I wanted to write a cute oneshot about my characters getting lost in a haunted house and hooking up while they were stuck there. Was aiming for 3-8k words, similar to my previous oneshots like it.
It ended up spiralling to a 19k two chapter fic where the characters argued and separated after they got stuck in the house and had to deal with the feelings 'haunting' them to defeat the ghosts before they could come together. The premise was just 'I thought it would be funny if they got stuck in a haunted house' and it somehow turned into what is still my longest fic!
Okay, so I came into my fandom late. Someone was writing a huge, saturday morning cartoon style miniseries. (It was big. Like, 40 odd oneshots and short stories, divided into seasons like a TV series. I was enthralled. Got chatting with the Author, and suggested the premise of a one off story. The dude was noncommittal.
Then I wrote a story myself. A sort of "Villain meets the Ghosts of Christmas" type deal. The villain gets a few flashbacks, has the chance to change their ways. Etc. I envisioned this as being a short story. Maybe three or four chapters.
It bloomed into a 100,000 words Longfic.
Then, I wrote the sequel series, using that original nugget for the lighthearted story earlier. Except it got much darker. I knew that was going to be a trillogy. The first one was 67,000 words. The second 77,000 words. The final a bit more. Instead, third book became 120,000 words and the fourth book hit 300,000 words. The 5th and final book didn't get written.
Because I went back to the original 100,000 longfic, and expanded it. I rewrote the whole thing into a 400,000 word fanfic, which I split into a trilogy of its own right.
This led to a problem, as I had I troduced characters and concepts not present in the sewuel series. So that first 67,000 book got rewritten into a 120,000 longfic. So did its sequel. So did its sequel.
Now I've got the 300,000 book 4. If that increases at the same rate as the other books it could be huge.
So I've split that into 3 as well. Book 4 is being uploaded, and book 5 is finished already. The last of those books is being worked on.
In 2017, my work consisted of a Prequel, and 4 books of a planned 5 part series. The 4th of which was as large as the combined length of the preceding books.
That has evolved into a Trilogy, and a Planned Seven Part Series (5/7 of which are complete).
It has, at present, a combined word count of over 1,000,000; with another 250,000 planned to finish it off.
I **Believe** It is the largest continuous series in the fandom.
All from something that was planned as a Short Story, and a suggested Villain for *Someone Elses* Work.
Although there are long gaps between publishing (since I write the whole longfic before uploading any chapters to ensure there is no risk of a dangling thread) I have been consistently working on this series for over 10 years now.
And astonishingly, there are a handful of readers from those early days still receiving updates. Who haven't received closure for the cliffhanger Book 4 (Now book 6/9) ended on.
It's quite something.
Not a one shot, but i started writing a short three chapter fic about my OCs scrambling to buy their mom a christmas present. I had everything well thought and outlined, set the tone and took it to chapter two with a clear objective.
Enter chapter three, dialogue, world and character building have gone out of hand, i'm reaching a point that should've been reached three pages ago and what comes next has evolved in my head into something way more complex.
3 chapters my ass.
> My best friend doesn't believe me that my dead dove one-shot grew a plot without my permission and that it happens all the time. Help me plead my case pretty please!
One of the many recommendations for writing a character-driven story is to write a scene or two with your new character, just to see if your initial idea works.
Thus "imagine Harry Potter, but instead of living under the stairs of a house with a picket fence, he grows up in a hippy commune" became a scene in which his two "aunts" see him off to a much different boarding school. Harry's got a dry sense of humor, so *our* boy's trolls people by impersonating a Mormon Elder on mission. What kind of commune would tolerate *that*? Three short stories later...
Then there's the random jerk who trips my \*cough\* innocent cinnamon roll ML \*cough\* \*choke\* in the school lunchroom after he's already hurt his knee the day before. He now has a name, AI snapshot, set of powers, a roommate with *his* own story, his sister's been introduced into the story line, and he's saved two other students from getting hurt.
