#all ive ever done is writing vaguely worded smut for phone games

[revasserium]

It's been ages since I wrote a chaptered fic. The last time, I think I was around 17-18. My word count was much lower though. My dilemma now is that my word count is significantly higher and right now I'm covering like, a "back story"? Like covering what happens before the main plot takes place. I wanted to keep it to three chapters, covering each year for school. But it's looking like I have a lot of stuff in the last chapter.

My question is, how do you break sections apart in a chapter without it looking too messy and all over the place? I considered breaking it up into smaller chapters but figured it might mess up the flow somehow.

Hm... so, this is going to be a longer answer so I'll put it under a read more :)

I think the "skill" of writing well comes not from being able to format a story so it doesn't look messy, but rather to write it well enough that it doesn't read as messy. i'm really lazy with this so when i don't wanna put in the work of like... making good transitions, i'll do the thing where i number parts of a fic and then just write like... vignettes basically LOL

for me, MOST of the time, it's me being lazy, and i'm alright with that. if this is just for funsies and you just wanna get from point a to point c without having to worry too hard about continuity or point b, then just do that, have a physical line-break!

if you wanna do the HARD thing, then you gotta like. reevaluate the chapter and ask urself, are these physical visual breaks needed because you were too lazy with your writing to lay down the foundations in text? because any good editor will probably tell you that you should lean on visual/physical things last in the medium of text/storytelling. not that you shouldn't or that there aren't fantastic instances of the layout of the text being just as important as the actual text itself (read: house of leaves) BUT, the text itself should do most of the heavy lifting, right.

so yeah! that's how i'd look at it. if you wanna do the Good Writing for urself, then you're gonna have to edit your story to make the writing better. if you wanna do the Fun Writing (which can also be the Good Writing; they're not mutually exclusive LOL) and it's literally just for u to like enjoy the content and not the form, then do whatever you want! leave it messy if u don't wanna do physical layout things!!! it's literally up to you :D

#and pls take this with a grain of salt lmfao i am literally a rando on the internet who happens to like writing silly lil fics #what i think is Good Writing is purely based on the things that ive been taught and have consumed so it might totally be off base #for some and very aligned with others -- moral of the story is -- do what you want! :D it's all for fun and hopefully a relaxing thing! #now if you're like writing a thing that you're pitching to editors and publishing houses that's a totally different thing LOL #and i would be very ill-equipt to give you advice there bc i have never pitched anything to a traditional publishing house ever HAHAHAH #all ive ever done is writing vaguely worded smut for phone games #🌧 raindrops