Question Corner Part 1

Hello and welcome to the first of (hopefully) many Question Corners with us, the authors at Tavern Talk. The aim of this first part is to start a conversation. A conversation that aims to both peel back the curtain and give back to the community that has supported us all. We hope this becomes a reference point for new, old and aspiring writers and a place where you can ask questions about writing.

Your Tavern Talkers are (currently): Prael, capslocked, mysonesecret, Peach, ddeun, majorblinks, kooya, Valentine Drifter, passingnotions, octoberautumnbox, Qwib Qwib, Orenji, defmaybe, gray, J Muns, xndrpndr

Below are just five questions, curated to give you all an initial insight into how some of us got into writing and our thoughts about the hobby and the process of writing. Not all of us have answered, though hopefully you see all of us pop up in various ways in the future.

Thank you for reading, and please enjoy.

Did you have any background in writing to begin with, or how did you get into the hobby?

kooya

Well I’ve always had a good amount of knowledge when it came to the literary bubble, writing and reading and things of that nature. So it’s the huge thanks to my english class and as well as my creative writing class in my fourth year of high school that has gotten me to delve into this position many years down the road! 

In terms of the smut space, I’ve been in and out of the fic verse for a few years with wattpad, then tumblr (the tumblr account that’s actually 9 years old and i finally had a purpose of using it LOL), and finding a gateway with the fabled bible of ao3. The Ksmut space wasn’t in my interest until mid 2022 and it got even more ignited around fall of 2023! I actually did a lot of wlw works on a previous account before making the switch to the more profound approach of a male reader a year later. While I’m trying to get the fic ideas that have been piling up in my google docs and notes, there might be a possibility where some of the wlw works may end up on fanprose! 

Orenji 🍊

Ok, this is SO funny because I really don’t have one! But I’ve participated in some essay writing contests before but wasn’t taken seriously. So, basically me being an author in this field is how I got into writing. Pretty much reading some authors back then like mint, peach, sins, and the others got me into this hobby and I really enjoyed it so far!

Qwib Qwib

No, just be delusional enough and you'll start creating stories in your head.

octoberautumnbox📦

i majored in english education does that count
look i know yuri isnt meta and never was but like this shit aint fair seriously WE JUST GOT TAXI i was sick of waiting sick of requesting i knew how to make coherent sentences ill fuckin do it myself and then i DID and now i have so many yuri fics its insane i fuckin love my job

xndrpndr 🤍

Writing and by extension story telling has always been something I’ve had an affinity for—regardless of medium. Be it original music, the many short films i’ve written over the years, the odd video game I’ll pitch to my friends and then never ever complete.

But creative writing is really the one I think I’ve hit my stride with.

I’m not entirely sure how other countries do it, but creative writing is pushed a LOT over here. A third of our high school English final was dedicated to it, and while I certainly wasn’t writing smut back then, writing has always been something I’ve done and enjoyed, and it helps that I've found a community who have been incredibly welcoming and supportive of me and my work!

Valentine Drifter 💘

I have zero, 0, zilch background in writing when I first started a year ago, with the only things that really serve as a ‘background’ being the multitudes of essays and academic research that I did for uni. The biggest reason that got me into writing and debuting as a writer was that at the time of my debut, I was going through a tough time of my life and thought: ‘I’ve been reading fiction for a while, why don’t I do that too?’

And I just started, I guess. Somehow debuted within a week of a certain author who’s written about St. Valentine getting his head decapitated, kept going, and somewhere along the way I’ve grown to enjoy the hobby of writing.

As to how I got into the hobby, I guess it started from reading all the k-smut fics from the active writers from 2022-2024. Prael, Capslocked, Kooya, Gray, Sins, Peach, IZ, ddeun, smite, locke, to name a few. The above then happened because of the aforementioned issue that I was facing in life and turned to becoming a writer to help get my mind off things.

capslocked

Not a lot. Wrote some smut for a few video game fandoms on AO3. Drabbled in sci-fi when I was younger.

ddeun

Technical academic papers only, no fictional writing background. I just read enough, saw others debut a little before I started, so I decided to give it a shot.

defmaybe

I picked up my MacBook and started writing after I broke up with my ex-friend. My first work was awfully inconsistent, but Tyler helped me shape my debut from the ground up.

passingnotions

Writing has always been the art form that most resonated with me since my early teens. Videogames and fictional worlds were the primary motivator at the time, though there was the occasional OC that I played around with. Additionally, I have always dabbled in different forms of journaling and blogging in both private and online spaces. As I grew up, literature became part of my formative, university-level education and, while I do consider myself rusty in regards to academics, it most certainly helped cement past experiences and hone my skills acquired throughout the years into something more official.

majorblinks

I’ve never taken any formal writing classes or anything. It was just something I got into as a kid! When I was in fourth grade one of our assignments was to write a short story (mine was a little scary and VERY Percy Jackson inspired) and ever since then I’ve been hooked. I used to write stories in Microsoft Word and print them out and give them to my parents to read. In fifth grade my friends and I all got into writing and we would email each other what we wrote or print it out and give it to each other at school… and then we all made Wattpad accounts. At 12 I started posting horrible but deeply passionate dogshit on Wattpad and then eventually made the transition over to Ao3, then Tumblr when I started writing for this community, then back to Ao3! And now Fanprose too! So I guess I’ve basically always been writing even though I’ve never been formally taught how to write or anything. I just kind of figured it out! And being in this community with so many incredible knowledgeable writers has taught me a lot too. :)

Prael

I have no formal ‘background’ in writing; in fact, during my education, I always hated literature. However, some part of me has always had an itch to tell stories, but I always let other parts of my life get in the way (sometimes I still do), even though I always believed in myself to be good at it. (whether I am or not, is up for debate)

So I got into this hobby, in part to scratch that itch of creative expression, and in part because I was reading the stories on Wattpad/Tumblr and always thought to myself: “I wish this fic went in this direction instead.” So eventually, I just made my own.

peach 🍑

I started this all on a whim basically. Outside of school assignments, I never really wrote anything or had aspirations to write. I never had the drive to write my own fics and barely knew what kpop smut was when I started. One day I was in a discord server and really wanted to write something about Momo and then a few hours later writerpeach was born.

gray

When I was in high school I once submitted a full length novel for a short story assignment that was basically the entire plot of Tokyo Ghoul that I had watched to that point condensed to something like 80 pages. I don’t think the teacher read it, and if she did I would probably have been institutionalised so yeah.

But other than that never actually completed a full work - not for trying, I just never had the motivation to really put in the effort to write something.

