher refused to ever let anyone look at this because it was part of his soul and he couldn’t stand the thought of his soul being destroyed.

Right now I am several stories ahead of any posting schedule. With my health on a rollercoaster, right now I am struggling with a damned oxygen hose, I hope that Carole my wife and beta can get help from readers or other writers so she can post the stories I have dreamed up, if something happens to me. Whither I have a few weeks or maybe several years I want to say things and I hope I get a chance to do this.

Age also brings fears of some day sitting in front of a keyboard and having not an idea in my head. So far this hasn’t happened but everything is finite.

It all becomes right when you get that one feed back. My second story was “Goodbye Mr. Evans, Hey Max” which contained a lot of biographical material about my first year of teaching. That feed back I mentioned was. “I really liked the character of Max which you created.”

Then there are sometimes when I look at what I am working on. It is all drivel. All I have to do is hit the delets key and 14 gigabytes will disappear for ever from the sight of mankind. Thankfully I go to bed and then in the morning when the pains of the day have not set in and Well, that isn’t so bad. Maybe a little adjustment and the 14 gigs slowly grows. Banners, signatures and finally stories that I want to share. Then I am glad I didn’t commit literary suicide with the delete key.
ken r

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Heavenli24 wrote:

April wrote:Vael, sometimes longer stories can spring from short story ideas. It's not uncommon. Originally Passion was going to be one of my shorter stories, but . . . well, you know how that's turned out.

This is true - my story You Can Alway Count On Me was originally intended to be a 10-part short story, but as I wrote it, I found myself really enjoying the story and it just seemed to write itself. Four months later, my 10-part fic had become the longest story I had ever written up to that point (35 parts) and a year after that it was a series of 3 stories, with a combined length of 220,000 words and 500 pages!

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Sometimes the stories just take on a life of their own. Some readers may remember when I stated that "Everything to You" was originally going to be two parts, LOL. It turned into ninety two parts and two separate vignettes/epilogues. And now, I actually have an idea for a sequel, if I ever finish the other things I have in mind.

It appears, from this thread, that it's normal to think your own writing is not as good as someone elses'. I've had this problem from the beginning. I can't tell you how many times I almost scrapped my stories thinking they weren't good enough to post. Or, I'll think it's pretty good, then I'll read someone else's story and change my mind.

When I was in college, I had the same problem in my writing class. We wrote a paper almost every week, and every week, I would think, "this is the paper I get the F on", and every week, I got an A. When I told my teacher, he said it was because I lived with it, breathed it, worked on it for so long that I lost all perspective by the time it was time to turn it in. I've found that to be true with my writing now. The more I go over chapters, the less I think they're worthy. Or I'll revise and revise until I just have to give up and post or I'll go crazy.

Nuts, huh?

Sylvia

my author fears: lol i have quite a few

♥ over writing a love scene

♥over writing a ending

♥dragging out a story

♥am i keeping the reader's attention?

♥am i doing the characters justice?

♥sometimes when i don't get enough feedback i end up posting another chapter: i get quite paranoid over it

♥when writing a love scene when do know what to write or language use without it seeming tacky.

♥ sometimes my mind goes blank when i write

♥ i have a awful habit of starting something but not finishing

♥ i have a fear that my stories aren't as good as other people's

lol i could go on...

I'm gettin scared even writing this.

But I'll just go ahead anyway. Hope I don't sound silly lol.

My fears include..

1) Starting a story, you know when you get all excited about this idea you have and then gradually...from time..you lose interest and abandon it halfway. Always happened to me. I started reading roswell fanfic from crashdown.com when I was fourteen years old. I began to write when I was twelve lol because I used to read goosebump books and stuff like spookville lol. I was into that stuff and one day came across a Roswell book in the library..that's when it all started for me. How I was pulled into the world of Roswell. The picture of Max was staring at me from the book cover. Thus I started to write many Roswell fics and save them on the computer..I was never a member of fanfic sites before. Anyway, halfway though..I stopped. I lost interest..I had about a hundred stories saved onto my computer..all deleted though.

2) Am I entertaining or insulting? I hate to offend people in my writing, My goal is to entertain. I get stared if ppl are finding my fics boring. What's the point in writing something boring lol? And then insulting. I don't like the character Tess but she makes a real villian because I see her as the other woman who tries to come in between Max and Liz all the time. It's the character of Tess, not who plays her that I have a problem with. And then I wonder if I'm playing the other characters right. I have no idea how to make a wild sexy Max lol. I only know the sweet one from season one. And I worry about feedbackers hating my characters. Alot.

