this will probably be the last preview I'll post until chapter two is done... 50k words for it now

Do you have any tips on how you write such long series so well without feeling like your dragging it out? I would love to write a 100k+ fic one day but I just don’t know how to go about anything that big, and how long does it take you to write that much on average? Thank you

This is actually a really hard question for me to answer, because I rarely think my stories are going to be long when I start them.  I’m getting a better handle on it as it keeps happening, but I still think “oh this story will be like 25k” when I start it, which is an improvement since the very first 100k+ fic I ever wrote was for a mini bang writing challenge with a word count minimum of 8k, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to reach that.  Ha. Hahahaaaaa….

I’ll try to answer it, but I am going to tag @jupiterjames to chime in because she knows my process better than I do, and I’ve also infected her with my longficitis.  She may have insights that I’m missing because I’m too close to the source lol

I’m actually quite mystified by people who can constantly write short fics, because that doesn’t come naturally to me at all.  I've always been a wordy fucker, but over time my scenes have gotten longer.  That’s something that just came with practice and becoming more comfortable with my own writing style.

For content: I have an overabundance of ideas, like, all the time.  You’ve probably seen that I often give some away because my cup overflows.  I keep huge bullet pointed lists of vague ideas and tropes that I want to write about.  I often end up taking 3-5 of those bullet points and smooshing them together into a single story.  Satin and Sawdust was like 6 bullet points on my list, and I had to figure out how to make them all connect.  That was half the fun of writing it!  And I’ve been eye-balling that meme going around where followers can give me 2 AUs to squish together, because THAT IS MY JAM.

That’s how I end up with Big Stories from small beginnings, but as for how I manage to not make them drag out?  I don’t have a good answer for that, because I don’t know.  To be honest, I often freak out during the writing process because I think I’m moving too fast between plot points.  It’s really common for me to pop into JJ’s messages with “is it too soon for this thing to happen???” and she always tells me no, but I usually end up putting more stuff in to spread it out anyway.  On the flip side, my overabundance of ideas often causes me problems too, and I drop a lot of stuff that probably would make it drag.  I cry to JJ about those too.  Honestly, I cry to her a lot.

I’m not afraid to ask if I’m adding too little or too much, and I think that’s important.  I can figure that stuff out by myself, but it takes much longer and more angsting is involved.  Writing can be done in a support vacuum, but I don’t work that way.  I mostly work with one person at a time, but there are a ton of writing groups out there that focus on helping each other improve, and they’re a super valuable resource if you ever feel like you need someone to check your pacing.  Outside perspective of pacing will always be different than your own.

Side note: writing buddies are The Best, and if you can find one, treat them as the blessing that they are.  Taking functional criticism is difficult, but a trusted writing buddy will either soften the blow, or tell you to suck it up, and they’ll know you well enough to tailor their approach!    

I don’t know if this helps, like, at all, but it’s as close as I can come to describing the absolute mess that is my creation process.

As for how long it takes me to write, if I’m not being lazy, it takes me 3-4 months to write about 110k on average.  I type very fast, and it generally only takes me a few hours to write a 5k chapter, but I only write a few days every week.  I can write much faster, because I’ve won NaNoWriMo before and it didn’t even seem that hard to do.  The 1667 words a day goal is easy for me to knock out in 90 minutes a day.  I like to take 2-4 days off between chapters tho, which is why I don’t pump out 50k every month lol

I like setting timers for myself, because when there’s a count down I am more likely to keep my fingers moving and the words going.  If I don’t have a time limit, then I will waffle over sentence structure and word choice.  If you can prevent yourself from self editing too much (it won’t stop altogether, that’s impossible), you can actually crank out quite a bit.

(I say “you” but I mean me.  If this works for you too, then awesome :D )

My final piece of advice though, is Don’t Think About The Word Count.  Just focus on writing the scene.  Length is less important than substance, and if you never write a 100k fic that doesn’t mean you’re not a talented writer.  You just have a different writing style than me over here with my huge-ass beast fics :)

Just 13 YouTubers I Love

Internet videos: certainly the dominant kind of content I currently consume, and it’s one which allows for very diverse voices on different issues. So I wanted to showcase some YouTube channels which I watch, all of which are relatively unknown (all of them are below 200k subs, and only six of which are above 100k subs). Now please note that I can’t watch everything, so keep that in mind please. Anyways, I’m gonna sort them based on the subscriber count in ascending order. Enjoy!