Anyway, cut to some years later, I’m bored, horny, on reddit and looking up idols and the oldheads will remember the former subreddit, and that’s pretty much how I discovered locke, peach, levi, sins, co, ddeun, etc, this whole space.

I read a lot. I read everything. I used to think, wow how do these guys come up with this shit, I could never. And then (honestly this is going to make me sound like a huge dick) I read something so bad by someone who I’ve since forgotten that it made me think I could actually write. And so I did.

caps once mentioned that I was one of the first writers he read before he started writing smut, so I think my work probably had a similar effect on him, so you know, you’re welcome world.

This is a long answer but I will take this space to say that a lot of my fics, especially the early ones, are pretty heavily influenced (read: ripping off) those writers I’ve already mentioned, so yeah, shouts out to them, they’re the goats, and I’m still ripping off your work today and there’s nothing you can do about itttttttttt lmaoooooo

How do you keep scenes from feeling repetitive across a long work?

capslocked

I break up smut scenes in my head as a logical flow of 5 phases 

Banter
Undressing/Kissing/etc
Foreplay
The sex of it
Cum (who/where/how)

 writing a piece with multiple scenes I try to either (A) start each scene from a different point in the flow, and/or (B) only use a few phases for each sequence. Why not start your scene with a facial? It's also reasonable to reorder the phases as well. Put banter into the middle of two people fucking their brains out? Cool. 

My main goal is to make it unpredictable what kind of smut the scene is going to deliver. Writing smut is all about leveraging anticipation, and if it's pretty apparent you're going to get a full 5-phase course multiple times throughout a fic, you're not really left eager anticipating much in my opinion.

ddeun

By making the work short. I usually have a scene in mind as the focus of a fic, so a work doesn't extend past that scene. If it does have more than one then inherently the scenes are different enough already.

Will also put out something about being descriptive in my own chapter, but in short use of metaphors/imagery and deliberate word choices help make things feel different.

defmaybe

I keep my work short enough so that I do not repeat stuff. Yeah, it’s rather unhelpful, sorry. Still, perhaps, it can be interpreted as keeping your work succinct in a way?

majorblinks

I do a lot of editing as I go. Checking for word repetition, things like that. But also I think something I definitely keep in mind while writing (especially when I’m writing stories with smut) is that you have to keep upping the tension, raising the stakes. I try to not have my craziest smut scene as the opener. I think the tension should be at a gradual climb throughout the piece so I save my wildest or most emotionally cathartic beat for the very end! Everything should feel like it’s LEADING to something. I think that keeps things from being repetitive. If I write a scene and it feels too repetitive or like it’s not moving anything along, I just cut it! I also like to play around with scene length—if all my scenes are starting to look around the same length / with the same paragraph composition, I start getting a little antsy and want to break it up. But that’s just me—I’m big on rhythm!

Valentine Drifter 💘

Well I try to keep the main focus of the works as different from each other as possible. Whether that be the kink that I want to write (Petplay, Thighfuck, Anal), to how I want to write the fic (Texts only, Past tensing the majority of the fic, write it in an hour), or who the idol is.
Because I for the most part write one big scene across the fic instead of short scenes with cuts, I can allow myself to add things that are different from previous works that I either wanted to incorporate back then, or mix it up from a previous work.

There are templates for everything; the plot, the characters, the smut. I could say I wanna write a friends to lovers fic with Karina that ends in filthy smut that includes titfucking and a facial, and a lot of people might say that it’s been done to death.

But it’s how you choose to add your own flair to it that gets you to avoid repetition.
How would one go through any changes on the friends to lovers trope? How would you write Karina? How would you write the reader? How would the writer's voice speak out in the writing?
All this can make a fic look different, and I'm sure I'm missing more nuances and complexities.

Though the hardest to keep the repetition away, I feel, is the idol.
Take Natty, Momo, and Somi, for example.
Can you write smut about them the same way? Sure.
Can you plug and play them into a fic that is completely finished, from plot, smut, opening and ending?

Arguable, though if you tweak the fic enough it can be done.
Can you write their personalities the same way judging from the headcanons the community has established about them? Kinda, but also, not really?

Each idol may have the same archetype of headcanon (all three are of the pphurt category), but they all have their own distinguishable personalities that help separate all three from being, well, the same. And that comes from the way you see each idol and combining it into the headcanon that the community has landed on and then writing that to create your own sort of character for them.

Another can be Minju (Jobless (but not really)).
#breedminju is synonymous with her now. But you can also write her in a multitude of ways to get there.
Hell you can even try #dontbreedminju for her (there is a draft about it sitting in my drive for months now #condomplayminju) which sounds blasphemous as fuck but also an interesting idea.
And that is where you can avoid repetition.
At least, from how I see it.

passingnotions

To start, my works are not long at all, at least in regards to this specific corner of the internet. Secondly, my technical vocabulary is not as expansive as other writers’, so my response will be brief. 

You need to read your work back, preferably out loud. Your storyteller's voice has cadence, pacing, rhythm, whatever you want to call it. When you’re in front of a white page writing sex that is both the point of your task and a distraction (have you seen who we’re writing about here?), it’s easy to get lost in just actions, or just dialogue, or some vague abstract metaphor that you feel is the central idea of your piece that ends up derailing the whole scene entirely. Writing requires you to be awake and aware—while many skills do become second nature, it’s still good to form a habit of looking at your prose from a technical perspective and break it down into something like little lego pieces so that you are able to visualize how to vary the content. Action, dialogue, observations, narrator interference. There's so many things that you can fit around a paragraph to make it feel varied in structure. If something feels repetitive, read it back. There is a high probability that it is not how you would usually tell a tale to someone you were speaking to.

As a final note (and this is something you will see a lot), writing is rewriting. Give that paragraph another chance and write it in a different style, see what other details you could extract from the scene that weren’t previously there; mix, match, merge. That first time you write something that now reads repetitive is probably because it reads like bullet points, because your brain was likely throwing everything out on the page before you had a chance to weave it into something more organic.

octoberautumnbox📦

i dont have a long work lol my longest is 8k

for any work tho, id like to think outlining helps. mind u, i cant plan for shit, but knowing what u want to happen in a story (the central point (feels weird calling it climax so i wont)) and then building around that is what works for me. in To Be Young and In Love in New York City the central point was yuri blowing oc with siwan on the phone and i just built around that using ideas from Like Me Better by Lauv. u prob picked it up if u read it “Midnight into morning coffee” “Stay a while, stay here with me” its something i love doing
https://fanprose.com/stories/to-be-young-and-in-love-in-new-york-city/chapters/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcqxLCWn-CE

theres levels to this shit, and im not of a very high level yet at all. but eventually we’re gonna get used to showing-not-telling, fun limited POV stuff, deep symbolisms, all of that good shit i assume caps is known for, alright? 