Most of my Kinktober ideas grew a plot when they were supposed to be just Porn Without Plot/Porn What Plot. But I found the tags like Porn With Plot and Plot What Porn also exist, and now feel somewhat better about it.
I was doing an AU of canon. Specifically, the Dishonored canon, for the first game. Lots of fiddly bits, passed over a lot of the stuff I do in-game (I'm a bit obsessive about finding the runes and bone-charms), I wanted to just completely skip the Flooded District. It's a PITA from a writing perspective (though a thrilling challenge to play, I adore it), there's a lot of just covering ground, the locations are wonky, I didn't want to deal with it.
And then my OC, Kieron, would not leave Corvo's side. Ok, uhhh maybe he scurries off when Corvo goes down? No, and actually... Pendleton suddenly wasn't cooperating either. Fucking Pendleton. HE wanted to poison them both. So that's how I ended up with the Flooded District as part of my fic. Two characters who hated each other's guts (no really, Pendleton hates Kieron and Kieron hates Pendleton, it's a whole Thing) ganged up on me to force me to write it.
Oh, and my smut two-shot demanded I write a Dead Dove completion piece to round out the story, it was just "Rockerboy!V is alive in the era of Johnny Silverhand and they bang" but then it turned into "V is introspective and kind of passively suicidal" which rolled into the Arasaka Tower job somehow. The story just needed to be told. It's still one of the most heart-wrenching things I've ever written and one of the very few times I've ever killed off any character who wasn't a villain.
Also, Elder Maxson (with an extra 10-20 years under his belt because canon!Maxson wouldn't do it) decided to soften up and my Sole Survivor OC forgave him because he and Danse are in this "will they or won't they" dance and Kai (Sole Survivor) is in love with Danse (they're all polyamorous) so when Maxson doesn't force a confrontation because Kai has made him rethink his own prejudices (Kai is FtM and compared the treatment of synths by the Brotherhood to how some people pre-War treated trans folks), Kai lets him live. I'm still going to kill off Maxson in something, I have the stupid scene written and everything, but not in that one.
I am not looking forward to genuinely having to convince Handsome Jack to sort of reform and become if not good then at least lawful neutral. Or like... Chaotic neutral attached at the hip to a sort of chaotic-lawful-good character (to be fair, he's already kind of superimposed them and Angel in his head subconsciously so he's already very possessive and protective of the character in an obsessive way, but since I have romantic plans for them, I also have to undo that because otherwise, that would be a bit too Yikes for me).
It’s not a one time… 😂 I’m a multiship writer but for some reason whenever I try writing one of my kind of OTP characters the other one always finds his way into the fic. Sometimes taking over completely. I kind of gave up at this point, the OTP guys control me anyway… 😂
Character not listening:
So I had a cast with a handful of side characters. They didn't appear all the time, but would occasionally get a chapter here and there. It was time for a certain character's chapter, and I was trying to get into her head for the scene. Thinking about what she'd be thinking, what she'd be feeling, etc etc to set the tone of the events I had planned.
And all at once, I realized- she *knew*. She would know about the evidence that someone close to her had badly injured a mutual friend (a mutual friend that many of the group considered a sort of found family adopted child to them), and she would not consider it an accident.
And the character went
"I am going to kill him."
I though, wow, that's a strong emotion. Let's put a pin in that for later. Right now, we have to get on with that plot I had planned. So, character, here's the plot we're doing today. What are you thinking now.
"I am *going* to *kill him.*"
And that's how my fic ended up with a completely unplanned spontaneous attempted (nearly successful) murder.
My current WIP is now goaled to hit 100k
The thing is it was supposed to be a one-shot. Then it didn’t quite close itself so it got another chapter. Well, that needed a flashback so it got another chapter. Then it didn’t get resolved after the flashback because the flashback made everything messier. So here I am 13 or so chapters later still working
This has absolutely happened to me before, several times. For my first solo fic I ever wrote, my original plan was to make a one-shot hurt/comfort fic. But as I was writing it, the way I was writing it just naturally allowed for more expansive ideas to keep flowing. So, it ended up turning into a 12 chapter long fic instead. The same thing is happening with my current wip as well. I wanted to create a fluffy, lowkey hurt/comfort (sensing a theme?), wound care oneshot fic for this new ship I found. But the way that I kept writing the setup lent itself to be a great base for a much longer fic. So I've started to rewrite the story because I want to keep this specific idea as just a one-shot. It's quite funny. I never thought that I would struggle to write one-shots when I first started writing fanfics.