#1: Laura Kate (aka Laura K Buzz)

Laura Kate’s channel isn’t super popular, but this video game journalist isn’t a complete unknown. She’s host or co-host on several podcasts, including The jimquisition Podcast, and has written for both gaming and general outlets such as Destructoid, Kotaku UK, and The Guardian. Her channel consists mainly of gameplay, though my favorites are her opinion pieces and news coverage. Oh and she recently started a podcast with the two girls from Geek Remix (you’ll hear more about them later; spoilers) talking about videogame-inspired pornography, which is super unique, tasteful, and fun. Bonus point: she’s an very out and proud transwoman in a cismale dominated landscape, so her presence is doubly welcome. And to be honest this is really just a big shout-out to her work overall and not only her YouTube channel, so... Check out her stuff.

#2: Jackson Bird (jackisnotabird)

Jackson Bird is a YouTube icon, despite his criminally low subscription count. He’s been active on YouTube over six years, mostly as a vlogger and both in front and behind the camera at the Harry Potter Alliance, but he has two other claims to fame: first of all there is his Grade A “why isn’t this a trend?” show Will it Waffle, where he tests if certain food items (and occasionally non-toxic non-food items) work if put into a waffle iron, and secondly he is an LGBTQ rights and education advocate for as long as he’s been on YouTube... Which makes a lot of sense for a bisexual transguy who’s been very open about his gender identity and transition. Overall his content (outside of his vlogs on his side channel) are a bit sporadic but definitely worth a look.

#3: rantasmo Three words: Needs. More. Gay. Rantasmo has been creating his little show on LGBT culture for over seven years now and it’s delightful and educational. In his videos, where he for instance covers topics like Game of Thrones, beards, Undertale, and The Wizard of Oz, he examines how LGBT people are portrayed and treated, what queerbating is, and lots more stuff. None of his videos are super long, like rarely do his videos last longer than 9 minutes, but they are still very entertaining and educational, so I highly recommend binging on a few of his more recent episodes to get you started.

#4: No Small Parts Productions I love watching movies and I presume you do, too. And occasionally you just notice either certain actors who you swear you’ve seen before but don’t know their name, or they just stand out in general but you have never heard of them. No Small Parts is a YouTube video essay series which covers exactly that. Run by bit-part actor Brandon Hardesty, No Small Parts provides lovingly crafted retrospectives on the lives and works on character actors. Thus far Hardesty has covered people like Crispin Glover, André the Giant, Darlene Cates, Scatman Crothers, and several others. It’s super fascinating, and all episodes are over 20 minutes long. He also has started to expand the channel to talk more about underrated movies and other related stuff, so it’s gonna be interesting to see how this channel develops. 

#5: rewboss

Andrew Bossom is a British man living in Germany... And as a German who is very much entrenched in the culture of the “traditional anglosphere”, that alone makes his videos appealing to me. Rewboss is a culture guy, and it shows. The German language, customs, travel destinations... He talks about it all and has been doing so for years. He originally even did half of his videos in German, but eventually dropped the habit because his German viewership didn’t really need it anymore. But anyways, Rewboss has been a YouTube educator for ages now, and he has even dabbled in helping other YouTubers, so a bunch of his older stuff might be of interest to you if you wanna get some basics in regarding the topic of online video. I’ve been a fan of his work for years and I think he deserves your attention, too.

#6: KyleKallgrenBHH (Brows Held High) My love for cinema is shining through again, this time with professional movie critic Kyle Kallgren, host of Brows Held High. Brows Held High looks primarily at arthaus movies, the avantgarde, the artistically noteworthy entries into the cinematic canon, though occasionally you also get William Shakespeare (basically every June), as well as yearly retrospectives and thematic analysis of both movies and occasionally other media like video games or theater. So if you are looking for very “high brow” stuff, Kyle is your man. Just be warned that some of the material he covers can be a bit NSFW visually and audibly, so keep that in mind once you tune into his work.

#7: Innuendo Studios

And we’re back at video games again, at least for the most part. Innuendo Studios, run by Ian Danskin, is definitely part of the more intellectual portion of this list but his videos are still very much approachable. Theories on authorship, genre death, the nature of coolness, and narrative are all explored here in a bunch of wonderful video essays ranging from short-ish to over an hour long, with that particular example being a series of videos about the psychology and history of Gamergate from a feminist point of view. The videos might be scarce but they are super smart and well-sourced. Dive in, you’ll definitely enjoy Ian’s work.

