fanfiction Archives - Brooke's Reviews and Sweeps

How’d That Happen? Finished my 7th Novel/Novella!

By Brookelorren on August 26, 2018August 26, 20186 Comments

Medieval Writing Desk Two and a half years ago, I began what I thought would be a short story of around ten pages. Today, I wrote the final sentence down in my first draft of what had become Like Normal People.

I had just finished reading the Legend trilogy for the second time, and I thought to myself “you know, I really would like a story that would tell what happened to Day and June.” This was before Life After Legend came out. They say that you should write the story that you want to read, and that’s exactly what I did.

I learned a lot while writing this story. One thing I learned was to never publish part of a story when you don’t at least have the first draft finished. At the moment, I have two novels that are about 2/3 of the way done that I haven’t started publishing on AO3 because of this. I had written about 14 chapters of this book… it just came to me, and I was a writing fiend. Then I had to write a chapter where Daniel (Day) and June went mountain climbing — and I don’t know a thing about mountain climbing. After watching a few videos about mountain climbing, and about El Capitan, I still wasn’t ready to write this chapter. Then I moved, and I forgot about this story. I forgot about writing (although I was writing in a journal, so I was still writing something).

This February, I got a message from someone asking me to finish this story. I had already started writing fiction again, and I was partially through writing Saving Adelinetta. I decided to reread Legend and work on this again. You never know what a difference your encouragement will make.

I wrote like mad for a while, and then… I got writer’s block again on this book, on chapter 22. It took five months for me to write that chapter. In the meantime, I wrote more on Saving Adelinetta, wrote two novellas, and wrote about 2/3 of another novel that I got the idea to write, Hero. I’ve written a ton this year.

I was tired of not having Like Normal People finished. So when I realized that I only had three months left until NaNoWriMo this year, I decided to set goals: finish Like Normal People in August, finish another one of my WIPs in September, and finish another one in October. I have another partially finished novella that I’m setting aside until 2019, and it looks like I should scale down my goals and only do one of my WIPs in September/October. So right now I hope to finish the first draft of Hero next month, and polish it in October.

In addition to not publishing until I’m done, I also learned a little bit about making stories a little bit more exciting while working on this. When I originally envisioned this story, it was going to be a short story where everything moves quickly to the happily ever after. I think how it actually turned out was a lot better.

I’ve learned even more this year. Hopefully it will show when I finish my as-yet unpublished stories.

The other day I saw a Twitter post asking how many novels someone had written before they had gotten published. This was after reading Paperfury’s post where she said that she had written 30 novels before getting published. I thought I hadn’t written much at all, but then I realized that I had actually written more than I thought I had. I’ve written nowhere near 30, but I have written 7 novels/novellas now, which really surprises me:

How I Lost _______ (I’m not going to mention the band’s name here) in 11th grade (novella)
Save the Best for Last – 12th grade (this one had a soundtrack with it) (novella)
Selfless – Divergent Fanfiction where Tris chooses Abnegation instead of Dauntless (novella)
Dauntless – Continuation of Selfless. Follows the alternate history of Insurgent (short novel; I won NaNoWriMo 2014 with this)
Republican Phenoms – Legend fanfiction where Daniel (Day) is given the trial score that he deserves (novella)
My New Best Friend – Legend/Divergent fusion fanfic where Day and June live in the Divergent universe and choose Dauntless (novella)
Like Normal People – Legend fanfic where I continue past the Champion epilogue; not canon with Life After Legend or Life After Legend II (short novel)

I finished the last three this year.

Well, that’s enough celebrating. Tomorrow I’ll start making the last few chapters of Like Normal People look good so I can finish publishing it. Then I’ll continue worldbuilding my NaNoWriMo 2018 project and finish up another one of my WIPs.

Wonderful Legend News!

