Questions For Fic Writers

questions for fic writers

a collection of questions i, as a writer, would love to be asked !!!

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

2. Go to your AO3 “Works” page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for “Additional Tags.” What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?

3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!

6. What’s one fact about the universe of [insert fic] that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

9. How do you find new fic to read?

10. How do you decide what to write?

11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

16. What’s an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?

17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

19. If you wrote a spin-off of [insert fic], what would it involve?

20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in [insert fic], what would it be?

22. Who is your favorite character in [insert fic] and why?

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue?

27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.

28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?

29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for [insert fic]? Explain your choices if you want!

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

32. What’s your ideal fic length to read?

33. If you write chaptered fics, what’s your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read?

34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

36. Do you visualize what you read/write?

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

43. If you take/write prompts: what’s your favorite prompt fic that you’ve written?

44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts?

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

Patient Love [COMPLETE]

AO3 | Art tag | get the book | Patient Love playlist | Patient Love Bot | Dean’s letters 

Rating: Explicit

Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore, Charlie Bradbury, Benny Lafitte, Balthazar (Supernatural), Bobby Singer, Jimmy Novak (Supernatural), Ellen Harvelle, Jo Harvelle, Missouri Mosely

Pairings: Dean/Castiel, background Sam/Jess

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, US Navy SEAL Dean Winchester, Journalist Castiel, Minor Character Death, Friends to Lovers to Strangers to Friends to Lovers, (is that actually a tag?), Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Military Backstory, War Injuries, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Panic Attacks, Anxiety Attacks, Grief/Mourning, Sobriety, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pinning, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, author is card carrying member of team everyone switches forever, Shower Sex, Facials, Comeplay, Come Marking, PLEASE CHECK THE TRIGGER WARNING IN THE NOTES OF EACH CHAPTERS

Summary: Castiel Novak is 27 when he suddenly loses his twin brother Jimmy, and his whole world turns to ashes. How do you deal with losing half of yourself when your whole life always revolved around the two of you, like yin and yang and black and white? How do you deal with a broken soul and old demons looming over you with no one to hold you back anymore?

After 10 years as a Navy Special Warfare Operator and more than a dozen deployments in both Afghanistan and Iraq, a battlefield injury forces 28-year-old Chief Petty Officer Dean Winchester to choose between being stuck behind a desk for the rest of his career or going back to civil life. When he learns about his friend Jimmy’s death, Dean makes his way back to Kansas with his heart in his throat and broken pieces at his feet.

Things are already complicated and painful enough as it is, but when former lovers Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak meet again after 10 years of radio silence and a galaxy of wounds and scars solidly standing between them, it feels like both a curse and a blessing has been placed on them both. Is there any hope in putting back their broken pieces together after a decade, and how do you deal with grief and broken dreams?

Author’s note:

This is a re-upload of my fic Patient Love. 

It has been deleted from AO3 by the Policy and Abuse committee following a hate campaign led by another fellow Destiel writer (her username starts with Palomino and finishes with Pup). After considering my next steps, I have decided that this story— which is so deeply connected to parts of my irl life— is too important to me and a whole bunch of other people for it to simply be unavailable online. So here we are.

This new upload won’t make up for the thousands of comments, kudos and bookmarks lost, but I hope that it’ll catch readers’ eyes and find new readers that had yet to read it the first time around. Please do leave comments. Do discuss things in the comment section. I’ll be around to chat with you.

TRIGGER WARNINGS – PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU TAKE NOTE BEFORE DIVING INTO THE STORY

• referenced past and present drug abuse • war talk, war injury • panic and anxiety attacks • depression • five stages of grief • Post Traumatic Stress Disorders

Specific trigger warnings are detailed in the notes of each chapter. Please be mindful of those, this is a story that deals with a lot of heavy stuff!

— fellow writers + taglist under the cut —

Keep reading

Doctor Who Masterlist

Welcome to my Doctor Who fic rec masterlist! Please use CTRL+F to search if you are looking for something specific. If what you would like to see is not on this list, please drop me an ask!

Lesser known fics

Thasmin

Lesser Known Destiel Fics pt 2

Hi everyone! Here's the second part of Destiel fics which have fewer than 5,000 hits. I hope you enjoy them!

Once a Day by followthattardis (2.4k)

Castiel has just enough control left over his body and mind that he steps into the Ma’lak Box on his own.

L’Oréal Féria 1-Step Lightening System for Men by gayliens (2.5k)

His hair had been the same since he was eleven, a tight almost-buzz on the sides, a little longer on the top. Brown, unassuming, military-issue. Never long enough to fall in his eyes, not like whatever Sam had going on on that head of his. His face had been changed by thirty-something years of slicing and dicing, aging out of those delicate features. If he dropped dead now on the bathroom floor, the coroner wouldn’t call him pretty. But his hair stayed Ken-Doll-identical all the way through.

or: dean fucks up dying his hair. cas helps

Rinse, Repeat by Ias (3.3k)

He's killed Dean hundreds of times. What's one more?

