Poll Results (Brief)
I had up a poll yesterday about writing independent of fandom.
The main finding of the poll, and really the only answer I was looking for was that comments is not the majority motivation for writing. Almost 60% (59.5% to be exact) of respondants replied as writing fanfic before they'd ever made contact with fandom. That means they wrote fanfic without feedback, beta, or community discussion and if past actions are the best indicators of future behavior, would continue to do so.
Another 26% wrote before encountering fandom, just didn't write about fan characters, and 14% of writers started in fandom. I purposely didn't do any followup on that, because there are just too many options. The sense of community is encouraging, increased discussion regarding character motivations is a plot bunny machine, some people encounter fandom so young they've always known it. (I'm thinking of some of ya'lls kids.)
But I didn't have a theory to prove - just disprove, and that did it.
Edit: I wrote this up at 6pm EST on March 4th, before the original post got metafandomed, so if the results are off now, that's why.
The main finding of the poll, and really the only answer I was looking for was that comments is not the majority motivation for writing. Almost 60% (59.5% to be exact) of respondants replied as writing fanfic before they'd ever made contact with fandom. That means they wrote fanfic without feedback, beta, or community discussion and if past actions are the best indicators of future behavior, would continue to do so.
Another 26% wrote before encountering fandom, just didn't write about fan characters, and 14% of writers started in fandom. I purposely didn't do any followup on that, because there are just too many options. The sense of community is encouraging, increased discussion regarding character motivations is a plot bunny machine, some people encounter fandom so young they've always known it. (I'm thinking of some of ya'lls kids.)
But I didn't have a theory to prove - just disprove, and that did it.
Edit: I wrote this up at 6pm EST on March 4th, before the original post got metafandomed, so if the results are off now, that's why.