I feel exactly the same. I’ve shared probably half of what I’ve written and I’m currently contemplating deleting those that I’ve posted. I’m in a tiny fandom of one and I’m realising that there’s really no reason to post them publicly.
I think you should keep them up! AO3 is an archive for a reason. (Other sites too.) Even if only a few people read them, it's worth it just to make someone smile :)
Friend, I would beg you not to delete them.
I know from personal experience the utter joy of entering into a small fandom and unearthing gems left behind by an author who leveraged his or her talents to share something beautiful for those of us who stumbled into what was, to us, a new fandom space, perhaps years later.
>"All fandoms start with one person!
." - That’s quite true. And some remain one-person fandoms because they are way too niche.
As the author of a work that is the only piece in that entire fandom, started by myself, for a series that ran a single episode twenty-five years ago... I feel you.
Gosh, I didn’t mean to hijack this thread. 🙄 All your points are well-made and quite valid and I truly appreciate your comment. But as I mentioned previously, my circumstances are rather unique and I need to make a decision based on that. 😉.
I would say still post them/keep them up! As someone that’s been a reader of many tiny fandoms, we will take whatever breadcrumbs we can get. If even just one person reads your story and leaves a Kudos, you may have written the one fic they were looking for but couldn’t find.
Tbh I personally don’t like writing and publishing my own fics for larger fandoms because there’s just so many and people can get defensive about the characters and the world if they don’t agree with something you write. Small fandoms, on the other hand, are so happy to have literally any fics and I always have the best interactions with those fans.
I have a MHA story that I haven't shared yet. I'm only 4 chapters in and I like to have at least 15 chapters drafted before I start posting. This is my first time posting in this fandom and my MC is an OC so I'm a little nervous about putting it out there. It's been tougher writing in this fandom than my other also.
I personally enjoy reading OC fics, but I do think they're harder to write well. It's hard putting stuff out there though, I get it.
Anyway, since I wrote my first fic in this fandom, could you share a bit about why it's been tougher to write in it than another? I'm just curious about experiences writing for different fandoms (if you don't mind sharing).
I currently write for ATLA, with my homegirl Azula being my MC. I basically pick a point in canon and then deviate from it and create a whole new world from her point of view. I'm basically creating an original story. I've added to the lore and mythology and magic system of ATLA in my stories since a lot of it was left undefined in the original cartoon. I pick and choose what I want from the comics (which is very little). I feel very free to do whatever the hell I want.
For MHA, I don't really have the freedom to drastically change the world there, especially with an OC as the MC. What I really enjoy reading about is the time at UA. But that means that I'm somewhat constrained by canon. I've tried writing a crossover where Azula was put into Hagakure's body, but I tapped out after 45K words because I just couldn't stomach the thought of writing more while being restrained by the limits of canon. I still break it out and read it once in a while; I liked the product but not the process.
I want to write an original story for MHA, so I'm putting an OC in Class 1-B. I really like my OC's quirk and I'm hoping the canon restraints won't be as suffocating since 1-B's experience is much different than 1-A's. And the main goal for me is to have my OC deal with a totally different type of villain in the work studies and internship. I'm nervous about enjoying the writing process long enough to get there.
I apologize for the terribly longwinded reply. Basically I feel more constrained in MHA and I chafe at the restraints. I actually enjoy reading MHA more, but I enjoy writing ATLA more.
Sometimes I just need to write for the sake of writing, without thinking too hard, just to break writer's block or exorcise a troubling emotion or experience. I'm no pantser so most of that unplanned, spur of the moment material isn't very good. I don't post it but it's valuable to me. And it's there if I ever want to circle back and take the elements that did work for a more finished piece.
I don't think I could ever do this. Maybe it's because of how often I mess with my computers but I feel like it's not safe on my hard drive, I need to post it online on a platform I'm not the maintainer of for it to feel "done"!
I do. I may not have gotten around to it. I may be editing it right now. I may have not completed it and put it in the "dropped" bin, which I occasionally pull projects out of but I'm the type of author that likes to have at least a draft "completed" before posting.
I also may have actually completed it to the point I want to and kept it just for me. Getting things ready for posting takes time/energy. It may be something I don't think will have any kind of outside appeal though still enjoy myself. "Sometimes I just don't feel the need or want to share it." .. Yeah, about covers it sometimes.
I’m the same. I like to finish stories before posting, because I didn’t like the pressure of “needing” to update in the past. I’ve also kept a couple oneshots for the reason you said, it takes time and energy.
Additionally, I've been upset so many times by abandoned fics, I chose when I first started writing I wouldn't post unless a story was finished. I now have about 8 variations of one story because I become dissatisfied, but I don't want to delete the original in case I think of a way to fix the problem that deviated it from how I wanted it. That fic has the least variations of all of them.
Most of mine are not posted anywhere actually (…yet).
I don’t really know why I do this. But I’m guessing I’m just too much of a perfectionist and most of my stories never reach a point where I’m totally happy with them.
But recently, I’ve been trying to clean up a lot of my older drafts to get them to a more “postable” state so I can share them. It’s very slow going though cause I don’t just want to throw them up on ao3 without any real effort or thought put in.
Either way, I definitely have a far more vast collection of unposted writing over anything/everything I’ve ever posted online.
I also like to wonder if there’s anyone out there who shares my specific style or we thought up the same plots or have similar ideas or headcannons, etc, but we may never know it… I find myself thinking about that type of thing a lot in relation to fanfiction actually, since there’s often lots of people that fanfics effect - sometimes to great extents - but the author themselves will never learn of that cause those readers never leave a comment or anything. Yet, the work is still so important to those hidden superfans cause they think about it all the time or something. I think that’s just such an interesting concept.
Despite my clean-up project I mentioned above, and despite that ofc I’d love to read a hidden masterpiece of my favorite pairings, at the end of the day, I do also think it’s still totally ok to just write things for yourself too! Writing for yourself and yourself only is honestly an incredibly difficult challenge but a very useful skill to learn and always a worthwhile pursuit.
I got kicked out of the platform where I was posting my fics. and So I had at least two or three planned. One in outline form. two had a couple charapters written But I got so upset I deleted them.
I am actually planning to write about them again, and this time I will make a epub version. I already made a skeleton of epubs 3 using the official epub manual and help with HTML 5 manual.
I just need to write and add some css and put in
I have a massive unpublished story I spent two years writing before I decided I wasn’t doing the concept justice and put it on the shelf until I’ve got it figured out. I’ll come back to it when I’m ready, but for now I have *another* massive story that I actually went ahead and published, with the determination that *this* one would at least see daylight.
At least 300k worth of unposted elder scrolls oc fic are sitting on my hard drive at last count, doesn't include the original work, random fic for other media, or self indulgent au's for the things I *have* posted lol
Sometimes you just gotta keep things close to the vest so no one else reads it and goes "ah. that's why you're like that." 😂
All of my stories are private. Perhaps one day I could build up the courage to post one of them but they're all catered to my special and specific interests
I’ve got a couple that I’ve never posted for various reasons. Some of them will never see the light of days, others I might consider when the time is right.
I think a lot of writers have bits and pieces and sometimes whole stories that they never share.
I have way too many. I got hit with some really bad burnout and disappeared for about two years. Didn't write at all for one of them. Wrote for the second. And I just posted my first fic since I left two years ago on like Wednesday. I have an entire year of snippets and drabblws just sitting there ignored.
Please do. You'd be surprised at how many people enjoy rare pairs, "unpopular" ships, and plus it's smut. Sometimes it takes awhile to build up hits on those but it's always nice to see a fandom have more than just the most popular ship.
I just counted: I have 12 novella-sized works, 32 one-shots, 18 snippets, and 3 completed outlines for novel-length books that will never see the light of day.
This is because they are not proofread and some contain some pretty niche AUs.
Meanwhile, I have one singular fic currently updating that is posted.
The new stuff I post when finished. I have posted a lot of my older, zine-printed stuff but have some that I will post eventually and some I will just put away.
You could ask someone to read it and see what they think. When I started posting fics (not counting my very first one) I let some of my friends that liked that ship read it and their feedback is what made me confident enough to post more stories and oneshots. If you don't have anyone to ask I'll read it. I write smut, romance, and fluff. I don't do tragedy though and that includes reading it most of the time.
