Hmmmm well that’s really tough! FIRST OF ALL to quote @monstersinthecosmos on a similar post: 

Dude! Just write some stuff. 😀 😀 This is a teeny little sleepy fandom and it is so thirsty for more content, just do it! You can do it! We all want you to write fic!!!!!!

…Fanfiction is awesome to flex your writing muscles a bit and get some practice in, and it’s helpful because it invites attention and feedback. It’s also easy to apply flash fiction or drabbles to fanfic because we don’t need exposition and backstory. Like, yeah! WE GET IT, WE KNOW! Quit dicking around and just jump into the story, we already want it! This is so valuable when it comes to just getting WRITING done and you really don’t even need a plot. You can elaborate on the teeniest mental images, headcanons, goofy or angsty situations, and that’s all it has to be! No one expects it to win a Pulitzer, it’s okay if it isn’t perfect!

In fact!!!!!!!!!! It shouldn’t be perfect! And you are not going to get better if you do not start somewhere!

I still get really nervous when I post fics and I doubt my abilities BASICALLY CONSTANTLY ALL THE TIME LOL but good and bad feedback are imperative to honing your craft and learning your strengths and finding things to fix. PLUS LIKE, it can really help to motivate you if you get some people on your side who like what you’re doing! Like I am consistently sappy and overwhelmed by the response to my fics and it’s what keeps me writing. 🙂  🙂  🙂  🙂

Anyway idk man, here’s an ungraceful dismount to my post lmfao but, listen!

Write! Do it! Share it with us we are thirsty.

^*APPLAUDS* Rules are made to be broken. Write the way you want! I had a teacher who told me that to begin a sentence with “And” was blasphemy, illegal. punishable by DEATH practically, but I know Anne Rice does it OFTEN, in published fiction, so that teacher was wrong. Maybe she was just trying to start us off with the rules so we could then break them. Probably that.

BTW I’ll reblog a really good graphic I saw once that described different types of fanfic.

So my advice?

Even though I write fanfic myself, I have my own tastes about it. Writing fic is an art in itself, you’re creating smtg, like sculpture or cooking, and as such it’s very subjective. There are courses taught on writing in schools at all levels, books written about writing, so while I can’t give you a thorough and objective answer in a short blog post… I can give you this much and NO CUTS WE LONGPOST LIKE MEN.

For me, writing is about 1 or more of these basic setups, sometimes combined and interwoven:

• (a) presenting a problem and exploring it,
• (a) presenting a problem, exploring it, and (b) offering a solution,
• (a) presenting a problem, exploring it, (b) offering what the author feels is a BAD solution and (c.) showing the consequences of that bad solution.

^That’s all you really need. Everything else is in service to that. Even the fluffiest fanfic has some issue, even if that issue is just, “What shirt am I going to wear tonight?” Mundane, probably, but hey, it’s still a decision that needs to be made! 😉

• Fluff tastes better with at least a dash of angst, Angst tastes better with at least a dash of fluff, etc. A friend of mine took a cooking class and was told that salt brings out the flavor in other ingredients. I definitely think that corresponds with fic. I’m not saying to use every ingredient at your disposal, but in an angsty scene, can you toss in one character trying to placate the other by doing smtg fluffy, idk, bringing them flowers? 

^X A flower offering might get rejected by the recipient in the scene (or it could provide ammunition!), but just the act of doing that can enhance the scene by so much. I MEAN LOOK AT THIS PICTURE. Is there not a rich story here??

• Use epithets sparingly. PLEASE just use their names if you don’t want to use their gender pronouns. I can’t tell you how far it kicks me out of a fic when I see “the elder vampire” or “the brunette” so many times in close proximity bc it fixates the reader on those characteristics, which generally have nothing to do with the scene itself. YES I KNOW SHE’S OLDER/YES I KNOW HER HAIR IS BROWN. SO WHAT?? Even when it’s two characters of the same gender in a scene alone together, your reader can usually figure out by context which “he” you mean when you write: “he reached up and touched his shoulder” One way to do it is by leading with one of the characters in the para, so it’s clear who’s doing the actions in it, ’[Name 1] tentatively went in for a hug. He reached up and touched his shoulder.’ In the next para, the other character can take over the action. ’[Name 2] batted the offending hand away. “Don’t touch me!”’
• “Said” is not a curse word. Go ahead and use other words for “said,” but too many ‘“Oh!” she cried’ ‘“Oh!” she moaned’ also kicks me out of a fic bc I become more aware of the writer sitting there trying to impress me. “Said” is just a notification that it’s a spoken word, let me breeze past it, it’s okay, really. Don’t let your “said” substitutes do so much of the work that the words of dialogue should be shouldering.
• Purple prose when it matters. A fic with all dialogue and little descriptive details can read like a report. If you’re going for that, good! But purple prose adds texture and helps immerse the reader. Readers don’t need it in every para and every line of dialogue, it tends to slow down the action. It can be used to great effect, maybe describing the interior of a room gives a nice pregnant pause in the dialogue to increase the tension. Just don’t drown the reader with it unless you’re doing it for a reason.

To return to my earlier point, What is the purpose of your fic? Even if you’re just aiming for the fluffiest fic, I feel like it gives it a little extra substance if there’s some underlying thing/moment you’re exploring. 

I did a fic about Louis, Lestat, and Claudia getting ready for Halloween, but I also included some exploration of Claudia getting upset and missing her mother, and that led to her being informed that Louis and Lestat also missed their own mothers. It’s one of those defining but subtle moments in everyone’s life, when you realize your parents were also children with parents of their own. So the fic was not just about the premise “dressing up for Halloween,” but what other things that could stir up, and what we can reveal about the characters whether or not it was explicitly given to us in canon. In this instance, we didn’t get this in canon, this was in the interstices of canon.

Anon, start slow, dip your toe in, look at fic you love and try to figure out what makes it so good for you! Don’t be afraid to fail.

I’ve collected some somewhat more objective things in my #on writing tag, so you might try there, but again, those are things that I probably agree with, too 😉