Extra Sauce by anomalation (3.4k)

Cas confides in a poor unfortunate McDonald's cashier, who is a little shit and makes Dean jealous to prove a point. Nothing but fluff and gritty fast food realism.

Mary Winchester, Lesbian at Large by alectolee (4.2k)

Mary Winchester is a lesbian. She has no idea how to tell her children.

The Passion of the Christ (and his angelic ex-boyfriend) by Bzzee (4.9k)

Dean and Cas are happy in heaven until Cas's ex-boyfriend saunters in. Dean discovers you can be jealous in heaven and that, apparently, Jesus fucks.

New All Over Again by Castielslostwings (5.7k)

Dean and Cas as childhood sweethearts separated as teenagers who have been searching for each other for years without success. Against all odds, they reunite in the middle of Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

preaching to the choir by piesexuality (7.9k)

“So, tell us—are you a religious man?”

Steve grimaces. "It's, um. Complicated. Very complicated."

or, There's no way Castiel lived that close to BYU-Idaho without running into some Mormon missionaries.

Speak Silence No More by rea_of_sunshine (8k)

When Dean imagined this moment, it went like this:

Dean bursts into the Empty—guns blazing, chin high, righteous anger coursing through him. No matter what form his plans and fantasies and whiskey-drunk-whispered-promises took, he is always, always successful. When he imagined it, he was finally the hero Cas deserved.

The reality of the moment is this:

It’s fucking cold.

Veil by evol_love (8.1k)

Not that Ed keeps tabs on anyone from his past life as a paranormal investigator, but he’s about 99% sure he heard through the grapevine that Dean Winchester fucking died, so getting a text from him on a random Thursday inviting him to his wedding is in the top ten weirdest moments of his life. And that’s really saying something. Ed’s had weirder weird moments than most.

His first instinct is No, absolutely fucking not, why on earth did you even invite me we’re not friends and we haven’t spoken in six years, but. But.

Maybe he misses the weird a little.

the pie isn't a metaphor (it's just pie) by noviembre (9.3k)

“I watched the Garden of Eden grow out of the desert,” Cas informs him. “And I’ve read everything Stacy has written on Bumbling Bee Gardener dot net. But please, Dean, share your wisdom about apple horticulture.”

Every Road Leads To You by songbvrd (9.9k)

When Cas gets poisoned by a djinn and is unable to be woken, Dean gets sent into his head to wake him up.

While Dean is expecting something that's hard to pull Cas from, he never expected to find Cas married with kids and a dog.

Dean has to confront what all this means to him and Cas has to decide whether to stay or go.

Won't You Stay? by allmystars (18k)

A week before Christmas, a weekend with his brother, and a hike into the mountains shouldn’t change a single thing about Dean Winchester’s life. It’s just a trip, just to distract Sam from everything he’s lost.

But, when a blizzard blows in, stranding the Winchesters, Sam finds a crack in the rock-face, and everything changes.

A pit, and pain, and every broken thing inside Dean, discovered by angels.

Well, one angel. One powerless, exiled angel.

Angel Recovery Project by keylimepie (20k)

An ordinary woman attempts a very extraordinary spell and brings back the wrong angel. But he's here and he needs help, from sandwiches to love advice, so what else is a girl to do?

5 Times a Member of Team Free Will Kills John Winchester and the 1 Time he is Kicked out of Heaven by bisexualsharks & Hazloveshisboo & jeremycarver (21k)

The 5 times different members of TFW (and a few others) got the chance to murder John Winchester, and the 1 time he was kicked out of Heaven because it was too late to kill him.

These are all separate one-shots that are not connected or set in the same timeline.

No need for dreaming by AsphodeleSauvage (24k)

Castiel loves his job as a wedding photographer. He loves nothing more than to capture the pure love in a couple's eyes as they say 'yes' - soulmates or not soulmates, he doesn't care. Yet, he can't help wondering about his own soulmate and about the mark on his chest that promises him a love story for the ages. There is also the fact that he keeps bumping into the charming Dean Winchester at every wedding he goes to...

A Hard-Won Peace by patheticfangirl (28k)

“Afterlife” no longer means forgetting what happened during life.

In Heaven, Dean is tormented by peace and freedom until he reunites with an also-struggling Castiel. Together, they work through issues they couldn’t leave behind, hoping to find something resembling happiness.

Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe by TheBlackLagoon (37k)

Cas Novak can’t see an escape from the life of hunting. Even with the frequent pleas from Jessica to leave it all behind, where in the world is he supposed to fit in? Dean Winchester can’t see a life beyond pencil-pushing for the Men of Letter’s Midwest branch. Even with the responsibility he holds to upkeep his family name, is it really what he’s meant to do? The two duos meet on what appears to be an easy salt and burn but which quickly spirals out of control.