By Brookelorren on July 27, 2018July 27, 20182 Comments

If you read this book for nearly any length of time at all, then you’ll discover that I love Legend, and Marie Lu’s books in general. I’ve probably mentioned at least one of her books every week that I’ve been active on this blog. Well, today I heard some WONDERFUL Legend news while I was on my break at work. There is still a chance that there will be a Legend movie!

I’m certainly not an expert on how all this works, but from what I understand, a movie studio initially buys the rights to a movie for a certain period of time. At that point, they can either make the movie… or not. CBS Films originally bought the rights to the Legend movie, but nothing ever came from it. BCDF Pictures now has the rights to the movie. So evidently, there is still enough interest for this to potentially happen.

I so hope this happens. This is a wonderful book and a movie would allow more people to hear about it. I had never heard of Divergent until I saw the movie trailer… and the book is so much better than the movie. The Legend fanfiction category over at AO3 is getting a little lonely.

That leads me to the other Legendy part of my day. It really was a great day for me. I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo this year, with a goal of 20,000 words. I also decided to do a fun little (okay, little is a little bit of a misnomer) challenge over at the Archive of Our Own Writers Group over on Facebook. They had a little game called “fandom roulette” where they would roll a specific type of story for me to write. I was challenged to write a gen fusion fic in my current fandom.

Gen fics are those that don’t have a love relationship, fusion fics are those where characters are written into another fandom as if they’ve always been there. So for my challenge (and Camp NaNoWriMo) I wrote a story where Day and June are born in the Divergent world and they both end up joining Dauntless. On Tuesday night, I won Camp NaNoWriMo with this story, My New Best Friend.

I published chapter 1 on Wednesday morning. Within 24 hours, I had 50 hits. I have absolutely no idea where all those hits came from. As a comparison, my most successful Legend fanfic, Like Normal People, only has gotten 757 hits in 2 1/2 years. The story with my most hits ever is Selfless, which is in the Divergent fandom, and it has a grand total of 2357 hits, but that story is almost 3 1/2 years old.

So today was a wonderful day, with both the movie news and my fanfic doing so well. It made my day at work seem to fly by, I was so happy. Hopefully, if you like Legend as well, the exciting movie news will actually result in some sort of movie!

Favorite Fanfiction Stories (Top Ten Tuesday)

By Brookelorren on July 17, 2018August 5, 201930 Comments

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic (sponsored by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Favorite Novellas/Short Stories”. I don’t really read that many professionally published short stories or novellas; if I didn’t stray from the topic, it would basically be “novellas and short stories I have read”. It wouldn’t even have ten stories on it. Most of the novellas and short stories that I have read are fanfiction, so I will be writing about my favorite fanfiction stories today instead.

I typically only read fanfiction in a few fandoms, mostly books written by Veronica Roth and Marie Lu, but here are the ones that I like a lot, in no particular order.

Young Elites Fandom:

The White Rose by Idestroyedtheworldoops – at 84,873 words, this is not a novella, but it’s the only Young Elites fanfic that I read and liked. It is an interesting take on the story: what if Adelina met Magiano as she escaped from prison and never became part of the Dagger society? It diverges from canon in a couple of other ways (Violetta is gay and never gets with Sergio) but I liked it overall. I’m currently working on a Young Elites fanfic that will probably be around the same size, but it’s a completely different concept.

Legend fandom:

Detention Legend by readandwrite – this is a cute little AU where Day and June meet in detention at high school. The writing isn’t perfect, but it’s probably the best one in this fandom that I’ve read up on Archive of Our Own (AO3, which is where I mostly read, and exclusively publish, fanfics). Other than the ones I’ve written, but I’m not one to judge my own fics (because if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t write it).

