I’m starting a new Anne of green gables fan fiction story. I want to make a good strong opening for the first chapter. I want to get readers on fan fiction hooked from the start. How can I do that? I would love to get as many reviews on this story as I can. I have written other Anne of green gables fan fiction and I just don’t seem to get reviews and I can’t understand why. I want people to enjoy my stories. I have the summary written up and the beginning of the first chapter written up if you would like to see it.
Hey! Thanks for the ask :) apologies for the delay. I’ve been sick with a nasty cold! That said, this is a great question and one that I regularly play around with, and because of that, I have A LOT to say. This got long. Sorry!
Fanfiction is a great way to build your storytelling skills, and I personally love writing fanfiction myself! Writing fanfiction and writing original fiction has a lot in common, and so a lot of advice can be applied either way. But there are some things that fanfiction does differently that original fiction just doesn’t have the same pre-ready audience for! So let’s look at fanfiction a little closer, and I’ll use this ask as a basis for a quick little fanfiction guide!
The Differences Between Original Fiction and Fanfiction
If you’re writing fanfiction you probably already know the difference between original fiction and fanfiction, but for those looking to use this guide for their own purposes, I want to talk a little more at length about how fanfiction and original fiction really differ beyond just the dictionary definition.
Fanfiction is creative content using characters or setting from an already established piece of work that you did not create yourself. Whereas original fiction is original to yourself.
This difference is important to understand because when writing your work, you do need to understand your audience and why things work the way that they do. For original fiction, you’re working with an audience that you have to connect with. But with fanfiction, the audience is pre-made, already invested in the characters, the setting, and sometimes the plot as well.
With fanfiction you have some leeway with how to write your story because readers are coming to the fanfiction already knowing that you are not the original author. That being said, there are a lot of FF readers who expect your fic to resemble the canon work, and so with all fiction, you will need to choose your audience and who you are gearing your work for. Your work will not appeal to everybody, even if your audience is pre-built. Everybody has different tastes, so what works for some won’t work for everyone.
Take Advantage of Canon
You’re an experienced fic writer, from what you’ve said, so you are familiar with canon and I’m betting you’ve read other fics within your fandom, right? This can be used to your advantage.
Some of the most successful fics I’ve seen, and some that I’ve found are most appealing to me, are the ones that incorporate canon into the fic in new and reimagined ways. One way to do this is to match your writing style, which is a fun challenge if you’re ever up to it. Another is to use symbols, motifs, and other aspects of the story in new ways or settings. One most relevant to your question, though, is to reference canon in your own fic.
It can be assumed most of the time that if a fan is reading your fic, there was something about the canon source that appealed to them. So if you’re unsure how to start your fic with a hook, take a look closer at the canon. Really pick it apart, and take a look at what appeals to you and why.
Does the source start in media res (starting the story “in the middle”)? Then you know that in media res would be an effective hook on this audience. If canon starts with a dream or another cliche, then using a cliche yourself may be forgiven at the least or even appealing to your audience. You know your fandom better than I do.
You don’t HAVE to use whatever tool canon uses if you don’t want to, but it is an excellent place to look first when making creative decisions about your fic.
The key to the hook involves tension. A good hook gets the reader engaged in the story by asking questions and making them wait for the answers. Your reader wants to know what’s going to happen next, and the best way to do that is to read the rest! Tension is created using stakes, so you don’t necessarily want to wait to give your reader a reason to care, but a little mystery goes a long, long way.
Getting Comments
This is where my personal advice may get disappointing.
Getting comments and reviews on your work is something that the writing community has always had a problem with in regard to how to get them and how to get more of them. I tend to stay away from this part of the discourse myself because my opinions tend to be unpopular, especially with newer writers. But the best thing I can say on this topic is this: comments and reviews are completely outside your control.
There isn’t a magic system or style or process or cheat code that will get you more comments or reviews. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve written since I was literally 12, and in fandom, you will find the most engaged readers across any platform and any media. Original fiction is infinitely harder to get engagement with (you might see writers on tumblr talk about this at length) than fanfiction. And so when it comes to engagement, you have 1 point going in your direction by simply what media you’ve chosen.
Fanfiction, by its nature, is designed around a pre-built, already excited, and already engaged fan base. The people reading your fic already love the original source and are also probably discussing canon with others, searching for and enjoying fan art, memes, meta, whatever. So these people are already engaged. I’ve found that no matter how well you write and how interesting your fic idea is if your already-engaged audience doesn’t leave comments in general, it’s going to be hard to get them to do that differently.
I’m not familiar with Anne of Green Gables myself, so I’m not familiar with the fandom. But I’ve been in a large number of fandoms over the years across many different platforms. Comments on ao3 are not as common as comments on, say, ff.net. Wattpad is difficult to get readers on, let alone commenters. Royal Road and others have very specific user bases that engage with some content more than others. So comments can depend upon where you are posting your fic.