Orenji 🍊

I haven’t written a lot of long-ass fics but I’d be glad to contribute to this. So, basically what I would do is to plan out the general flow of my fic that would come out as something very lengthy. Having like a plan on how to attack a certain fic is a must, even when it doesn’t have or lacks plot. Then, I’ll plan out scenes according to the main flow of my fic and will make sure it has a certain chain of events that are all connected between different scenes, like stating a vague description about the past scene, etc.

I’d try to tend to play different words in a paragraph or sentences for the reader to not get the ick of a certain word being repetitive at times, and would usually break fourth walls, be goofy by a little, and use some idioms that still correlates to the ongoing scene. A long work would require effort, planning and some in-depth beta reading to refrain from scenes being repetitive, and as long as the scene flows smoothly, then it’s good to go!

Qwib Qwib

Usually for a long work (10k +) you'd have a plot idea or a rough story progression, which means that scenes won't be repetitive since the story is moving towards an end. A “15k all smut no plot” wont work in this case as it can be treated as 3-5 smut scenes tied into one—at that point just split them up.

kooya

To be honest, it does get draining trying to prevent the inevitable. Don’t just take it from me, and i’m sure the other lovely writers can also attest to the similar struggle. One way that I try to aim for is to try to minimize a sequence so that it doesn’t stretch for longer as intended. Meaning, think of it as a puzzle piece; what you’re trying to achieve with the scene and the idol in particular; are they trying to progress the story with OC’s conflict or are they trying to get their ass railed in a short amount of time? It definitely depends on the plot (if there is one, let’s be honest), but all in all, there isn’t anything wrong with sticking to your strengths and mediums. We do it all the time! It’s all in the details, the setting, the dynamic between the OC and the idol in particular. Certain writers have their own fixes whether it’s in the kitchen and bathroom, etc etc… The scene itself doesn’t have to lead into a smut sequence all the time. 

Either that or- just replace it with a different idol and try to shift the style that best suits the personality and their qualities. Good ol’ plug ‘n play. 

Prael

To be quite honest, I don’t know if I do. Or, at least, I don’t think I did before. I wrote a lot of single-scene fics that probably did drag, and I guess I only got away with it because readers were too happily gooning to all the smut to care.

I guess now I’m focusing on making my scenes have purpose. I don’t let them wander as much as I used to. I enter every scene with a purpose of “I want to convey this feeling” or “I want to do this plot development”, or “I want to fuck Yujin like this.” And that doesn’t always stick, but I try my best to remain focused on my goal.

peach 🍑

Do I even? I have no clue. When I've been re-uploading my older fics I've noticed they're all just kind of one giant scene. Granted some of them aren't as long as now, but I look back when editing and take stock of how long everything is. I used to have multiple smut scenes in one section, so I try to split it all up so the setup happens here, the blowjob scene happens after, then the doggystyle part happens etc, with little pauses in between and I try to break it up with non-smut to keep it from feeling exhausting.

For something like IVL it's usually sex, then some time of scene after at a cafe or lunch break or something to kind of let things catch a breath. I do my best to combine smut with little slice of life moments or even fluffy things that make the characters more than just a vessel for fantasy fulfillment.

gray

Hello, it’s me, the worst person to answer this. I still have this problem. I read and reread and reread my own shit and some things fall out and some things stay there that shouldn’t but such is the creative process.

The worst is that I read something I wrote and I have an annoying feeling that I’m pretty sure I’ve written something like this before in a previous fic. However, one thing I’ve come to terms with is that most of the readers (or at least the people that read my stuff) are pretty forgiving and are ultimately just trying to get off - so you can get away with a lot and it won’t be so bad.

This is a bad answer to the question.

Here’s an honest one. I ‘test-drive’ all my fics. Parts that feel like speedbumps along the way die. Take from that what you will.

What one piece of advice would you give to your debut self that new writers could learn from?

octoberautumnbox📦

not enough yuri fics. u gonna sit on ur ass and wait? bitch boy slut.

majorblinks

Definitely just write. That’s it. You have to write. I am a firm believer that you can’t really THINK your way into being a good writer—you have to try it out for yourself. You can plot and plan every little detail all day and in my opinion it means next to nothing unless you WRITE IT. Don’t overthink it. Trust your idea and get words on the page. You’ll learn as you go! You can read up on technique and all these things but you will never become a good writer if you don’t actually WRITE. There’s no way around it! There’s no secret trick or shortcut to it! Write whatever comes to mind and if it’s terrible let it be terrible. Go to sleep and come back the next day and make it a little less terrible until you’re at least content with it. And then do that over and over again until you’re finished. And then put it out in the world. And then be proud of yourself for creating this thing out of thin air and finishing a project / goal you set out to do because that is AWESOME and IMPRESSIVE and not everyone can do that. And then write something new! Every time you write you learn something new—about things you like, things you don’t like, the process, words you’re into, phrasing you love, the inner workings of your soul, all of that. It’s kind of how you level up, so to speak. You have to get experience. Ugh, that’s corny, but you know what I mean. Then later on down the line you can go back and read your old writing from when you were just starting out and reflect on things you would change now and how you’ve grown. It’s very fulfilling. It’s actually amazing if you look back on your old work from years ago and cringe—that’s the biggest sign that your taste and your skill level has grown! Literally the worst thing you can do to yourself is think so much about writing that you never actually end up writing. There is basically nothing I can tell you that you won’t learn yourself just from the experience of writing a lot. WRITE!!!

defmaybe

Go wild, don’t let any (except for the terms of service of that platform and common sense) confines restrict you.

Orenji 🍊

Gain confidence and keep on reading. For me, growing my vocabulary, word plays, plot planning etc. stems from continuous reading from other writers and reading outside fiction. I don’t really read tangible or online books which I’d say is my weakness and newer writers can learn from there too! But still, it’s in you where the magic happens because you’ll write whatever you desire and want, which confidence comes into play.

Being confident to put out, ask for advice, to expand your territories makes you a great writer which would I say to my younger self but honestly, I did that through time and it really makes you a better writer. If you’re not confident enough to write, it’s fine because maybe someday, you’ll find that little spark where you can show who you are as a writer and contribute to the table.

Valentine Drifter 💘

Don’t ever be afraid of asking for and receiving feedback.