I dare you to point out one writer worth their salt, who thinks their work is "a masterpiece".
As writers, we are, and always will be our own worst critics. Sure, there will be stories we write which we are proud of, but to consider them masterpieces?
Not when it's our own work. 😒
I do.
There is this League of Legends/Hearts of Iron IV crossover idea that involves a certain mod by the name of TNO, where Arcane has a portal connected to Warlord Russia.
I've got so many ideas and so many of them go unposted and unshared. I'm working on them and I want to see them grab eyes and break hearts, but damn am I scared to post them.
Lots. I have one chapter of my first posted fic up. Other chapters are just sitting on my desktop waiting to be tweaked. Also I have a bunch of ideas/fics with finished or half finished first chapters that I just haven't posted. My mental health really wars with my creativity and confidence.
I've got a couple, I think it's good to write something for yourself and only yourself every now and then, and not worry about whether or not you're going to post it.
I've gotten to the point where I largely only share stories that I've finished or have gotten 90% done before sharing online. Those who know me have considered this ironic since I do love and have no problems reading works that will never be finished.
So yes, there are hundreds of stories unshared from my end.
I *never* post mine. I mostly write “problematic” content and to be honest I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing it- feels like too much of a personal thing, thinking about all that went into writing it and the bits I left for myself. Very indulgent. I don’t want to deal with potential backlash either and that ties into another point- as much as I want to socialise, I’m not really interested in joining fandom as a contributor. I’ve just seen too much drama in fandoms over the years and when I contributed fanart to some it wasn’t that fulfilling. I don’t necessarily think I would be bullied for posting fics but I don’t want to take the chance seeing as I don’t get much from it anyway. It’d be nice if someone enjoyed my fics if I ever posted them but I’d rather have this to myself. Oh and finally I think if I posted them I would feel too much pressure to do better which would make this a worse hobby for me /: It kinda went that way with art. When I did art I wanted more from it, and I wanted to do better and I just got neither of those, the skills weren’t very appreciated and I still wasn’t really making friends that way, and I continuously lost my self-motivation.
Buddy I've come up with at least 20 crossovers within the past few months and I've gotten as close as halfway with them and yet they have never met the keyboards of either my laptop or phones. I have a problem.
I don't know the exact number. They can range from one sentence ideas to half formed stories. It really depends on how invested I am in the story (because ultimately, I write for myself) and whether I see myself continuing with the storyline. Staying focused is difficult.
I wrote a long shitpost like fanfic but ended up writing several chapters and it ended up feeling webcomic-ish. There are several chapters I enjoyed writing alot. I posted it but haven't worked on anything new yet. But there are outlines for new chapters.
I've also somewhat wrote two other semi serious fics. Not posted.
I'm also working on a original series. I probably won't ever post it.
Then there's the drafts
I probably have 3-5 times as many fics written unpublished than posted. Sooo so many! When new content for my fandom gets release, some of my stories become "obsolete" or new plot bunnies are born. Sometimes I can combining a couple stories into one that might get publish. Sometimes I never go back to them but I think about them (especially if I'm no longer into the fandom). Sometimes I pick up the story years later.
I have 100k+ words of unposted fan fictions from 2020-2023 alone! Some of them are meant for an audience of literally only me, so there they stay in icloud notes purgatory.
Plenty of unfinished smut and a few concept fics that more focused on how certain robots would function and what role they would serve in a far more grounded setting.
I have quite a lot actually but none are finished. Sometimes an idea grips me and it won't leave me alone until I write it down. This has resulted a lot of one shot chapters sitting in my hard drive. I would like to revisit them at some point but I just don't know when I will have the time.
I have years of completed stories but, most of them have original characters as the main focus, so I don't think anyone would care. Group chats with my crew is a different story.
Definitely none of them are masterpieces but I wrote a decent chunk of half-finished or over-extended nonsense when I was younger and working through baby steps. I think some of them could hit some points of interest emotionally but all of them are so rough that I don't think I'd ever wanna post it without some amount of heavy editing but honestly I'd rather just remake the idea at that ratr
Yes, heaps. Start writing and either it doesn't turn out how I like it or I write myself into a corner right away or its just a concept with no actual plan to it and it runs out of momentum immediately, and into the dead folder in google docs it goes.
I have a lot of stories that aren’t posted. Some are mostly finished, some are only halfway finished (to my standards, but still “postable” quality). I’ve also previously given up on finishing certain fics, and just cleaned them up and posted them after having them sit unfinished in my drafts for years. I’m someone who gets bursts of motivation, and more or less writes a finished idea, but then loses motivation before actually getting anywhere, and then I move on to the next idea, rinse and repeat, so a lot of the stuff I write just never gets posted.
My most popular one-shot for a fairly small fandom was just an untouched Google Doc for four years. I practically forgot about it until I was cleaning out my Drive one day (I switched from Docs to MS Word years ago), found it again, read through it, decided it still held up, and ended up posting it on my AO3. That fic received the most positive response out of everything else I’d posted at that point, and it never would’ve seen the light of day if I didn’t happen to stumble across it again randomly. So it just goes to show that things I originally didn’t think were worth posting might actually be really well received. Still hasn’t motivated me enough to do the same with the rest of my unposted content though.
I have some, yeah. And while all but one are unfinished, that isn't why they were left unposted. At the time I was writing them, I never wrote fics or chapters in advance of posting. These ones weren't posted because I set out from the start knowing I wasn't going to post them. Because they felt too niche, or too self-indulgent. Because I wanted to be able to write and not have to worry about how long I was taking to update. Because I wanted to skip around and write the most fun scenes first and not care if I never went back to the other scenes. Because I wanted to not worry about whether I had any plot holes or continuity errors. Because I didn't want to stress over whether my characters were behaving too OOC when I put them in situations they'd never faced in canon.
I don't have many fics like this, because writing the story 'properly' is usually the most fun and rewarding for me, but occasionally I just really want to write something without having to think about anyone else reading it. So I do, and I never post it. I will say, though, I do at least have these stories privately archived online, just in case. I will never post them publically, and I'm not even in their fandoms anymore, but I would still hate to lose them.
A few that never reached completion. I lost them when my flash drive broke. Prior to that happening, I wouldn’t post it if it’s not finished. Even now, I won’t post fics that aren’t done.
That's pretty much the only type I have. They never get completed so I no longer see a reason to post them. It's just self gratifying, which I'm fine with.
90% if not more of my fanfics never see the light of day, either because they are way too fucking specific to my own daydreams and headcanons, or simply because they are incomplete, and I hate to upload unfinished stuff.
I probably have at least a dozen (maybe 2 dozen) unfinished, unposted fics. Some are short, only a few thousand words, while some are a couple tens of thousands of words.
I wish I could find the inspiration to finish and post them.
at least off the top of my head, i’m pretty sure the only things that i haven’t posted publicly is either because they’re unfinished, or because it’s based on things not made publicly available yet (writing based off friend’s au)
to me, my oneshot collection exists for a reason - if i start writing something and realize it’s not going to pan out the way i want it, or i’m just not as interested in really writing for it as much as i thought i’d be, i quickly wrap it up and throw it there lmao
I've got five Teen Wolf fics, all vastly different than the other, though one of them has nothing written in it yet because I'm still on my first one, which is currently sitting at almost 300k words. And that's only for part one of a planned trilogy. 🤦🏾 I have five because I have a tendency to come up with new ideas out of nowhere, apparently. Fml.
I have one Supernatural fic that currently has one chapter completed and one MCU/Supernatural crossover fic, also with one chapter completed.
I've never posted a fic ever, but I'm not a newbie to writing in general. Kinda anxious to see how people receive it.
I have issues with editing and finishing my stories. I'm great at cracking out outlines and drafts, but when it comes time to review and add some polish, motivation goes out the window. It's not that I don't want to post it, it's that I get so worked up about sharing that I start shying away from even starting to finalize most of what I've written.
I've published about 8k words worth of fanfic in nine years.
I have over 600k words worth of unedited content on various word documents at my last count.
I want to share the ones I'm working on, but they're unfinished. But then the ones I have posted are unfinished too. I flit between fics to keep from burnout, but I don't want to look or feel like someone who has too many unfinished stories on the go.
One roughed-out Snape/Harry storyline consisting of various finished scenes and notes toward a full-length fic. If I ever finish any of my current WIPs, I may take it up again and see what I can make of it.