Comments can also depend on how large your fandom is and the specific fandom-wide attitude toward comments and discussion. I write fic in a small fandom right now, and while my views and kudos are pretty low compared to my larger fandoms, my comments are higher because there are fewer of us, and we all recognize each other’s URL. Big fandoms may result in people being more comfortable with anonymity and choosing to lurk instead. That doesn’t mean people don’t like your work. They, for whatever reason, just don’t want to say anything to anybody.
Fanfiction also has a lot of differences in engagement when talking about tropes or kinks. When tagging your fic, always tag it appropriately, but there will be a portion of your readers who clicked on your fic because of one or more of your tags. If you’re writing explicit fic, people specifically looking for the kink you’re writing for will be more engaged and more likely to comment because they want to see more of their chosen kink. The same goes for tropes like “enemies to lovers,” “soulmate au,” or “coffee shop au.”
An 18-chapter soulmate au I wrote 5 years ago in a huge fandom got 68k views and 300+ comments. So looking at those metrics, you can say, large fandom +1, popular trope +1, it was a popular ship +1, and it was on ao3 +1, and 18 chapters = 18 times I was on the first page of the “recently posted” dashboard. Those boosted my chances of getting comments. On the other hand, let’s look at what really matters here: ratios. If you count all of those comments, which about a third to half were response comments from me, then out of all of my viewers, .4% of them left a comment. Less than half a percent of my readers said anything to me. And that number goes down when you take out the comments that were mine. Taking out my responses and dividing them by chapters, that’s about 8 unique comments per chapter. Not much when 68k pairs of eyes saw the fic, right?
Now if we look at a more recent example, I have a current fic that is in a small but engaged fandom, arranged marriage au (related to canon), and that one had about 20 comments and 500 views. That’s 4% of people who clicked on the fic and left me a comment. I didn’t respond to many of those comments this time around, so that ratio doesn’t go down all that much depending on how we filter comments.
I’ve played around with trying to engage my audience. Things like asking a question in the author’s note to spark conversation in the comments worked somewhat but not all the time. Responding to comments doesn’t seem to affect that number either. People aren’t really looking at whether you’ve talked to others in your comment section before leaving a comment themselves. Simply saying, “I’d love to hear your thoughts!” Tends to do enough for my taste, but ultimately that won’t always work.
In general, engagement on fics has gone down in recent years. I don’t have the numbers to back it up. I’ve been around a while, enough to have lost original documents for my works at least three times. From my experience, though, fandom has changed its culture from what it used to be. I don’t have the answers, but I do know that there are clever ways to engage your audience that can still make fandom a fun place for you.
Ultimately this is a long-winded way of saying that you can’t control other people’s actions. Even some of the most incredible writers I’ve seen have struggled with the comment conundrum. It has nothing to do with you or your writing and everything to do with the other person and the millions of unpredictable factors that go into why they made the decision to leave or not to leave a comment. Believe me; it’s hard not to let reader engagement affect your sense of pride in your own writing. And I’ve found the “write for yourself!” advice mostly useless.
The best you can do is the little things that drive clicks and increase eyes on your work. Everything else is up to the reader.
Things to say about your writing instead of “this is so bad”
My writing doesn’t have to be perfect all the time
The dialogue in this scene feels stale (or another adjective), but I can revise that later
The descriptions lack specificity (or another issue), but I can revise that later
The [another specific craft element] isn’t working the way I’d hoped, but I can revise that later
I don’t feel like I can objectively judge my work at this current moment
I’m not happy with my writing right now, but that doesn’t mean I’ll feel this way forever
I’ll reread this writing at a later time and move on for now
This scene isn’t turning out how I’d pictured in my head, but I can accept that for now and tweak it later
I trust myself to edit this in the future
I’m afraid people are going to judge my work, but I’ll accept that I can’t control the reactions of other people—my reaction matters most
This scene/subplot/character/etc is overwhelming me.
I’ll take my time through this scene/chapter/subplot as more time may allow me to immerse more in the draft.
I’ll write this scene/chapter/subplot as quickly as I can—I would like to get through this part ASAP.
It’s okay to make mistakes in my writing.
I’m not feeling very confident in my craft right now, but I know this will pass
This scene might be bad, and that’s okay. Sometimes I write gems, and sometimes my writing needs a bit more work (that’s normal)
This scene relies on [certain skill] that I’m still honing. I understand to get better at something, I have to practice and practicing requires mistakes.
I’m not excited about this scene right now
I had high expectations for this scene, and unfortunately, I don’t feel like I’m hitting them. However, it’s okay for expectations to change.
I’m disappointed with how my writing is turning out. That’s normal, even though it sucks.
I’m going to remind myself what I DO like about my writing because this feels bad, though I know this feeling won’t last forever.
Sometimes writers need to say “my writing is so bad,” and that’s fine too! Sometimes though, it’s good to note what is specifically wrong in case you need an extra boost forward! <3
“Words are so powerful. They can crush a heart, or heal it. They can shame a soul or liberate it. They can shatter dreams or energize them. They can obstruct connection or invite it. They can create defenses, or melt them. We have to use our words wisely.”
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