Relaunches

[Gama]

Hi all, it's been some years since I've been active around these parts, and being back has been making me want to write fan fiction again. I can't help but feel though that I want to pick up some of the projects I let drop before.

The thing is that I've still been writing a lot in that time (I've been studying a part-time creative writing Master's degree, in fact) and I feel my writing has developed a lot, and I'm no longer inclined to just continue those that were never finished, and am more interested in tearing them down, and starting from scratch in some cases with some fairly major modifications to the plot.

I can recall sometimes finding this frustrating when authors did this rather than continuing. It's perhaps a bit different in this case because it has been so long since the publication of the last chapters (four years!) but what's your view on this in general?

 

[AetherX]

Usually I recommend against rebooting stories, but that's usually aimed at people who don't like the early chapters of their three-years-in-the-making fic. I'm a big advocate of editing old chapters as you go to keep up with your abilities. It takes a lot of time, but its worth it. I've seen edited stories finish, but I've never seen a reboot get much farther than it did the first time around. Dedicating all of your writing time to stuff you've already written gets tedious quickly and you end up wanting to move on to another project. In your case, your projects are both quite old and were not very far along if I remember correctly. I think it would be okay to relaunch. I'm pretty sure the only people who remember your old stuff that are still around will just be glad that you're posting again.

 

[Lugion]

DO IT

 

[AceTrainer14]

Keeping this general, I think the reboot depends on the story. If it has been a long time without updating, I think enough time would have passed to logically start again. It would also depend on how long the story is: if it's near the end, that would be pretty annoying, but if it is only a few chapters in or less than halfway through, I think it would be fine. The only time I don't like reboots is when its a long runnign story and the author decides to start again. I have been tempted to reboot and rewrite Galactic in full, but I know that at my current pace it would be about another decade before I'm back at the point I'm currently at. Instead I am just going to rewrite the first few chapters, see how that goes, and then decide if I want to do a big rewrite project and tidy up the chapters.

 

[CrystaI]

I am doing that right now. Good thing is that my current crossover project only have prologue and 1st chapter published, so reboot can be done without being too much of a hectic. The previous time I update my fic was 2 years ago. Because during these time when I rewrite again and again the 2nd chapter, also with the continuous accumulation in knowledge of narrative writings, I found that my already established background setting hinder my progression, so I think it might be better to overhaul the overworld setting, which there leads to rewrite the entire story. So mind as well just reboot the fic. P.S. I'm also planning to completely overhaul my fic blog as well together with this reboot.

My fanfic publication habit is do not edit after it had already being posted. Generally speaking there are seldom grammar mistakes because I don't edit old chapters, hence I recheck and reread at least 5 times on 5 different days before posting. And because of that, I had to do a lot of planning not only for the present but also for the future story before I actually start writing, and I have to live with any plot inconsistency if it had already established in previous chapters. If it had become a major plot construction issue in later future, it is certainly a better choice to reboot the fic before it goes further to the point of becoming difficult to redeem.