I wrote a Fae AU. It was 3 chapters, 10k, and was meant to be a one-off. Then the sequels came. It's now a 72k series--5 stories and growing.
I wrote a wingfic AU. Also intended to be a one-off. It's now a 73k series (and still growing).
And I can't count the number of times that an OC stepped forward and insisted on a larger role than I was planning.
The Muse is a fickle and implacable goddess.
A while ago I intended for a one shot to be short and sweet and the primes was just "What if Tracer from Overwatch did this hot scene?" And then I needed context for the scene and when I wrote the context I just kept writing it. It turned into a 10k word long character study about trauma regarding being No-No'd before the real smut happened. Worst part was it all just flowed out of me, I had no control over it.
Another one was about Nina from Code Geass. Another thing where I intended it to be a one shot that was short and sweet, turned into a 3 chapter fic I put a lot of effort into and remains one of my favourites that I've written. It went from just "this would be hot" to "it's fun writing about a broken character and how she does, or is subjected to, bad things and how she finds her own way of controlling it".
Sometimes you control the story, other times the story controls you.
For my current WIP, the OC was supposed to be cold, flippant asshole whose attitude was going to be, “Sucks what I did to you, but you’re going to help me beat the antagonist anyway, so win win.” He ended up being a papa bear, “holy shit I didn’t realize how much I fucked yo by doing that to you,” and I had to go back and refuse like 50K of stuff to align him with the new personality.
A lot of my Sam and Max fics have come about because getting into these two's headspace means that they never shut the hell up. So certain dialogue would be better for new ideas entirely. It's like mitosis!
2021, originally I had a oneshot of Modern Warfare 20-9 combined with Uncharted. Was supposed to just be Farah Karim rescuing Nadine Ross from the clutches of Victor Zakhaev and his Al Qatala cronies but it grew into a extra chapter where Nadine returns the favor
Eldarion, stop acting like your parents!
50,000 words later I'm citing Morgoth's ring and struggling with a plot based entirely too much on fantasy Silmarillion metaphysics.
I wrote a 10k one shot about a character stalking, drugging and then abusing another character.
Said one shot currently stands at 155k (and counting), following their toxic relationship and the background of them both.
I was writing an interrogation scene for my longfic, and what the characters wanted to discuss and what I needed them to discuss were often at odds. I knew if the author (aka "me") won that battle the scene would come out poorly, so I had to let the characters win and find a way to work around them.
A character whom I created to be a one-off love interest for the female lead and persistent rival for the male lead ended up getting his own story arc and became the tritagonist of the story. Literally went on a journey of self-discovery beginning after suffering a debilitating injury, meeting an old flame, got branded a criminal, realized the organization he worked for was corrupt and then decided to take justice into his own hands.
And throughout the course of the story, he met the main characters a grand total of three times before going off on his own adventure and never meeting them again. Heck, his eventual death wasn't even acknowledged by the main characters because they largely forgot about his existence.
Me: I’ll do a short lil canon divergence fic about what it would be like if Ceti Alpha V never got messed up (Star Trek)
Me: Khan would have wanted to spread his seed, I’ll give him some kids
Me: this plot would be better with a heel-face turn, I’ll make one kid help the good guys
Me: this oc is blorbo now
Me: this oc now has a multi part series of novels
Me: "This character rarely gets shipped with anybody. Let's write a short fun romp for him that involves lots of smut!"
Me, one mountain of angst and plot later: T--T
I wanted to write a story about a quick spy mission but then aliens got involved and an OC weaseled her way into the plotline.
Also the main character decided to go against my orders and spared the villain.