Get people’s opinions on it. Have it get beta’d before hand if you’re afraid of posting it, ask writers that you know for help on anything, whether it be tensing, structure, the plot, the idol, whatever.
Let your work be loved, hated, laughed at—it makes for a beautiful end result that you might even look back fondly on.

Except for crack fics. That shit will guarantee a fun time at the cost of your sanity. The Jollibee fics and the Megalodon fic spawning in less than 6 months because I saw a single gif and the words, and I quote:

ok but like
now my interest is piqued
Yknow?

Were uttered, and now we have a crack fic subgenre in the ksmut community. That being said, pls no more crack fics I beg-

As I was saying, that first leap is always the hardest. But every leap after gets a little bit easier the more you jump. And there will be people who will teach you how to do it along the way.

Please, don’t be afraid to ask. There are a lot of people that are willing to help and learn from each other.

J Muns 🙈

I think the biggest piece of advice I would give my debut self would be to trust myself. I know that’s really broad, but just trusting yourself makes real improvements in a lot of different ways.

 This hobby is just that, a hobby. You aren’t writing for a boss, there’s no deadline, there’s no pressure at all really. That’s why it’s important to trust your tastes, and write for yourself. Write what makes YOU laugh, or cry, or even goon.

 On that note, trust that you’ll find your way or writing style. It’s not going to happen on the first fic. You might not even know your tastes. Maybe you’ll write something, post it, then 3 days later look at like: “what the fuck was that?”. That’s okay, trust that it’s part of the process.

 I had worries about finding my voice as an author when I first started. To me, I’ve learned, your voice is trusting that instinct. That doesn’t mean what you write down is law, and you shouldn’t edit down your work, that would be insane. It means maybe trusting that weird idea that pops up mid fic, one that’ll ruin your whole outline, and seeing where it goes. You’re going to naturally write prose the way you view the world, maybe you think a lot and it’s stream of consciousness, maybe you find the beauty in things, and your prose is really purple, maybe you like to laugh and it's witty. Trust yourself that it will come out. Of course, a big chunk of an authors voice is in the prose, but letting it permeate other things as well really makes your writing your own.

passingnotions

Iterate. Put words on the page, as deranged as they may be. Not everything will be published, and that’s the point. If you don’t write, you can’t rewrite. Take it from me, I couldn’t believe how simple it actually was once I stopped overthinking my workflow.

Qwib Qwib

“Don't write Asa” is my troll answer—writing her somehow fucked my writing speed.

But for real, dont head into an in-depth series when you have nothing planned and think you could just wing it. Plan it all out, from start to end of the series, every chapter, and every progression of those chapters. Only after that, then you should start writing it.

kooya

Read. Read, read, read, read, read. Read your fav writer’s fics, series, their fav fics from other writers. Try to take notes and mark things that stand out to you in their narration, how they portray the idol of their choosing, what makes it stand out in terms of detailing, the world building. How mush their brain is as they write their ult bias getting fucked to death in the back of the car. 

Reading is the most important tool that all writers and non-writers possess. Read stories in a different fandom, see how the writers get around to gushing out a 200k+ fic with like 10 to 20 different chapters. Get feedback and ask questions. No matter how dumb they might be. 

As for me: i would probably say is to lessen the exposition, give the reader just enough detail so that they can let the imagination do the rest of the fic. If I were able to break the fourth wall in my narrating and without the use of quotes all the time between characters, let the OC’s thoughts carry in the sequences that don’t carry the actions, I’d think they’d be in a way better place. 

But then again, it all takes practice and reading. 

capslocked

There is nothing wrong with short, simple smut. Don't feel pressured to meet word counts for arbitrary reasons. Smut is smut and the rest of the fic should be what sells the line ‘you cum in her cunt’ segment that we're all reading for.

xndrpndr 🤍

READ. READ READ READ READ READ. Pick apart fics. Decide what you like, you don’t like. What works for you? What doesn’t? What would you have done differently? Or maybe the same? Doesn’t have to be limited to fanfiction, either, or even writing. My style and work are the sum of all the people I’ve read but also all of the media I've ever consumed. Sure, I’m greatly influenced by the writers here, but also this one video essay about music software development, Final Fantasy VII, MY BUNNY GIRL SENPAI.

But also remember that you can draw on  IRL things too. Sure it's cliché, but it's true when they say Inspiration is everywhere. Writing is not just a recount of a story you have in your head, it's a reflection of you, your life and your experiences.

Now, that may not completely apply, compute or even be ethical regarding you writing pretty kpop lady go fucky fucky, but it matters in shaping how you go about and represent certain themes, events etc. 

Your writing is YOU.

ddeun

Reread your own stuff occasionally (ie. When someone interacts with a fic you haven't thought about in a while), you might spot some stuff to fix, or recognize some patterns that you didn't see before when the fic was "fresh" in your head.

Prael

Ditch the over-explanations. Ditch the excruciating details. Focus on thoughts and actions. A good read requires momentum and pacing. I always found myself getting bogged down in the details, and not only did it make it really difficult to write, but also uninteresting to read. As a writer, you’re there to guide the reader, present the path, but every reader’s path looks and feels a little different.

peach 🍑

Practice is your most important friend. Most people don't get off their couch and run a marathon if they don't exercise on the regular. Write every day, write 50 words, write 5 words, write 500 words, however many you feel. Write about your breakfast. Write about what you did, write about what you want to do. Write about your favorite meal, write about Yujin's fat ass (same thing), whatever gets the words down on paper. Getting used to writing on a daily basis will help you slowly improve over time. Once you start to write more and more, you can learn what you think works and what doesn't.

And also read! Read more than you write. Read other fics, read other types of media, read things you would never be interested in. I think a fun experiment to do is take a paragraph from your favorite writer's fic and make it in your own voice.

Most importantly have fun, because you're not being forced to do this, (hopefully), this isn't a job, this isn't an obligation, writing should always be a hobby first.

gray

ddeun gave me advice pretty early on - when you think a story’s done, sleep on it. Read it again the next day with fresh eyes, you’ll be surprised how much shit falls out.

ddeun also told me he does not follow this advice anymore.

Wellllll I still do and it works for me so yeah - try it. Also to echo what other people said read as much as you can. Read other peoples stuff. Figure out what you like and don’t like about other people’s works. I read other peoples shit and bang my head against my desk wondering how the fuck they did it. Sometimes a work is so good it takes me out of it and that’s a whole other thing.

