I'm not just talking about writing one, but how much effort and time you put into it.

Each chapter has its own thing going on. Could be characters, detailing, working on grammar errors to make things flow smoothly, and the list goes on from there.

This feels like a trend for me. I seem to do this for any story of mine that I have yet to publish. It's like I'm trying to make myself confident in writing a story, but at the same time, I'm wanting to ensure that it meets my expectations of being good. I can't seem to shake it off.

The reason why I say this is because I have this feeling that if I don't do this, then my stories are going to get bombed and get the red saber of death and unworthiness added to it.

Is there anyone here who knows what I'm feeling?

I can spend about a month on a given chapter at this point (outlining, first draft, edits, second draft, re-edits). Early on, each chapter took less time, but as things progressed, I found it took longer and longer. Something not helped by no longer being locked indoors during The Plague.

On average? Four to six weeks, from first draft to publication. That said, those chapters tend to be 10k words (and up) long, plus the first draft is written in pen, meaning the second draft a typed rewrite. Then prereaders leave notes. Then edits.
I'm not exactly the norm, though. Most do one draft, edit, and are fine with that. Personally, I'm not. The second draft redone is always better--like, significantly better, and more fun to write, too. I know not only that specific chapter better, but my story better.

My goal is not to write a story free of criticism because people will always find something to criticize, no matter what. You can't please everyone, man. You can't. Someone WILL dislike whatever you make, even if you did nothing "wrong".
All I can do--all YOU can do--is tell the story you want to tell the best way you can. That's it.

How you do learn to best do that is to learn. You learn writing by WRITING. And some of that writing is going to stumble and may not be liked. But if you ask me, that still doesn't mean it's unworthy. All writing is worthy, because all writing you made is something you can learn from.

For me, it varies, but I do try to give some thought before writing anything out especially if I want to make me fanfics special and outside the box to make sure they are exclusively mine.

I'm not sure. Sometimes a chapter could take only a few days to finish, even if it is 2000 words. However, others can be so complex that they would take months to complete. It depends on the dedication you put in. Writing the prologue chapter of a story is not the same as writing the high point of the story.

It wouldn't be out of my character to edit a chapter up to 200 times. From time to time, I even still edit a chapter I published a decade ago.

The process of the first idea to publishing can take years, even if it's just one chapter.

We already have enough stories on this site to last somepony for a lifetime. Quantity is no longer needed. Quality is what the readers here crave. Quality, however, demands time.

In order to achieve maximum quality, your process simply can't be shortened. So, don't worry; you're not the weird one here. 90% of others here are the weird ones for not bothering to produce quality.

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I never actually consider the time, though I'm sure it can be anywhere from days to months, depending on the subject matter. One of my more popular stories deals with some subjects that I find quite difficult to write, for it involves violence, self-harm, non-con, and forced subjugation, but I'm committed to finishing the tale for, in a strange way, I want to see how it turns out just as much as my readers do.

Some of my more light-hearted tales take only a few days at most, though for all my writing I always check and triple-check my spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as rewrite passages to better improve the word-flow. Many times, I've written a scene and was satisfied with it, only to sleep on it and wake up with an entirely different idea, so I rewrite it.

As an aside, this is also the reason many writers like myself abhor being rushed, or being bombarded with PMs asking for updates. Writing is a personal process, and for some of us, it's a slow one.

If all goes well, I can bang one around 4k-8k chapter in a month, 3 hours a day. I spend maybe a day or two on editing and correcting errors, or changing entire bits to something better.

But usually it can be months to make the same. Working the same 1 to 3 hours.

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As of late, it takes me around two weeks and a ton of editing to be satisfied with a chapter. I have one in particular that I started writing in March and just recently deemed complete, after going through and revising it almost twenty times. It all depends on how much work you wanna put into a chapter I guess, but for me I want them to be as smooth and easy to read as possible, so it takes me a while.

About three to five hours.
Sit down, let the words flow from mind to fingers to keyboard.
And then re-reading the whole thing once it's done in an editing pass before publishing.

7958962
Anywhere from less than a minute to literal months depending on the fic lmao

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It depends on the mood to write the chapter. Because its hard to force down the picture in your mind to words on the keyboard. Aside from writing skills, most words were so familiar to us that other ways to pronounce them gets set aside from ever being used. Also the free time you have makes it longer finish. ex: is me when I need to re-fix after re-fix a chapter all because there's a much more diverse way to express each paragraph. So for your question, to me it's around two 2-3 tops (if not busy and or in the mood/motivate).

The reason why I say this is because I have this feeling that if I don't do this, then my stories are going to get bombed and get the red saber of death and unworthiness added to it.

Stories seldom get the red saber for not being good. At worst, stories that 'aren't good' usually just languish in obscurity, with few likes or dislikes.

The red saber usually comes from (some) people being offended by or actively hating the story. It doesn't have to be because of the story itself, even, and it certainly doesn't require that the story be bad. People could even be telling each other something that isn't true about the story.

People can be offended because the story insults their favorite ship (or because they think it does) or because they think the story is about a social cause that some people love to downvote and some other people don't care about.

Or perhaps 'worst of all,' the story could be rated "M for mature" and not have porn in it.

On another hoof, even if someone TRIED to offend everyone (as Twilight Sparkle tries to do in the story I've linked here) they might not succeed.

TTwilight Sparkle Cancels Herself

• MLP: FiM
• Slice of Life

All she's asking is that everything she might ever say be held against her. In advance.

• Twilight
• Applejack

Estee · 9.5k words  ·  252  13 · 3.8k views

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lol, anywhere from two weeks to the better part of a decade. Although I have been writing faster since I started the redux of my story.

But I feel like you are asking the wrong question here, every author writes at a different pace, through a different process. Some authors can sit down and write 10 000 words over a couple hours, but most can't. And attempting to do so when you can't will just leave you with unreadable slop that only a couple people will like.

There are 2.5 billion words of stories on this site alone, more than anyone could reasonably read. The only way to stand out is to, either write a story that is in an incredibly popular genre (T or E rated comedy one-shot or M/sex/porn fic are really the only big stand outs), write a largely original story or just write well.

I try not to make mine too long, but that's mainly due to not having enough thought to do such length, plus I'm writing a fanfic and not a book, so I don't see a reason to make them that long to start with.

I don't start editing a story until the whole entire story is done. So depending on how long each story is that I write it might take me months to do. When I start releasing a story I'm editing as I go.