Question about Fanfiction Chapters (Discussion)

[Toki]

Dear Readers and content creators alike,

I was hoping to get your opinions and discuss the merits and possible issues with a quandry I have been agonizing over for a while now.

Is it an acceptable thing, for a fanfiction writer to update past stories, in the effort to make them better? Or is it better to leave it alone, if it's something that enough people already approve of?

I've been struggling with the though of going back to a few stories of mine, and maybe tweaking things, or some even down rightly re-writing the whole chapter or adding more to an already finished story. But I was wondering how other fanfiction scooby writers felt about doing such a thing, and also asking those who enjoy reading Scooby stories?

How would you feel, if a story has been well established for a while, that up and went and changed on you? Or would you like to see if that content creator might be able to improve said story, and do it better?

Or, is it worth to make a second story, with the added bits, leaving the older version alone so the readers would be able to see the two versions and then get to enjoy which ever they prefer without loosing the other one? (But then it doesn't help with the comments section if you are searching for added reviews)

I would love to hear feed back on this subject, and from anyone. Readers and Writers alike. I'm curious what people thing and if they have any experience with a favorite writer doing this, and if it was done well, or if you regretted them changing the original story.

[Doo]

Personally, as a writer, I've occasionally updated past stories to improve upon them. In an example, my self-imposed 'rule' is that I don't want anything to date my story, such as the characters discussing current technology or trends (maybe a bit pointless, but you never know who will read your fanfic in 2075 lol). Before I thought about this, I had a small part involving Daphne texting on her cell phone, which I've since removed, because the rest of the story did not have any reference of such modern technology. I've also heard of fellow other fanfiction writers going back and slightly tweaking names or scenes to be consistent with something they want to add later.

However, it's probably worth saying that I would never change a story too much. A writer is usually their own harshest critic, so I guess my philosophy with revisions is that I would never delete or rewrite something too big, as a part that I personally hate might be something another reader absolutely loves. I'm not sure how big of revisions you're wanting to do, but if you're planning on rewriting numerous major scenes in the story, I guess my advice would be to create a second story so you aren't disappointing readers by removing scenes they enjoyed.

[russm]

IMO if the revisions are significant enough it might be better to publish it again as a revised story

[Toki]

Well, the main one I am looking at, I had LittleSoprano, look over and told me that the first two chapters were really hard to understand. And my original intention, didn't pan out in the way that I had hoped. So, honestly, I take her opinion really seriously. (I think I would be stupid not to)

So, I don't plan to change what happens, more so how I wrote how it happened. And it also have a great drop in readers from chapter one, to chapter two... so statistically there are less people reading according to FFnet stats, then I would like. I know there is a natural drop, but this is dramatic.

[Doo]

In that case, I would say definitely rewrite the unclear scenes so they are more understandable. As long as you're not changing what happens or a large chunk of the content, I would say that readers would probably be happy to be able to understand what's going on better.

I'm also on Fanfiction.net and I think the drop in views is generally pretty normal. For example for chapter 1 of my current story I have 25 views for the month, and then on chapter 2 it drops to 9. I would assume all the views we're both getting on chapter 1 are the "bookmark/save it for later" people who just never come back to it.