Also steal! Steal as much shit from other people’s works as you can and then be a criminal and hammer it until it’s unrecognisable so no one will know what you did but you. I’ve stolen quotes, passages, things other people have said to me in real life, entire plots from caps, no one cares. Another thing - they say you can’t write a character that’s smarter than you and I think that generally applies to most writing. You can tell a writer is writing something that while it may be fiction it’s still emotionally true, so you know, experience things in life? Go outside. Touch grass.

Even if you’re not having the kind of dommy-mommy sex getting eiffel towered by Xinyu and Sohyun in real life, there’s gotta be some emotional truths (or trauma, lets be real) deep inside you (lmao) that you can port into it and make your fics feel realllll maaaaaaan.

Lastly if it’s too hard and not fun then just don’t do it? You don’t have to, no one’s making you. I’ve come and gone a couple of times because it’s stopped being enjoyable but it eventually it’ll come back and if it doesn’t then hey it happens.

(There was a time I was dating this girl when I was taking a break from writing and she told me she loved reading adult BL webtoons and I mentioned I used to write smut and then we got into an argument about it, so you know, the other piece of advice is if you want to tell someone you write smut know your audience!)

How do you decide what to leave out of a fic?

passingnotions

Inspiration comes in bursts. Write a note of points that you wish to go over in the general narrative of your work. It’ll probably be disorganized, so take a minute to chronologically structure them. Then, just write. 

Your story will evolve and, at times, it’s completely out of your hands. Characters can come alive, take action, face consequences. Let it happen. Periodically, I’d recommend checking in on your notes, figuring out if that a>b>c structure you plotted out is still on its rails. Does the prose require another go to match? Or did the story stray so far into its own thing that now the outline requires a look over?

The extent to which you engage with this specific advice will vary depending on your workflow. Some of you are able to fucking gun it with no plan. I say fuck yeah to that. 

And follow your gut, by the way. Reading something back and not liking the way it fits? Take it out, stash it somewhere where it could maybe be recycled, and see how it flows from there. You know what you like. Don’t ignore instinct. 

kooya

It honestly comes down to whether or not I liked the way that it’s being presented. I’ve omitted a good amount of material that I initially thought it should’ve stayed but in the long run and based on what others have seen in terms of feedback post export and when the fic is finally out, it puts my mind in a better place that I didn’t go overboard with a specific part of a fic or sequence in the plot or story. 

If it lines up well with the story, then that’s all she wrote. And if it doesn’t, then it’s probably worth cutting it and leaving it for another fic that might seem worthy of that detail. 

Personally, I”ve been a lot more critical with my writing the recent releases and rereleases. Just goes to show that oversharing can only get you far in terms of what to keep in a fic and what to keep out. 

Though, I’m still learning as I go and refine the craft. 

octoberautumnbox📦

cant lie i struggle with this a lot. im not sure if u, dear reader, noticed some fics where i set up a smut and didnt push through, and the other fics where i put in a smut i didnt plan for lol. Dreamlike Universe is of the former and Breakable Heaven is of the latter.
(Dreamlike Universe and Breakable Heaven on fanpores soon idk if u wanna go over to tumblr but theyre there)

my rule of thumb is if it isnt fun, or stops being fun, its not worth putting in. if it makes the fic less fun to write, less fun to read, why go through the trouble? u as the writer (yes u, dear reader!) r the ultimate consent-giver

capslocked

For smut specifically, if I find my writing too mechanical (you lift her leg, you touch her chest, you push her into the stall, you pull down her panties, etc) I'm probably not writing anything terribly engaging. 

Similarly I find if my dialog during sex is just "oh fuck that's good", then yeah, similarly, I need to figure out what they might be saying to eachother during the scene.

People are chatty when they fuck. They talk a lot. They talk about their kinks, what turns them on, they get self-defensive when people are judgmental about it. Sex shouldn't just be "omg you're so deep" over and over.

ddeun

I tend to build outwards from a core idea, so stuff not relevant to the core idea gets left out. I cut stuff out if the sequence of events doesn't work, or there's an easier way to do it.

Real example in my drafts: Idol works out, gets horny, one sex scene, then lots of sex on a vacation trip. Trying to get from workout to vacation and explain it somehow is just extra info that is not key, so I rolled it into workout while on a vacation already

majorblinks

People say that you need to kill your darlings and it’s TRUE!!!!! One of my absolute biggest tells that I probably need to cut something is if I spend days or weeks agonizing over a specific paragraph, wording and rewording it one million times. If something isn’t working I have learned to step back and be like: Okay, I can’t make this work right now, it’s gotta go. If you write in Google Docs you can always get it back from your History if you really need to! But for now it needs to get OFF the screen, it is NOT working right now, it is eating up all your attention and brainpower. I’ve done this with entire fics before. If I start getting the sense something is going nowhere and I have no real goal or intention or nothing to say with the story, I get out. It’s the same on a scene or paragraph or even sentence level. If it’s not adding anything meaningful, get it out of there! I honestly think it’s an instinct you train and you have to write A LOT to hone this instinct. I still have room to improve on this. If I catch myself writing an entire paragraph just to say something pretty instead of saying something that has meaning or purpose, and I’m retooling it a million times trying to get it to sound the prettiest it can be while it has no substance to it, I know I have to cut it. Nothing wrong with making things pretty—that can definitely be a purpose for people too! But I personally have to limit myself these days because I used to agonize over making sure a sentence SOUNDED beautiful instead of making sure it said something meaningful, and it left me very stuck and exhausted with writing. This took me years to learn about myself, too, which is why my main advice is always to WRITE—you will learn what works for you and your specific process with experience and practice. I still love my pretty words and metaphors! But I realized that can’t be my primary focus—beautiful words alone don’t make an interesting story to me. Whenever I start focusing on the specific wording instead of the overall STORY it prevents me from moving forward. And the ultimate goal right now, for me, is just to reach the finish line—I can make it better through editing later. So when I start getting stuck rewriting the same paragraph four times, I know it has to go and I try something new instead!

Orenji 🍊

I’d say the stuff that doesn’t click with me whenever I re-read it again, whether it’s dialogue, a paragraph or more. I’m a type of writer that loves to have a simple wordplay but make it engaging and pure with the genre of a specific fic (make it filthy when it’s smut, make if wholesome af when it’s fluff, make it a psychologically suspense or sad when it’s an angst). Also, when a certain scene doesn’t sit well with the general plot of the fic I’m writing, I’ll just either rewrite it or get rid of it and think of a scene which connects well to that preceding fragment.

Qwib Qwib

I'm going to start and say that I started writing just to share stories,  smut is just an add-on— so this is not a smut advice. I always say write as long as the story requires—means that dont put a word count as a main goal “i need to reach 20k” or “it has to fit within 8k” would mean compromises in your stories, trust your judgement, and pick it apart as a reader.