Divergent fandom:

Divergent FourTris One-Shots & Short Stories by FourTrisHEA – these are several short Divergent stories. I particularly like the Camping & Roughing it chapters, where Four is a professor with a crush on Tris… and who does he just happen to run into on a camping trip with his friends?
The Third Pedrad by bornafluffychild – the story says that it’s not finished, but it is. This is also not a novella (123,204 words). It is a story where Tris grows up in Dauntless as the adopted daughter of Hana Pedrad, so she’s basically Zeke and Uriah’s sister. She meets Four (of course) and when they start to like each other, that brings up some complications, since Zeke is very protective of his sister.
Becoming Determinant – Tobias’ Story by Windchimed – the first book in the Determinant series. This one follows the events of Divergent from Tobias’ perspective. It may have been part of my inspiration for Saving Adelinetta, a Young Elites fanfic that I’m writing from Magiano’s perspective (still a work in progress). Becoming Determinant is 132,807 words.
Determinant: One Choice Will Change Everything by Windchimed – this is basically an alternative to Allegiant. If you hated the ending (darn you chapter 50!) then this is a much better one. Novel length, 165,005 words.
Prior Rings by Windchimed – I haven’t read this one in a while, but I remember enjoying it. You should probably read her Determinant story before this one. This is also not a novella (150,125 words).
Online Friends (Divergent) by FourTrisHEA – this is a cute little novella where Four and Tris meet in a Game of Thrones chat room. It was my inspiration for another work in progress I have, Gamers. But you should read this one if you like Divergent fanfiction.
An Unexpected Christmas Eve by springberry – this is a short story where Four and Tris get stuck in a cabin together on Christmas Eve. Springberry is also the author of the slow burn story Discoveries, which is currently unfinished.
Shopping List by Windchimed – this is a cute short story where Four and Tris meet in a grocery store.

I’m sure that I could list more good fanfics in the Divergent fandom, but these were the ones that I had bookmarked or stood out in my memory. There are also a couple of good Legend fanfics that I found on fanfiction.net (I think) but I can’t remember which ones, and I’ve found that, even though there’s more stories over there, there’s also a lot more junk, which is why I read on AO3 for the most part.

Postscript: Even though I chose to write about fanfiction this week, I have to mention that I actually did read a short story last week, and it was A. MAZ. ING. I bought the paperback version of Warcross, which has Life After Legend in it. It is worth the $.50 a page that I paid for it (I already have Warcross in hardback, so I pretty much bought the paperback only for those 21 pages). If you love the Legend trilogy and haven’t read it, it’s totally worth buying.

Compliments to the Writer (Part 2)

By Brookelorren on July 13, 2018July 11, 20182 Comments

This is part 2 of a 2 part series about complimenting authors. Part 1 was published last week. It deals with sending compliments to lesser-known, struggling authors.

Rock Fans I wrote my first two novellas in the junior and senior years of high school. They were stories about a music group that I liked. In fact, just about every story of any significant length that I’ve written has been fanfiction of some sort. The NaNoWriMo story I am planning for this year is historical fanfiction in an AU setting with original characters (okay, it’s original fiction with historical inspiration… maybe I can get over that mental block I have with original fiction if I think of it as fanfiction). I’m starting to get decently okay at remixing ideas and coming up with new works, I guess.

Which leads me to today’s topic, which is that of fandoms. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of struggling authors out there that would love to hear a compliment about their work every now and then, but I wonder about the bigger, more well-known authors.

The other day, I saw a tweet that says you can’t talk about an author’s works enough. To a degree, I’m skeptical about that. They had a good argument though. I don’t actually watch television, but if I did, I’d see commercials about movies, but not about books. I don’t drive on the freeways much because from where I live, I go nearly everywhere via surface streets, but if I did see billboards, there’s a better chance that they’d be for a movie than a book.

So as I thought about that yesterday, I decided to go ahead and tweet about the book I read yesterday that I think that everybody should get. Even though I feel like maybe people are sick and tired of me talking about how much I love the same books over and over and over again, we hear about the same movies and television shows all of the time, and nobody bats an eye over that.

People also don’t bat an eye over people that go crazy over rock bands and television shows. Teenagers have posters of their favorite bands on their walls, scream and go crazy at rock concerts, and spend hundreds of dollars on shirts and memorabilia (I certainly did). People have been going to Star Trek conventions for years, dressed up as their favorite characters. How much time have people devoted to learning Klingon now? I read about a year ago or so that some people were raising their child to speak Klingon as a native language.

