hello it’s your friendly neighborhood fic writer after a few recent convos with other writers i wanted to highlight why we’re often begging for validation and why it’s so important to show your support of fics

[thread / rts appreciated! ]

firstly, i wanted to stress how much time goes into writing a fic, because i think a lot of non-writers don’t know the extent of how long it can take. after consulting a couple of writer friends, i’d say the consensus is that writing 500 words in an hour is the ideal-

but a lot of the time it might only be like 200-300 words in an hour (so like, roughly half a page). let’s say the average is about 350/hour (and that’s not including time spent staring into space lol). in that case, a 10k fic is 28.5 hours of work.

now take into account that many fic writers are writing much longer fics than that.

50k fic?? 143 hours of work
75k fic?? 214 hours of work
100k fic?? 285 hours of work

and that doesn’t even account for time spent brainstorming, outlining, editing, formatting, etc. which would add a significant amount of additional hours to those counts

mind you, this is not me complaining! i LOVE writing! fic writers do this because we enjoy it and love bringing people happiness with what we create. but i also wanted to put into perspective how much *work* it is.

when you see writers being upset that their fic didn’t do as well as they’d hoped, that’s not just a couple hours of work going ignored. it’s often over 100 hours of work. that’s the equivalent of four straight days/nights! FOUR DAYS!

now, let’s take a moment to discuss statistics and the ratio of hits, kudos, and comments on ao3. i posted a tweet yesterday asking writers to share what their usual hits:kudos ratio is and what they consider to be a “good” ratio.

most writers i talked to expressed that generally for every 10 hits, they get one kudos. so about 10% of people who open the fic hit that kudos button. sometimes 12-15% if you’re lucky but i don’t think anyone said any higher than that.

there’s a couple of factors to take into account, such as that hits could include people revisiting a fic they’ve already left kudos on, or it could be from people opening the fic and not actually reading it. also someone pointed out 10% engagement is about avg for social media-

but again, just considering how much *time* is spent on these creations, it’s a bit sad. leaving kudos takes one second and you don’t even have to be logged into ao3 to leave kudos so it’s a nice and easy way to show support! please do it!

however, i also wanted to stress that the “success” of a fic is not dependent on numbers. after my tweet yesterday regarding hits vs. kudos, a few people shared insightful comments about how they find these numbers meaningless or choose to ignore them bc they’re discouraging-

and that’s totally valid and i agree! numbers don’t really mean anything. there’s a lot of factors that affect the statistics on a fic and a lot of it is pure luck/chance and not necessarily quality. so then why am i concerned with them at all?

the reason why i even bring up things like hits/kudos is because it’s the most common form of validation writers get. if you think the hits/kudos ratio is sad, the hits/comments ratio is even more disheartening (it’s typically about 1% if you’re lucky lol)

the fact that a bulk of fic writers’ validation just comes from hits/kudos (because so few people comment) means that a lot of writers develop an unhealthy fixation on their stats. yes we know numbers ≠ quality, but numbers is most of what we get

the point being, PLEASE comment on fics that you enjoy! even if it’s just a single emoji or “wow i loved this!” it makes a world of difference. comments are the form of validation writers cherish the most and it’s what we get the least.

several writers i spoke to regarding this pointed out that comments are the most valuable to them, and even if a fic didn’t get many hits/kudos, even a single heartfelt comment makes them feel a lot better (and as a writer myself, i agree!) so please please comment

in addition to that, fandom needs to do better for writers in terms of social media engagement. a promo tweet for a fic might at the very highest get 300 likes if you’re EXTREMELY lucky. meanwhile artists on twt tend to consider under 1k on a piece of art a “flop” so...hmm

when i say “300 likes if you’re lucky” i mean very very lucky. most fic promo tweets that i see get maybe 50 at most and i’ve seen many of my writing friends get under 20 likes on their fic tweets, sometimes under 10. which is abysmal honestly. rts are even more scarce.

again this is not about numbers equating to quality. this is about giving writers exposure by sharing their work so that others can find & and read it. this is to say 1) follow fic writers on twitter! 2) rt their fic tweets!

not only that, but a lot of fic writers feel shut out of social circles in fandom or like no one is interested in our snippets/wips. so please engage with us, and read & comment on wips we post if you have the time!! it really means a lot!

anyway i’m reaching my thread limit so i’ll stop. but i appreciate if you read this whole thread and i hope it puts some things into perspective. please feel free to rt and/or to share your own experiences!