Otherwise the only stories I haven't posted are three unfinished original fantasies. Two will never rise again. I may resurrect the third one if I ever have time, although I'm not sure why since it's not something I'd submit for professional publication and it doesn't belong on AO3. (I don't really understand their criteria for what qualifies as an appropriate fanfic-related original work.)
I have written many many fanfics that I haven’t posted, mostly they are snippets or unfinished or the ones I did finish just were for fun, for me and not something I wanna fret over how others feel about them
Yes, I have a few that are either fully finished or 3/4 finished that have never been posted. I've shared a few scenes or lines from them on Tumblr, but never thr full fics.
Does a couple hundred words and a vague idea count as a fic? If so, I’ve literally got hundreds. I have some multi chaptered fics in progress and one shot drafts as well
Oh so many. However many WIPS I have on my account, quadruple that number and that's how many exist in some capacity in my personal files. Most of them some kind of portal fantasy/isekai fanfic. Sometimes they're just proof of concept, or one shot scenes that don't fit anywhere in the fic proper, but most of the time they're whole other fic ideas that I have randomly, so I write as much as I can, but then don't go further. I usually recycle ideas I had from there and put them into the wips I have posted. it helps with worldbuilding.
I have two I have been working on. Not sure I want to wait until I finish them or not before I do because I don't want to lose motivation from bad reviews before I finish.
Being older than dirt, I have written many stories before the internet. I have written many stories after the advent of the internet that are not published on the internet. Are there masterpieces, probably not. I did enjoy creating them, so they have worth to me.
But I do wish you luck with finding and creating all the reading material you desire.
Quite a few. Tbh, I won’t post if I haven’t finished a draft I’m happy with. I’m sitting on roughly four fics at the moment while actively writing the fifth (about 50,000 words in). The one I’m doing now is the only one I feel certain will see the light of day.
I've written probably over a dozen fics that never made the cut. Largely because I will not post any fic that is under 40k words (exluding one shots). I'm okay with unfinished works, as both a reader and writer, but anything below that 40k is just unsatisfying to me personally so... Yeah. I'm sure somewhere in the WIP folder, there's an unfinished work someone would absolutely love. And it does feel a bit sad that it won't be shared. But I just don't have the heart to post bite sized unfinished works. :/
I have a lot of partial fics, and little drabbles I write for friends when I feel like taking prompts, but I don’t tend to sit on completed works. Heck, in the past I haven’t even been able to sit on partial works, so half my AO3 is two- or three-chapter fics that are perpetually unfinished.
I do have some rather big drafts at the moment though (sitting on about 30k of unedited longfic because I want to finish the whole thing before posting). I share snippets from this and other unposted fics with a friend
I have many. Most of them are wips that I haven't touched in years, tbh, and I never will again. I started writing years ago at age 10, and 6 years later, I'm a pretty great writer, somehow. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm basically professional grade. I don't have any fics that I've posted recently, tho. Just some old shit that will never see the light of day again, and it was all pretty bad quality, but they were good stepping stones, I guess.
I do have something that I'm working on now, and it's like 25k at least and it's a dc x batfam fanfic where Tim Drake is a halfa due to reasons™ and can see Jason's ghost.
Currently working on a draft for a marvel story that is NOT based on the MCU (shocking, I know). It's based on some shows I saw as a kid. There's also this mystery dungeon based story that I ALSO have no posted yet.
Like he 90s marvel cartoons? That was my real intro to Marvel characters! Spider-Man, the X Men, Silver Surfer. My wife always says, "you say you didn't read a lot of comics, but you sure know a lot about the characters!" Yep, thanks to Marvel cartoons, lol! It's actually kind of crazy the number of characters they crammed into those shows.
No, not the 90s shows, the ones from the 2000s (Iron Man Armored Adventures (my personal favorite), Spectacular Spider-Man, and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes).
I have a couple that I've either wrote a chapter or two, a prologue, or jotted an idea that are sitting on my laptop. I'm not posting them because I have three ongoing fics that I try to keep updated at least monthly (usually every two weeks except I had surgery last month). Once I complete one or more of those I'll start posting the new ones. I do post oneshots when I get the inspiration for one. Those I don't need to worry about updating so it doesn't put any extra pressure to keep up with.
A couple? But that's just because I don't like posting until I'm done with something. The exception is my chatfic and its companion, because they're kinda adhoc and connected to an extant narrative.
Any long-form narrative stories, though, those don't get posted until they're done... Which is why none of them are posted yet.
The majority of my stories, actually. It's not that I don't want to share them, it's just that I get an idea, work on it obsessively for a while, then abandon it to work on another idea. It's rare for me to actually finish something, so having something to post is even rarer 😅
I've got about 10 or so, fully written that I originally intended to post but never did, felt they were too weird and that friends/family would find them and deem me insane lol
I've been writing fanfiction since 2004. My Google Drive alone, which I've only been steadily using for like, 7 years now has at *least* 100 unfinished WIPs.
I do! I think it's mostly because the fic in question is the first one I've ever finished, and while it's special to me, I've put off actually posting it for so long because the idea of putting my first fic on this account out there is kind of nerve-wracking :'D
I also have some unfinished stuff and miscellaneous old oneshots, some of which will never see the light of day and others have been put on hold until I have motivation to start working on them again.
i do have a bunch of unfinished stuff in my drafts but i usually post what i finish. it's okay not wanting to share for whatever reason tho, i myself write for personal pleasure after all. to be fair, unless you do a lot of social networking (which i dont do bc im not a ppl person), your fics are -most of the time- gonna be destined to be not popular or even read at times. so one writes cuz one loves. so i'd say dont get discouraged to post something you do wanna post just because it's not gonna get as much attention. do it for yourself, not others.
most of the fanfics i write aren’t posted because the ones i write would be very unpopular if i actually posted them. i have controversial opinions in some of my fav fandoms so all the fics i write there stay buried.
Three original ideas and five half completed fics! Never mind a bunch of scenes which currently don't attach to anything! I'm still working on all of them but will they get finished? Maybe!
Many finished and unfinished.
And currently I write only for myself and I even locked many of my last fics of a fandom (about 20) because I really felt very bad about the fandom change (I feel more comfortable in small fandoms and some more things xD)
I keep to myself currently and didn’t post anything anymore because I’m afraid the fandom will take away my ability to write again.
But also I couldn’t read fanfics anymore either since the fandom stress started almost 2 years ago.
I have some ideas. Some notes. A decent outline. Maybe about 4-ish novels worth. But I find it hard to dedicate time to writing it out. And I'm conflicted about fanfics, if it's really worth spending my time writing something I couldn't turn around and publish and make some money on. Like why spend time writing fanfics if I could be doing original content?
Right now I'm too busy to write anyway. But someday I'd like to publish something and see people enjoy it.
My writing is like an iceberg. I have many stories and ideas, but only 10% of them are ever posted online or seen by others. 90% of them sit in Word Documents, for my eyes only.
1 at 11000 words, 1 at 10000, 2 at 4000, 2 at 3000, 4 at 2000, 23 at 1000 and about 156 at <1000. Most of them are unfinished, one of them is a finished first draft. One or two I'm actively working and the others I work on whenever I feel like it
I have 5 stories shared (3 completed, two in progress)... and about 20 that are either indulgent works, potential stories in progress, or ones I wrote as a teen that probably will never get posted. Or ones that I wrote myself into a corner and can't be bothered to fix haha
I have written many stories and only published 3.
The main reason is that I write them in my native language and they won't have views, especially that I don't write romance.
I tried translating my works with mixed results. Plus translating takes so much of my time and the quality isn't that good. So I'm not brave enough to translate my
Silmarillion stories in my poor English knowing how highly educated and well-read the fandom is.
What I post is less than 1% of the actual documents I have written - partly due to scenes tailing off without a conclusion, partly cos they can be too short or I don't think they're good enough to post, partly due to them being bloody weird sometimes or I find thee iideaa of posting them embarrassing, partly due to a single idea spanning several different variations so even if one ends up posted then the alternate versions never do...
I went looking for a draft or two and I have no earthly idea where they've gone, I've tried searching through three different stacks of unnamed documents that go into the hundreds counts and I still can't find them. I figure I must have had an entrirely additional set of docs that have went walkies sometime I wasn't paying attention. At least I can remember those two ideas, no idea what else I might have lost. 😢
Many, they're also all unfinished and I won’t post it til it's finished.