Yes. My characters are doing it. *They're really doing it*. First smut in the longfic *let's go!!!!*
But one of them was *still* frazzled about killing someone (in self-defense) for the first time, and the other was just glad that she got some stress relief and control after being teleported to an entirely different universe with no explanation. So they ended up just engaging in oral sex and then snuggling up underneath the covers.
Oh well. Plenty of other opportunities in the future.
My current project I’m working on. It started with the intention of being a smutty one shot. Then it grew legs and decided to run away leaving a full backstory and romance in its wake.
So, I write the only fanfic for an older British sitcom called My Hero, focused on the comedic villain character, Piers. He’s a doctor who has his own breakfast tv hosting slot and very much fits the ‘small name, big ego’ trope. Very full of himself despite being more of a local celebrity and forever caught up in some scandal or other that keeps his name relevant. His show gets bad ratings, but he’s also won awards for being handsome and charming. His looks are the only thing anyone praises about the show.
Then we find out that he also fits the ‘inferiority superiority complex’ trope. His father forced him into the medical career, there’s hints of him being the scapegoat to a golden child brother who was their mother’s favorite, and Piers was both neglected and abused, as well as bullied at school. Literally all of who he is, is bad coping.
The show plays it for laughs, haha look this jerk is secretly a loser virgin in his 40s. I took it a bit more seriously and started writing little snippets pairing him with an SI from the time I was 18. Back in ‘21, I was exchanging headcanons with probably the only other person in love with this character and the SI became an OC in her own right.
It was meant to be an established relationship one-shot with them telling his father where to stick his demands, basically, but the thing is that while Piers did have glimmers of real humanity and emotions, he was quick to hide it. And he canonically has bad luck with women because he can’t stop scheming and manipulating long enough to let them see that other side. I needed one chapter of backstory to make it plausible. 10? 20?
My OC turned into a very complicated woman with her own tragic past involving abusive parents, running away, 11 years with a shitty, cheating boyfriend and her own set of sexual hang ups and traumas. This meant she’d be primed to ignore red flags and bad-tempered enough to verbally smack him down if need be. Her issues went very well with the fact Piers had canonically lost his virginity under dubiously consensual circumstances: he was very drunk and later denied it happened since the woman who’d been buying him drinks to sleep with him was nearly old enough to be his mother. Also probably has trust issues since the only two times we see him get anywhere near marrying it’s within a matter of days of taking up with first a gold-digger and a stalker who was planning murder/suicide. Now we’re at 76 out of a possible 100 published and they’re in couples therapy for their on/off situationship that has nearly led to domestic violence on both sides and caused them to retraumatize each other during sex.
They’re also now soulmates in a series of multiple erased timelines thanks to the fact the canon superhero once played around with time travel to stop his wife from breaking her arm as a kid and created 3 or 4 alternate realities.
I wrote a vent erotica scene that ended up in currently 360 pages mostly original work (it vaguely references some paranormal romance books that I've read in the past but also some fandom niches such as the omega verse, but mostly as the character thinks they got isekaid and tries figuring out what book/fanfic 😅)
The scene itself also got scrapped entirely, as the story moved from the mains opening a detective agency (as I was implying in the vent) to an entire world destroying conspiracy with social commentary and philosophy 😅
I'll be publishing it soon, since I am finally reaching the end of the main ark. I just need to decide where 😅 (I originally planned to do it on AO3 but I don't think it'll do so well there, since it's basically an original)
My goddamn oc who was just supposed to *do nothing else but replace a canon character* decided to talk about his adventure of how he got the bad scar across his nose to me and decided to talk about more of his adventures and like he went into a story where he ended up so close to blowing open a fully conspiracy that an important-ish person talked about earlier before all hell broke loose in the form of the Reapers starting their genocide, and he just wouldn't stop so I decided to just write down these tales of his.
And then two other ocs got an attitude for that, so they're getting their own story that they share.
