procrastinating-writing:

staidwaters:

missdrarrydawn:

ao3commentoftheday:

friendly reminder that there are no minimum requirements you have to meet before you can write and post fanfic

• you don’t need to be perfect in the language
• you don’t need to have spectacular grammar and spelling and punctuation
• you don’t need to have an intricate plot with subplots and red herrings
• you don’t need to write a minimum number of words
• you don’t need to be a “name” in the fandom
• you don’t need to be caught up with every piece of canon content out there
• you don’t need to be a superfan or know everything about every character

all you need is an idea and a willingness to write it down. the rest will come in time ❤

reblogging this because ive had experiences with people telling me im not good enough of a fan to participate and for a long time it made me insecure and too scared to post so now i want ro reblog this so no one else has to worry the same way i did 🥰

Can I second that superior language skills are NOT necessary. Years ago, when I first got into fanfic, I read a lot of awesome fic by people who obviously didn’t speak English well and were translating from some other language using a dictionary, or who were obviously very young and had improper grammar. But even if the language wasn’t perfect, their IDEAS were awesome. And there was something gorgeous and amazingly honest about things translated literally from a foriegn language, or that are written the way a child speaks instead of the way an adult writes. I really enjoyed them.

Lately though…I almost never see those types of fics. I don’t know if it is because I’m in different fandoms or what, but the overall language skill seems to be much higher. Which is wonderful…but I worry that there are a lot of authors with incredible ideas but weak language skills who are scared to post. I’d still really like to read them!

I’d also like to add two more things: 

-You don’t have to portray the characters with perfect accuracy. 

– You don’t have to be accurate with facts. Prices. Medicine. Type of car. It’s fine if it’s wrong.

One of the most amazing things about fanfiction is the lack of requirements. In published fiction, there’s a million requirements and you do need to have a lot of skills to get something published. But in fanfiction? The only thing that matters is that you have an interesting idea and can communicate it. You don’t even have to communicate it perfectly. 

Expectations are different. If I spent ten dollars on a book at the bookstore and it had a thousand gramatical errors and misspelled words and the plot was poorly planned out, I’d be kinda upset. I paid money for it. It was written and edited and published by professionals. At the very least, the errors shouldn’t be there. 

But fanfic often isn’t written by professionals or edited at all and I know that. If I clicked on the same fic on AO3, I wouldn’t even blink an eye. I know the writer may be a kid or someone who barely knows the language. I know they may have no experience writing fiction or any education on how to do it. I know they could be some old lady who can barely see the screen. So I don’t expect perfect. As long as it’s readable and the idea interests me, I don’t care if the characters are perfect or the grammar is. I don’t care how accurate it is or how intricate it is. I don’t care if it’s 100 words. The beauty of fanfiction is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to exist.