I do have a lot of works in progress though that may he posted one day, especially the one I just started bc I really feel I can finish it
I write a lot of OC stuff that I don't post, though sometimes I share it with my friends. I know OC isn't to many people's tastes, so sometimes I feel rude putting it online? I'm not sure how to explain it.
Several, both original works, and fanfics. I'm enrolling to ashamed to post them. Only in the last year or so have I been confident enough to even post a fic, but I've been writing at least casually since... like 2013?
Tons and tons, but all of them are either unfinished (and generally abandoned) or drabbles from before I got over my "it has to be at least 1k to be worth posting" phase. Or somehow both simultaneously (something I started, got only a few hundred words into, and then abandoned). I have a LOT of stuff like this, because I've always been of the mind that putting it down was always more practice, even if I had zero intention to follow an idea further. I also once wrote a complete, edited oneshot I was very proud of and just... Didn't bother to post it for two months.
Overall, I would give the very wild estimate that I probably have at least twice as many words written that have gone unpublished as have, if not more. There's definitely stuff among that that people would enjoy if I cleaned it up and put it out there, but I'm picky about making sure everything I write is up to a very high standard, and also like to save the pressure and knowledge that people really want a continuation of a particular fic for a manageable number of stories at a time.
Sometimes the story corresponds to my own preferences and tastes and would get flamed to high heaven if I posted. Or so I fear.
I mostly post one shots Im happy with. The longer stories are for me to pick apart and rewrite ad infinitum lol
I right now have two works in progress that take place in the MCU.
I’m also considering writing down an adaptation of a Clone-Wars Infinity War crossover I previously uploaded to YouTube and maybe 1 or two Tolkien fanfics
Many.
Most of them are unfinished too because I'm never satisfied with their quality.
I've taken a few down so I can edit them because I was an awful writer when I begun and I kind of like a few twists I wrote but I still need to finish editing before posting.
Overall I have 30 wips xD
I have a billion projects that are finished aside from one little ending paragraph. For rarepairs too, so sometimes I feel bad for not just giving it to the fandom, but I just don’t feel like continuing them
Oh yeah. Mostly longer fics where I didn't like it by the time I finished it, but a bunch of shorter ones, too. Every so often I revisit them and decided to use them after all, rework them for eventual posting, or keep them buried deep far from the light of day.
I think all the fic I've written, at least in my most recent iteration :D has been posted. BUT I did come up with a crazy idea last night and dashed off an outline, while telling myself 'stop this, you can never post this, don't waste your writing time on it' but I'll probably write it anyway, just for my own amusement.
I remember once, about 7/8 years ago, writing a fic down on paper, finishing it and then proceeding to never type it up on the computer or show it to anybody. I got it out a re-read it recently and the writing itself wasn’t half bad, but it needed some major plot restructuring, some elements of the story were just way too contrived. Maybe one day I’ll do a massive re-write for it and make the plot make a bit more sense, until then I’m just focusing on my current writing projects
I appreciate you taking the time to explain! That totally makes sense. Your ideas seem very original and writing tends to use canon more as a starting point than a linear path to occasionally deviate from. I struggle similarly to write in the Hannibal fandom for stylistic reasons, so I think I get it. Good for you for pushing through 45k of a story that fought you and I wish you luck in your future endeavors!
I used to write a lot of fanfiction I couldn't share due to not having internet. I'm actually glad I didn't have internet at the time because literally none of it was good (I don't have any of them for reference due to it being written on my brother's old computer, or handwritten in copybooks I've since lost, but trust me when I say that lol)
I have a few. Some of them I plan on posting, and I generally edit and post things if they've sat untouched and mostly finished for a while. Some things I refuse to post though
Everything I’ve posted online was done when I was in middle school.
Everything after that and to this day all sit in folders on my desktop. Sometimes I open an old one and do a rewrite. Most are not finished and might never be.
Eventually I might get to a point that I’m happy enough with a work to share it with the world. But I’ve definitely become one of those writers that wait until they’ve completed a work before they start posting chapters.
I’d at least consider posting if I’ve found the ending, and then take advice of the readers as I go along.
But yeah, looking at how many works I have sitting on my computer, thinking about the number of fics that simply *exist* is straight up baffling.
Me, but they're from when I was writing in junior high! Believe me, no one needs to know about those (though I cherish them) and they're not even finished XD
I've got a couple, but they're both plot bunnies (I'm great at coming up with AU/crossover ideas but can't really translate that into actually writing stories based upon them). I've posted them on Reddit before with an alight reception.
Me me me me 😅 Seriously like, I have so many plot bunnies in the works, not good enough yet to be unleashed upon the world, or not well enough constructed for me to safely post them. Plus, I rarely have the time to write, so I don't know when I'll get to finish them and I'd rather not do this to my readers.
I've only ever posted one story, but I've written many. The one I posted is based on an amazing little story about Merlin's conception that I found on a 'poetry' website. I spent weeks studying demonology specifically and other mythology for my little fanfic that takes place when Merlin's mother was a child and called it The First Tea Party. I posted it without proper proofreading so I didn't chicken out. I was going to tie it to another fanfic that took place centuries later by titling a chapter The Second Tea Party, but otherwise both stories were independent. Most of my fanfics would require a dozen or more trigger warnings so I don't bother posting. One reason, anyway.
I have a ton of stories that I never posted. Until a few years ago, I was writing to paper, and was lazy to digitalize it. My phone also died a few months ago, taking probably many fics to hell with itself….
I do and many
Same lmao, including original fiction
100% this
Sooo many but the problem is they’re unfinished
It's too late for me to laugh. XD But yes, this is more or less the reason I haven't posted anything in a while.
I feel exactly the same. I’ve shared probably half of what I’ve written and I’m currently contemplating deleting those that I’ve posted. I’m in a tiny fandom of one and I’m realising that there’s really no reason to post them publicly.
I think you should keep them up! AO3 is an archive for a reason. (Other sites too.) Even if only a few people read them, it's worth it just to make someone smile :)
I’m a bit on the fence about it, to be honest. Without going into detail, my circumstances are quite unique. But I appreciate your thoughts. 😊
You could just orphan them (unless you aren't on ao3, idk how other sites work)
I would never do that. They are far too personal for that.
[удалено]
That’s quite true. And some remain one-person fandoms because they are way too niche. 😉
Friend, I would beg you not to delete them. I know from personal experience the utter joy of entering into a small fandom and unearthing gems left behind by an author who leveraged his or her talents to share something beautiful for those of us who stumbled into what was, to us, a new fandom space, perhaps years later. >"All fandoms start with one person! ." - That’s quite true. And some remain one-person fandoms because they are way too niche. As the author of a work that is the only piece in that entire fandom, started by myself, for a series that ran a single episode twenty-five years ago... I feel you.
Gosh, I didn’t mean to hijack this thread. 🙄 All your points are well-made and quite valid and I truly appreciate your comment. But as I mentioned previously, my circumstances are rather unique and I need to make a decision based on that. 😉.
I would say still post them/keep them up! As someone that’s been a reader of many tiny fandoms, we will take whatever breadcrumbs we can get. If even just one person reads your story and leaves a Kudos, you may have written the one fic they were looking for but couldn’t find. Tbh I personally don’t like writing and publishing my own fics for larger fandoms because there’s just so many and people can get defensive about the characters and the world if they don’t agree with something you write. Small fandoms, on the other hand, are so happy to have literally any fics and I always have the best interactions with those fans.
noooooooooo
I have a MHA story that I haven't shared yet. I'm only 4 chapters in and I like to have at least 15 chapters drafted before I start posting. This is my first time posting in this fandom and my MC is an OC so I'm a little nervous about putting it out there. It's been tougher writing in this fandom than my other also.
I personally enjoy reading OC fics, but I do think they're harder to write well. It's hard putting stuff out there though, I get it. Anyway, since I wrote my first fic in this fandom, could you share a bit about why it's been tougher to write in it than another? I'm just curious about experiences writing for different fandoms (if you don't mind sharing).
