Do you have any advice and how to write a long fic?
I'll encourage long fic writers to add on in the notes, but as someone who tends to prefer short and medium-length fic, I'll tell you how I go about it.
- Get a premise that you just absolutely love. You're going to be writing this thing for months, if not longer, so you want it to be something you're willing to spend a lot of time thinking about.
- Embrace subplots. You'll have your main plotline that you want to see through from beginning to end, but you can also weave in some subplots here or there. The way I do this so that I don't get lost down a rabbit hole is that I always make sure that every chapter has at least 1 thing that moves the main plot forward and then if I want to spend 1-2K with some side characters doing something fun I can do that as well. Subplots can extend for the length of the full narrative, but they can also just last a chapter or three. If you're used to writing short fic, these might give you that familiar feeling of "completion"
- A chapter is only as long as it needs to be. Don't get hung up on having a consistent chapter length. Don't get hung up on hitting some arbitrary number every time. Instead, figure out what the next part of your story needs to include and write however many words it takes to get that chunk across. Varying your chapter lengths is a normal thing to do and not something to stress about.
- The next thing that I find important personally may or may not be relevant to you, but I find that I can't plot anything in much detail. If I get too into the nitty gritty with my plotting, it just feels like I've already written it. I need to keep it at the level of "And then A and B meet C and hijinks ensue." I can figure out the particular hijinks later. It's the characters meeting up that's the next important thing for me to figure out. Getting too far ahead of myself is a death knell for me in writing long fics, but there are other writers who swear by it. Test out different ways of approaching it and see what works for you.
- As someone who tends to write more briefly, another feature that's common to longer fics is more extensive descriptions. People spend time painting visual pictures of the setting or the characters or the actions that are happening. Write the more bare-bones style that focuses more on dialogue (if you're like me) and then go back and read through what you've just written and see if there are opportunities to add in more detail. This can lead to some really interesting characterization choices and also help you out with worldbuilding.
- When it comes to worldbuilding, you don't have to get it all on the page. You just need to share what's relevant for the reader in that moment and what is useful to lay out now so that it's already there in a future chapter. You can have an encyclopedic knowledge of how your world works in your head, but it's not actually necessary. No one is going to be quizzing you later - and if they do, you can always figure it out at that point.
- Most important for me when I'm trying to get myself to the end of a longer fic, have a friend or a group of friends who are also into what you're writing - or at least willing to hear you get excited about it. Being able to get excited about your work is so important. It's like a bottle of water being handed to you on mile 10 of a marathon.
I'm the opposite for point 4. I used to plot out longer stories/fics and outline with things like "chapter 5: they get more comfortable together" and then go ????? when I got to it.
Now I might put that in initially when planning out the basic structure of a fic, to figure out the pacing, but once I get to chapter 5 I stop and write a new outline just for that chapter. Something like:
- Mary is sewing while Olive is working on a spell across the room
- Thinks about mother and what she's cooking up
- Tired, puts down needle - Olive notices
- She asks Olive to show her what she's doing
- Olive sits down by her (cute moment, Mary gets flustered by proximity)
- Teaches her about spell, Mary thinks she's being very nice
- Olive unbends and shows a little more affection
If I come to a note that just indicates mood or a general goal of the scene, it's too vague. I feel overwhelmed and like I can't write something this big. But an outline like this is a ladder that will help me climb the wall instead of staring at the top of it.
My success rate isn't great with writing longer fics but I always want to/have one in my WIPs somehow, lmao. I find that it also helps to not write it alone. Writing in isolation is so very exhausting. Get yourself a friend who likes your writing and you can show snippets of your WIP to them. You can brainstorm plot points with them. Bonus points if you're their hype person in return, and you can organize writing sessions together. I'd never have finished any of the multi-chapters I finished if I didn't have friends to hold my hand through it. Anyway. Hope that helps!
I agree with a lot of the above (and especially nire's and chocolatepot's points), but one of the first things I always think when I see someone asking how to write long fics like this is: why do you want to write a long fic?
If it's because you have an idea that needs the space and time to develop, then cool. If it's because you want to challenge yourself and try out a longform format, awesome. But if it's just because you feel like you should, that somehow a long fic is more valid, then my advice boils down to: a story should be as long as it needs to be. If you can tell the story you want coherently in short form, with the emotional impact that you're aiming for, then do that and try to ignore the misplaced shoulds. A story is not better or more valuable just because it's long. (A sentiment I stand behind completely as someone who too often finds herself writing 100k+ fics.)
My advice for actually writing long fic is to remember and refine your overarching emotional arc(s) at all times and to resist the urge to throw in subplots just because you like them if they're going to mess up the pacing of your story. Pacing a long fic is critically important and intensely difficult, especially in the middle. Ask yourself what purpose each scene serves as you write it. If you discover that you're duplicating something you've already done, figure out whether it can shed new light on the characters or plot or if you might have to let it go.
(Also at some point in every long fic, I want to throw it away. Every single time. A few times I nearly have. Don't give in, that's just the monsters speaking. You can do this, just take a breath and take a break and come back to it later.)
I think my biggest advice is don’t write a longfic just because you want to write a longfic. Write a longfic because the fic you want to write is long.
This is closely related to point 1 above.
But I very rarely plot out a whole story before I write it—I’ve conflicted with several writing teachers over it. I can’t do it in much detail at all and I usually can’t plan the end until I’ve already written the first third or so, I have to find the story as I write it.
This means I SUCK at predicting what length something is going to be with any kind of precision.
I can, however, usually tell if a fic is more a self-contained one-off (be it a one shot or a limited set of chapters) or something that’s gonna run for a while (either novel-like or more episodically serialized).
Either way, though, you kinda have to just let the fic become whatever length it ends up needing to be in order to tell the story you’re trying to tell.
If a story you expected and planned to have be a 50k+ longfic wraps itself up closer to the 20k mark, that’s okay! If you’ve written the whole thing before posting any (rather than doing it as a serialized WIP), then by all means take a couple editing passes, see if there’s places to flesh out details, add some scenes, explore some plot threads you didn’t pull on the first time through.
But don’t force it to double in length just because you want to have written something long. You’re gonna drive yourself nuts, make yourself unhappy with a perfectly good story, and probably end up with something that’s boggy and draggy for readers.
Let the story be the length it is.
For all you know the next one will run away and snowball epic lengths.