I assess my own work, “is this part needed”, “i can just cut this and it wont change anything”, or “does this really need a paragraph or can i just sneak it as a 2 sentence” stuff like those are common occurrences when i write.

defmaybe

If I’m too lazy to write it, it’s not needed.

Valentine Drifter 💘

If I write and feel like it does not or will not fit the way the story goes, I dump it into another doc in case that I want to return to it. My best example of this being the Winter fic, Recollection (fanprose.com/stories/recollection/chapters/1)

I wrote 8k of this before I took a second look at it, said that this isn’t going the way that I originally intended to do so, and scrapped around 6k of the words and turned it into what it is now.

Most of the time whatever I leave out stays in the dump doc until further notice, though there are a few scenes that I’ve re-used from that doc.

Prael

I’m a momentum-based writer. Which probably means nothing to you, but I alluded to it above. I start writing, and I just go into flow state, but if I ever get stuck? Then I took a wrong turn. That’s how I know something has to go; I have to take a step back and recalibrate. Those are the parts I leave out.

peach 🍑

As you can see from the absurd length of my recent fics, I find it very hard to scrap things. But I do! A lot, actually. I have entire fics that could be spawned from scraps I've removed. Believe it or not, I try to have each fic serve a purpose that isn't just an idol getting railed. Sometimes I feel like there's too much smut, sometimes a paragraph just isn't working, or sometimes I take too long returning to a fic that I cant pick backup the momentum, and it all gets fucked off.

Sometimes there's a scene where Wony gets railed over the balcony, but she just got railed over the kitchen counter. So I try to stay cognizant over what might feel too repetitive, which I'm not sure I'm great at, but I also don't like my fics to just a checkbox of positions. I might write a character one way and then come back and read it to find it I completely hate it and change them. It depends. It's all a messy process and somebody should take my keyboard away once I hit the 20k mark.

gray

This is actually a pretty easy answer (even if I don’t follow it all the time), but it’s really straightforward when I write. Everything I write tends to have a goal. Most of the time it’s one of two - making myself laugh, or making myself horny. Sometimes it’s both. So anything in the fic that doesn’t serve either of those purposes, it’s gone.

That’s why I find fluff hard. Angst, I feel like if it makes me want to kms maybe that means it’s successful? Who knows, never tried, maybe one day! (Writing angst, not the other thing).

But I pretty much write for an audience of one - me! (There’s a writer quote I can’t remember who it’s attributed to but basically goes along the lines of, if you try to fuck the world you’re going to get an STD, ergo just write for an audience of one and you’ll get the best results - although occasionally I am intentionally writing in a line or a joke that I think will make kooya or caps or another writer I like laugh, so there’s that too).

Also, I have a habit of writing stuff for the sake of it, or because I think I’m being clever (rarely the case) so there’s usually a lot of fat to cut. But my initial draft of fics are usually just vomit on a page and then I oscillate between fleshing it out and trimming back down, and there’s some favourites that always stick through.

There’s one joke I’ve been trying to make work for like ten drafts now, but it’s not there yet. One day. One day.

Making people cum through fiction - surprisingly easy, half the battle is just choosing a good cover photo. Making people laugh, very tricky, tricky.

But yeah, 90% of writing is done in the edit, making things work, but most importantly making things work for you. Don’t bother with what I or anyone else thinks actually, if you really like something, fuck it, keep it in. If a sentence is too hard to make work cut it out. If you can’t be bothered looking at a fic anymore just drop it. If it doesn’t get you off, what’s the point? Just care about what you’re making and it’ll all come out in the wash. It’s your story! Do what you want with it!

This is a very long answer for a question about cutting shit down.

Your opinions on the increased usage/reliance on AI to write stories?

defmaybe

AI for polishing is fine. There’s the critique for sucking you off and grammar fixes that I find helpful. Still, I think prompters should be transparent about their AI usage. Art should be made by humans. It represents our heart and soul, and it should remain that way.

passingnotions

This is a complicated topic. 

I’ve toyed with AI for the sake of curiosity; have seen it generate ideas, generate prose… But, to this day, I do not think it fits my personal writing process in any way. As a necessary disclaimer: none of my fics posted have any AI generated text.

Creating art is an eternal learning process, one where the progress is never linear. You could write a thousand works and all will vary in quality throughout. What even counts as quality, anyway?

To avoid philosophizing: I know quality writers who have utilized the tool to enhance their works and/or their process. Who am I to tell them what to do? I do not judge them simply for living in the time and age where that, specifically, is possible. I can’t control this. When asked, the writers I have personally interacted with are candid—truthful—about their usage and how it has helped them further their craft. The key takeaway with these people is that they can write a story without artificial intelligence that can match and exceed the machine’s output in the first place. 

Now, something I value greatly is honesty. The utilization of AI is as unstoppable as it is invisible. There’s programs that check for AI use, but will we hold every piece of media up to the same, unified standard? Is the script for Dune: Messiah going to be put through Pangram the same way we run it for kpop smut fics? I’m not going to come down on a user for generating hundreds of thousands of words for their favorite idol, videogame, cinematic universe—my energy is better used elsewhere—but why pass it off as your own? 

The idea, the necessity that one feels as an author to publish something comes from the inescapable, nagging feeling of wanting to share something. As writers, we feel our observations matter, as self-centered as it may sound. Wanting to share sadness, happiness, horniness, and offer your point of view on a topic is what gives it value. The human aspect is what gives it value.

So, to me, generating hundreds of thousands of words and putting them online are not a sign of you wishing to speak and be seen and heard, but a sign of you vying for attention, performing, in front of a crowd, to be observed and nothing more. You do not wish to engage with the community, whichever it may be, the same way legitimate writers and readers do so. Your purpose is another thing entirely.

Does that mean I wish for every writer that utilizes AI to tag their works as such? Again, this is not something I can control. The stigma around it probably keeps people from doing so, even if one sentence out of hundreds is the only one generated. What I do wish is for people to be upfront about their writing process when asked about it, not because of some measly witch hunt, but because writers and readers alike love to pick the brains of other creators in their space. Talking shop is fun. If you’re just pressing a button and copy-pasting the results, do not pretend we sit at the same table.

capslocked

I notice a lot of writers using it these days, even those that are pretty well-received by the community and have many readers. Obviously if you're just prompting and copy pasting what comes out, it's kind of a middle finger to the community you're trying to share with.

Any good work requires authorial intention. AI also doesn't solve the problem of being a good storyteller or smut writer. So at best you've got a failing work in all narrative categories that, I guess, has readable prose.