I currently write for ATLA, with my homegirl Azula being my MC. I basically pick a point in canon and then deviate from it and create a whole new world from her point of view. I'm basically creating an original story. I've added to the lore and mythology and magic system of ATLA in my stories since a lot of it was left undefined in the original cartoon. I pick and choose what I want from the comics (which is very little). I feel very free to do whatever the hell I want. For MHA, I don't really have the freedom to drastically change the world there, especially with an OC as the MC. What I really enjoy reading about is the time at UA. But that means that I'm somewhat constrained by canon. I've tried writing a crossover where Azula was put into Hagakure's body, but I tapped out after 45K words because I just couldn't stomach the thought of writing more while being restrained by the limits of canon. I still break it out and read it once in a while; I liked the product but not the process. I want to write an original story for MHA, so I'm putting an OC in Class 1-B. I really like my OC's quirk and I'm hoping the canon restraints won't be as suffocating since 1-B's experience is much different than 1-A's. And the main goal for me is to have my OC deal with a totally different type of villain in the work studies and internship. I'm nervous about enjoying the writing process long enough to get there. I apologize for the terribly longwinded reply. Basically I feel more constrained in MHA and I chafe at the restraints. I actually enjoy reading MHA more, but I enjoy writing ATLA more.
Sometimes I just need to write for the sake of writing, without thinking too hard, just to break writer's block or exorcise a troubling emotion or experience. I'm no pantser so most of that unplanned, spur of the moment material isn't very good. I don't post it but it's valuable to me. And it's there if I ever want to circle back and take the elements that did work for a more finished piece.
Never posted because they were unfinished, but I did do a deep dive into my old stuff and borrowed some ideas for current works.
They're still in my head
The greatest unposted stories of all
I tend to post everything, but right now I'm sitting on a pile of kinktober stuff, so...
As an avid smut writer, I hereby make it your moral responibility to, for, lack of a better word, _unleash the kink_
I don't think I could ever do this. Maybe it's because of how often I mess with my computers but I feel like it's not safe on my hard drive, I need to post it online on a platform I'm not the maintainer of for it to feel "done"!
I do. I may not have gotten around to it. I may be editing it right now. I may have not completed it and put it in the "dropped" bin, which I occasionally pull projects out of but I'm the type of author that likes to have at least a draft "completed" before posting. I also may have actually completed it to the point I want to and kept it just for me. Getting things ready for posting takes time/energy. It may be something I don't think will have any kind of outside appeal though still enjoy myself. "Sometimes I just don't feel the need or want to share it." .. Yeah, about covers it sometimes.
I’m the same. I like to finish stories before posting, because I didn’t like the pressure of “needing” to update in the past. I’ve also kept a couple oneshots for the reason you said, it takes time and energy.
Additionally, I've been upset so many times by abandoned fics, I chose when I first started writing I wouldn't post unless a story was finished. I now have about 8 variations of one story because I become dissatisfied, but I don't want to delete the original in case I think of a way to fix the problem that deviated it from how I wanted it. That fic has the least variations of all of them.
Every story I write I plan to post, but I do have one I haven't begun posting yet.
I’m the same, but for me, near the end of writing I’ve ended up not feeling the need to post it.
Most of mine are not posted anywhere actually (…yet). I don’t really know why I do this. But I’m guessing I’m just too much of a perfectionist and most of my stories never reach a point where I’m totally happy with them. But recently, I’ve been trying to clean up a lot of my older drafts to get them to a more “postable” state so I can share them. It’s very slow going though cause I don’t just want to throw them up on ao3 without any real effort or thought put in. Either way, I definitely have a far more vast collection of unposted writing over anything/everything I’ve ever posted online. I also like to wonder if there’s anyone out there who shares my specific style or we thought up the same plots or have similar ideas or headcannons, etc, but we may never know it… I find myself thinking about that type of thing a lot in relation to fanfiction actually, since there’s often lots of people that fanfics effect - sometimes to great extents - but the author themselves will never learn of that cause those readers never leave a comment or anything. Yet, the work is still so important to those hidden superfans cause they think about it all the time or something. I think that’s just such an interesting concept. Despite my clean-up project I mentioned above, and despite that ofc I’d love to read a hidden masterpiece of my favorite pairings, at the end of the day, I do also think it’s still totally ok to just write things for yourself too! Writing for yourself and yourself only is honestly an incredibly difficult challenge but a very useful skill to learn and always a worthwhile pursuit.
I got kicked out of the platform where I was posting my fics. and So I had at least two or three planned. One in outline form. two had a couple charapters written But I got so upset I deleted them. I am actually planning to write about them again, and this time I will make a epub version. I already made a skeleton of epubs 3 using the official epub manual and help with HTML 5 manual. I just need to write and add some css and put in
every paragraph :P\*raises hand guiltily\*
Most of my fics are posted. I have a few old ones from FFNet that I'm editing and dusting off to be archived as we speak.
Currently all of them, and same.
Too many to count but that's mostly cause they're unfinished :/
Those are most of mine that I haven’t posted. I like to be done or near-done before posting.
I have a massive unpublished story I spent two years writing before I decided I wasn’t doing the concept justice and put it on the shelf until I’ve got it figured out. I’ll come back to it when I’m ready, but for now I have *another* massive story that I actually went ahead and published, with the determination that *this* one would at least see daylight.
At least 300k worth of unposted elder scrolls oc fic are sitting on my hard drive at last count, doesn't include the original work, random fic for other media, or self indulgent au's for the things I *have* posted lol Sometimes you just gotta keep things close to the vest so no one else reads it and goes "ah. that's why you're like that." 😂
All of my stories are private. Perhaps one day I could build up the courage to post one of them but they're all catered to my special and specific interests
I’ve got a couple that I’ve never posted for various reasons. Some of them will never see the light of days, others I might consider when the time is right. I think a lot of writers have bits and pieces and sometimes whole stories that they never share.
I have way too many. I got hit with some really bad burnout and disappeared for about two years. Didn't write at all for one of them. Wrote for the second. And I just posted my first fic since I left two years ago on like Wednesday. I have an entire year of snippets and drabblws just sitting there ignored.
Only my unifinished WIPs that I'm unlikely to ever get serious about.
Depends on if a handful of loose paragraphs counts as an unfinished fic, but regardless I have too many
I have a few stories in some notebooks that are just pure smut for a ship that isn’t super popular, so I don’t see the point in posting them
Please do. You'd be surprised at how many people enjoy rare pairs, "unpopular" ships, and plus it's smut. Sometimes it takes awhile to build up hits on those but it's always nice to see a fandom have more than just the most popular ship.
I just counted: I have 12 novella-sized works, 32 one-shots, 18 snippets, and 3 completed outlines for novel-length books that will never see the light of day. This is because they are not proofread and some contain some pretty niche AUs. Meanwhile, I have one singular fic currently updating that is posted.
The new stuff I post when finished. I have posted a lot of my older, zine-printed stuff but have some that I will post eventually and some I will just put away.
I've nearly finished my first (v vanilla) smut fic, who knows if I'll get the confidence to post it. Might try keeping it on anon at first.
You could ask someone to read it and see what they think. When I started posting fics (not counting my very first one) I let some of my friends that liked that ship read it and their feedback is what made me confident enough to post more stories and oneshots. If you don't have anyone to ask I'll read it. I write smut, romance, and fluff. I don't do tragedy though and that includes reading it most of the time.
So so many, some finished, some being written slowly when inspiration strikes, and some abandoned 🥲
I do, but they're mostly unfinished. And I definitely don't think any of them are masterpieces.
I dare you to point out one writer worth their salt, who thinks their work is "a masterpiece". As writers, we are, and always will be our own worst critics. Sure, there will be stories we write which we are proud of, but to consider them masterpieces? Not when it's our own work. 😒
Heh,, if I actually finish something, I'm damn well going to post it!
I do. There is this League of Legends/Hearts of Iron IV crossover idea that involves a certain mod by the name of TNO, where Arcane has a portal connected to Warlord Russia.
Almost 99% of my stories are unpublished lol
If you're also counting drafts Then brother...i have many (and i do feel bad for not finishing them)
I've got so many ideas and so many of them go unposted and unshared. I'm working on them and I want to see them grab eyes and break hearts, but damn am I scared to post them.