Just for the Holidays by Fallen_Angel_Meg (41k)

After going through some tough times, Jess, Castiel's best friend, decides the best thing for him to do is to get away for Christmas. She secretly signs up their shared house on a home exchange website and it doesn't take long for them to get some interest. Castiel ends up trading houses with Sam Winchester, despite his hesitations to do so. So now Castiel has to spend his Christmas alone in Lawrence, Kansas. Which isn't so bad because Castiel is looking for some alone time right now, not wanting to get romantically involved with anyone. That is, until he meets Dean Winchester and things get complicated.

And that's it! If you have any other fics with under 5k hits that you love — whether they be your own or your friend's — please share them with me! Often these fics are swept under the rug when the authors put so much time and effort into them, so I hope you enjoy reading them :)

hi this is an ask for a good fic recommendation. I just read a Destiel fic based on beauty and the beast and I was wondering if you had any other recommendations for a Disney hybrid story? Thanks :)

hiya anon!! this is a great idea for a rec list, but unfortunately I only know two! Hopefully someone else can help us out by reccing some amazing Disney AUs :D

Once Upon A Time in a Disney Store by noxsoulmate (23k)

When Castiel Novak gets sick and loses his voice for a few days, he comes up with a clever trick to explain his lost voice to the kids in the Disney Store he works at. One little Mary Winchester, however, takes his note too serious and promptly starts a quest for his prince. Will her charming uncle be able to break the curse and be his one true love?

(This whole series is so cute!! And the second one is Christmas-themed, just in time for the holidays!)

Happily Ever After by Castielslostwings (31k)

Police Officer Dean Winchester’s younger brother Sam and his best friend Charlie Bradbury have had enough of watching him pine over his best friend, roommate, and partner on the force, Castiel. Especially when it’s so obvious to everyone but the two of them that the feeling is mutual. Subtle hints and encouragement just aren’t cutting it anymore. Now, it’s time to get drastic. It’s time… for Disney.

And I think this might be the fic anon is referring to, if anyone is interested! (If it isn't, you just get a bonus rec lmao)

Beauty and the Beast by seraph_castiel (49k)

Castiel hated the rules of the Royals.

"Do this, do that." It was like they were better than the people who lived in the township. He always loved humanity, and he never knew what would happen when he unleashed it. His family has more to it than he thought, and when he met a firey Omega to keep him in line, the Alpha was absolutely in love. Even though the Omega was a peasant. Whats wrong with being human? Aren't they all?

If anyone knows any others, please let us know and I'll make sure to give them a read!! And thank you for the ask, sorry I couldn't be more helpful :D

do you have any destiel recs where cas being gay/only into men is a part of the story. It doesn’t have to be centered around that but still significant

hi anon!! I do have some gay Cas fics for you, but not too many, unfortunately! If anyone else has any recs they can share to help us out and make the list a bit longer, that would be fantastic!

Gay Cas Fics

Hell is a Place on Earth by pollutedstar (1.6k)

Mary knows logically that demons and angels are the polar opposites of each other, but she still finds herself startled that lights don’t flicker every time Castiel enters a room. She looks up, her eyes blurry from straining to read her husband’s writing in the dim light of a lamp. The angel stands silently, tilting his head, and she feels guilty for telling Dean angels watched over him. The pressure of those eyes are not for a child to bear.

Walk Through Fire For You by purple_charlie (2.3k)

Boyfriend.

The word still feels foreign in Dean’s mouth, still brings back echoes of John Winchester’s thinly-veiled (if even that) homophobia. "Man up, don’t be a sissy, I didn’t raise a fairy". It’s a swollen blister in the back of Dean’s mind, throbbing with pain whenever a stranger’s eyes linger too long on Cas’ hand in his, whenever a waitress double-takes at how close they sit in diner booths.

But here, dirty dancing with Cas in a warehouse full of other queer folks, Dean wants to shout from the rooftops- I’m Dean Winchester, I drive the baddest car in town, I lift heavy things for a living, and this is my boyfriend.

Cuffed to an Angel by mattzerella_sticks (72k)

Dean Winchester has a lot going for him: he's beloved by his students, he's finished writing his first book, and he's living comfortably in New York City. The only problem is... he's single. That wouldn't bother him much if his family wouldn't be visiting for the holidays. With cuffing season over, Dean has to face his family alone... or will he?

Castiel DiAngelo is a simple detective who hasn't really celebrated Christmas in over 9 years, holidays and family being a sore spot for him. But after taking Dean up on an offer, he finds that you can't really avoid the holidays.

Will these two be able to pull off a seminal holiday trope? Or will certain developments get in the way...

Four Letter Word for Intercourse by bendingsignpost (194k)

As a grease monkey turned college freshman, Dean's constantly three seconds away from being stressed out of his mind. It hardly helps that he's finally figuring out his sexuality in his thirties.

What might help with that stress is a little phone number (and a big credit card bill). If he can't figure out how to be bisexual in person, he can at least give it a go over the phone, right?

(It's probably a bad idea, but he really can't help himself.)

I hope you enjoy them, anon, and I'm sorry I only have these four for you!! If anyone else has any gay Cas fics that they'd like to share, please send me them and I'll add them to the list :)