My Avatar Fanfic

[SnowRider]

I posted this link on Avatar Forums, so I might just as well post it here.

It's my Avatar fanfic. I started writing it in February and just finished it last week. It's posted on Fanfic.net and is just over 123,000 words and 26 chapters long:

Payback

It is basically my take on (some) of the film's backstory and my attempt to answer the question "What happens next?" after Jake opens his eyes at the end of the film.

It started out small and ended up being a novel-length piece of writing.

I've never written a novel before, ever.

[ISV Venture Star]

Originally Posted by SnowRider

I posted this link on Avatar Forums, so I might just as well post it here.

It's my Avatar fanfic. I started writing it in February and just finished it last week. It's posted on Fanfic.net and is just over 123,000 words and 26 chapters long:

My dissertation was <30,000...

[bigtris]

This was a beautiful fanfic, thanks for writing this. Coming from a guy who works for the newspaper industry, it's no wonder your story was so detailed and descriptive and also full of imagination.

[SnowRider]

Thank you for the kind words for my fanfic. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I have a couple ideas for follow-up one-shot stories that I will get to in time.

[SnowRider]

I got a nice, positive review of my fanfic on FF.net today, which made my day, actually.

It's good to know that my writing touched someone and made that person feel good about the world.

[Aaron]

I'm really enjoying this so far, SnowRider! (sitting on fanfiction.net with my morning coffee)

This inspires me to finish some of my long-dormant fanfics. I can't imagine ever getting something of this size and complexity out there, though! It takes me a solid month just to do a one-pager!

[SnowRider]

Grumble, grumble, people who jump ahead to the last few chapters because they apparently just want to see how the story ends, grumble, grumble, grumble!

I hate it when people do that. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

[Ashen Key]

Originally Posted by SnowRider

Grumble, grumble, people who jump ahead to the last few chapters because they apparently just want to see how the story ends, grumble, grumble, grumble!

I hate it when people do that. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Eh, what can you do? I have been known to skip to the end of books - mostly when I'm in an an anxious headspace, and then tension is making me flip out, so I skip to the end to know what happens so I can calm down and ENJOY the journey.

But if you end up writing another fic, one way would be to just post a chapter at time.

[Pa'li Makto]

It's a very nice fanfic. Well worth the time it takes to read it.

[SnowRider]

Yeah, I have done that sort of thing myself, but it's really not cool for the writer to have the reader(s) jump around a book and read this chapter, then that chapter, etc.

The writer writes a book/novel/fanfic/whatever so that the reader can appreciate the work in its entirety, from Point A (the beginning) to Point B (the end) and can appreciate the journey that the character (or characters) makes in its fullness.

It's just one of my pet peeves is all.

I mean, I do appreciate the collaborative dynamic on Fanfiction.net between the authors and the readers in which stories are posted one chapter at a time and thus there is a chance for readers to offer critiques, suggestions, thoughts, etc. and therefore the story can evolve in a much more open and focused manner, but that's not my style.

I'm more old-school myself in that I think the writer has an obligation to the readers to present the story to them as he or she intended it to be presented, warts and all, in its completed entirety, not one or two chapters at a time, even if the second way (one or two chapters at a time) allows the writer to build up an audience for the story.

To me, the dynamic that is operative on FF.net is very much in the same vein as the old Saturday afternoon serials in the 1930s and the serialized stories that would appear in the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines.

I can appreciate that, but basically that isn't the way I like to work when I write.

Your milage may vary, of course, but "one chapter at a time" isn't my style.

[Ashen Key]

First up, I'm a writer myself. I mostly write one-shots, but I'm in the middle of a chaptered epic - Speak, Friend, and Enter - that I AM putting up chapter by chapter (I have maybe...a half written, only only five chapters up, because what I have written is all over the place.

I don't think authors have any obligations, except to tell the story. And if the reader wants to jump around, they are free to. And if it happens to spoil it, then so be it - once something is published, the author has no control over how people view it. Which I think is the way it should be.

Most of my fannish experience is on livejournal, where there is a combination of chapters and very long fics posted as a one shot. It varies both to style, and also the situation that the author is writing (say, for Yuletide, or one the Big Bags (50,000 word stories).

But I also find my attitude has changed - I'm a busy person, I don't have TIME anymore to sit down and read the whole thing in one go, usually. So things in chapters are good (so I can mark my page), and I like the idea of building an audience. I write to SHARE things, after all.

And, besides. If putting things out a chapter at a time was good enough for Dickins, it's probably good enough for me *g*

But, like you said, YMMV.

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i have read a lot of the Avatar fanfics on FFN, and i originally read Payback on your thread on AF, and i must say once again, that your fanfic is hands down, the best one i have ever read to date.