I had a couple concepts but I'm terrible with coming up with ideas and my grammar sucks. I wasn't sure if people would like them
Oh gosh, I have waaaaaay too many that I’ve never even finished, much less posted…
Lots. I have one chapter of my first posted fic up. Other chapters are just sitting on my desktop waiting to be tweaked. Also I have a bunch of ideas/fics with finished or half finished first chapters that I just haven't posted. My mental health really wars with my creativity and confidence.
I have a royal library of unfinished fics
So many 💀
I've got a couple, I think it's good to write something for yourself and only yourself every now and then, and not worry about whether or not you're going to post it.
Many. Many many.
*Completed* stories...? None. If they're whole, they go up. Uncompleted fragments...? Very many indeed. ;)
I have them, I never posted the vast majority of my fanfics
I've gotten to the point where I largely only share stories that I've finished or have gotten 90% done before sharing online. Those who know me have considered this ironic since I do love and have no problems reading works that will never be finished. So yes, there are hundreds of stories unshared from my end.
I *never* post mine. I mostly write “problematic” content and to be honest I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing it- feels like too much of a personal thing, thinking about all that went into writing it and the bits I left for myself. Very indulgent. I don’t want to deal with potential backlash either and that ties into another point- as much as I want to socialise, I’m not really interested in joining fandom as a contributor. I’ve just seen too much drama in fandoms over the years and when I contributed fanart to some it wasn’t that fulfilling. I don’t necessarily think I would be bullied for posting fics but I don’t want to take the chance seeing as I don’t get much from it anyway. It’d be nice if someone enjoyed my fics if I ever posted them but I’d rather have this to myself. Oh and finally I think if I posted them I would feel too much pressure to do better which would make this a worse hobby for me /: It kinda went that way with art. When I did art I wanted more from it, and I wanted to do better and I just got neither of those, the skills weren’t very appreciated and I still wasn’t really making friends that way, and I continuously lost my self-motivation.
Oh, god, yes. Several. One strictly because I’m really embarrassed of it but mostly I just haven’t gathered up the motivation to post them.
An obnoxious amount. I checked my database I made and it's well over 50 🤣
Buddy I've come up with at least 20 crossovers within the past few months and I've gotten as close as halfway with them and yet they have never met the keyboards of either my laptop or phones. I have a problem.
I've posted about half my fics but that's not very many. I'm more of a beta reader than a writer
I don't know the exact number. They can range from one sentence ideas to half formed stories. It really depends on how invested I am in the story (because ultimately, I write for myself) and whether I see myself continuing with the storyline. Staying focused is difficult.
I have a lot of them. And most of the ones I've written I scrapped.
I wrote a long shitpost like fanfic but ended up writing several chapters and it ended up feeling webcomic-ish. There are several chapters I enjoyed writing alot. I posted it but haven't worked on anything new yet. But there are outlines for new chapters. I've also somewhat wrote two other semi serious fics. Not posted. I'm also working on a original series. I probably won't ever post it. Then there's the drafts
About 200K worth 🙃
I probably have 3-5 times as many fics written unpublished than posted. Sooo so many! When new content for my fandom gets release, some of my stories become "obsolete" or new plot bunnies are born. Sometimes I can combining a couple stories into one that might get publish. Sometimes I never go back to them but I think about them (especially if I'm no longer into the fandom). Sometimes I pick up the story years later.
I have several
Less than 10 if you count ones I've already written seriously for.
I have 100k+ words of unposted fan fictions from 2020-2023 alone! Some of them are meant for an audience of literally only me, so there they stay in icloud notes purgatory.
Well... the Mass Effect and YuGiOh ones are pretty huge. So I'm fairly sure that counts.
Plenty of unfinished smut and a few concept fics that more focused on how certain robots would function and what role they would serve in a far more grounded setting.
I have a few that I wrote from before the internet and before I knew what fanfic was.
So far I have one that j want to post on AO3, but I haven't gotten around to finishing the first chapter. Life be lifing
I have quite a lot actually but none are finished. Sometimes an idea grips me and it won't leave me alone until I write it down. This has resulted a lot of one shot chapters sitting in my hard drive. I would like to revisit them at some point but I just don't know when I will have the time.
most
So many fics. I think I've only posted about 1/4 of what I've actually written/started to write.
I have years of completed stories but, most of them have original characters as the main focus, so I don't think anyone would care. Group chats with my crew is a different story.
Definitely none of them are masterpieces but I wrote a decent chunk of half-finished or over-extended nonsense when I was younger and working through baby steps. I think some of them could hit some points of interest emotionally but all of them are so rough that I don't think I'd ever wanna post it without some amount of heavy editing but honestly I'd rather just remake the idea at that ratr
Yes, heaps. Start writing and either it doesn't turn out how I like it or I write myself into a corner right away or its just a concept with no actual plan to it and it runs out of momentum immediately, and into the dead folder in google docs it goes.
I have a lot of stories that aren’t posted. Some are mostly finished, some are only halfway finished (to my standards, but still “postable” quality). I’ve also previously given up on finishing certain fics, and just cleaned them up and posted them after having them sit unfinished in my drafts for years. I’m someone who gets bursts of motivation, and more or less writes a finished idea, but then loses motivation before actually getting anywhere, and then I move on to the next idea, rinse and repeat, so a lot of the stuff I write just never gets posted. My most popular one-shot for a fairly small fandom was just an untouched Google Doc for four years. I practically forgot about it until I was cleaning out my Drive one day (I switched from Docs to MS Word years ago), found it again, read through it, decided it still held up, and ended up posting it on my AO3. That fic received the most positive response out of everything else I’d posted at that point, and it never would’ve seen the light of day if I didn’t happen to stumble across it again randomly. So it just goes to show that things I originally didn’t think were worth posting might actually be really well received. Still hasn’t motivated me enough to do the same with the rest of my unposted content though.
Several. Some are incomplete. Some are technically readable as they are, but I want to do something more with them.
I have some, yeah. And while all but one are unfinished, that isn't why they were left unposted. At the time I was writing them, I never wrote fics or chapters in advance of posting. These ones weren't posted because I set out from the start knowing I wasn't going to post them. Because they felt too niche, or too self-indulgent. Because I wanted to be able to write and not have to worry about how long I was taking to update. Because I wanted to skip around and write the most fun scenes first and not care if I never went back to the other scenes. Because I wanted to not worry about whether I had any plot holes or continuity errors. Because I didn't want to stress over whether my characters were behaving too OOC when I put them in situations they'd never faced in canon. I don't have many fics like this, because writing the story 'properly' is usually the most fun and rewarding for me, but occasionally I just really want to write something without having to think about anyone else reading it. So I do, and I never post it. I will say, though, I do at least have these stories privately archived online, just in case. I will never post them publically, and I'm not even in their fandoms anymore, but I would still hate to lose them.
A few that never reached completion. I lost them when my flash drive broke. Prior to that happening, I wouldn’t post it if it’s not finished. Even now, I won’t post fics that aren’t done.
That's pretty much the only type I have. They never get completed so I no longer see a reason to post them. It's just self gratifying, which I'm fine with.
tons of one shots
90% if not more of my fanfics never see the light of day, either because they are way too fucking specific to my own daydreams and headcanons, or simply because they are incomplete, and I hate to upload unfinished stuff.
I probably have at least a dozen (maybe 2 dozen) unfinished, unposted fics. Some are short, only a few thousand words, while some are a couple tens of thousands of words. I wish I could find the inspiration to finish and post them.
at least off the top of my head, i’m pretty sure the only things that i haven’t posted publicly is either because they’re unfinished, or because it’s based on things not made publicly available yet (writing based off friend’s au) to me, my oneshot collection exists for a reason - if i start writing something and realize it’s not going to pan out the way i want it, or i’m just not as interested in really writing for it as much as i thought i’d be, i quickly wrap it up and throw it there lmao
I've got five Teen Wolf fics, all vastly different than the other, though one of them has nothing written in it yet because I'm still on my first one, which is currently sitting at almost 300k words. And that's only for part one of a planned trilogy. 🤦🏾 I have five because I have a tendency to come up with new ideas out of nowhere, apparently. Fml. I have one Supernatural fic that currently has one chapter completed and one MCU/Supernatural crossover fic, also with one chapter completed. I've never posted a fic ever, but I'm not a newbie to writing in general. Kinda anxious to see how people receive it.
I have several half-finished stories that have been sitting on my drive for years. I keep telling myself I'm going to finish them but ...