I've read a lot of smut. I don't need to read fics that just sorta, are the same exact thing as everything I've ever read?

However there are use cases I suppose where writers can write alongside to augment their work, although I will only say I've yet to be inspired in my own writing by any fic heavily leveraging AI.

xndrpndr 🤍

I get it. I hate it, condemn it, wish it never happened, but I get it.

When I began writing on tumblr, I leaned on AI a little too much than present me would be happy with. My self-esteem being at an all time low probably contributed to this, but I wholeheartedly believed that anything and everything it spat out onto my document would be infinitely better than whatever my poor excuse for a creative brain could conjure up.

I was wrong.

It was only after I took my own advice and read more, consumed more media, whatever, that I began disagreeing more and more with whatever was generated.

And would you take a guess at what my solution to it all was?

Write it my-fucking-self.

So, yeah, I get and understand why it’s so prevalent—it’s quick, it’s easy—there’s something outwardly substantial and tangible for minimal effort. But frankly, it’s an insult to the people who pour their heart and soul into their work only to it's being overshadowed, flushed out, or even just being treated equally to whatever the nth fuckwad-mcgee copy and pasted from ChatGPT.

Orenji 🍊

Ok, this may be very lengthy because I have different sides with this so bear with me LOL:

Genuinely, I don’t discourage the use of AI in writing stories albeit relying on it fully to the point of releasing it just from a single prompt you made? That’s a no no.

Again, I’ll tell this and probably some people will too: AI is here to guide us, but not to replace us. AI is a great tool to experiment with stuff like this for example: it would be interesting for specific LLMs (Large-language models, you can search it up, google is free) to create an underline on a specific prompt you will say. On their insights and outputs, you can come up with something interesting since different LLMs have different training grounds to analyze and provide human-like texts, which can be said the same with writing fics. Getting that idea can aid you to finish a specific scene where you think you’re lacking at and where you feel yourself demotivated, traverses into a great finish.

Yet still, you being the last one to check, write, and articulate everything you’ll write is still the main thing in writing fiction, because this is a space where “creativity” and “talent” comes into play, and just publishing a fic right off the bat because of a singular, meticulous prompt you’ve sent loses that essence, and it applies to not just writing, by artists in the same common ground.

Another thing, AIs can be your assistant when writing which is great, providing AI-generated feedback whenever you feel like you need to beta read something so long that you can’t be arsed. But yet again, it is better to re-read your own stuff whenever you feel like it, and AIs are just there to provide some insights depending on how it read the fic your writing and sometimes, it lacks ingenuity and human empathy, especially with scenes the invokes deep human emotions and carnal scene in smut.

Personally, I may sound weird because I haven’t really used AI to do this stuff but looking at how this has grown and how people are using it, I feel like this needs to be said. Yes, this is alarming since some people who rely on AI whenever “writing” something feel very lazy, and it’s even unfair for the people who put real effort in creating fics that don't get recognized but people who are reliant on the artificial beast gains traction vastly. Nothing in this life is unfair, but if you feel like you’re happy to provide what you really wrote was something you poured great effort into, be proud! Someday, people will notice you and appreciate your works and nothing beats a fic where you really poured everything into, no matter how simple or long it is.

Remember, AI is a tool for assistance, not a reliant substance.

ddeun

I don't like it, I won't interact with it if I think it is AI written. I have been fooled before but recognize it better now. Of course I can still get fooled, but I am more skeptical of and monitor new writers to the scene (sometimes they start off as non-AI and then use AI to put out more stuff quickly, maybe because they get a lot of requests from readers) 

I give existing writers a bigger benefit of the doubt if they have one or two sus patterns, but for now I ignore their specific work and see if it continues, if they do then I no longer follow them.

I don't call wrAIters out because there's a nonzero chance they see AI work, don't recognize it, like it and then mimic the AI voice in their writing. That's why I just don't interact with them.

I don't seek to confirm because it isn't worth my time, but if I do find out beyond a shadow of a doubt you use AI to write and you try to pass it off as "original work", then you no longer exist to me, you're no more than the LLM you use.

Valentine Drifter 💘

Disappointing, really.
Though I can’t say that it wasn’t expected.

With the rising emergence of AI being used everywhere, it will inevitably show itself in writing stories.
But then again, are you really writing it if someone prompts an AI model for the fic?

Writing needs to be creative, fun, done because you enjoy the act of writing. AI sucks that out of the entire thing because you aren’t the one writing anymore. You’re just letting someone else do the work and taking credit for it all while more of our world’s resources get depleted into the whole thing.
But that’s a different story.

It sucks to see it happen, sucks to see that writers that are AI-assisted or AI-generated get more traction, sucks to see writers that made so much effort into their works not get the attention that they deserve.
And I get it, AI-assisted/AI-generated can make you post more because of how easy it is to make.
But at the same time, you’re probably not going to make something memorable for people to read if the LLM will keep giving you the same old formula.

So, I understand that I cannot avoid seeing it, and the best I can really hope for is that people would stop using it.
Yet I can’t help but feel disappointed and maybe a little heartbroken that we’ve gotten to this point.

Qwib Qwib

Definitely not the popular opinion and definitely not one of the loudest once. Maybe I am stomping on passionate writers when I only see this as a side hobby, and I understand if they don't agree with this take. 

It's not about whether ai is in stories or not, i frankly dont care about that, what i do care is quality. If its bad its bad, ai or not, if its good then does it matter if its ai? Can you even tell if it's ai?

Ai can help with new writers (it could be intimidating for new writers without it), it can be a good tool if they do care, rather than just producing slop. 

Though after all that I've said, over reliance on it—simply copy & pasting or just “prompters” is just laughable to me, especially if they carry the “writer” title.

kooya

AI to help with prose and grammar feedback, or even other words that may suffice a description or expression? Yes. 

AI to help with writing a whole story because you’re lazy or you want to experiment for fun and curiosity? Absolutely not. 

It’s so interesting to see the growth of AI in the past year and what it can produce. Yet, it’s not perfect. I try to stray away from the usage of it and try to get an authentic opinion from a real person as opposed to a machine. Don’t get me wrong, the feedback I got from the shinez threesome fic that Caps provided to me (ily btw), showed a lot of good things as well as the bad. I think I prefer to use it in that intent or approach rather than having a freaking clanker do the work for you. 

Because if the work is AI and they consider it to be art, then once that same AI art is published in a public creative space, it becomes forever. 

