A selection of author notes in the trend of Post The Rough Draft!

[cimorene]

None of these are from stories that are visibly a part of a challenge, exchange, or other date-dependent occasion.

1. This isn't the edited version so I will be going back later and fixing things after getting back from vacation.


2. No beta because I write this shit at like 3am and publish it immediately.


3. I wrote this headache fic with a headache so please forgive any typos


4. i read my writing once after i have written it and that is IT, so any mistakes will be staying. that's just how it be.


5. wrote this in a frenzy and its not beta read so. it probably sucks my bad


6. anyway i didnt really feel like editing this one so apologies for any errors,


7. any mistakes r my own haha i wrote this at 5am again sorry guys.. forgive me v_v!


8. not beta read bc i just need to PUBLISH THIS DAMN THING


9. No Beta, no heed towards canon. :)


10. also did not proofread this bc i have no energy so XX

#4 is actually doing a lot more proofreading than what seems like a plurality of the fandom I've been reading, so props I guess?

Comments

[james]

It's interesting to see how much has changed over the last 30 or 40 years of published fanfic (online - zines are a different fish I think). There's a definite trend from "I am writing a story and publishing it to an audience" to "I am engaging with other people over this shared love of thing it doesn't matter how we engage just that we do."

Neither is better or worse, but the younger generation of fanfic writers is absolutely doing things differently than the older generations. (Also it seems like so many people write on their phones! How do you edit and check over a document on a phone for crying out loud.)

[cimorene]

Yeah, I mean... I find it quite difficult because while it's definitely true that neither is better or worse - and they're cultural expectations in both cases - I definitely find one of them a lot more pleasant to interact with, and in many ways I think a body of work made up of more finished and polished pieces is also easier to read.

I've observed these sorts of norms varying from fandom to fandom quite a bit, still, though. I hope that means that there's room for ideas about it to move in both directions, rather than inexorably sliding away from beta reading.

[james]

I usually tell myself that if I want a particular story to have been beta read, then I must be willing to volunteer to beta read it. That almost always makes the urge for it to be beta read go away. ;-)

[cimorene]

I have that train of thought sometimes, but it doesn't really work. I still think everyone who likes it should be willing to beta read it. I mean, in a world where beta reading is the norm, you still find fic that is not necessarily competently beta read, but they still deserve points for trying.

[ealgylden]

I just... argh. I can't put myself in that headspace. I know it's because I'm Old On The Internet and this is a very different generation of fandom, but how can they be proud of posting something they know to be slapdash? You just want to write to get it out, cool, yes, I support that! But it doesn't have to be public! And it's not even on a personal blog or whatever; it's in an archive! An archive that gets millions of hits and worldwide interaction! I read these notes and I cringe.

I also caught a glimpse as I scrolled past of a tag that said something like "1987 camboy" and was laughing too hard to go back and investigate. Oh, digital natives, no. That's not... no.

[cimorene]

In a fic the other day set in 1986 there was a movie "streaming on tv".

[ealgylden]

Siiiiiigh.

[niqaeli]

I mean, I'm gonna be honest: very little of my published fic has received a beta read. Some of it has! Some of it has been much better for that beta read! That's arguably why I sent it out to beta in the first place; knowing that it needs a second or third eye to tell me what to do with it.

But a lot of what I write that gets published has not received anything that could remotely be called a beta read (as opposed, potentially to an 'alpha read'), and I'm not necessarily out here going "yo, this wasn't beta read!!" but part of that is because I... also don't think it's always a necessity, either? It kind of depends on the fic and what you're trying to do with it, I feel like.

[cimorene]

I've posted things without a beta reader after making every effort to proofread them myself. I also know, though, that I'm pretty good at editing, even if there's always a qualitative difference from an outside perspective and a higher risk my brain will hide typos from me. There are things that aren't serious or important enough to bother getting someone else's help, and other things that I would never post without getting multiple beta readers.

I would never advertise it, though. Or post something that I hadn't read over carefully multiple times - something I was confident was clean enough to pass for beta read to most readers. Cleaner than a lot of stuff that is beta read, if the beta doesn't know as much as they think they do.