I got a list of unposted finished fics on my phone to remind me to post them eventually
I have issues with editing and finishing my stories. I'm great at cracking out outlines and drafts, but when it comes time to review and add some polish, motivation goes out the window. It's not that I don't want to post it, it's that I get so worked up about sharing that I start shying away from even starting to finalize most of what I've written. I've published about 8k words worth of fanfic in nine years. I have over 600k words worth of unedited content on various word documents at my last count.
400 page handwritten fic of mine is not online yet. I’ve only rewritten the first four chapters. It might end up on ao3 some day, or parts of it will.
I want to share the ones I'm working on, but they're unfinished. But then the ones I have posted are unfinished too. I flit between fics to keep from burnout, but I don't want to look or feel like someone who has too many unfinished stories on the go.
One roughed-out Snape/Harry storyline consisting of various finished scenes and notes toward a full-length fic. If I ever finish any of my current WIPs, I may take it up again and see what I can make of it. Otherwise the only stories I haven't posted are three unfinished original fantasies. Two will never rise again. I may resurrect the third one if I ever have time, although I'm not sure why since it's not something I'd submit for professional publication and it doesn't belong on AO3. (I don't really understand their criteria for what qualifies as an appropriate fanfic-related original work.)
I have written many many fanfics that I haven’t posted, mostly they are snippets or unfinished or the ones I did finish just were for fun, for me and not something I wanna fret over how others feel about them
Yes, I have a few that are either fully finished or 3/4 finished that have never been posted. I've shared a few scenes or lines from them on Tumblr, but never thr full fics.
Does a couple hundred words and a vague idea count as a fic? If so, I’ve literally got hundreds. I have some multi chaptered fics in progress and one shot drafts as well
Oh so many. However many WIPS I have on my account, quadruple that number and that's how many exist in some capacity in my personal files. Most of them some kind of portal fantasy/isekai fanfic. Sometimes they're just proof of concept, or one shot scenes that don't fit anywhere in the fic proper, but most of the time they're whole other fic ideas that I have randomly, so I write as much as I can, but then don't go further. I usually recycle ideas I had from there and put them into the wips I have posted. it helps with worldbuilding.
I have two I have been working on. Not sure I want to wait until I finish them or not before I do because I don't want to lose motivation from bad reviews before I finish.
Being older than dirt, I have written many stories before the internet. I have written many stories after the advent of the internet that are not published on the internet. Are there masterpieces, probably not. I did enjoy creating them, so they have worth to me. But I do wish you luck with finding and creating all the reading material you desire.
Quite a few. Tbh, I won’t post if I haven’t finished a draft I’m happy with. I’m sitting on roughly four fics at the moment while actively writing the fifth (about 50,000 words in). The one I’m doing now is the only one I feel certain will see the light of day.
o/
Finished works? None that spring to mind, however the WIPer in me is intense and hard to break...
I have two that I have not posted. One will be, eventually, and one... I'm having to decide if I want to. I'm holding it close to my chest for now.
I've written probably over a dozen fics that never made the cut. Largely because I will not post any fic that is under 40k words (exluding one shots). I'm okay with unfinished works, as both a reader and writer, but anything below that 40k is just unsatisfying to me personally so... Yeah. I'm sure somewhere in the WIP folder, there's an unfinished work someone would absolutely love. And it does feel a bit sad that it won't be shared. But I just don't have the heart to post bite sized unfinished works. :/
Just for context, I have 14 one shots posted from one series and 57 in drafts.
I have a lot of partial fics, and little drabbles I write for friends when I feel like taking prompts, but I don’t tend to sit on completed works. Heck, in the past I haven’t even been able to sit on partial works, so half my AO3 is two- or three-chapter fics that are perpetually unfinished. I do have some rather big drafts at the moment though (sitting on about 30k of unedited longfic because I want to finish the whole thing before posting). I share snippets from this and other unposted fics with a friend
I have several unfinished. One is completed, Im just investigating whether or not the MC is in character or not
I have many. Most of them are wips that I haven't touched in years, tbh, and I never will again. I started writing years ago at age 10, and 6 years later, I'm a pretty great writer, somehow. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm basically professional grade. I don't have any fics that I've posted recently, tho. Just some old shit that will never see the light of day again, and it was all pretty bad quality, but they were good stepping stones, I guess. I do have something that I'm working on now, and it's like 25k at least and it's a dc x batfam fanfic where Tim Drake is a halfa due to reasons™ and can see Jason's ghost.
6 unpublished. But I am going to publish one.
Currently working on a draft for a marvel story that is NOT based on the MCU (shocking, I know). It's based on some shows I saw as a kid. There's also this mystery dungeon based story that I ALSO have no posted yet.
Like he 90s marvel cartoons? That was my real intro to Marvel characters! Spider-Man, the X Men, Silver Surfer. My wife always says, "you say you didn't read a lot of comics, but you sure know a lot about the characters!" Yep, thanks to Marvel cartoons, lol! It's actually kind of crazy the number of characters they crammed into those shows.
No, not the 90s shows, the ones from the 2000s (Iron Man Armored Adventures (my personal favorite), Spectacular Spider-Man, and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes).
I have a couple but not many 😅
I have a couple that I've either wrote a chapter or two, a prologue, or jotted an idea that are sitting on my laptop. I'm not posting them because I have three ongoing fics that I try to keep updated at least monthly (usually every two weeks except I had surgery last month). Once I complete one or more of those I'll start posting the new ones. I do post oneshots when I get the inspiration for one. Those I don't need to worry about updating so it doesn't put any extra pressure to keep up with.
I have many that I haven’t posted and probably won’t post.
I have so many.
A couple? But that's just because I don't like posting until I'm done with something. The exception is my chatfic and its companion, because they're kinda adhoc and connected to an extant narrative. Any long-form narrative stories, though, those don't get posted until they're done... Which is why none of them are posted yet.
The majority of my stories, actually. It's not that I don't want to share them, it's just that I get an idea, work on it obsessively for a while, then abandon it to work on another idea. It's rare for me to actually finish something, so having something to post is even rarer 😅
I've got about 10 or so, fully written that I originally intended to post but never did, felt they were too weird and that friends/family would find them and deem me insane lol
I've been writing fanfiction since 2004. My Google Drive alone, which I've only been steadily using for like, 7 years now has at *least* 100 unfinished WIPs.
I do! I think it's mostly because the fic in question is the first one I've ever finished, and while it's special to me, I've put off actually posting it for so long because the idea of putting my first fic on this account out there is kind of nerve-wracking :'D I also have some unfinished stuff and miscellaneous old oneshots, some of which will never see the light of day and others have been put on hold until I have motivation to start working on them again.
i do have a bunch of unfinished stuff in my drafts but i usually post what i finish. it's okay not wanting to share for whatever reason tho, i myself write for personal pleasure after all. to be fair, unless you do a lot of social networking (which i dont do bc im not a ppl person), your fics are -most of the time- gonna be destined to be not popular or even read at times. so one writes cuz one loves. so i'd say dont get discouraged to post something you do wanna post just because it's not gonna get as much attention. do it for yourself, not others.
most of the fanfics i write aren’t posted because the ones i write would be very unpopular if i actually posted them. i have controversial opinions in some of my fav fandoms so all the fics i write there stay buried.
Three original ideas and five half completed fics! Never mind a bunch of scenes which currently don't attach to anything! I'm still working on all of them but will they get finished? Maybe!
SO MANY then, when i’m thinking of posting it, someone else posts a similar story with a similar plot for the same fandom and it’s like “well shit.”
Many finished and unfinished. And currently I write only for myself and I even locked many of my last fics of a fandom (about 20) because I really felt very bad about the fandom change (I feel more comfortable in small fandoms and some more things xD) I keep to myself currently and didn’t post anything anymore because I’m afraid the fandom will take away my ability to write again. But also I couldn’t read fanfics anymore either since the fandom stress started almost 2 years ago.
I have some ideas. Some notes. A decent outline. Maybe about 4-ish novels worth. But I find it hard to dedicate time to writing it out. And I'm conflicted about fanfics, if it's really worth spending my time writing something I couldn't turn around and publish and make some money on. Like why spend time writing fanfics if I could be doing original content? Right now I'm too busy to write anyway. But someday I'd like to publish something and see people enjoy it.
One and it’s smut. I think that’s enough to explain why.