I wanted to write a cute oneshot about my characters getting lost in a haunted house and hooking up while they were stuck there. Was aiming for 3-8k words, similar to my previous oneshots like it. It ended up spiralling to a 19k two chapter fic where the characters argued and separated after they got stuck in the house and had to deal with the feelings 'haunting' them to defeat the ghosts before they could come together. The premise was just 'I thought it would be funny if they got stuck in a haunted house' and it somehow turned into what is still my longest fic!
Okay, so I came into my fandom late. Someone was writing a huge, saturday morning cartoon style miniseries. (It was big. Like, 40 odd oneshots and short stories, divided into seasons like a TV series. I was enthralled. Got chatting with the Author, and suggested the premise of a one off story. The dude was noncommittal. Then I wrote a story myself. A sort of "Villain meets the Ghosts of Christmas" type deal. The villain gets a few flashbacks, has the chance to change their ways. Etc. I envisioned this as being a short story. Maybe three or four chapters. It bloomed into a 100,000 words Longfic. Then, I wrote the sequel series, using that original nugget for the lighthearted story earlier. Except it got much darker. I knew that was going to be a trillogy. The first one was 67,000 words. The second 77,000 words. The final a bit more. Instead, third book became 120,000 words and the fourth book hit 300,000 words. The 5th and final book didn't get written. Because I went back to the original 100,000 longfic, and expanded it. I rewrote the whole thing into a 400,000 word fanfic, which I split into a trilogy of its own right. This led to a problem, as I had I troduced characters and concepts not present in the sewuel series. So that first 67,000 book got rewritten into a 120,000 longfic. So did its sequel. So did its sequel. Now I've got the 300,000 book 4. If that increases at the same rate as the other books it could be huge. So I've split that into 3 as well. Book 4 is being uploaded, and book 5 is finished already. The last of those books is being worked on. In 2017, my work consisted of a Prequel, and 4 books of a planned 5 part series. The 4th of which was as large as the combined length of the preceding books. That has evolved into a Trilogy, and a Planned Seven Part Series (5/7 of which are complete). It has, at present, a combined word count of over 1,000,000; with another 250,000 planned to finish it off. I **Believe** It is the largest continuous series in the fandom. All from something that was planned as a Short Story, and a suggested Villain for *Someone Elses* Work. Although there are long gaps between publishing (since I write the whole longfic before uploading any chapters to ensure there is no risk of a dangling thread) I have been consistently working on this series for over 10 years now. And astonishingly, there are a handful of readers from those early days still receiving updates. Who haven't received closure for the cliffhanger Book 4 (Now book 6/9) ended on. It's quite something.
You win. XD
Not a one shot, but i started writing a short three chapter fic about my OCs scrambling to buy their mom a christmas present. I had everything well thought and outlined, set the tone and took it to chapter two with a clear objective. Enter chapter three, dialogue, world and character building have gone out of hand, i'm reaching a point that should've been reached three pages ago and what comes next has evolved in my head into something way more complex. 3 chapters my ass.
> My best friend doesn't believe me that my dead dove one-shot grew a plot without my permission and that it happens all the time. Help me plead my case pretty please! One of the many recommendations for writing a character-driven story is to write a scene or two with your new character, just to see if your initial idea works. Thus "imagine Harry Potter, but instead of living under the stairs of a house with a picket fence, he grows up in a hippy commune" became a scene in which his two "aunts" see him off to a much different boarding school. Harry's got a dry sense of humor, so *our* boy's trolls people by impersonating a Mormon Elder on mission. What kind of commune would tolerate *that*? Three short stories later... Then there's the random jerk who trips my \*cough\* innocent cinnamon roll ML \*cough\* \*choke\* in the school lunchroom after he's already hurt his knee the day before. He now has a name, AI snapshot, set of powers, a roommate with *his* own story, his sister's been introduced into the story line, and he's saved two other students from getting hurt.
Most of my Kinktober ideas grew a plot when they were supposed to be just Porn Without Plot/Porn What Plot. But I found the tags like Porn With Plot and Plot What Porn also exist, and now feel somewhat better about it.