#8: Stop Skeletons From Fighting (formerly The Happy Video Game Nerd)

We all need positivity in our lives and SSFF is definitely the kind of positivity I think the video game crowd should try to emulate. SSFF is an examination of videos from a very critical but also loving point of view, looking at forgotten or maligned games and looking for what they can teach and what they did right and wrong; looking at certain aspects of video gaming history, including behind the scenes information... All that and more has been part of Derek Alexander’s work for several years now. If you wanna learn more about what makes good video games good and you do already watch Extra Credits, then do yourself a favor and check out Derek’s videos. I can also recommend his pre-SSFF stuff, back when he called himself the Happy Video Game Nerd, a character he created as a response to the negativity-focused reviewer culture during YouTube’s early days as exemplified by the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic, though of course those videos are relatively ancient. #9: Jenny Nicholson Confession time: about seven years or so ago I was quite into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It was a good show back then and I was always a sucker for fun musical numbers, so it was a nice fit (plus I didn’t know how toxic the brony subculture was becoming so that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of it). But anyways, I actually stumbled across Nicholson for the first time during that time period because she was making an abridged series of MLP: FIM called Friendship is Witchcraft, which was and IMO still is hilarious. She voiced all of the female characters (except Celestia), and when Hasbro was putting an end to it via copyright strikes, I lost sight of Nicholson... But earlier this year I rediscovered her and her wonderful, wonderful snark. If you enjoy nitpicking apart blockbusters, especially Star Wars, then Jenny is your gal. She could give screenwriting classes, her stuff is that good and funny. She’s also recently been hired by ScreenJunkies to host the Star Wars-centered Millenial Falcon, which I also recommend if you love the old SW like myself. Also we have officially passed the 100k subscriber threshold, so we’re talking about the popular kids now! #10: hbomberguy British people are inherently funny- and smart-sounding, even though most aren’t (I’m sorry British people; feel free to make as many Germany-bashing jokes as you’d like). But hbomberguy definitely is both smart and funny. Whether he is talking about (British) politics, responding to YouTube “skeptics” or MRAs, or ranting about media for hours, he’s always a joy to watch and hear. Probably one of my favorite videos of his is his almost two hour long masterpiece “Sherlock is Garbage, And Here’s Why”, in which he finally managed to put into words why Sherlock’s fourth season was the worst and why Moffat is just a horrible, horrible showrunner including on Doctor Who, which is something that has hampered by enjoyment of Doctor Who and I was’t even fully aware of it and can finally express myself on this topic the way I’ve been wanting to for ages, and that should be enough of an endorsement from my end.

#11: Folding Ideas Dan, the Foldable Human, is an expert on editing, working behind the scenes in the movie industry, how YouTube works, and how culture shapes media. I honestly can’t even summarize this channel even further because I’ve hit the nail on the head and just want to you watch this Canadian guy and hear him talk about mostly movies. “The Art of Editing and Suicide Squad” is a very good starting point in his videography, close to 1 million views, and it is everything you need to know about this channel in a 35 minute long package. Just check out at least that video and if you like what you’ve seen, dig deeper. You most likely won’t regret it.

#12: Lindsay Ellis (The Nostalgia Chick) We have reached “the big ones”! Lindsay Ellis has been in online video for almost a decade now and she has mastered the art of the video essay. She’s been looking at media from a feminist perspective for ages now and her body of work speaks for herself. 90-ish episodes of The Nostalgia Chick, 23 episodes and counting for Loose Canon, where she examines how different characters have been portrayed throughout the years, thus far nine long-form video essays, and her recent series The Whole Plate, where she covers the basics of film studies by looking at Michael Bay’s Transformers. Check out her stuff, I implore you. You will spend hours watching her content and learn so, so much!

#13: Geek Remix (Mari and Stacy)

You love fun let’s plays hosted by several people but think that there should be more women doing so, too? Me, too! And that means you’ll probably enjoy Geek Remix, aka Mari and Stacy, who are two lovely ladies playing so many games! Night in the Woods, Dragon Age Inquisition, Resident Evil 7, Life is Strange, Contradiction: Spot the Liar, and so many more. Otherwise you can also expect theory videos, conversations about human sexuality, easter egg listings, and a lot of other fun stuff on their channel, which with about 147k subs is definitely the most popular channel on this list. Special shoutout to my friend @hella-flawless-amythyst who introduced me to them, so if you get sucked in by Mari and Stacy’s charm, you can “blame” her, too (if you actually blame her I will hunt you down though). So... That was my list. Lots of stuff on there, sadly nothing music-related if you were looking for that (but if you speak/understand German, I highly recommend Bina Bianca, who is just adorable and is an honorable mention), but I hope that you’ve found a channel or two that might interest you. This took ages to write, by the way xD