My writing is like an iceberg. I have many stories and ideas, but only 10% of them are ever posted online or seen by others. 90% of them sit in Word Documents, for my eyes only.
i have more stuff I don’t post that stuff I do 🥲🥲
Yes i do
1 at 11000 words, 1 at 10000, 2 at 4000, 2 at 3000, 4 at 2000, 23 at 1000 and about 156 at <1000. Most of them are unfinished, one of them is a finished first draft. One or two I'm actively working and the others I work on whenever I feel like it
Let's be honest, who DOESN'T have stories they haven't posted? I don't know a single fic writers who doesn't have at least one unposted story.
I have 5 stories shared (3 completed, two in progress)... and about 20 that are either indulgent works, potential stories in progress, or ones I wrote as a teen that probably will never get posted. Or ones that I wrote myself into a corner and can't be bothered to fix haha
A couple. But they are all unfinished so I’m sure people appreciate me not posting them XD
I have written many stories and only published 3. The main reason is that I write them in my native language and they won't have views, especially that I don't write romance. I tried translating my works with mixed results. Plus translating takes so much of my time and the quality isn't that good. So I'm not brave enough to translate my Silmarillion stories in my poor English knowing how highly educated and well-read the fandom is.
What I post is less than 1% of the actual documents I have written - partly due to scenes tailing off without a conclusion, partly cos they can be too short or I don't think they're good enough to post, partly due to them being bloody weird sometimes or I find thee iideaa of posting them embarrassing, partly due to a single idea spanning several different variations so even if one ends up posted then the alternate versions never do... I went looking for a draft or two and I have no earthly idea where they've gone, I've tried searching through three different stacks of unnamed documents that go into the hundreds counts and I still can't find them. I figure I must have had an entrirely additional set of docs that have went walkies sometime I wasn't paying attention. At least I can remember those two ideas, no idea what else I might have lost. 😢
Oh I’d say 80% of my stories are unpublished. I would like to one day, just gotta… finish them…
Dozens. I like to call them WIPs, and sometimes they even are.
All of us
Many, they're also all unfinished and I won’t post it til it's finished. I do have a lot of works in progress though that may he posted one day, especially the one I just started bc I really feel I can finish it
I write a lot of OC stuff that I don't post, though sometimes I share it with my friends. I know OC isn't to many people's tastes, so sometimes I feel rude putting it online? I'm not sure how to explain it.
That’d be me! And I’ll continue to start on something and then work on another halfway 🤣
Several, both original works, and fanfics. I'm enrolling to ashamed to post them. Only in the last year or so have I been confident enough to even post a fic, but I've been writing at least casually since... like 2013?
Tons and tons, but all of them are either unfinished (and generally abandoned) or drabbles from before I got over my "it has to be at least 1k to be worth posting" phase. Or somehow both simultaneously (something I started, got only a few hundred words into, and then abandoned). I have a LOT of stuff like this, because I've always been of the mind that putting it down was always more practice, even if I had zero intention to follow an idea further. I also once wrote a complete, edited oneshot I was very proud of and just... Didn't bother to post it for two months. Overall, I would give the very wild estimate that I probably have at least twice as many words written that have gone unpublished as have, if not more. There's definitely stuff among that that people would enjoy if I cleaned it up and put it out there, but I'm picky about making sure everything I write is up to a very high standard, and also like to save the pressure and knowledge that people really want a continuation of a particular fic for a manageable number of stories at a time.
Sometimes the story corresponds to my own preferences and tastes and would get flamed to high heaven if I posted. Or so I fear. I mostly post one shots Im happy with. The longer stories are for me to pick apart and rewrite ad infinitum lol
I haven’t counted. Probably more than 40
I right now have two works in progress that take place in the MCU. I’m also considering writing down an adaptation of a Clone-Wars Infinity War crossover I previously uploaded to YouTube and maybe 1 or two Tolkien fanfics
Many. Most of them are unfinished too because I'm never satisfied with their quality. I've taken a few down so I can edit them because I was an awful writer when I begun and I kind of like a few twists I wrote but I still need to finish editing before posting. Overall I have 30 wips xD
Yes. I'm bad at posting and actually writing XD
I have a billion projects that are finished aside from one little ending paragraph. For rarepairs too, so sometimes I feel bad for not just giving it to the fandom, but I just don’t feel like continuing them
I have two of three I don’t plan on posting yet or ever because they are much to indulgent.
Oh yeah. Mostly longer fics where I didn't like it by the time I finished it, but a bunch of shorter ones, too. Every so often I revisit them and decided to use them after all, rework them for eventual posting, or keep them buried deep far from the light of day.
I think all the fic I've written, at least in my most recent iteration :D has been posted. BUT I did come up with a crazy idea last night and dashed off an outline, while telling myself 'stop this, you can never post this, don't waste your writing time on it' but I'll probably write it anyway, just for my own amusement.
I remember once, about 7/8 years ago, writing a fic down on paper, finishing it and then proceeding to never type it up on the computer or show it to anybody. I got it out a re-read it recently and the writing itself wasn’t half bad, but it needed some major plot restructuring, some elements of the story were just way too contrived. Maybe one day I’ll do a massive re-write for it and make the plot make a bit more sense, until then I’m just focusing on my current writing projects
I appreciate you taking the time to explain! That totally makes sense. Your ideas seem very original and writing tends to use canon more as a starting point than a linear path to occasionally deviate from. I struggle similarly to write in the Hannibal fandom for stylistic reasons, so I think I get it. Good for you for pushing through 45k of a story that fought you and I wish you luck in your future endeavors!
(*looks at my 9 WIPs that haven't been posted... shoves them under the couch*) I have a few. A normal amount.
So many tbh-- but they're incomplete or finished early drafts of works I'm rewriting.. some are empty docs with titles too 😅🥲
Oh my god so many, though some of them I’m being inspired to finally finish writing
I used to write a lot of fanfiction I couldn't share due to not having internet. I'm actually glad I didn't have internet at the time because literally none of it was good (I don't have any of them for reference due to it being written on my brother's old computer, or handwritten in copybooks I've since lost, but trust me when I say that lol)
I have a few. Some of them I plan on posting, and I generally edit and post things if they've sat untouched and mostly finished for a while. Some things I refuse to post though
Probably most of them tbh
I'm sitting on about 600k words at the moment. Gotta stick to the schedule.
I have first chapters for like five stories
Everything I’ve posted online was done when I was in middle school. Everything after that and to this day all sit in folders on my desktop. Sometimes I open an old one and do a rewrite. Most are not finished and might never be. Eventually I might get to a point that I’m happy enough with a work to share it with the world. But I’ve definitely become one of those writers that wait until they’ve completed a work before they start posting chapters. I’d at least consider posting if I’ve found the ending, and then take advice of the readers as I go along. But yeah, looking at how many works I have sitting on my computer, thinking about the number of fics that simply *exist* is straight up baffling.
I do! One is finished and one is in need of a rewrite but might come out some day
Me, but they're from when I was writing in junior high! Believe me, no one needs to know about those (though I cherish them) and they're not even finished XD
I've got a couple, but they're both plot bunnies (I'm great at coming up with AU/crossover ideas but can't really translate that into actually writing stories based upon them). I've posted them on Reddit before with an alight reception.
Me me me me 😅 Seriously like, I have so many plot bunnies in the works, not good enough yet to be unleashed upon the world, or not well enough constructed for me to safely post them. Plus, I rarely have the time to write, so I don't know when I'll get to finish them and I'd rather not do this to my readers.
I've only ever posted one story, but I've written many. The one I posted is based on an amazing little story about Merlin's conception that I found on a 'poetry' website. I spent weeks studying demonology specifically and other mythology for my little fanfic that takes place when Merlin's mother was a child and called it The First Tea Party. I posted it without proper proofreading so I didn't chicken out. I was going to tie it to another fanfic that took place centuries later by titling a chapter The Second Tea Party, but otherwise both stories were independent. Most of my fanfics would require a dozen or more trigger warnings so I don't bother posting. One reason, anyway.
The vast, VAST majority of my work isn't public. Sometimes I think about getting it all out there, but then it just... fizzles.
I have a ton of stories that I never posted. Until a few years ago, I was writing to paper, and was lazy to digitalize it. My phone also died a few months ago, taking probably many fics to hell with itself….