The Unfortunate Bio of TheWalkingDaryl

What I've Learnt From Fanfic (26/07/19)

Ok, so yes I did say I was gonna be ofd the radar today until Sunday Australian time, but I'm sitting at the Atlanta airport and have nothing to do until just after 7pm, and I got thinking and thought I would update to pass the time.

On a side note, for some odd reason, it's been telling me that I have no reading lists the past 2 days, when I had 2 for ages; is it just me or on my end of things? Anyone else experiencing this?

Anyway, as the title suggest, this is gonna be a short lesson on...what the title says.

Ok, so I was sitting here and I was thinking through scenes I have to write for my upcoming stories, and it made me realise (as I run through the actual entire scene in my head, word for word, including dialogue) that over the past...5 and a half years I've been on here in amongst the fanfic world (fuck, it's already been that long???), that I've become very careful in the way I word things within my fanfics.

Let's have a bit of a history lesson.

So when I first got onto Wattpad (23rd November 2013 is the exact day I signed up), there was a real mass craze of ships.

I'm talkin' Jalex, Andley, Kellic, Cashley, Cricky (or however the cools kids spell it), just to name a few.

This is a very big part of why my stories suffered; why I struggled as a fanfic writer. Not saying I don't struggle now - have you seen the reads count on any of my recent stuff? Talking about the past 12 months or so of work - because I do, I still struggle.

I was an Andliet writer in a time that Andley was the popular ship, so you can probably see why I suffered through such little notifications of votes or comments blah blah, etc etc.

Only person reading my stuff at the time is no longer someone I want to associate with due to circumstances. I'm good at holding a grudge but I have my reasons.

Outcast was first published in April of 2014. Yes. It's been up on Wattpad for over 5 years. Guess some of you didn't know that one, hey?

To this day, it's still my most read story. It's sitting on roughly 35K reads and truth be told, I was hoping to get it to 40K this year, but at this rate, it won't happen for a while.

With so many new readers and writers on here and ships/canons coming and going on by, it makes it hard if you haven't had your story take off and get great reads in it's first year or so.

Unless you get the really dedicated fans of the person/ship/band, takes time.

My second highest read story is at roughly 28K reads and has been up for either 3 or 4 years. I forget if it was 2016 of 2015 I first put it up.

Ok history lesson over. Literally almost forgot my point.

The fact of the matter is that over the almost 6 years I've been selling my heart to fanfic and making awesome friends off here, I've become very specific with how I word things within my stories.

This, my friends, has come down to the simple fact of when I first started: ships.

Those of you who know me well enough may have noticed something about me by now, depending on how long you've known me online here or irl, and that thing is that:

I don't do ships.

Yes kids, that's right, I don't venture into the ship world. (There is a point to all of this, promise.)

If you happen to know a bit about your favourite bands that I also adore, you may notice something I nearly always do when it comes down to it in my stories.

If I need to throw some people together into relationships, most times if I know who their significant other is, that's who it will be.

I very rarely put them with an OC, unless it's necessary to the story.

For example, in my A7X stories, you'll find Matt with Valary and Brian with Michelle. These are their irl relationships; I haven't suddenly had a ship of my OC or someone else with one of them.

Is this making sense...? I am getting to my point. I really am but I have 2 more hours to get this all down before I have to get on the plane to LA and then, then I will be outta the internet for roughly 14ish hours.

So pay attention!

Ok, back to ships.

So the interesting thing about ships that made me start working my words carefully was the plain and simple fact: many people who read ships turn anything dirty.

I'm talkin' anything and everything.

This is the main reason I started watching how I said things. Someone will always read into it more than it's meant to be read into, but if you work it carefully, there will be less of it and less for people to work off.

The main thing from the get-go I started doing in stories was say:

'Kissed her/him on the side of his/her face', because this kids, gives all you dirty motherfuckers, less of a chance to turn it the wrong way.

Oh that's right boys and girls, I'm stopping you before you even start!
You'll find that in all my stories (may have missed it once or twice in one or two), this is what I write instead of:

'Kissed him/her on his/her cheek', because let's be fuckin' real here, one of ya's is gonna switch this around to be on my wavelength of what this could potentially mean.

I think for me personally, I find it more comfortable to write this way because I myself, am a serious fanfic writer *laughs at self from a distance*

Not that you peeps aren't; I just do this kinda thing to make it a bit easier to...see the picture...of what I'm describing...?

Either way, fact of the matter remains that the longer you dwell in fanfic, the more 'word cautious' you may get.

Nearly 6 years in the game here guys; this fanfic tree and all it's branches are still growing. No slowing me down any time soon.

So I think this is all I have to say on this for now.

I was thinking that maybe I should start doing this kinda thing again in here since I haven't done a whole lot of fun stuff in a while here and it's all just story info/updates lame stuff.

So let me know if you would like me to cover more fanfic topics and maybe what ones you'd like to see?

Alrighty, I'm gonna head off now so I'll be available for about 2 hours or so before I go off the grid for about half a day or so.

Take care and I'll letcha all know when I make it back home, probably Monday (Australian time again woo).

Have a good one guys.