Proposal for a novel-writing community

[emmagrant01]

EDIT: New community! novel_fanfic

Thanks so much for the response on my recent post about writing novel-length fanfic. Based on many of the responses, it seems that there is interest in a community for novel-length fanfic writers. After reading through the comments and thinking about a format that might be useful and supportive, I propose to form a community focused on supporting the writing of novel-length fanfic.

This would not be a place to post novel-length fanfic -- the consensus seems to be that LJ is just not a good forum for that. What it would be instead is a discussion and support forum for this particular genre of fan fiction. If this idea is intriguing, please read on.



First, let me emphasize that the idea here is to facilitate the development of a supportive writing community. I'm volunteering to mod this group, but I don't want this to be MY group. I would appreciate your honest feedback on the ideas below. If you have any additional suggestions or thoughts about ways a community could be supportive that I haven't listed, please leave a comment to suggest them. Also, please take a moment to fill out the poll. For the purpose of discussion, let's define novel-length as longer than 40,000 words. (I understand that's the common definition in most fandoms.)

Proposal:

The purpose of this community is to provide a discussion forum and support network for writers of novel-length fan fiction within the LJ community. It appears that the culture of LJ may not be conducive to the writing and publication of novel-length fan fiction, but the interactive and communicative structure of LJ has advantages over the more traditional mailing list. I'm not sure if this forum should be restricted to the Harry Potter fandom or not; as a writer in two fandoms, I can see arguments for both perspectives.

There are two ways people could be involved in the community: as a member or as an observer (reflecting the fact that you can either join or monitor a community). I'll outline what I see as the possibilities for involvement in either case.

Members
Members of the community would be writers of novel-length fanfic, writers who are interested in trying to write novel-length fanfic, or other folks who find the writing process interesting and would enjoy discussing it. Many of these sorts of posts could be friends-locked to members of the community in order to keep the spam down for non-members. Here are ways in which members could benefit from involvement in the community:
• Weekly writing discussions could focus on "big issues" in writing novel-length fic. As the mod, I could take suggestions for questions and post them once a week, for example. (This could be public or private, depending on the topic.)
• Writers could ask questions in posts, request certain types of resources, look for beta readers, etc. (These entries could be friends-locked to members of the community, if we like.)
• Writers could request specific support related to a fic they're writing. For example, they could ask for suggestions for overcoming writer's block, they could post an outline for their novel and ask for help in hashing out a plot, or ask specific questions about characterization. They could even vent their frustrations and difficulties with the process, with the idea that members of the community could offer encouragement and support. (Again, these sorts of posts could be friends-locked to the community, at the discretion of the poster.)
• Writers could post announcements about new chapters of their fics (posted on their LJ or elsewhere) or of postings of completed fics. (These would be public, unless the poster would rather not have a WIP or rough draft widely read.)
• Writers could recommend novel-length fics or propose to discuss the structure or style of a novel-length fic, from a writing perspective.

Observers
Anyone should feel free to "friend" or "monitor" the community, whether they write novel-length fanfic or not. I'm thinking that the writing-specifc posts could be friends-locked so that the public posts would mostly pertain to announcements of novel-lengths fics or discussion of such fics. (And cut down on the spamming of your flist with stuff you're not interested in.) Thus, the community could serve as a sort of "alert service" (think "chapter owls") for novel-length fic and WIPs that are being written. As the mod, I could maintain a backdated entry which is a list of current WIPs and finished novel-length fics written by members of the community; this could be a useful reference for observers.





Poll

[Poll #364865]



Please feel free to offer any other comments or suggestions as comments on this post. Thank you for your interest! Please feel free to spread the word and direct people to this entry.

Comments

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I'm most familiar with the HP characters, so I'm loath to read a novel-length fic from a fandom whose characters I'm not familiar with. OTOH, good novel-length fic of any sort deserves encouragement, and maybe I'll be enthused enough to go read the original work to be able to read the fic.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. If it was open to multiple fandoms, some of the things I've suggested above would have to go, IMO. Some things about writing novel-length fic are going to cut across fandoms. I think it depends on the interest of possible participants, to be honest.

[jetis.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of things that I had some problems with, but of course, they are only my opinions. You would be the mod.

Place to vent frustrations or difficulties in the writing process

I get a lot of them from my flist. If the thought it was well stated and had relevancy to the writing process in general, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But really, I have NO desire to see 300 people vent about their writing.

Post announcements of new chapters
Post recs of novel-length fics or WIPs
Start/participate in discussions about a posted novel-length fic

There are already comms dedicated to this kind of stuff--and I already belong or have belonged to a lot of them. I really don't think another rec'ing comm is needed, because there are plenty of them out there and I'm more interested in this being a support comm for writers with wips than an open recing comm.

The same with the new chapters. I belong to tons of MLs and such. The net (LJ in particular) is just already bloated with this kind of stuff.

