Writing tips and tricks -- LJ/DW

[entkayjay]

One of the things I love about fandom on LiveJournal/DreamWidth is the enormous resource of actual terrific fanfiction writers who love to discuss writing, and writing in fanfiction in particular! Came across this link via the Metafandom community (which is of late usually mired in fandom kerfluffles and -ism discussions, so be aware if you go looking) and wanted to share... lots of great tips and tricks in the original post and in the comments.

Example (from SGA fandom):

b) Condensing or handwaving exposition:

"Oh this is the machine that turns rocks into gold!" Rodney said. The wheels turned here and the rocks went in there. John tuned out.

Writing tricks. Also tofu. -- kaneko

[panyasan]

Really interesting stuff. Good tricks too. Is LiveJournal/DreamWidth a blog, a site?

[entkayjay]

Livejournal (and Dreamwidth, a similar concept but totally separate and actually fan-built and run) are blogging social networks. Fandom "moved" there from yahoogroups and elists in the early 2000's, so it's quite heavily populated with people who are into being active fans, ie, those who read, write, squee, meta, follow, and socialize with fandom people.

LJ has the outside reputation of being for teen girls, how it got that I have NO idea, because I have not frequented anything outside of my interests. It's also the #1 blogging platform in Russia, go figure, so there's a lot of Cyrillic journals and comments that come up in random searches. It's also the home for ONTD (Oh No They Di'nt), which is like the Entertainment Tonight of the blogging world. DW is a similar platform that is populated almost exclusively with fandom-types, since they built it as an alternative to LJ when LJ does stupid things (which happens a lot less frequently than it used to).

I treat them both as a networking source, a place to put all my RSS feeds, a social space, and a personal journal. There's a lot of intrinsic netiquette unique to LJ, but it's a great place to find people passionate about just about anything.

It's my internet home.