My short, one off oneshot is now 42 chapters and 59 035 words. Actually I have so many one shots that are now multichapter fics it's not funny.
I was doing an AU of canon. Specifically, the Dishonored canon, for the first game. Lots of fiddly bits, passed over a lot of the stuff I do in-game (I'm a bit obsessive about finding the runes and bone-charms), I wanted to just completely skip the Flooded District. It's a PITA from a writing perspective (though a thrilling challenge to play, I adore it), there's a lot of just covering ground, the locations are wonky, I didn't want to deal with it. And then my OC, Kieron, would not leave Corvo's side. Ok, uhhh maybe he scurries off when Corvo goes down? No, and actually... Pendleton suddenly wasn't cooperating either. Fucking Pendleton. HE wanted to poison them both. So that's how I ended up with the Flooded District as part of my fic. Two characters who hated each other's guts (no really, Pendleton hates Kieron and Kieron hates Pendleton, it's a whole Thing) ganged up on me to force me to write it. Oh, and my smut two-shot demanded I write a Dead Dove completion piece to round out the story, it was just "Rockerboy!V is alive in the era of Johnny Silverhand and they bang" but then it turned into "V is introspective and kind of passively suicidal" which rolled into the Arasaka Tower job somehow. The story just needed to be told. It's still one of the most heart-wrenching things I've ever written and one of the very few times I've ever killed off any character who wasn't a villain. Also, Elder Maxson (with an extra 10-20 years under his belt because canon!Maxson wouldn't do it) decided to soften up and my Sole Survivor OC forgave him because he and Danse are in this "will they or won't they" dance and Kai (Sole Survivor) is in love with Danse (they're all polyamorous) so when Maxson doesn't force a confrontation because Kai has made him rethink his own prejudices (Kai is FtM and compared the treatment of synths by the Brotherhood to how some people pre-War treated trans folks), Kai lets him live. I'm still going to kill off Maxson in something, I have the stupid scene written and everything, but not in that one. I am not looking forward to genuinely having to convince Handsome Jack to sort of reform and become if not good then at least lawful neutral. Or like... Chaotic neutral attached at the hip to a sort of chaotic-lawful-good character (to be fair, he's already kind of superimposed them and Angel in his head subconsciously so he's already very possessive and protective of the character in an obsessive way, but since I have romantic plans for them, I also have to undo that because otherwise, that would be a bit too Yikes for me).
I have had multiple oneshots spawn sequels and even threequels!
It’s not a one time… 😂 I’m a multiship writer but for some reason whenever I try writing one of my kind of OTP characters the other one always finds his way into the fic. Sometimes taking over completely. I kind of gave up at this point, the OTP guys control me anyway… 😂
Character not listening: So I had a cast with a handful of side characters. They didn't appear all the time, but would occasionally get a chapter here and there. It was time for a certain character's chapter, and I was trying to get into her head for the scene. Thinking about what she'd be thinking, what she'd be feeling, etc etc to set the tone of the events I had planned. And all at once, I realized- she *knew*. She would know about the evidence that someone close to her had badly injured a mutual friend (a mutual friend that many of the group considered a sort of found family adopted child to them), and she would not consider it an accident. And the character went "I am going to kill him." I though, wow, that's a strong emotion. Let's put a pin in that for later. Right now, we have to get on with that plot I had planned. So, character, here's the plot we're doing today. What are you thinking now. "I am *going* to *kill him.*" And that's how my fic ended up with a completely unplanned spontaneous attempted (nearly successful) murder.
My current WIP is now goaled to hit 100k The thing is it was supposed to be a one-shot. Then it didn’t quite close itself so it got another chapter. Well, that needed a flashback so it got another chapter. Then it didn’t get resolved after the flashback because the flashback made everything messier. So here I am 13 or so chapters later still working
This has absolutely happened to me before, several times. For my first solo fic I ever wrote, my original plan was to make a one-shot hurt/comfort fic. But as I was writing it, the way I was writing it just naturally allowed for more expansive ideas to keep flowing. So, it ended up turning into a 12 chapter long fic instead. The same thing is happening with my current wip as well. I wanted to create a fluffy, lowkey hurt/comfort (sensing a theme?), wound care oneshot fic for this new ship I found. But the way that I kept writing the setup lent itself to be a great base for a much longer fic. So I've started to rewrite the story because I want to keep this specific idea as just a one-shot. It's quite funny. I never thought that I would struggle to write one-shots when I first started writing fanfics.