3) I struggle so much with love scenes. I don't know what people are looking out for in Adult fics...whether it's smut or something sweet like lovey dovey stuff..I try to draw a line and get a balance between the too. Since I am not really experienced *coughs* in that field...I have no clue how to write it. I get inspired by top writers though who have me staring at the computer screen like this for hours (minutes more like, don't wanna get repetitive eye strain injury lol )

4) I hate to drag out a story just like Pijeechinadoll Ping said above. I always find myself doing that to some of my fics. For example when I write an adult fic...I spend years almost and then after god knows..like a centuary later Max and Liz finally sleep together. I don't know how that happens..I guess I've always grown up in the field where sex/love making is considered to be a serious matter and takes it time like a flower taking time to bloom.

5) I'm also very shy. I never talk about sex to anyone apart from a close friend and recently one of my sisters. I can never talk to my parents about it. Hell no. I had to talk with teachers in secondary school to know what sex was becase In sex ed I had no clue what the hell was going on. I was only eleven. So for me, I get so shy when I write sex scenes. So shy.

6) Feedback. Now I have no problem with a little fb. As long as ppl do comment..and I know at least what I write is being read. But I don't like nitpickers who take it too seriously. Yes, critics are welcome to talk about it but an overdose of something I barely understand..I've seen some ppl's fics be nitpicked on a long scale and I just think..wtf? Questions are fine. But suggestions on how to run the story from other ppl is just..not my thing. Not my cup of tea. Because not only it takes you off your story but it makes you think your original idea is pathetic..well for me it does. you don't wanna click on your story and find that someone's written a lengthy essay about the flaws in it and what should be done. Say you had a hard day at work or school and you want to unwind and then you see comments like that and it just get's you all upset.

So I have some solutions I think to ease some of my fears...

1) Pre write some chapters for a brand new story. Go over it with your sister, best friend, your beta or some of your roswell fanatic friends or something.

2) make a plan..always works for me. Always have a plan of how you want to start your story, manage the middle body of your story and then how to end it.

3) Imagination. I have a very wild imagination and I love it and I'm defo not afraid to use it.

I think I have some more things to say but I can't think right now atm.

god hunter i just read what you wrote. and i agree with every single point you made!

its so hard to get it right sometimes ^^

I have to say that the hardest thing for me is the idea that I'll post a fic and not finish it or leave it hanging for forever (which annoys me greatly).

It just leads to this pressure to finish it and I don't think that the story comes out as well as I'd want it to.

And that's another thing: the act of writing itself.

I tend to write bits a pieces - a line here, a paragraph there, a couple of pages - and then try to figure out how I'm going to string them all together.

Of course, it doesn't help when I do this to multiple stories at once. I sit and wonder if this line or description should be used in one of my other fics, even though I know that when I originally wrote X it was for the fic I was working on at the time.

It's the second-guessing I suppose.

Constantly trying to perfect it when I know it's not going to be perfect. However, I tend to hold on to things and over-analyze them to the point of frustration because some strange part of me believes that it could be better. Finally I just take out all the notes and post the darned thing to find that people like it; or they don't. You can't really please everyone so I've stopped trying to do that.

After I post it doesn't really effect me; or at least not nearly as much as it does when I'm writing.

And the writing!

I was trained to write more formally growing up - not completely formal, but it's hard for me at times to write words such as "can't" or "don't" or "should've". I find myself instead using "can not (or cannot depending)," "do not," and "should have" and then going back later and have to change them to fit the characters and their dialogue (as well as what is commonly used in today's language).

I'm sure there are many more things that I could come up with but I have stories I'm supposed to be working on as we speak so I'm going to stop procrastinating (another issue I have) and get to work on them.

Sigh.

The joys of writing. How something can be so fulfilling and so very... well, you get the idea, at the same time is beyond me!

I suppose we all do it for the same reason though: the love of telling the tale. It's like an addiction for the natural writers. We're all slightly masochistic that way.

Off to work on my work! We shall see how far we get tonight!


Ashley

Ok I guess my fears are:

I never know if my writing is good.

I never know if I should really continue the story.

I never know if I'm putting the right emotion.

I have two stoies to finish,but can't cause I don't how to fix it.