And as far as the discussion goes, I guess that's okay. I wouldn't mind it if it was maybe, one fic a week that everyone would focus on. I know there's a comm for fic discussions, but that might just be completed fic.

I guess the only thing that's giving me pause is that there just seems to be so much being proposed and I'm having difficulty just figuring out exactly what this comm's purpose is, but I guess that what this is poll is about, huh?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

You're right that there's a lot here! That's why I posted this as a proposal to see what people would find useful. I basically culled suggestions from all the comments left on my earlier post. We'll see what people want, and go from there.

Re: venting -- you're right that it could be an issue. What I had in mind was something very specific to the process of writing a novel-length fic, not rants or frustration about fandom in general. (That's what your personal LJ is for, right?) That one's scoring high on the poll so far, so people seem to think it's a good thing. I can't help but think there are ways to manage that sort of thing without it being overly annoying. The idea was that you could come to this community and yell "Help!" (f-locked) and people would help you. That may not happen on your own LJ.

Re: reccing, etc. If there are other comms for that, it may not be necessary here. Good point. As far as announcements of new chapters, that was something people specifically requested in the comments on my last post. I know there are places like The Pimp Cane specifically for that, but it's hard to imagine people in a writing community wouldn't also want to say, "hey, new chapter", as well, especially when they're hoping to get feedback from other members of the community. There could be a way to manage it so that it's not just a free-for-all. I'm open to suggestions about what that might be...

Thanks for your feedback!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Re: Restricting to HP...it seems like it would be good to let anyone talk about any other series, but HP is so incredibly large and unwieldly as it is, that it might just be too much to handle.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Right -- it might be that we could widen the possibilities for participation by narrowing the scope of the community, if that makes sense.

[hazelhawthorne.livejournal.com]

I do understand the desire to restrict discussion to HP fics, but I think the idea of a novel length fic writer community would reach accross fandom boundaries and that many of the topics would cross over. I read lots of HP novel length fics and would love to join in the discussion of them, but as a writer, I'm currently playing in PotC waters and would appreciate being able to discuss my fic as well. I understand that members of the comunity who are not familiar with the fandom a writer is working in may not be able to give much help with making sure charaterization stays true to cannon, but things like plot and character development, as well as basic writing advice, are not dependent on knowing the source material.

Umm... just my two cents.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

As someone who writes in more than one fandom myself, I can definitely see the appeal of having a community where the focus is on writing novel-length fic, regardless of fandom or pairing. As I mentioned to someone above, it may be more feasible to do that by narrowing the focus of the community. But looking at the results above, it seems that people are interested in things like reccing fics as well. I'm not sure if there is already a comm out there for that sort of thing.

This seems like it could potentially serve a lot of different purposes, but I'd like to find something that fits the needs of the people who would actually participate.

[gblvr.livejournal.com]

I answered that I'm not sure because I tend to fandom hop; right now, I'm pretty well stuck in HP and would use it for that only, but what if that changes? I might like the comm, and want to utilize it for other fandoms. I figure if I feel like that, so will others.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I;m getting that sense in the comments, but not necessarily in the poll. Interesting...

[thermidor.livejournal.com]

I am not so far, a writer of novel lenght fic; I write very little actually. However, I do beta and I also am resource & research girl (reference librarian by day; super geek by night)and if writers would want it, I'd be happy to serve in that capacity.

I don't have strong opinions about it being HP only, but I guess I would lean that way.

[ashe-frost.livejournal.com]

The main problem with not allowing non-Harry Potter people in the community is that this community would be such a valuable resource to write novel-length fiction, that members of the community who are multifandom would want to use it for their other fiction, as well.

Maybe on one day a month, there should be a post made by a moderator as a sort of bulletin for novel lengths in other fandoms. Members could go in, say what fandom the fic is in, or which fandom the topic of discussion pertains to, maybe give a breif description of the fic (general header stuff--title, pairing, rating, genre, etc), or a tiny overview of the different spectrums of the topic, and link to an entry in their own livejournal or another community's live journal where the fic or topic could be discussed.

I also think that, yes, while there are a lot of communities that rec fics, there is still a place for recs in the community. Especially when discussing styles or instances that occur in novel lengths, people should be able to reference already written novels as examples. It also might be a good thing to have a topic (maybe one linked to on the community's info page) that lists reccommended fiction. Or maybe just a list of fiction that's been discussed in the community. Or just as one thread where people can reccommend fiction at their own will.

Maybe the same could go for updates. Just a thread where people could say that they updated their fic. So we would have the benefit of knowing when the novels we followed were updated without having the annoyance of seeing it cross-posted six times on our f-lists. We could just click the link to an entry dated months earlier.

I really like the idea of this community, you know. I'm getting kind of excited about it, and I'm not really much of a joiner.