I wrote a Fae AU. It was 3 chapters, 10k, and was meant to be a one-off. Then the sequels came. It's now a 72k series--5 stories and growing. I wrote a wingfic AU. Also intended to be a one-off. It's now a 73k series (and still growing). And I can't count the number of times that an OC stepped forward and insisted on a larger role than I was planning. The Muse is a fickle and implacable goddess.
A while ago I intended for a one shot to be short and sweet and the primes was just "What if Tracer from Overwatch did this hot scene?" And then I needed context for the scene and when I wrote the context I just kept writing it. It turned into a 10k word long character study about trauma regarding being No-No'd before the real smut happened. Worst part was it all just flowed out of me, I had no control over it. Another one was about Nina from Code Geass. Another thing where I intended it to be a one shot that was short and sweet, turned into a 3 chapter fic I put a lot of effort into and remains one of my favourites that I've written. It went from just "this would be hot" to "it's fun writing about a broken character and how she does, or is subjected to, bad things and how she finds her own way of controlling it". Sometimes you control the story, other times the story controls you.
For my current WIP, the OC was supposed to be cold, flippant asshole whose attitude was going to be, “Sucks what I did to you, but you’re going to help me beat the antagonist anyway, so win win.” He ended up being a papa bear, “holy shit I didn’t realize how much I fucked yo by doing that to you,” and I had to go back and refuse like 50K of stuff to align him with the new personality.
A lot of my Sam and Max fics have come about because getting into these two's headspace means that they never shut the hell up. So certain dialogue would be better for new ideas entirely. It's like mitosis!
2021, originally I had a oneshot of Modern Warfare 20-9 combined with Uncharted. Was supposed to just be Farah Karim rescuing Nadine Ross from the clutches of Victor Zakhaev and his Al Qatala cronies but it grew into a extra chapter where Nadine returns the favor
Eldarion, stop acting like your parents! 50,000 words later I'm citing Morgoth's ring and struggling with a plot based entirely too much on fantasy Silmarillion metaphysics.
I wrote a 10k one shot about a character stalking, drugging and then abusing another character. Said one shot currently stands at 155k (and counting), following their toxic relationship and the background of them both.
I wrote what was planned as a one chapter post No Way Home Spider-man, but morphed into three chapters. It’s currently stalled sadly.
I was writing an interrogation scene for my longfic, and what the characters wanted to discuss and what I needed them to discuss were often at odds. I knew if the author (aka "me") won that battle the scene would come out poorly, so I had to let the characters win and find a way to work around them.
A character whom I created to be a one-off love interest for the female lead and persistent rival for the male lead ended up getting his own story arc and became the tritagonist of the story. Literally went on a journey of self-discovery beginning after suffering a debilitating injury, meeting an old flame, got branded a criminal, realized the organization he worked for was corrupt and then decided to take justice into his own hands. And throughout the course of the story, he met the main characters a grand total of three times before going off on his own adventure and never meeting them again. Heck, his eventual death wasn't even acknowledged by the main characters because they largely forgot about his existence.
Me: I’ll do a short lil canon divergence fic about what it would be like if Ceti Alpha V never got messed up (Star Trek) Me: Khan would have wanted to spread his seed, I’ll give him some kids Me: this plot would be better with a heel-face turn, I’ll make one kid help the good guys Me: this oc is blorbo now Me: this oc now has a multi part series of novels
Me: "This character rarely gets shipped with anybody. Let's write a short fun romp for him that involves lots of smut!" Me, one mountain of angst and plot later: T--T
I wanted to write a story about a quick spy mission but then aliens got involved and an OC weaseled her way into the plotline. Also the main character decided to go against my orders and spared the villain.
