I have written fanfiction for years, and have accounts on several different fanfiction websites. For me, fanfiction is a safe place for me to go when I find I cannot cope. It is one of the ways I kept my stress levels down when I was at school, and even now, I find myself relying on writing fanfiction a lot.
Fanfiction websites I use
I use three fanfiction websites to read and upload my work: fanfiction.net, Wattpad, and Archive of Our Own (also known as A03). These days, I use Wattpad and Archive of Our Own more than fanfiction.net, but I still read work on that website.
Fanfiction.net
Fanfiction.net was the first fanfiction website I started using back in 2014. At this point, I was interested in Ever After High, so a lot of my fanfictions reflected that. However, when 2018 came, I wrote my fanfictions based on The Sarah Jane Adventures. Almost all of these stories were part of a series that I called ‘The Emma Smith Adventures’, named so after my main protagonist (who was called Emma Smith when I created her).
It is an easy website to use, and you can access most of its features even when not logged in. Even if you don’t have an account, you can still read and comment on stories, but you need an account to publish your work. When publishing your work, you need to upload a document to the site, which you can work on, and documents stay on the site for a year. If you edit the document, the document life resets, and it stays on the website for another year. Other people cannot access documents. There are also guidelines you must agree to every week if you want to upload a new story.
When you are in a specific fandom, it’s easy to find the type of story you’re looking for. All you need to do is click on the filters button at the top and a list of filters comes up, allowing you to choose what you want to read.
If you are searching for a specific fandom, you click on browse then on the category that the fandom would come under. Then, you can either search through the entire list or click on the letter of the alphabet your fandom would fall under. You can also search for crossovers in the same way.
I find it easy to search for different things on this website, and a lot of the stories that I discovered here I keep coming back to. But you can only specify four characters with each story and two genres. It is the same with crossovers, so if you have more than four characters, you can only include the main characters. It’s the same issue with genres, so you cannot narrow your searches down as much as you can with Archive of our Own.
I also found with this website that some characters do not appear under the character drop-down list. I find it difficult when I decided to rewrite Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith, and couldn’t find one of the characters I was looking for, so I only listed one character.
When writing crossovers, you can only limit it to two fandoms, or explain in the description about the other fandoms in your work, but that eats into the limited word count authors have to describe their work.
While I enjoyed publishing my work on fanfiction.net, I mostly abandoned my account on there. There is only one story I would want to continue updating, but I mostly work on my other fanfictions.
Wattpad
Wattpad, alongside Archive of Our Own, are the two websites I use most often. You need an account to access anything on the website, and you must be over thirteen to create one. However, once I created an account, I found it easy to search for stories I want to read. You search for what you want at the top, and you can narrow it down by the number of parts, when it was last updated, the content, and choose the tags you want used.
It is easier to narrow down what you want to read with Wattpad when you type in the tags you want and the number of parts you want to read. It is more flexible than fanfiction.net, but you need an account to even access the website, making it more restricted.
It is easier to upload on Wattpad than fanfiction.net, and this is the website I post my Emma’s Six series to, and I can design my own covers. For these, I use Gimp, and I try to make each of my covers for the series as unique as possible. I write a lot of Six the Musical fanfiction on this website, and most of it is part of the Emma’s Six series. I also write some on Archive of Our Own.
Archive of Our Own (A03)
A03 is the website I discovered most recently, and I love using it. Everyone can access the site, and I found that navigating the website is simple. You can leave kudos and comments on stories without an account.
When you have an account, you can also bookmark stories you want to read again, and subscribe to them so A03 sends emails to you when the author updates their story. You can also save stories to read later and favourite fandoms, but you can only go up to twenty. Your favourited fandoms show up on the home page along with the stories you saved to read later. You can also add your own icon, which is what appears with your username on any comments and on your profile, along with your works, series, and bookmarks.
It is easy to upload onto A03. If you are saving a story as a draft, it will only stay on the website for thirty days before the website deletes it. However, if you are saving a draft chapter, then it stays as part of the story, and stays on the website unless you remove the story.
You can also create Pseuds, but I have not used that yet. Pseuds are alternate accounts you can also post works to, and they will appear on your profile.
Right now, A03 and Wattpad are my favourite websites to use.
What I write stories about
When I was slightly younger, I used to write fanfictions for Ever After High, which was an animated YouTube series about the children of fairy tale characters that attend boarding school. While I enjoyed it for a few years, I grew interested in another fandom, and moved away from Ever After High.
I tried watching the episodes again recently, but there wasn’t the same spark I felt when I was a young teenager. That is where the username CeriseHood5050 comes from, as my favourite character from that series was Cerise Hood, the daughter of Little Red Riding Hood.
I occasionally write fanfiction about Torchwood, Doctor Who, Six the Musical, Titanic, Rainbow Magic, and Twilight. I write several fanfictions that include aspects of Torchwood and Doctor Who because a lot of my fanfictions are based in that universe. I love writing fanfictions about Six the Musical, and I would love to write more. As there isn’t a fandom space for it on fanfiction.net (and I stopped using that site), I publish all work relating to Six either on Wattpad or A03.
I am writing a Titanic fanfiction on A03 as a spin-off for my Emma’s Six series. I enjoy writing about the Titanic because it is one of my special interests. For my fanfictions, I decided I’d try and stick with as much historical accuracy as possible while trying to tell a story. I tried writing Rainbow Magic fanfictions before, but they are crossovers with The Sarah Jane Adventures, and I hope to write one I’d finish at some point. I only wrote one Twilight fanfiction because I don’t enjoy it that much, and only wrote it to include some characters I like in that fandom in another fanfiction.
Writing fanfiction for The Sarah Jane Adventures
I thought my fanfictions about The Sarah Jane Adventures should have their own section, partly because of how many there are, and because of how much I love the series. I was interested in the show both before and after my interest in Ever After High. It is still my favourite TV show, and I write a lot of fanfictions about it. I’ve started writing it back in 2014 and continued writing fanfictions for The Sarah Jane Adventures ever since.
You can read the following story on Wattpad at: https://www.wattpad.com/933142972-emma%27s-six-downtime
My more recent ones are on Wattpad and A03. In The Sarah Jane Adventures, I love the characters, the storylines, and it’s an incredible TV show. While it was aimed at kids, I found I can still enjoy it as an adult. As I wrote more stories based on this show, I started shipping two characters together. In the fanfiction world, Shipping is when a fan starts thinking of two characters in a romantic relationship. Ships can also refer to ‘pairings’. The pair I ship is Sarah Jane Smith and Ruby White. It is an unusual pairing, and I seem to be the only person who publishes work for this pairing. But I’m happy with this, as I enjoy writing for this pairing.
Writing fanfiction and special interests
A lot of my fanfiction relates to my special interests, as I like writing stories about what I enjoy. As a reader, you know when an author enjoys what they write about, as their enthusiasm shines through. It’s also obvious when they don’t enjoy it. Writing should be about what you enjoy, and I find basing my fanfictions on my special interests means I enjoy reading and writing it more.
As I’ve written and read fanfiction for years, I know it is best to write about what you love. I also have several unfinished fanfictions I’ve either forgotten about or abandoned as I lost interest in them or couldn’t imagine it well. I also abandon some of my stories if my writing style changes too much, but for the most part, I try to keep my fanfictions going until I reach the end.
Since I have published this blog post, I started publishing Emma’s Six on fanfiction.net instead of Wattpad. I will continue writing more Emma’s Six stories on fanfiction.net but not Wattpad. Due to this, the two main fanfiction websites I now use are fanfiction.net and Archive Of Our Own.