Snow White with Laurana, copyright 2008 Brooke Lorren — So people can spend hundreds of dollars to see their favorite Disney characters, but is it weird to be a book fan?

I can get self-conscious when I talk about my favorite authors, or write reams of fanfiction. Okay, so maybe it’s a little weird that I spent so much time playing Divergent Trilogy on Quiz Up that I’m the All-Time Worldwide second highest rated player in the world (#1 in America)… but weird can be good, right? Okay, so maybe I dressed up like Tris when I went to go see Insurgent in the theaters… but people dressed up in Belle costumes when the live action feature of Beauty and the Beast came out, what’s wrong with that? So what if I’m writing all of this fanfiction in these little fandoms… and I’m the only person that’s published there for a year. Maybe that makes me different, but that’s okay, right? This one fanfiction author has written over a million words in one fandom that I read. What’s the difference in writing a million words of fanfiction in a more popular fandom and 100k words or so in a less popular fandom?

I don’t know if I’ll ever not be self-conscious about being uber-hyped up about books that I love, but people go crazy over the World Cup, or football, or rock bands… so maybe it shouldn’t be that weird to be appreciative of the books that bring a smile to my life… and want to share that happiness with others by telling them about it.

I hope that doesn’t make me creepy…

Marissa Meyer’s Heartless is Good Fanfiction

By Brookelorren on June 2, 2018June 3, 2018Leave a Comment

I recently read Marissa Meyer’s 2016 book Heartless. It is a story based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland stories, with a few references to some familiar nursery rhymes and Edgar Allen Poe thrown in for good measure. I thought that it was an excellent piece of fanfiction and is well worth the read.

I’m not sure if many people refer to this novel as fanfiction, but that is what it is, and it’s not meant to be an insult. As someone that’s written over 1000 pages of fanfiction myself (and have probably read at least a million words of it written by other authors) I happen to like fanfiction. Meyer herself wrote more traditional fanfiction (based on Sailor Moon) years ago, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising that someone can make a career writing fanfiction based on works that are in the public domain.

Heartless delves into the question of “What was the Queen of Hearts like before she became the evil creature that Alice runs into?” It’s a fair question, because most children aren’t calling for the heads of people that they’re angry with. It turns out, at least in Meyer’s world, that the Queen of Hearts was just an ordinary girl with big dreams. Big dreams, a love interest, and a family that didn’t quite have the same dreams for her that she did.

Like most good fanfiction, the story is much richer if you are familiar with the original stories that it is based on. There are characters in this story that you’ll run into that play a minor part in Alice in Wonderland that play a larger part here. You can still enjoy this story even if you aren’t familiar with Alice in Wonderland; the more you know about the original work, the more you will appreciate the little details in this story, however.

I enjoyed most of the elements of this story. Meyer uses beautiful imagery to tell about the treats that the future Queen of Hearts, Cath, makes, she creates an interesting little love story, and the story ends with a good explanation of how the Queen of Hearts becomes the heartless creature that we see in Alice in Wonderland.

This is not a feel-good story, but that’s not really to be expected, because if it truly was a story that emitted happy feels, then the Queen of Hearts wouldn’t become who she becomes. She is a character who, although she is brave in some areas, can’t assert herself in other areas, and is slightly unlikable as a result (overall, I do have a favorable impression of her though). Her love interest, Jest, is a likable guy, and I would have liked to have seen more of the story exploring their relationship. These are just minor complaints, however.

If you haven’t read this story yet, I recommend it, especially if you like stories set in an Alice in Wonderland-style fantasy setting. If you like Lewis Carroll, I definitely recommend it, as there are some passages with witty banter like you would find in the Wonderland stories. Although it is not the best book that I’ve read this year, I did enjoy it a lot, and I kept reading it on my work breaks and in the evenings until I finished it.