Improbable Press Blog

I've been talking with a few fandom people lately about comments they've received on their fic. One writer felt so badly about the feedback they were ready to delete their AO3 account. Because of fucking comments. "I love this but here's how you've failed me…" comments.  "I love this but there wasn't enough sex," comments. "I love this but here's how the plot went all wrong," comments.  "I love this except you didn't write me the perfect thing I wanted and you were meant to know, so I'm going to shit in your kitchen," comments. How god damn dare.  How...

I have written for a living for over twenty years and so a non-writer might figure writing's easy for me most of the time. Ha ha ha. Ha. I write so much crap. So much. Tons of garbage. Words that are ridiculous. Awful. Words a particularly illiterate gerbil would be ashamed of. And yet… …that garbage gets me to the good stuff. It always feels like it shouldn't and yet it always does. Every time. Because writing nothing will never get me there but writing rubbish? Figuring out where the story doesn't go? It helps me find the exact right...

By Sara Dobie Bauer   Arranged marriage. Forbidden love. Age difference. Enemies to lovers. Gay for you. VIRGIN!   These are all tropes. Tropes are so-called “overused plot devices.” They’re plots, conflicts, and characters we’ve seen a hundred times before. Some might say they’re clichéd. Why would you want to write something clichéd? Because these clichés, these tropes, work and they allow readers to relate to your writing and even find the exact sort of story that turns them on.   No surprise, I write BBC Sherlock fan fiction. That show is a trope magnet thanks to all the unresolved...

Do this: Ignore anyone who doesn’t like what you like. Ignore ‘em.Because there are seven billion people on this planet and about the only thing we’ll all agree on is the human need for food, water, and air. Beyond that it’s a crap shoot.This by way of saying that when it comes to fic tropes there will always be people who think they’re lame, over-used, lazy. Great! Let those folks go off and enjoy something edgy. You? Me? We can happily settle down with a beloved coffee shop fic, a college AU, or whatever the ever it is we love....

I've written more about Sherlock Holmes than the man who created him. Books, fan fiction, articles, essays; more than three quarter of a million words. The thing is, I almost stopped so many times. Because I write professionally, people pay me to write about flu jabs and saving for retirement but they didn't pay me to write hundreds of thousands of words of Sherlock fan fiction. So I tried quitting. Tried to focus on 'real' writing. Yet every time I turned in an article on feral cats or baby colic, I'd start another chapter on another fic, muttering I shouldn't...