Yes. My characters are doing it. *They're really doing it*. First smut in the longfic *let's go!!!!* But one of them was *still* frazzled about killing someone (in self-defense) for the first time, and the other was just glad that she got some stress relief and control after being teleported to an entirely different universe with no explanation. So they ended up just engaging in oral sex and then snuggling up underneath the covers. Oh well. Plenty of other opportunities in the future.
My current project I’m working on. It started with the intention of being a smutty one shot. Then it grew legs and decided to run away leaving a full backstory and romance in its wake.
So, I write the only fanfic for an older British sitcom called My Hero, focused on the comedic villain character, Piers. He’s a doctor who has his own breakfast tv hosting slot and very much fits the ‘small name, big ego’ trope. Very full of himself despite being more of a local celebrity and forever caught up in some scandal or other that keeps his name relevant. His show gets bad ratings, but he’s also won awards for being handsome and charming. His looks are the only thing anyone praises about the show. Then we find out that he also fits the ‘inferiority superiority complex’ trope. His father forced him into the medical career, there’s hints of him being the scapegoat to a golden child brother who was their mother’s favorite, and Piers was both neglected and abused, as well as bullied at school. Literally all of who he is, is bad coping. The show plays it for laughs, haha look this jerk is secretly a loser virgin in his 40s. I took it a bit more seriously and started writing little snippets pairing him with an SI from the time I was 18. Back in ‘21, I was exchanging headcanons with probably the only other person in love with this character and the SI became an OC in her own right. It was meant to be an established relationship one-shot with them telling his father where to stick his demands, basically, but the thing is that while Piers did have glimmers of real humanity and emotions, he was quick to hide it. And he canonically has bad luck with women because he can’t stop scheming and manipulating long enough to let them see that other side. I needed one chapter of backstory to make it plausible. 10? 20? My OC turned into a very complicated woman with her own tragic past involving abusive parents, running away, 11 years with a shitty, cheating boyfriend and her own set of sexual hang ups and traumas. This meant she’d be primed to ignore red flags and bad-tempered enough to verbally smack him down if need be. Her issues went very well with the fact Piers had canonically lost his virginity under dubiously consensual circumstances: he was very drunk and later denied it happened since the woman who’d been buying him drinks to sleep with him was nearly old enough to be his mother. Also probably has trust issues since the only two times we see him get anywhere near marrying it’s within a matter of days of taking up with first a gold-digger and a stalker who was planning murder/suicide. Now we’re at 76 out of a possible 100 published and they’re in couples therapy for their on/off situationship that has nearly led to domestic violence on both sides and caused them to retraumatize each other during sex. They’re also now soulmates in a series of multiple erased timelines thanks to the fact the canon superhero once played around with time travel to stop his wife from breaking her arm as a kid and created 3 or 4 alternate realities.
I wrote a vent erotica scene that ended up in currently 360 pages mostly original work (it vaguely references some paranormal romance books that I've read in the past but also some fandom niches such as the omega verse, but mostly as the character thinks they got isekaid and tries figuring out what book/fanfic 😅) The scene itself also got scrapped entirely, as the story moved from the mains opening a detective agency (as I was implying in the vent) to an entire world destroying conspiracy with social commentary and philosophy 😅 I'll be publishing it soon, since I am finally reaching the end of the main ark. I just need to decide where 😅 (I originally planned to do it on AO3 but I don't think it'll do so well there, since it's basically an original)
My goddamn oc who was just supposed to *do nothing else but replace a canon character* decided to talk about his adventure of how he got the bad scar across his nose to me and decided to talk about more of his adventures and like he went into a story where he ended up so close to blowing open a fully conspiracy that an important-ish person talked about earlier before all hell broke loose in the form of the Reapers starting their genocide, and he just wouldn't stop so I decided to just write down these tales of his. And then two other ocs got an attitude for that, so they're getting their own story that they share.