Once published, art is forever. 

octoberautumnbox📦

the lettuce fic is a thinly veiled rant against generative artificial intelligence in the creation and consumption of fanfiction. i planned to make an author commentary on it eventually but i can spare a bit of stuff here.

if u go look it up on fanprose, u’ll see a passage where xanti points out something i mentioned abt three dragons. i did say this was an old draft of mine but i didn’t tell the full story.

Year of the Dragon is a now-defunct draft that had Chaewon, Yeji, and Karina going in for a foursome with OC in a lunar new year afterparty (this was 2024, around three months after i debuted, which was a huge task i still now dont think im ready for lol). it was AI assisted, in that it was 68% AI and 32% me. i gave up on it 1,000 words in.
Soulless. Boring. Distracted. it hyperfocused on a ruby red bar drink instead of karinas massive dobhonkerinos. Instead of expressing yeji’s desire for a fun night out and away from work, it reveled in the marvelous elaborate scene that was not too loud, not too isolating, but just right. i swear to god theres no mechanical logic to being in a fucking club and having chaewon talk barely above a fucking whisper. 

there really was no point. this isnt my fic. hell, this isnt “a” fic. this is just a gander of words propped up on each others shoulders wearing a long trenchcoat called Year of the Dragon. trust me dear reader, the way generative ai takes the fun out of writing is no joke. theres nothing to gain writing this way. u’ll get bored, itll feel empty, ull drift away from ur favorite idols. despite never naming her, the lettuce fic features yuri because it really was her that destroyed the three dragons. nobody else in the world could have.
https://fanprose.com/stories/when-the-lettuce-goes-bad-but-you-eat-it-anyway/chapters/1

majorblinks

I don’t really have a lot to say about this except for I hate it! I think it defeats the entire purpose of making art. I know some people care a lot about writing fast and the end product but I’m personally really crazy about the process and the journey to get there. I LOVE the process of writing, even the painful editing parts. Writing, in my opinion, is a real test in problem solving. I find it to be difficult and rewarding figuring out how to best tell a story and how to put my weirdest and most ambitious ideas into words! It really gets my brain going, I love challenging myself like that. Writing is also just such a personal thing to me. I love looking back at a story as a time capsule of exactly where I was and what I was doing in my life: what I was reading, watching, who I was talking to, what I was thinking, everything. It’s like I can look at any of my past writing and see a section of past me’s brain just laid out on the page. Wrinkles and all. And it’s incredible! I feel so lucky to have that! And AI just completely removes all of that. Which are, in my opinion, the best parts of writing. So I think it sucks! Writing is challenging! Let yourself be challenged! Let your brain grow through the struggle and come out better for it on the other side! Don’t let your mind atrophy from lack of use! Do something by yourself so you can be proud of the work you’ve done! <3

Prael

AI is a tool. Generative AI is a mostly poor, repetitive, generic tool, with the very rare bit of something interesting. Now the thing is, if you trust that wholly to write a fic, you’re getting something 95% bland, generic and repetitive, at best. It’s forgettable; it means nothing. It has no soul or personality. That’s the bad AI.

That’s the AI that feels like a disease. It spreads its regurgitated garbage, with no guiding hand; it’s messy.

That’s the AI that shows up on Fanprose and makes every other writer sad. That’s the AI that hurts the thing we are all here to enjoy. That’s the AI usage that has to stop.

But, again, AI is a tool. AI can spit out ideas at you, it can make corrections - it can be useful. So write, write with your mind and your heart and your soul and your style, and if you’re really struggling, use the tools at your disposal, but don’t ever depend on the tools. Don’t ever become the tool. Don’t ever become the disease.

peach 🍑

Oh boy. It's complicated, I think. If you program AI how to cook, does that make you a chef? Not really. You just told it to do a thing and it did it all for you without you learning anything. Same thing with writing. Far too many people have fallen into this trap of throwing garbage into a LLM in hopes of shitting out diamonds, but instead it gives dirt from the playground.

That doesn't mean it doesn't have its uses, but people don't use it the way they should. They expect to open a five star Michelin restaurant but end up with a burnt, depressing TV dinner that people eat because some (readers) don't care about the taste.

I think there's endless value to AI when used for the right things, but people are lazy and want the easy route. They don't want the struggle, the blank google doc, the eureka moments—the enjoyment of hitting that post button and the satisfaction of I did this. They'll never know what it's like to work on something for months, to reshape it, to delete it, to destroy and build all over again. They just know what it's like to hit the retry button. And that's fine, if they don't want that—but I'd prefer if I never knew of their existence.

gray

I use AI a lot at work, it comes with the industry, whatever, it’s going to swallow us whole, destroy the planet, kill the economy, it’s true, it’s all true.

Writing is my hobby. Like the actual act of writing. Why would I deprive myself of that. Look, I know it can be useful to bounce ideas off, do grammar and spelling checks (I’ve tried, it doesn’t quite get there) but -

I think it goes hand in hand with another thing that’s important for writers to think about - why are you writing? Are you writing for fun, are you writing to improve, are you writing because you saw Karina’s tits and you got horny and you need an outlet for it? I don’t see how AI genning stories and posting them helps in any of those cases.

Are you writing for your ego because buddy there’s much better sources for that. There’s no reward for any of this (pocas notwithstanding). You won’t get any actual tangible benefit from posting smut other than something interior, right? Number goes up but it’s not realllll. If you really care about likes and notes and eyes on your fics then just go write Max Verstappen smut and you’ll get tens of thousands of notes on tumblr for just a paragraph of work trust me you’ll be much happier. So yeah, just write for yourself, even if it’s still bad at least you created something for you and even if you delete it and trash it something you once created did exist in this world and you will know that and carry that forever.

If you are an AI writer and you’re reading this, just try something for me: Prompt your fic, have your AI generate it for you. And then open up a new doc and type in every single word that was generated one by one. And as you do you’ll start to get this annoying feeling, and pick out the shit that is bad, or doesn’t make sense, or isn’t what you want, and then you’ll start editing and rewriting and shape it into something the AI couldn’t generate on it’s own and is uniquely you. Congrats, you’re a writer! Just try it. Try it for yourself. Try it for your best buddy grayyyyyyy.

Or don’t, you know, I’m not the writing police, and if I was I’d ban you and take all your pocas give me poca give me Asa and Anna and celestial Winto and secret Irene pls pls pls

(Final note: years ago after I released like two fics levi dm’d me and sent me his famous gdoc about grammar and prose and strongly advised that I need to start using emdashes so that’s why I do now even though I find it really annoying, and now that it’s an AI tell it kinda makes me want to punch a hole through a wall.)